Hello all, a little while ago I had an idea to do a campaign based off completely random characters. I’ve liked the way it’s turned out so I’m opening up a second campaign taking place in the same world.
The one thing I would like to do more this time around is to really work together and get a solid backstory before beginning. No back story now, no concepts now. Just looking for anyone interested in rolling a lot of dice to make their character.
Like before post a possible story line on how the group could come together as a writing sample. Expected posting once a day.
This sounds really fun! I hope this is okay, I wasn't sure how much to assume about the characters or world.
Our party comes together in a dungeon. They're all pretty sure they haven't done anything wrong... not yet anyway. They each had heard of the strict and controlling authoritative force in this city, but either hadn't been in the city long enough to experience it or had been smart and lucky enough to avoid it. But now, for one reason or another, they have all been brought in. For some, they hadn't the correct papers to enter the city, others had been caught doing business with a shopkeep who had fallen out of favor, others still had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Regardless, they now sit, perhaps a bit confused, in their cells in the city's dungeon, all in sight and sound of each other, each thinking of their next move.
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I do both party and individual character commissions. PM me for info.
Corti- Warforged bard (Union!)
Hadar Jaffe- Half-elf Knowledge Domain Cleric (Nemo's Citadel of the Unsleeping Sun)
Count me in. I've always been drawn to playing characters created at random first and then making sense out of the results.
As usual, our party knew each other in a famous tavern filled with people, songs and of course ale. But the peculiar thing was how they actually knew when, where and how meet each other, they weren't summoned by someone, at least not through a mundane method, they all met their employer in their dreams, dreams that started nice with the most precious memory or desire they could hold in their heart turned to their worst nightmare in a couple of seconds...
After they would've experienced their worst nightmare, they were individually transported to an empty room, where a man standing in the middle provided all the instructions to form the party that would have all the means to overcome the events that they just witnessed.
I've played may a game where I've rolled for stats, races, and classes and they all have come up with unique and memorable characters. I'd be down for this.
The party comes together on the Enchanting Siren, a merchant ship making a routine trip across the sea to deliver it's good to port. The party, filling in for various roles of the ship (sailors, new hired hands, guards, stow-aways, passengers, ect...). What the crew doesn't know is that the captain is transporting cargo that no one else knows of, or so he thinks. Part way into the trip, the ship comes under attack and hard choices are needed. Do they defend the ship, hide, join in with the attackers? Stay tuned to see what fate holds for the Enchanted Siren.
Sounds like a blast, I'd love to join a campaign built on this kind of foundation! How will everyone be notified when the thread updates, or should we all be checking DDB every so often?
They were heroes in the making, the lot of them, and they knew it.
It was years ago that Mother - the eccentric, enigmatic recluse bankrolled by her equally mysterious fortune - had sent a veritable army of social workers, natural philosophers, and talent scouts to every orphanage across the continent. From foundling institutions both properly registered and subterranean, Mother's agents identified the most promising youths and relocated them to the matriarch's sovereign compound to begin a life of training, study, and preparation. Even a bit of love, every now and again. Some of these adoptees were nearing adulthood when they had been selected, while others were children barely old enough to walk.
Not all survived to the present day, of course. Lethality was never intended during our upbringing, but we creatures born to die can be so fragile.
Now is the time for us, the prime cohort, to finally be let loose. To chase our purpose and heal the world with all that we have become thus far. Our journey begins.
Hey! This sounds awesome! I would be very excited to join! And I was in the process of coming up with some interesting plot line, but after reading both Gundropgoof911's and Bduds2006's posts, I be equally excited to play either option!
Being a mercenary is not an easy job. Being a soldier is worse. Our company can be both for the right amount of money. We kill, we pillage, we protect, we investigate, yet, we have our own rules and norms. We are our own judges, our own executioners. Me and my friends here are senior officers in the company and most of contracts are taken up by us. They call us ‘Delvers’, because we take all the specific mercenary jobs. If you ask me, we have it good, War is not my specialty anyways. Throughout the centuries of the company’s existence we found many allies, but for every friend nowadays we have three enemies on our backs. At times like these the company shrinks and recruits are scarse. At times like these soldiers die. At times like these senior officers must take action and the company’s end. And that is why we are here. The company was always a place where one could go when they didn’t have anywhere to return to. The company is a home and a family to many, but many of us are bad people, some worst that we kill, yet company is company. At times like these we do everything to save the company, you have to be realistic about these things.
This is heavily inspired by The Black Company and the basic idea is that the party is people who are very close to each other and are senior members in this mercenary group, their main objective being making the company strong again. This doesn’t have to mean only recruiting new people, it could mean revenge, and basically anything else.
Taverns in Waterdeep are noisy places. The bard in the corner tries vainly to make herself heard over the sounds of drunken carousing from the crowd mostly made up of humans, half elves and dwarves.
Against this scene, the grim silence of the mismatched group in the corner stands out like a gnome amongst goliaths. Something significant must be happening.
The leader of the group, a rugged Dwarven fighter with a grey beard and twice broken nose, breaks the silence.
"Are ye in?" he calls out in his booming voice.
The halfling rogue looks across the table (this isn't hard because it's right at her nose level). She shrugs. "At this point, what do I have to lose?"
"Well, technically quite a lot," says the wizard opposite her. At her scowl, the wizard will backtrack. "But I'm in."
The barbarian who rounds out the group raises his tankard, "To adventure!"
I'm really keen for this concept. It sounds like a fun way to end up with an out of the box character and build a complex backstory to justify it, and that is ridiculously up my alley
The sack over your head is removed, and you are thrust forward sharply; the manacles around your feet causing you to trip and fall; the cuffs around your hands stop you from protecting your head as it bounces off the dusty floor. You sit up, groggily, and examine your surroundings. A sandstone room on three sides, the fourth side iron bars, the doorway out of this cell is filled by a half-orc who looks at you with contempt. As he slams the cell door shut and locks it, you look about and realise you are not alone. You share the cell with several others, an assortment of races. Facial expressions range from anger to despair to hope. They look well-fed and fit, recent arrivals no doubt, like yourself. Looking beyond the bars of your cell, you see several others, filled with moaning, starving bodies that have likely been here much longer. You notice that the chests of each of your 'roommates' have been branded with a symbol denoting them as slaves. It is at this point the half-orc returns with an equally unpleasant friend brandishing a red-hot brand, the slave symbol glowing angrily. You try to get away, your restraints making any movement rather ineffective. The first half-orc grabs you roughly, lifting you off the floor with your limbs above your head, as the second drives the brand into your chest. Screams you think cannot possibly be your own, along with the smell of burning flesh, are the entirety of your universe for the next few seconds, at which point the God of Mercy takes pity on you, and you pass out.
The flickers of candlelight threw dancing shadows across the wall. The figures moving in trance like unison. The layers of dirt and stone above would block out any sounds that tried to escape making this the perfect location for what was happening tonight. Getting here wasn't easy especially with all the watching eyes on the surface. For those here, it had been something they had been dreaming of for years and it was living up to every expectation. Inside that small carved out stone room, it was difficult to make out any faces and the masks made it nearly impossible to identify the person standing right next to you. The crowd surrounding you moves like a pulse as you can't help to move with it. The rhythmic slams of a pickaxe against the stone wall provided the beat for the pulse of the crowd. The acoustics of the chamber seemed to amplify the lutes, flutes, and viols. The most exclusive underground concert was in full swing and you were lucky enough to be invited.
You wake to the idyllic sound of birds chirping, the sunlight dappling thorugh the trees. Naked except for some basic modesty covering, you can't remember how you got here, you just remember going to sleep somewhere else. You hear a giggle and the sound of something rushing away through the undergrowth.
Interested.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God Adewild: Shadows and Light 2 Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
This job couldn't have gone worse. Big Lenny got pinched and Small Lenny is dead, someone set us up. The streets are filled with alarms, barking dogs, and the shouted orders of the city guard. We got separated, good thing we all remembered the location of the safehouse.
You look at the crowd gathered. You see young street urchins in their dingiest standing next to a comely Lord in his finest silks and there is a plethora of beings running the gambit between these. You see many a human, dwarves, a few halflings, several half-elves and half-orcs and even a few very nervous looking Kobolds next to some equally neverous goblins. This hodge podge gathering, numbering into the hundreds could be confused for a Lords coronation but you like all the others gathered know it is a much more somber affair and for a much greater man than any Lord you have ever witnessed. Tolley as all gathered knew him, Toleth Nybor, officially the owner and proprietor of the unassuming Dancing Nag Inn and Tavern. But for those gathered here to lay Tolley to rest behind the burnt out remains of the Dancing Nag, he was father, teacher, priest, fence, accomplice, alibi, friend, confidant, banker, bursar, therapist, trader, redeemer and more. Even though Tolley was old when you met him as a lad, he was in fine health when you last saw him two fortnights prior and all gathered would talk about how loved by Tolley was and what a horrible accident that took Tolley and the Dancing Nag. You can not shake the nagging suspicion that this was far from an accident and more than a simple fire.
Interested.
Sorry if this sounds too Nancy Drewish, trying for a different approach.
Alright, I’m going to close applications by the end of the night as it looks like I’m already saying no to quite a bit of people. I’ll send a pm as a group for the ones who got in. Thanks everyone. If someone else wanted to do this for a group of their own, I can send the lists for rolling.
Hopefully I'm not too late cause this sounds really cool!
You all awake feeling well rested and comfortable. As you come to your senses you come to realize that you are not in your own bed. Come to think of it, you don't remember what your own bed is. Or where it is. Or if it exists. As you look around at your surroundings you see a dark, modestly decorated room with a few other beds that look exactly the same as the one you are in. They are all occupied.
In each bed is a humanoid figure with the same confused look on their face; you assume your own expression matches theirs. You've never seen them before but as you look at each of them in turn you find that you know their names. You feel a sense of comfort knowing they're here with you, like they are dear friends or family. Do you even have dear friends or family? You can't quite recall.
The next thing you notice is everyone else has a matching leather strap around their neck with a scroll tied into it. As you reach to your own neck you find the same thing. Unrolling it, you see fine, flowing script spelling out a short message. "Greetings Adventurer! Do not panic. You are safe. I'll be with you shortly..."
(DMs choice where this could lead, but my first thought is some powerful person/being hand picked different people with specific skills for a task they need completed. They gathered these adventurers together and magically wiped memories to eliminate chances of anyone refusing the task.)
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Hello all, a little while ago I had an idea to do a campaign based off completely random characters. I’ve liked the way it’s turned out so I’m opening up a second campaign taking place in the same world.
The one thing I would like to do more this time around is to really work together and get a solid backstory before beginning. No back story now, no concepts now. Just looking for anyone interested in rolling a lot of dice to make their character.
Like before post a possible story line on how the group could come together as a writing sample. Expected posting once a day.
This sounds really fun! I hope this is okay, I wasn't sure how much to assume about the characters or world.
Our party comes together in a dungeon. They're all pretty sure they haven't done anything wrong... not yet anyway. They each had heard of the strict and controlling authoritative force in this city, but either hadn't been in the city long enough to experience it or had been smart and lucky enough to avoid it. But now, for one reason or another, they have all been brought in. For some, they hadn't the correct papers to enter the city, others had been caught doing business with a shopkeep who had fallen out of favor, others still had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Regardless, they now sit, perhaps a bit confused, in their cells in the city's dungeon, all in sight and sound of each other, each thinking of their next move.
I do both party and individual character commissions. PM me for info.
Corti- Warforged bard (Union!)
Hadar Jaffe- Half-elf Knowledge Domain Cleric (Nemo's Citadel of the Unsleeping Sun)
Count me in. I've always been drawn to playing characters created at random first and then making sense out of the results.
As usual, our party knew each other in a famous tavern filled with people, songs and of course ale. But the peculiar thing was how they actually knew when, where and how meet each other, they weren't summoned by someone, at least not through a mundane method, they all met their employer in their dreams, dreams that started nice with the most precious memory or desire they could hold in their heart turned to their worst nightmare in a couple of seconds...
After they would've experienced their worst nightmare, they were individually transported to an empty room, where a man standing in the middle provided all the instructions to form the party that would have all the means to overcome the events that they just witnessed.
I've played may a game where I've rolled for stats, races, and classes and they all have come up with unique and memorable characters. I'd be down for this.
The party comes together on the Enchanting Siren, a merchant ship making a routine trip across the sea to deliver it's good to port. The party, filling in for various roles of the ship (sailors, new hired hands, guards, stow-aways, passengers, ect...). What the crew doesn't know is that the captain is transporting cargo that no one else knows of, or so he thinks. Part way into the trip, the ship comes under attack and hard choices are needed. Do they defend the ship, hide, join in with the attackers? Stay tuned to see what fate holds for the Enchanted Siren.
Sounds like a blast, I'd love to join a campaign built on this kind of foundation! How will everyone be notified when the thread updates, or should we all be checking DDB every so often?
They were heroes in the making, the lot of them, and they knew it.
It was years ago that Mother - the eccentric, enigmatic recluse bankrolled by her equally mysterious fortune - had sent a veritable army of social workers, natural philosophers, and talent scouts to every orphanage across the continent. From foundling institutions both properly registered and subterranean, Mother's agents identified the most promising youths and relocated them to the matriarch's sovereign compound to begin a life of training, study, and preparation. Even a bit of love, every now and again. Some of these adoptees were nearing adulthood when they had been selected, while others were children barely old enough to walk.
Not all survived to the present day, of course. Lethality was never intended during our upbringing, but we creatures born to die can be so fragile.
Now is the time for us, the prime cohort, to finally be let loose. To chase our purpose and heal the world with all that we have become thus far. Our journey begins.
Hey! This sounds awesome! I would be very excited to join! And I was in the process of coming up with some interesting plot line, but after reading both Gundropgoof911's and Bduds2006's posts, I be equally excited to play either option!
I’d be interested in playing this!
Being a mercenary is not an easy job. Being a soldier is worse. Our company can be both for the right amount of money. We kill, we pillage, we protect, we investigate, yet, we have our own rules and norms. We are our own judges, our own executioners. Me and my friends here are senior officers in the company and most of contracts are taken up by us. They call us ‘Delvers’, because we take all the specific mercenary jobs. If you ask me, we have it good, War is not my specialty anyways. Throughout the centuries of the company’s existence we found many allies, but for every friend nowadays we have three enemies on our backs. At times like these the company shrinks and recruits are scarse. At times like these soldiers die. At times like these senior officers must take action and the company’s end. And that is why we are here. The company was always a place where one could go when they didn’t have anywhere to return to. The company is a home and a family to many, but many of us are bad people, some worst that we kill, yet company is company. At times like these we do everything to save the company, you have to be realistic about these things.
This is heavily inspired by The Black Company and the basic idea is that the party is people who are very close to each other and are senior members in this mercenary group, their main objective being making the company strong again. This doesn’t have to mean only recruiting new people, it could mean revenge, and basically anything else.
Taverns in Waterdeep are noisy places. The bard in the corner tries vainly to make herself heard over the sounds of drunken carousing from the crowd mostly made up of humans, half elves and dwarves.
Against this scene, the grim silence of the mismatched group in the corner stands out like a gnome amongst goliaths. Something significant must be happening.
The leader of the group, a rugged Dwarven fighter with a grey beard and twice broken nose, breaks the silence.
"Are ye in?" he calls out in his booming voice.
The halfling rogue looks across the table (this isn't hard because it's right at her nose level). She shrugs. "At this point, what do I have to lose?"
"Well, technically quite a lot," says the wizard opposite her. At her scowl, the wizard will backtrack. "But I'm in."
The barbarian who rounds out the group raises his tankard, "To adventure!"
I'm really keen for this concept. It sounds like a fun way to end up with an out of the box character and build a complex backstory to justify it, and that is ridiculously up my alley
The sack over your head is removed, and you are thrust forward sharply; the manacles around your feet causing you to trip and fall; the cuffs around your hands stop you from protecting your head as it bounces off the dusty floor. You sit up, groggily, and examine your surroundings. A sandstone room on three sides, the fourth side iron bars, the doorway out of this cell is filled by a half-orc who looks at you with contempt. As he slams the cell door shut and locks it, you look about and realise you are not alone. You share the cell with several others, an assortment of races. Facial expressions range from anger to despair to hope. They look well-fed and fit, recent arrivals no doubt, like yourself. Looking beyond the bars of your cell, you see several others, filled with moaning, starving bodies that have likely been here much longer. You notice that the chests of each of your 'roommates' have been branded with a symbol denoting them as slaves. It is at this point the half-orc returns with an equally unpleasant friend brandishing a red-hot brand, the slave symbol glowing angrily. You try to get away, your restraints making any movement rather ineffective. The first half-orc grabs you roughly, lifting you off the floor with your limbs above your head, as the second drives the brand into your chest. Screams you think cannot possibly be your own, along with the smell of burning flesh, are the entirety of your universe for the next few seconds, at which point the God of Mercy takes pity on you, and you pass out.
Love this concept!
The flickers of candlelight threw dancing shadows across the wall. The figures moving in trance like unison. The layers of dirt and stone above would block out any sounds that tried to escape making this the perfect location for what was happening tonight. Getting here wasn't easy especially with all the watching eyes on the surface. For those here, it had been something they had been dreaming of for years and it was living up to every expectation. Inside that small carved out stone room, it was difficult to make out any faces and the masks made it nearly impossible to identify the person standing right next to you. The crowd surrounding you moves like a pulse as you can't help to move with it. The rhythmic slams of a pickaxe against the stone wall provided the beat for the pulse of the crowd. The acoustics of the chamber seemed to amplify the lutes, flutes, and viols. The most exclusive underground concert was in full swing and you were lucky enough to be invited.
You wake to the idyllic sound of birds chirping, the sunlight dappling thorugh the trees. Naked except for some basic modesty covering, you can't remember how you got here, you just remember going to sleep somewhere else. You hear a giggle and the sound of something rushing away through the undergrowth.
Interested.
Liarin: Against the Cult of the Reptile God
Adewild: Shadows and Light 2
Brother Thaddeus: Rime of the Frostmaiden.
This job couldn't have gone worse. Big Lenny got pinched and Small Lenny is dead, someone set us up. The streets are filled with alarms, barking dogs, and the shouted orders of the city guard. We got separated, good thing we all remembered the location of the safehouse.
Interested.
I got alot a doods
You look at the crowd gathered. You see young street urchins in their dingiest standing next to a comely Lord in his finest silks and there is a plethora of beings running the gambit between these. You see many a human, dwarves, a few halflings, several half-elves and half-orcs and even a few very nervous looking Kobolds next to some equally neverous goblins. This hodge podge gathering, numbering into the hundreds could be confused for a Lords coronation but you like all the others gathered know it is a much more somber affair and for a much greater man than any Lord you have ever witnessed. Tolley as all gathered knew him, Toleth Nybor, officially the owner and proprietor of the unassuming Dancing Nag Inn and Tavern. But for those gathered here to lay Tolley to rest behind the burnt out remains of the Dancing Nag, he was father, teacher, priest, fence, accomplice, alibi, friend, confidant, banker, bursar, therapist, trader, redeemer and more. Even though Tolley was old when you met him as a lad, he was in fine health when you last saw him two fortnights prior and all gathered would talk about how loved by Tolley was and what a horrible accident that took Tolley and the Dancing Nag. You can not shake the nagging suspicion that this was far from an accident and more than a simple fire.
Interested.
Sorry if this sounds too Nancy Drewish, trying for a different approach.
Pori Gathar - Level 1 Tiefling Life Cleric - GamoRust's Baldur's Gate Descent to Avernus
Rusty - Level 4 Warforged Rogue - Virst's Clifftop Adventurer's Guild/Fiendfall Scouting
Alright, I’m going to close applications by the end of the night as it looks like I’m already saying no to quite a bit of people. I’ll send a pm as a group for the ones who got in. Thanks everyone. If someone else wanted to do this for a group of their own, I can send the lists for rolling.
Hopefully I'm not too late cause this sounds really cool!
You all awake feeling well rested and comfortable. As you come to your senses you come to realize that you are not in your own bed. Come to think of it, you don't remember what your own bed is. Or where it is. Or if it exists. As you look around at your surroundings you see a dark, modestly decorated room with a few other beds that look exactly the same as the one you are in. They are all occupied.
In each bed is a humanoid figure with the same confused look on their face; you assume your own expression matches theirs. You've never seen them before but as you look at each of them in turn you find that you know their names. You feel a sense of comfort knowing they're here with you, like they are dear friends or family. Do you even have dear friends or family? You can't quite recall.
The next thing you notice is everyone else has a matching leather strap around their neck with a scroll tied into it. As you reach to your own neck you find the same thing. Unrolling it, you see fine, flowing script spelling out a short message. "Greetings Adventurer! Do not panic. You are safe. I'll be with you shortly..."
(DMs choice where this could lead, but my first thought is some powerful person/being hand picked different people with specific skills for a task they need completed. They gathered these adventurers together and magically wiped memories to eliminate chances of anyone refusing the task.)