Lost city of the Dragon Queen

[skydude808]

Hello, I'm working on a DND campaign and would love some people to help me test it out.


Deep in the Kalizar jungle, the city of Telepo stands at the base of an extinct volcano. For the last fifteen years Telepo has seen a period of unprecedented growth going from a simple town to a large city. All due to a single commodity, Dragonfire gems. In recent years the frequency of monster attacks has increased immensely, forcing the merchants guilds and the town rulers to band together to create what they call a safety fund.

This campaign is inspired by south American mythologies and has a few custom creatures and some reworked for the environment. There is both good and evil here and the players will be to making decisions that will affect the fate of everyone.

 

[Lucius Cypher]

Interesting, but vague. Anything else you can tell us? And by "test it out", do you mean you want to test out creatures? Puzzles? Mechanics? Or just a setting?

 

[Idea]

Can you give us some more logistical details? Namely...

---> Starting Level
---> Content Allowed or Banned (Standard Books, MTG-Setting Books, PlaneShift, Unearthed Arcana, Homebrew...)
---> How will Stats Be Done?
---> Do we use rolling for gold, starting equipment, or is it up to us?
---> Any other particular / special rules you'd like to mention?

I feel like I'm missing a question...eh, I'm sure I'll think of it eventually.

Personally I am a little concerned this type of campaign will get a little moralizing... But we'll see. More importantly for now, my interest or lack thereof will mainly be dependent on the answers to the logistical side.

 

[skydude808]

It's a setting I'm working on with a few new monsters I've been A GM a long time but have surprisingly little real DND experience. I have the core rulebooks and Tasha's but if you really want to play something crazy I'm open to discover other things.

Mechanically speaking we will do point buy for stats and starting gold will be dependent on your backgrounds, due to this being a text based roleplay, I'd like to propose we use a group initiative system where we elect someone to roll and that determines whether the party or monsters go first then we would all dictate actions we wish to take and roll all at once. I will then put up a list of success or failure then we can take much more creative liberties with our posts in the way of narration of characters. I'm open to discussion about all of this.

Im not planning on making it a philosophy class but yes there will be decisions the party will have to make and consequences. I'm neutral as to what is done you guys can go evil if you want, just don't fracture the party right away. my world's happen around the players because that's how I feel rpgs should be designed.

 

[skydude808]

Interesting, but vague. Anything else you can tell us? And by "test it out", do you mean you want to test out creatures? Puzzles? Mechanics? Or just a setting?

This is the first time I'm designing my own setting and monsters specifically for dungeons and dragons, I've used modules before for DND but for the majority of my roleplaying experience I've always used simple homebrew systems. By test it out I mean seeing if I've done well with the planning, creatures, quests.

 

[Idea]

It's a setting I'm working on with a few new monsters I've been A GM a long time but have surprisingly little real DND experience. I have the core rulebooks and Tasha's but if you really want to play something crazy I'm open to discover other things.

Mechanically speaking we will do point buy for stats and starting gold will be dependent on your backgrounds, due to this being a text based roleplay, I'd like to propose we use a group initiative system where we elect someone to roll and that determines whether the party or monsters go first then we would all dictate actions we wish to take and roll all at once. I will then put up a list of success or failure then we can take much more creative liberties with our posts in the way of narration of characters. I'm open to discussion about all of this.

Im not planning on making it a philosophy class but yes there will be decisions the party will have to make and consequences. I'm neutral as to what is done you guys can go evil if you want, just don't fracture the party right away. my world's happen around the players because that's how I feel rpgs should be designed.

"Starting Gold will be dependent on backgrounds" could you clarify this? Since it's usually based on class...

And what level would we start at as players in this campaign?

 

[skydude808]

"Starting Gold will be dependent on backgrounds" could you clarify this? Since it's usually based on class...

And what level would we start at as players in this campaign?

First level, and I have a table that lists gold amounts for diffrent backgrounds but class based sounds simpler for everyone so let's go with the standard amounts for classes

 

[Idea]

First level, and I have a table that lists gold amounts for diffrent backgrounds but class based sounds simpler for everyone so let's go with the standard amounts for classes

Gotcha. First level isn't really my cup of tea, so I'll be skipping this one. Regardless, thank you for the answers and best of luck with your campaign!

 

[Lucius Cypher]

Level 1 eh? Those are rough beginnings, but I'm still interested. So in short:

Custom Homebrew setting

Point-Buy for stats
Starting at Level 1
Gold based off class

Group initiatives (Aka everyone goes on the same turn, then the NPC's)
Player focused world
DM owns the PHB and Tashas, but other books are allowed.

Fairly standard fair for a game. Level 1 can be pretty rough since any combat will be inherently swingy, especially for group initiatives. For example if the enemies all decide to swarm a single player, nothing other players can do unless they had specifically used their last turn to try and prevent this, which may not be something they predicted would happen. Anything in particular about the world itself that may be important for character creation? for example, what's the race relations like? If I decide to play a half-orc, do I just need to get used to people feeling threaten by me? If I'm a dwarf, is it considered abnormal if I'm a fairly sober hippie type instead of a hardcore crafter? So on and so forth.

 

[skydude808]

Level 1 eh? Those are rough beginnings, but I'm still interested. So in short:

Custom Homebrew setting

Point-Buy for stats
Starting at Level 1
Gold based off class

Group initiatives (Aka everyone goes on the same turn, then the NPC's)
Player focused world
DM owns the PHB and Tashas, but other books are allowed.

Fairly standard fair for a game. Level 1 can be pretty rough since any combat will be inherently swingy, especially for group initiatives. For example if the enemies all decide to swarm a single player, nothing other players can do unless they had specifically used their last turn to try and prevent this, which may not be something they predicted would happen. Anything in particular about the world itself that may be important for character creation? for example, what's the race relations like? If I decide to play a half-orc, do I just need to get used to people feeling threaten by me? If I'm a dwarf, is it considered abnormal if I'm a fairly sober hippie type instead of a hardcore crafter? So on and so forth.

That is a good point but the group initiative will be happening at the same time for instance not only will you tell me what you are doing but I will give hints about next action things like "the five goblins begin rushing toward Fred" then you have the opportunity to change your action to attempt to assist Fred before we roll once the dice are rolled you can't suddenly switch actions till after the roleplay phase.

As for the question of races the city is very much mixed on the issue as there is about a 60 40 split between the outsiders(mainly humans, dwarves, halflings and gnomes along with a minority of elves and half orcs and other races looking to profit off of the rare resource of bloodstone) and natives(humans khajit, and lizardfolk) there are more outsiders than natives at the present time.

A half orc would be met with fear by most of the natives as they are not common in this area the only time they likely had contact with orcs is when a warlord named skull chopper attempted to retreat south after losing a war with verdania a kingdom that sits at the edge of the tarnakian desert and the jungles. The warlord saw an opportunity and led the remainder of his fractured horde on the warpath making it all the way to gobeki tepe(the largest city in the region) before being halted by the war priests of the sun god calling forth an avatar in the shape of a monolithic humanoid golem which radiating pure light. It caused mass destruction killing skull cleaver and most of the remaining members of the warband. the few remaining orcs fled into the jungle. More died from the hostile fauna but some remain deep in the jungles raiding isolated villages.

A dwarf would be a more casual sight, the locals have grown used to the sight of dwarves and would likely assume he came to operate the specialized mining equipment. The newcomers would view a hippie rather oddly as most of them are interested in the Enterprise while the natives would begin to notice parallels with their more shamanic beliefs and likely become more accepting if you acted on them.