Game: D&D 5e
Group type: Online Play-by-Post on Discord
DM’s Experience: About three years
Location/Timezone: N/A, Asynchronous Game, PBP
Schedule: Each player should post at least once a day (at least some actions and dialogue)
Roles sought: 3-4 Players
Game style: Balance of Combat/Roleplay/Exploration, Missions to Help a Starter Town, Improve Your Base

Do you want to learn D&D but don't feel ready to play a live game yet? Playing by post is a great way to learn. It moves at a slow pace, which helps with learning any rules, and you can carefully write out what you do so that your character comes across just how you imagine them.

Hi there! I’m Tidy (31, he/him, DM for ~3 years), and I’m seeking three players for a play-by-post 5e character-driven campaign focused on exploring the wilderness around a "starter town," helping out the townsfolk, improving your base, and resolving personal conflicts from the PCs’ backstories. I want to run this PBP game exclusively for new players because I remember how much I needed something like this when I started. Plus, I love the energy and new ideas that new players bring to the proverbial table.

Shared Homebrew World / No Lore Knowledge Needed
You don't need to know any lore (or any rules) to join. We'll build our world together as things come up. For example, if you choose to be an elf, then you can decide where you came from and what elves are like there. You can determine the history of your homeland and even decide if it still exists or how it has changed.

As a starting point, you can imagine the setting to be a relatively generic medieval fantasy world like the Forgotten Realms, except let's leave out the racism, sexism, etc. The region will consist of small, isolated settlements scattered across mostly unexplored wilderness—a “points of light” setting, if you will.

I will probably make a custom hex map for our setting. It will be blank at first, but as we establish backstories and explore regions, we’ll add new hexes one at a time.

Starting Adventure
Our starting adventure will focus on bringing the team together! Each PC’s backstory will play a part in the challenges we face, which will give us reasons to be there and to work together. You might have a link to the location, creatures, treasure, or virtually any other thing we can work into the story.

We’ll begin on the outskirts of an adventure site where the PCs meet for the first time. Each one has traveled here for their own reason. Your backstories will help me to design the types of places, creatures, and items within this adventure site. I'll also use each character’s traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws to further personalize the adventure to our party.

By the end of the adventure, we may have the choice to claim the adventure site as our base.

Later Adventures
After the first adventure, we’ll decide if we want to continue or not, so there’s no pressure to commit to a long campaign. If we do continue, we’ll continue to have a player-driven story. The adventures will always have links to our characters' personal goals and/or backstory, and sometimes the things we've done in the past will ripple out and affect locations we haven't visited yet.

Heroic and Hopeful Tone
The tone of the campaign is “heroic” and “hopeful,” by which I mean that the PCs are good people who do the right thing and try to maintain hope even in the face of loss. Think *The Lord of the Rings*. Your PC must be (Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic) Good aligned. This campaign isn’t for PCs who do things like stealing from each other or poking the owlbear just to cause trouble. No edge-lords. No self-centered, aloof, or too-cool attitudes.

Player Types
The type of player best suited for this game has ambition for their character’s life. They love internal and external character development, and they are more than willing to take the initiative and contribute when the party has a choice to make. They are curious and willing to push the story forward so we won’t fizzle out. They’re consistently kind. Players should be 18+ and love writing fiction.

Character Creation
Starting level is 1.
Fixed HP.
Standard Array for stats.
Starting equipment, not gold.
Official content is welcome.
Tasha's rules are welcome.
Feats are welcome.
No third-party content or homebrew subclasses/classes/races for now.
Each PC must have 2 Traits, 2 Ideals, 2 Bonds, and 2 Flaws. (I’d love to read any backstory you write too!)
I have every D&D book on here, so if you join the campaign before making a character, you’ll have access to ALL the options.

House Rules
You'll go from Level 1 to Level 3 pretty quickly, but after that, I'll use the following questions at the end of every "dungeon"/adventure to determine if we’ve leveled up.

Since last level-up:

1. Have we explored a new adventure site?
2. Have we changed something meaningful about our corner the world?
3. Has each PC resolved a difficult personal conflict from their backstory OR accomplished a difficult personal goal?
4. Has each PC struggled with one of their Flaws?
5. Has each PC expressed one of their Ideals?
6. Has each PC acted upon one of their Bonds?
7. Has each PC looted a meaningful treasure?
8. Have we overcome a difficult threat or neutralized it in other ways?
   

When we can answer yes to all eight, we level up! This reward system allows us to emphasize what our campaign is really about.

Home Base
We can also level up our base. Once we claim a lair or choose a building (or the whole town) as our base, I’ll make a “base advancement map” (like from the game Blades in the Dark) where at the start of each adventure, we’ll pick one advancement we’d like to add to our base (alchemist, blacksmith, magical defenses, etc.). I’ll work an opportunity to attain that advancement into the adventure.

Safety Tools
We’ll use the “lines and veils” tool to ensure everyone at the table is comfortable.

Tech
I'll keep this as low-tech as possible for the players, but just so you know what tech is involved, we’ll mostly be on Discord. We'll use Beyond for character sheets. I'll also make it possible to roll your virtual dice here on Beyond and send the results to Discord without any hassle.

This next application is just for me to worry about, but in case you're interested, I use the 3D Virtual Tabletop app to run combat maps. The art for our maps will mainly come from D&D books and CzePeku’s Patreon.

Time Zones
As a PBP game, time zones aren’t terribly important, but I will be most active from 8:00 a.m. CST to 8:00 p.m. CST.

Ready to Apply?
All right, I’ll stop now! If you’re still interested, then to apply, send me a private message or post here. At the very least, I want to know how new you are to D&D (both the game and the culture, I suppose), what things appeal to you about D&D, and what your character idea(s) might be.

I'm looking for new(ish) players (again, 18+), proofread writing, and positive vibes. Thanks for considering this campaign!

I look forward to speaking with you and beginning the game!

—Tidy

Hi Tidy, this sounds interesting! I can provide some more details and discuss further if you contact me on discord: JCzkof#2942

This sounds great I'd love to learn. My discord is Sirloin77#4166.

Hey I'd love to learn more. Is this still open to join? My Discord is KikiDee#0465