[Troika!] Enter the "Abstract Painting of TTRPGs"

Welcome to The Western Frontier, adventurer! You've joined the best of the best here at SINC, CA! Saints of Interplanar Navigational Charters, Chalmers Acolytes. I'll be your Operations Overseer, Mr. Sullivan. We're on the fringe of the Imperium's reach here in Port Chalmers, so while you may be wanted or otherwise watched back home, here I don't care what your crimes were - Only that you do the job you've signed up for. And that job is to explore, document, make connections with the locals, and get into places you probably shouldn't be! Danger? Adventure? Relics, artifacts and ruins?? Strange beasts and plants?? Oh, it's out there, adventurer.. And the longer you wait, the more you miss out on! --------- The Setting: - The Western Frontier is a West Marches style of D&D! - We are largely based in Australia/NZ, and as such we play at times convenient for us! - We have somewhere between 13-16 active players, most have two currently active PC's! - Our experience with this style of D&D and with D&D as a whole varies! - Session scheduling and game direction is driven largely by players! This is an open world sandbox style of game! Game Info: - We use variant rules long/short resting. Short rests are now 8 hours (overnight), long rests take a week of downtime back in The Town, or another fortified position. (Settlements, Inns, camps - places with structures for you to sleep in and an armed guard/watch). - Resources matter! Spell components, ammo, carry weight, and rations are all tracked! Character Creation: - No twilight cleric and no variant humans. All PC's begin with a free feat and a non-combat uncommon item. - We use Discord for voice/text chat, Owlbear Rodeo for battle maps, & D&D Beyond/google sheets for character sheets. - Homebrew must be approved by a GM. Players: - 18+ people only! Firm on this, sorry gang! We range in age from about 19 to the late thirties! - LGBT+ folk expressly welcome! - No bigots, -ias or -isms, thank you! - All experience levels welcome, we're learning to run and play this style of game too, so we don't mind teaching you on the way! - Interested? Might be the game for you? Get in touch! Message me with: - A little about you! *Age, exp with d&d, timezone and typical times/days you'd play at/during (scheduling reasons) - A rough character idea! - Things you think you'd be interested in doing as a player! - Your discord username! - Times and days that'd work for you for a quick call so that we can vibe check each other!

M Corp. Residing in District 13 of the City, and the pinnacle of mental and psychological care. Nowhere else will you find psychologists and therapists more qualified. Whether you're suffering from run-of-the-mill struggles, serious mental health conditions, or something more esoteric, you will find no better treatment than within one of M Corp's mental care institutions. …If you're well off, that is. The Backstreet slums of District 13, as is typical for all districts, doesn't get to taste the fruits of its parent corp's labour. Mental health services in the Backstreets are underfunded, neglected, and ineffective for dealing with the City's ails—with one exception. Moonsetter Clinic, founded by an ex-researcher of M Corp, seeks to bring the cutting edge of mental care to the people who most need it. Since its establishment three months ago, it has become a venerated, almost sacred institution to the Backstreets residents. Dozens of people each day walk into the complex, and walk out changed for the better. Even some of the Five Fingers have taken notice, and gone as far as to enforce it as neutral ground exempt from their bloody turf wars. It is a bona fide miracle. You don't buy it. Oh, you had your suspicions before: nothing that good ever graces the Backstreets without some strings attached. But there's also a personal reason behind your mistrust. You know someone—friend or family, colleague or simple acquaintance—who is a frequent patient of this place, and they recently went for their usual check-up. Maybe you even accompanied them to the lobby. It's been days, and they haven't returned. Your suspicion turned to surety. You quickly came across others who shared your experience, banded together, and decided. There is something rotten about Moonsetter Clinic, and you are all going to get to the bottom of it. Introduction Hi there! I am Nope (22, he/they). I hail from the far-off land of New Zealand, and I've been playing and running TTRPGs for close to 9 years now—mainly D&D 5e and 5.5e, but I've also dabbled in other systems like Pf2e and Lancer as well. I am also, as the title might indicate, a big Project Moon fan! This mini-campaign was made to combine two of the interests nearest to my heart, and is hopefully the start of a larger anthology of adventures set in the City. If you're not aware, Project Moon is a Korean indie game studio that creates games set in The City: a cyberpunk dystopia with fantasy elements. Life is cheap, violence is banal and commonplace, and corporation rule unchecked. In terms of vibes, think office workers in suits or streetwear fighting with store-bought swords and back-alley augmentation procedures, living paycheck to paycheck. Familiarity with this setting is not required for this mini-campaign; the plot will be pretty self-contained and won't make many references to the wider Project Moon canon. Details - System: D&D 5.5e, with some homebrew to adapt it to Project Moon's setting. The necessary homebrew is actually quite light (just 9ish pages) thanks to the City arguably borrowing more from high fantasy than conventional sci-fi in its worldbuilding; thus, the majority of translation is in reflavouring abilities and classes rather than bespoke custom rules. You can take a peek at the homebrew I plan to use here. - Level: Probably around 5-7, to be discussed with players during Session 0. Level-up is unlikely, given that this is a single adventure. - Time: Sunday 2pm fortnightly, GMT+12. Sessions will run from 3-4 hours. - Starting Date: My goal is to hold Session 0 sometime in early-mid October! - Length: 4-6 sessions, as a very rough estimate. More likely to be longer than shorter. - Players Needed: 4-5 - Platform: Foundry for VTT, Discord for communication Requirements - Age 18+ - Have a decent mic and a stable internet connection. - Have some decent experience with D&D 5e or 5.5e, or be willing to learn quickly. - Be willing to be earnestly invested in the campaign, and in each other's characters. - Be prompt and timely in showing up to sessions; give advance notice of a few days if you're not able to make it. - Don't be a bigot or an asshole. - No use of generative AI; I'm not a fan. Further Considerations - This is an LGBTQ+ friendly table! If you're not comfortable with that, go elsewhere. - The following topics will be covered: classism, mental health, medical malpractice, slight body horror. - The campaign will likely have a focus on combat and social interaction, with limited exploration. - This campaign is intended to be serious, but not misery porn! There will be ample space for jokes, light-hearted moments, and goofiness in general. - Combat difficulty will aim for 'challenging but fair'. I'm not interested in playing every encounter absolutely optimally; enemies will act based on their personalities, goals, and the current situation. As a DM, my priority is for combat to be fun and engaging, while still maintaining actual stakes—notably, this means non-zero chances of character death. - The setting of the campaign is not perfectly 1-to-1 with the Project Moon setting, due to D&D's mechanics and structure. The biggest divergence from canon is that magic as it works in D&D exists in the City and is well-understood and utilized as just one of many pathways to gain power, alongside technology, augmentations, and sheer competence. - Project Moon's stories are very character-focused, with emphasis on personal trauma, character growth, and facing your fears to achieve self-actualization. Include the word sun somewhere in your application. While the scope of this mini-campaign means there probably won't be much in the way of formative character arcs and development, I want to keep that focus on character-driven personal stories that Project Moon is known for. - My hope is to run this mini-campaign and others like it (some set in the City, some with their own bespoke settings) to build a community of like-minded players, with whom I hope to establish a long-term TTRPG gaming group! - I am technically a Project Moon larper LMAO (haven't played any of the games, got into it purely through watching playthroughs and wiki-diving) Applying If you want to apply, fill out this form! Once I gather enough respondents, I will shortlist a number of potential players and schedule interviews with them over voice call on Discord. After that, I will select 4-5 players to invite to a Session 0, and hopefully from there the campaign will begin!

GAME START: I have three players. voting on starting date and time begins now.  I am still looking for more players. Game system: Pathfinder 2e Remastered, with optional rules to recapture more of the 3.5 D&D feel. CONTENT WARNING: This is not an inclusive or “safe space” game. Fantasy adventure involves horrible and offensive topics. This official module combined with the "Crown of the kobold king" can include or touch on: abduction, potential player-character death, extreme poverty, death by dysentery, stagnant water, fantasy deities, magic and the occult, animal harm, violence and gore, maiming driven by racial hatred, prostitution, brothels, sex, alcohol use, drug abuse, addiction, poisoning, murder, false accusation, witch hunts, religion twisted into fanaticism, abandoned children, harm to children, thinly veiled pedophilia (among the Paizo staff) plague and mass death, genocide, war, indentured servitude (slavery), Unichs, false imprisonment, assassins, violations of the Nuremberg principles on informed consent and experimentation, supernatural pacts, beheadings, tyranical taxes, death, evil cults, indoctrination, domination, unlawful detention, bondage, imprisonment, toxic waste, environmental destruction, torture, body horror, maiming and death by fire or acid, corpses and human remains, undead (ghosts, ghouls, vampires), giant spiders and webbing, snakes, bats, other monstrous insects and vermin, necrophilia, non-consensual undeath, prolonged drowning, quicksand, twisted “nobility,” family legacies of incest and debt, fiery destruction, animal attacks, gruesome traps, mind control, forced transformations (lycanthropy), volcanic eruption, hazardous geo thermal features, claustrophobia, and more. Not for the fragile or the mentally ill.  Published module: The Fall of Plaguestone. Twist: Run as an Otherworlder / Isekai adventure (influences include Sword Art Online, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, The Wizard of Oz, the “Den” segment of the animated film Heavy Metal, and similar stories). You and a few others are somehow brought to another world of monsters, magic, and madness. Optional rules and Character creation: All player characters are Human only. Ancestral Paragon, Free Archetype, gradual ability boosts, Automatic bonus progresion are in play. Characters begin with amnesia. They have no classes or background—these must be earned in play. No evil characters. Not using the free ability boosts method. Ability scores are rolled: 3d6, then replace the lowest die with a 6. Only ancestry boost is applied. Ability scores (and the resulting bell curve) help describe your character. Attribute − 10 is the modifier. Good and Evil are objective, real forces. Alignment is not used, but sins committed are tracked. WHY?: because you are told that the 1st level DC is 14, the hard DC is 18... but you will face DC's 23 and higher. (MATH: The difference between 14 and 23 is 9. a first level fighter with a +4 str mod has a +9, meaning the fighter player is starting with a 70% chance of FAILURE. not only that... roll a 4 or less [total 13 or less] against DC 23 the fighter has critically failed. You have to roll a nat 20 to get a critical success, 5%... but you have a 20% chance of CRITICAL FAILURE).  You will face creatures that can instantly kill and remove one player character from the battlefield (ala Swallow whole and more). what if the character in question is a Weapon impliment thaumaturge with a maximum of +3 str modifier, and only trained proficiency rank attacks? compared to the fighter, you are automatically at a -3 disadvantage! [EVERY +1 MATTERS] who wants to be the two or three players that must waste their actions, only so that the best suited character still has a 50% or greater chance of failure?) This is why I am going to make you far more powerful than the NPC's who are all bloated, fat, incompetent, or really really old... (Doubt me? read the book!) This is why it falls to the player characters to take on this adventure! Introduction: You arrived at the northeastern tip of the nation of Isger, inside a farmer’s harvest and seed storage building, surrounded by Tar Baphon's undead hordes. one of the otherworld characters on watch ran outside and was promptly slain by ghouls. Seems all of you are trapped! Bort Bargrith's caravan clears the way and intent on resupply stop at the harvest storage building. Bort the dwarf rogue, Tamil the elven bard, and Shae the halfling ranger discover all of you. There is a confusing moment when no one can comunicate due to language. Bort provides a magical ring that gives you litteracy and fluency in the Common Andorian language. Bort says, "you must come with us or you will die here! The farmer families who opperated these farms are dead and by salvage rites you lot own all of this Stock. You can join my caravan fleeing Tar Baphon, in exchange for some of your goods."   GM: on the journey you may learn languages, purchase 30 gold of starting equipment, through use of Bort's magic rings and from the mass of refugees in the caravan get training in a trade (earn your background) and adapt to this world (earn your class) in the months of travel south. Setting context (past twenty years): Tar Baphon, the Slayer of Aroden, the Arch-lich, and the Dread Tyrant’s undead armies are marching south. The Goblinblood Wars have recently ended (a united effort by greenskin and scaled races to genocide everyone else). The orc war against the dwarves of the Five Kings Mountains has only recently ended. The hobgoblin Ironfang invasion of Molthune and Nirmathas has recently ended. Cults of undeath, disease, plague, death, chaos and destruction (Urgathoa, the Whispering Way, Rovagug) have been largely decimated, but hidden cultists remain and anyone you meet could be one. A recent witch-hunting inquisition died out, yet public suspicion of spellcasters still runs deep among survivors. A plague on the east side of the nation of Isger killed 70% of the mortal population. Platform: Discord. Voice. I will share my screen. I use Pathbuilder ( $5 to unlock all features, it is helpful if you have it, but you do not need it.). Starting: At a time the players agree on, once I have three or more players. Contact me here if you want to join and play in this Adventure.