• Free • System: D&D 5e 2024 • Players: 3 of 4 (1 open slot). • Tools: Discord audio + Foundry • Playtime: Fridays at 6pm EDT running until 9-10pm EDT. Campaign starts mid-October. • Duration: Long-term campaign. This campaign has not started yet, but the other 3 players and I have been playing for many years. • Play-style of the table: Heavy roleplay with lots of exploration of characters. Looking for a character/player with story initiative. No meta-gaming. Players at the table prefer profanity and references to sexual themes be kept mild. • Tone & Themes: Dark fantasy, gritty realism, survival, mystery, “west-marches-esque” exploration, horror, found-family, and community building. This is not grim fantasy, and it does not take itself so seriously as to not laugh. • LGBTQIA+ friendly and themes explored. Short Premise: The heroes already lost. Now you have to survive in a world where civilization has been reduced to lost and divided outposts. Whether you were born here or came from another world, the last shreds of humanity fight for survival with the help of a goddess who only helps those who help her. It falls on you to be a part of this cause to turn the tides and reclaim lost secrets and reconnect scattered peoples. This campaign focuses on roleplay and character interaction and development. It also utilizes the gritty realism rule and is no stranger to hard fights. There is an exploration component to this campaign that is as big as the players make it. The group of players would be best rounded out by 4th player who is heavily interested in roleplay, has a character with strong motivations, and makes the narrative as they go. As for me, the DM, I’ve been a DM for over a decade, who gets the most enjoyment watching player characters and NPCs weave together a story with drama, emotions, and stakes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Longer Premise: You start with nothing but the clothes on your back. Some of you were born here. You grew up within Vale's walls, watched the Crimson Crescent Clan train and patrol and bury their dead, and at some point you made the decision to step forward: to volunteer yourself as a candidate for something more than an ordinary life. Whatever led you to it, something about you was enough. Whatever you owned before that moment isn't yours anymore. Volunteering costs you that much, at least. Some of you were not born here at all. You come from somewhere else entirely: another world, another life, and you have no memory of choosing this. One moment you were living an ordinary life somewhere that wasn't Arde. Or maybe just about to be killed in your old life. The next, you were standing in a dark chamber before a statue of a faceless woman, told that you'd been brought here on purpose, for a purpose, by a goddess who expects something from you in return for the power she's given you. You didn't volunteer. You were chosen. The distinction may matter more than you think. However you arrived at this point, the truth is the same: you are one of the rare few capable of carrying magic in a world where even the faintest spark of it is treated as a miracle. You will crawl your way up in a place where people just like you have died trying to put dinner on the table. Vale is one of the last true human settlements left standing, surrounded by goblins, kobolds, orcs, and worse, and it has survived this long only because a handful of people were willing to become something more than they were. In your first steps into this life, you will earn your place among the people you're fighting for. You'll learn how this world actually works, and what it costs to survive in it. Luna, goddess of the humans, has granted a handful of people the potential for magic to empower the war effort. She is not a gentle patron. She rewards those who advance her cause and withdraws her gifts from those who don't produce results or lack the will to keep fighting. As such, those that follow their faith also ascribe to the belief that only the strongest are worthy. Later, you'll be asked to do more than survive. Humanity's remaining settlements have grown apart, isolated, forgotten by each other. You may find yourself rebuilding what was lost between them: not just roads and walls, but the alliances and trust that once made humanity more than scattered, desperate pockets of survivors. What comes after that is less certain. The things that hunt you are old, patient, and larger than any settlement's walls. Nobody has beaten them outright, not once, in all the years this war has been fought. But maybe that was never actually the goal.