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Hello Friends. I come to you today with an idea to try something different. Different is good, and exciting. In this case - it's also super nerdy.

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in playing a roll20* based Dungeons and Dragons campaign? I think I have all the rules, and think I should be able to DM a particular 1-10 campaign called:

THE CURSE OF STRAHD




Ideally the party is 5 PCs who start from Level 1. The ultimate goal of the campaign is to free a valley from an ancient evil. I think it's about 30-40 hours worth of content and the PCs are around Level 10 by the end. The source material is very open-ended and exploration focused. It stretches a giant valley with two villages, a town, and plenty of sites of interest.

This particular campaign is not known for throwing punches. And is set in a bleak and challenging gothic horror setting. Sometimes the party will take a wrong turn and end up in a high-level area. Diplomacy or sometimes just running your ass off could be the best strategy sometimes.

About D&D 5E. This is by far the best edition I've played. It's much more focused on the PCs riffing and exploring, and the DM guiding the rules to fit what happens. I played my first D&D campaign back in 3.5 in the back of freshman science class. I have been binging on podcasts lately, and think the new streamlined rules and actions make for some super fun and creative gameplay.

A session could be 2-3 hours on a night of the week that worked for everyone. All we'd need to use is the roll20 software, which is entirely browser based. We'd need at least one session 0, to roll characters, describe the basic rules, and to iron things out.



*roll20 is like WebEx for D&D - teamview maps + ability to send handouts, store character sheets, show Monsters, etc.

2-3 hours one night a week?

What the hell? I'll do it.

I had a friend back in my JR High years that owned the monster's compendium and the rule book so we would just create characters and fight different enemies arena style and see how leveled up they could get before dying.

It was so fun but i've never played an actual game with a DM, i'd love to try this.

The first step will be to pick and generate the player characters. I'll supply some subset PDFs from the PHB(Players Handbook), and you guys can pick what you want:



Classes: The Players Handbook has: Fighter, Paladin, Wizard, Cleric, Rogue, Barbarian, Ranger, Bard, Sorcerer, Druid.

Race wise, The campaign probably mostly calls for humans, but I can't imagine a D&D party without at least a dwarf or something.

If you can commit to playing, and a class fancies you, feel free to call dibs on it.

Whoa. I haven't played D&D since before Troy was born

2nd Edition only edition.

First batch of PC options from the Handbook. More to come.

The most relevant parts will be the large tables - always on the second page. Those are the bare summaries of what you get at each level of your class. This and a filled out character sheet is all you need for a session.

Proficiency is how good you are with the weapons and skills particular to your character.

Check out the "Quick Build" for good default templates for potential characters.

Rogue
Barbarian
Paladin
Cleric

BTW I am in. We should all prolly buy the 5E Player's Handbook, right?

https://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook ... th+edition

GORDON wrote: BTW I am in. We should all prolly buy the 5E Player's Handbook, right?

https://www.amazon.com/Players-Handbook ... th+edition

Awesome! And yes, especially if you want to be a spell casting class. It’s much easier for the players to handle that part.

I've got shitloads of D&D experience, I'll just need to see what changes there have been between 2nd and 5th Editions.

Just ordered the handbook.

What's the plan for being a Tele-Dungeon Master? Video group chat? Is there an online app for you to draw maps for us, dungeon layouts so we can see rooms/hallways/doors/etc?

GORDON wrote: Just ordered the handbook.

What's the plan for being a Tele-Dungeon Master? Video group chat? Is there an online app for you to draw maps for us, dungeon layouts so we can see rooms/hallways/doors/etc?

I'm going to use Roll20. I've got a big pile of maps(overland and tactical), NPCs, and all kinds of goodies already loaded from the official digital D&D module for the campaign. There are options for fog-of-war, images of places and monsters I can send in real-time, and it has voice-chat built in. I've played a bit with it, but haven't tried the voice part yet. There's even a very sophisticated digital dice rolling system, if you don't want to do physical rolling.

I can do session 0 next week if people are ready by then. Wednesday/Thursday night - or next weekend too.

Peeps need to get the PHB and get to reading.

GORDON wrote: Peeps need to get the PHB and get to reading.

I probably wont buy the PHB right away but if this becomes something we do a lot more then i'm all for it. Maybe one you with the PHB could make PDF's of the class we choose for those without the handbook??

The weekends are going to be the best for me because there are way to many distractions around my house during the week. Can't do next Saturday the 10th either. I can do this weekend or next friday.

How many people do we need? 5?

Stranger wrote:

GORDON wrote: Peeps need to get the PHB and get to reading.

I probably wont buy the PHB right away but if this becomes something we do a lot more then i'm all for it. Maybe one you with the PHB could make PDF's of the class we choose for those without the handbook??

The weekends are going to be the best for me because there are way to many distractions around my house during the week. Can't do next Saturday the 10th either. I can do this weekend or next friday.

How many people do we need? 5?

5 is ideal, but we can try rolling with 4 if we need to.

I can do next Friday. I could do this Sunday morning too, but it’s kind of late notice so getting the numbers might be hard. You won’t need the PHB for Session 0, and it would probably be 2 hours.

I made four more character class subset PDFs.

Ranger
Druid
Fighter
Wizard

Others so far:
Rogue
Barbarian
Paladin
Cleric
Class Overview

is there a Monk?

GORDON wrote: is there a Monk?

3 additional added:
Monk
Sorcerer
Bard

Others so far:
Ranger
Druid
Fighter
Wizard
Rogue
Barbarian
Paladin
Cleric
Class Overviews