Hello and welcome to the land of Archea where you will embark on an epic adventure to confront elemental evil, protect the innocent, restore peace and prosperity to the land, and become rich beyond the dreams of avarice while doing so! Or die trying. Either is fine by me.
This is a dark, complex world full of humor, puzzles, and occasionally preventable death. Play as much or as little as you want—just don’t expect to survive if you go charging in sword-first. You can join a revolution, stop a war, commit tax fraud, discover ancient secrets, or all of the above. I have storylines ready—but they’re yours to chase, twist, or burn down. Oh, and you can’t sit in Etienne Monpierre’s chairs. Don’t ask. Just… don’t.
Naturally, every game of D&D and every GM is different from all the rest. In recognition of this fact, I would like to offer you a brief guide as to what you can expect in this particular game.
- As far as I am concerned, all of you are on the same side. There are no conflicting agendas amongst the player characters… unless some of you decide to create some on your own.
- The universe you will be exploring is the one described in the 5.5E/5E D&D books with a few exceptions, some of which you will be aware of at the beginning of the adventure and some of which you will stumble across later on (perhaps to your detriment).
- You may treat what you recall from reading the 5.5E/5E D&D books as your fund of “common knowledge” that you have acquired while growing up in this land. In addition, you may also ask the GM if you have any common knowledge about something that is specific to this adventure… for example, “Do I happen to recall anything about how the brigands in this area tend to operate?”
- No matter whether your source of common knowledge is the D&D books or the GM, always remember that “common knowledge” is “common” which is not necessarily the same thing as “accurate”.
- When I’m the GM, characters tend to die. This is not because I’m trying to kill them but, rather, because the adventurer’s life is a hazardous one and I think it’s important that the players are exposed to that. The decisions your character makes will have consequences and some of those consequences may be that your character croaks like a frog that just got stepped on. Unfortunately, this is contrary to the main purpose of the game which is that we all get together and have some fun without anyone being excluded.
- Therefore, if your character dies, you’ll invent a new one at the same level as the recently and dearly departed. You and I will figure out a story to explain how your new character came to join the pre-existing group. Or, if you were particularly attached to the prior character, maybe a wizard will offer resurrection in exchange for something deeply inconvenient—perhaps involving goats, garden hoses, and an oddly specific chant.
The underlying principle then is that everyone who wants to play gets to play… even if their characters turn out to have the lifespan of a fruitfly.
- When you set out on your quest, you’ll be accompanied by a number of friendly NPC’s. These NPC’s will serve two roles,
- If one of our friends hears about the game and is keen on joining once in a while, they can jump into playing one of the NPC’s without having to go through all of the overhead of creating a new character.
- The NPC’s will also allow a balancing of the party. If, for instance, all of the players want to play “squishy” characters, there won’t be any need to draft one or more of them to be “tanks”… instead, we’ll make the NPC’s be the tanks so all of the players can play the character types they really want.
- We will set a regular time to play but, in recognition of the fact that not all of us can attend regularly, we will also have an email digest sent out weekly as well as this regularly updated website so that you can keep up with the storyline even if you can manage to make only one out of every three sessions. We’ll miss you when you’re gone, but will make sure you’re able to jump right back in when you return!
- Many of our culture’s fantasy stories (including D&D) are quite brutal with betrayal, assassination, rape, slavery, racism, bashing and stabbing of living beings, death by exsanguination, death by fire, and death by simultaneous exsanguination and fire being commonplace and, in fact, somewhat accepted.
- Although we won’t be reveling in these activities, we will be describing them… for instance, if you roll a critical hit which results in the death of a goblin, you might expect to hear about how your mighty blow cleaves the wretch’s head from its shoulders and its body topples backwards limply with blood spurting from the neck for a few seconds before trailing off to a pathetic trickle into the dirt.
- If there is some subject or some form of description that would make you uncomfortable for whatever reason, however, please let me know privately. I won’t tell anyone else about it but I will make sure that it doesn’t come up in the game. The whole reason we are coming together, after all, is so that all of us can have a good time and it’s certainly worth putting in some work toward that end.
- Your GM, wise and masterful though he be, struggles to come up with names for things and frequently resorts to borrowing names in our universe for use in the game universe. You should not attach any particular meaning to this unless the GM named something in a humorous or ironic manner in which case a courtesy chuckle is always appreciated. So, when you learn that a deity in this game is named after Vladimir Putin, you should not go running to read all about him. There won’t be any connection between our Vladimir Putin and the god Putin other than the fact that both are evil. (Don’t forget the courtesy chuckle).
- Your GM will set up a variety of online forums, puzzles, etc. This will be a space where the GM can provide information drops and advance tangential parts of the story. It’s also where the players can continue to work out game problems/puzzles/etc in between sessions. Obviously, we all have varying amounts of time available so you’re all encouraged to participate in these to the extent that you can. If you can’t spare much time for the online part, just try to read along from time to time and we’ll make sure you’re caught up on any important developments when we meet in person.
- Your GM will also set up online areas where your character(s) can keep a diary or journal or, perhaps, simply the electronic equivalent of a chaotic collection of scrawled notes on the backs of bar napkins and the like. He plans to flood you with TONS of stuff to think about so you are encouraged to make use of this to keep track of all of the information you’ll encounter. These areas will be accessible to your fellow adventurers so maybe don’t use this to vent about how you REALLY feel about Fred the Uncouth Barbarian.
- Your GM will be, at all times, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. As for the beings your characters meet during the course of the adventure… not so much. If ever you are confused as to whether you are talking to the GM or one of the many scoundrels, sociopaths, layabouts, sycophants, cutthroats, blackguards, blowhards, dullards, drunkards, bastards, clochards, laggards, dotards, or stinkards populating this universe, you need only ask.
- Finally, always remember that we are all coming together to create a story where a group of plucky adventurers band together to pull off some truly epic shit in the face of absolutely impossible odds. Your GM will supply the absolutely impossible odds and all the rest of you need to do is to figure out the truly epic shit.
Welcome and good luck!