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Campaign Themes, Style, and Tone

The campaign is set in a steampunk/magic-punk world with a Wild West and Victorian Noir aesthetic. Technology like hovering monorail trains, airships, wands, and early automobiles coexist alongside magical artifacts and elder god ruins. The game will focus heavily on dungeon delving, frontier exploration, secret passages, and uncovering mysteries.

The players and the DM agreed to start the campaign with an upbeat, chaotic, and comedic vibe that will slowly burn into a more dramatic and epic narrative as character backstories intertwine. The overarching plot will feature a mysterious "Big Bad" that the party discovers over time, as well as a rival adventuring party acting as a "lawful" foil to the players' chaotic group.

Rules of Play

  • Player vs. Player (PvP): The DM is allowing "anarchy" where players can theoretically take action against each other, but everyone agreed to maintain party cohesion and not take it too far.
  • Safety Tools & Rating: The campaign is rated "R" for violence and horror (e.g., describing graphic magical effects or torture devices like the "spider box"). However, sexual content will "fade to black" (kept behind the veil), and there is a strict, zero-tolerance ban on sexual violence.
  • Combat Speed: To keep the game moving, if a player takes more than a minute to decide their action, they will "freeze" in combat, though this will be loosely enforced at first.
  • Death: The game features permanent character death. If a character hits 0 HP, they make death saving throws; 3 failures means they are dead. If they are dead for too long, they cannot be resurrected, and their character is permanently deleted from the database.
  • Leveling: The DM will use Milestone leveling rather than tracking XP.
  • Critical Rolls: A Natural 20 is a critical success; critical damage (usually 2x) is applied. The player rolls a second d20 to see if the effect is multiplied again. A Natural 1 is a critical failure; if a second D20 roll is also a 1, the player hits themselves. This applies to skill checks as well.
  • Alignment: Alignment is treated as subjective rather than a metaphysical law; it reflects how a character's intentions are perceived by others, rather than a strict moral absolute.

Decisions Made During the Session

  • The Starting Hook: The party decided they will meet at a frontier brothel, get involved in a brawl, and subsequently travel to the capital (Tiras) to formally register with the Adventurers Guild.
  • The Debt Mechanic: The DM pitched—and the players accepted—an idea where the party will fail their initial "gear appraisal" at the Adventurers Guild. To get the necessary gear, they will take out a loan from the Guild, starting the campaign deeply in debt, which gives them a unified reason to adventure together.
  • Level Progression: The party will start at Level 1, level up to 3 quickly, hit a moderate pace up to level 5, and then progression will significantly slow down. Subclasses are picked at Level 3, with the exception of Clerics who pick their deity at Level 1.
  • Starting Location: Session 1 will open at a brothel on the frontier edge of the Golden Sea/Valegrad. A bar fight will break out, pushing the characters to flee to the capital to register with the Guild.

Player Characters (Detailed & Thorough)

  • Alisha’s Character (Chaos/Infernal User): Alisha is playing a chaotic character aiming to become a walking bomb. She wants to visually resemble a volcano, playing a Half-Drow with charcoal skin and necrotic green fire streaks that occasionally actually catch fire. Her massive overarching goals are to release Calomnar (the corrupted, banished God of Order turned God of Chaos) and to birth the world's first chaotic dragon.
  • Alistair’s Character (Infernal Knight): A human from House Leduc, a French-immigrant noble house in Veilgrad with a deep, sordid history of reckless infernal magic. He is playing an Oath of Obedience Infernal Knight (a "Blackguard") who was tricked by a Scylithene shadow priestess into selling his soul for power. He explicitly wants to play an unsympathetic, spoiled rich boy looking for power who doesn't care about anyone but himself.
  • Maddy’s Character (The Brothel Worker): A highly-feminine gay/lesbian Half-Drow rogue. Because of the stigma against Drow, she hides in the dim light of a wild west frontier brothel. She uses infernal magic to secretly curse and inflict necrosis on abusive men. Her primary motivation is to find the person who abandoned her at the brothel.
  • Callie’s Character (Gnome-Raised Tiefling Cleric): A Tiefling Cleric following Izara (the Goddess of Love) who was adopted and raised by gnomes in a hidden warren. She is currently on a "rumspringa" to have adventures before she is allowed to return home. She emits a faint pink glow, identifies as asexual/agender, and acts as a "problematic therapist" who tries to be a people-pleaser but is actually deeply emotionally dysregulated and terrified.
  • Kieran’s Character (Gnome Monk): A Gnome Monk following the "Way of the Wild Walker". Their martial arts style relies on swapping their elemental attunement during short or long rests. They may be tied into Callie's backstory as her childhood friend who acts as her protector.