LFP
D&D Beyond
Please NOTE: You can still play all of our games even if you DO NOT PAY. Joining our Patreon is a choice, and it provides you with access to the resources that I create. Free art, one-page dungeons, etc. I try to create gameable, system-agnostic content every month for my players to use at their own tables.
|WHAT IS MORTIS:
|STYLE OF PLAY:
Mortis is a fantasy world, with all its perils, contradictions, and surprises: it's not a "game setting" which somehow always produces challenges of just the right difficulty for the party's level of experience. The party or the players have no "right" to only encounter monsters they can defeat, no "right" only to encounter traps they can disarm, and no "right" to a die roll in every particular circumstance. This sort of situation isn't a mistake in the rules (unless it is, which it can then be brought up at the end of a session!) Game balance just isn't terribly important in this style of game. It's not a tournament where the players are against the GMs. It's a story with dice: the players describe their actions, and the game master describes the results, and the story of the characters, epic or disastrous, grows out of the combined efforts of GMs and players. Rules aren't fragile, and the game doesn't collapse if someone makes a mistake or one character is temporarily more powerful than others, or an encounter is "too hard." Sometimes game masters will make a bad call. These aren't tragedies. Role-playing is just like the Internet - it doesn't break if you push the wrong buttons. Game balance just isn't a critical matter.
|THE LIVING CAMPAIGN:
You could compare a living campaign world to today's MMORPGs, even when you're not logged in as the world continues to move forward with or without you. Quests and storylines can be completed throughout the week, and it's very much a drop-in and drop-out experience. We're going to be playing as often as we can and the storyline will move forward regardless of who's there and who isn't. We also have a number of 'metagame' resources located on our website and we encourage our players to contribute to the world-building and development of their characters. Likewise, we use achievements that reward prestige points (experience), new abilities, crafting systems, property ownership, and more. Furthermore, we are also on the lookout for game masters who are interested in running games for the setting, this would give players a chance to run more than one character and play in different parts of the world to experience new things all while changing the surrounding setting. Player choice is key to making this work. Your choices will matter and will have a lasting impact on the gaming world and the storyline as we move forward.
|SHARED SETTING, BUILT BY THE COMMUNITY:
A shared setting is a massive work of collaborative and interactive fiction. This allows a set of creative works where more than one writer, artist, or world builder can independently contribute a work that can stand alone but fits into the joint development of the storylines, characters, or world of the overall project. We have a foundation of strong lore, numerous pantheons of gods, a map, and other pieces of fiction that players can reference to help them build additional pieces of content to add to the overall setting. Ohr Games also hosts numerous contests throughout the year related to writing micro fiction, creating pieces of art, etc.
|COLLABORATORS, NOT CONSUMERS:
A collaborator player is someone who is excited, they think about the game outside the immediate session. They have a drive and excitement for the setting, they want to build characters and stories in the world. They want to help expand their lore and to contribute in meaningful and fun ways. Furthermore, they role-play, they're active in the community, and they're a joy to be around. These are the types of players we're looking for. We want to create a community of great people, and this is the first step to doing that.
Consumer players just want something to do in their spare time, when they aren't in the middle of a game they aren't paying attention to the discord, they aren't having a conversation about the game, they aren't planning anything, etc. They're not here to think very hard about the game. They just want to kill a few hours. Sometimes that's okay, but generally, we're not looking for those sorts of players. We want folks to be amped about the setting. Enjoy sword and sorcery, and dark fantasy, and want to contribute. If you're a consumer-focused player, you probably won't get much out of this community.
|LORE OF THE SETTING:
RUINATION OF MAGICK AND RELIGION
The world is a fragmented, ruined shell of what it once was, and magick is what ensures it stays that way. In ages past, before the Night of Prophecy -- when humankind and the other races of Ayotha were given a chance to meet a sliver of what it was that they had foolishly called their Gods -- the world followed the rules set out for it at its creation. Arcanery, in a very generous sense of implying it existed at all, was only a theoretical, philosophical exercise, conducted in meeting halls and lounges by societies that simply enjoyed dressing their social circles in a different kind of trapping. It did not exist; not merely as the world sees it now, in this broken age of horrors, but at all, and when it did arrive, it did so on the wings of nightmares.
Magick is not some mystical recipe its practitioners follow on a day-to-day basis to casually manipulate the world around them; while it effects very real results in the world around it, these results are consequences of another reality being imposed upon ours and causing the one we live in to shatter, albeit in -- at least hopefully -- a controlled fashion. As far as scattered records can ascertain, the application of this knowledge came at the hands of the humans of Ayotha first, as most of their peers and the other races struggled not just to rebuild but to survive in the lloigor-wracked wasteland that was once a comparatively peaceful, fertile world. After the Night of Prophecy, rumors of uncovered writings which allowed real magick, real power, to be channeled through a dedicated practitioner and out into the world. These writings were collected in an utterly forbidden grimoire that came to be known as the Black Book, a tome with many speculated origins. Some say the Book is a legitimately living, sentient other, an alien and conscious entity with an unknown and sinister purpose. Others say that it exists simultaneously in other times, other places, other worlds, and exists conterminously to spread its influence in the past, present, and future all.
What is incontrovertible, however, is that the following of parsed and translated rituals found in this book or copies of it has wrought unmistakable horror upon the world and those in it. While the Night of Prophecy was responsible for the destruction of cities, towns, and life, the magick found in the Black Book is responsible for the corruption of what remains and what has been built to try and effect repairs upon those shattered remnants. While there is real power to be found in the practice of these rituals, the overwhelming vast majority that even know of the existence of the Black Book are far from willing to pay the cost of not just their sanity, but that of their friends, loved ones, and fellow men. Every so-called spell cast brings the known world closer to a tremulous reality merged with that of wherever the grimoire truly came from, and even among the universally-loathed practitioners, all but the maddest can recognize that that would bode very, very poorly for our world and those living in it.
Most do not know the intricacies of magick, of course, but they know enough and have heard enough of rumors to wish to stamp it out where it exists. People have been strung up and burned, tied and quartered, even tortured to death over days over the mere mention of witchcraft, and this is the case through almost all of actual civilization. There exist, of course, esoteric societies, occasional outposts, even whole races of people who feel differently, but these people are outside their own universally reviled as destroyers and corrupters of the highest order, and they are ruthlessly hunted and slain by those who catch wind of them. Only in the vast, far reaches of the untamed world is this viewpoint ever relaxed, and even then it would still be a poor idea to reveal oneself -- fear is the most powerful motivator of violence.
|IS THIS A PAID GAME?
Mortis is a pay optional game. Donations and subscriptions are available through our Patreon, but players are not required to pay before jumping in and playing a game. The only limit is time and seats at the digital table. I do monthly free content releases for all members of the community. This varies from free, public domain pieces of art. One-page dungeons, NPC cards, and more. Those who choose to help us monetarily receive access to a large archive of old PDF content and design documentation for our games and world-building. In addition, you are given free access to every PDF that I release while you're subscribed. We also offer character art and art prints to those who subscribe for longer periods of time.
|PRODUCTION VALUE
I'm 100% in favor of talented dungeon masters earning money while running games online. I don't agree with the idea that just because you're paying someone they're going to run a better game than someone who does it for free. Money does not equate to quality, this is especially true in a field such as this one. Style, ability, and literally everything else that centers around these games is 100% subjective. Where one player might find a particular style of Game Mastering fun, someone else might have a miserable time. This is why I operate on a 'PIYHF' system. It's not a particularly fun abbreviation to say, but it gets the point across. "PAY IF YOU HAVE FUN'. If you can donate monetarily, that's awesome. If you'd rather write a story or help contribute to our setting. That might just be even cooler.
A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords at dawn.