Reworked a few of my personality characteristics into something that can be incorporated easier.

Equipment: (And 15g)

Equipment list:

I hope you all don't mind the pace.  We'll be done with character creation soon, I promise.

Please review the 5 factions of Faerun:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/compendium/rules/basic-rules/appendix-d-the-five-factions#AppendixDTheFiveFactions

You can choose to have your character belong to one of the factions - if your alignments and character concept fits.  This is not necessary, and you won't really see any benefit from it from the first half of the campaign is completed.

Delmae is a member of the Emerald Enclave.

Beegred is a member of the Order of the Gauntlet.

I am writing up the first introductory post for the campaign and I need 2 pieces of information.  Everyone please roll 1d10 and 1d20.

Beegred - ten: 6 and twenty: 5

Tozer Stormspar

• Faction: Emerald Enclave
• 1d10: 4
• 1d20: 1

Xilyra is a member of the Zhentarim.

1d10: 5

1d20: 10

Her backstory and secret will be done in a bit.

1d10: 9

1d20: 16

Narstin: d10: 10 d20: 6.  Harpers could be a good fit for Narstin

Quote from Kerrec >>

PART 2

This next bit is ambitious and I don't know if it's going to work.  If it doesn't, no big deal - I tried and maybe I'll try to improve it or just not bother in my next games.

You're all going to start together, but none of you will have known each other prior.  This is part of the module.  By necessity, you will all have to work together to escape, but that doesn't mean you're friends.  There will be NPC's you will fight with and travel with to escape that would be enemies in any other scenario.  Once (and if) freedom is achieved, those NPC's are probably going to revert and if you see them again, they won't be reminiscing your time together in the Underdark.  Along the same lines, all of you can work together the whole way out of the Underdark and once you reach the surface, you go your own way and never see each other again.  Unless your characters form strong bonds of friendship.  I'm going to try to do provide the same "reward" motivation to have stories within the Out of the Abyss story, where those stories are your characters forming bonds.  Other than setting it up at character creation, I will be completely hands off from that point onwards (other than providing the awards).

I'm not yet ready to explain the mechanics and I will do so as soon as I can (it's just too late tonight).  But in the meantime, what I want is for each of you to create a deep dark secret your character has, that they haven't been able to tell even their best friends, or family.  Something they just haven't been ready to face yet.  It can be anything from vile acts done to others or vile acts done to the character.  Anything that justifies the secrecy.  Once you've chosen, tell me what it is in private messages and I will record it.  Then I will explain how it will work when I have time to sit down and write it all out.

My hope is when we get into combat initiative order, we won't have to wait days to get through the combat order to get to post again.  In situations like those, each of you can continue to post along the lines of:

"During the last long rest, I was on guard duty with so-and-so, we talked during our shift.  This is what we said...."

That way you can all work on your stories while we slog through the combat in OotA.

I'm still trying to figure out the mechanics for this, but here's the end goal:

Once a character has achieved friendly status with another character, that character can begin to try to extract knowledge of the "dark secret" each character is keeping to themselves.  The interviewer can ask a yes/no question once per game day, and the interviewee has to answer truthfully.  Once the interviewer successfully guesses the "dark secret", I will seed the next opportunity to loot with 1 magical item, selected at random until something useful for someone appears.  The interviewer who makes the successful guess will get to pick 1 free feat. 

The interviewer can only get the free feat once, and the party only gets 6 free magical items.

The end goal here is to have something for you all to post every day, even if we're bogged down in initiative order for a battle.  The side benefit, I hope, is a deeper character evolution for all of you.

I'm thinking of having these yes/no questions asked in Private Messages, so everyone has to dig out everyone's dark secret without any information given away for free.  

As to achieving friendly status with PC's or NPC's, here is what I'm thinking.

For each of you, I have a table similar to this:

Delmae

• Narstin: 300
• Beegred: 300
• Tozer: 150
• Valthana: 200
• Xilyra: 250

The value is the total 'influence' target you need to accumulate for that person to consider you their friend.  I picked a base of 100 and modified based on certain variables.  I have no idea if this is too little or too much, we'll just play it out.  You will be able to build influence once per long rest per PC or NPC.

In order to build 'influence' points, you will sum up a list of actions that will establish a DC for a Charisma (Persuasion) check.  The base DC is 10, and the following (this can evolve!) actions can affect the DC:

• +5 for each level of difference in alignment, ie:
• +5 for Chaotic to Neutral,
• +5 for Neutral to Lawful,
• And vice versa
• +5 for Good to Neutral,
• +5 for Neutral to Evil,
• And vice versa.
• Others (to be justified by DM)
• -5 for teamwork actions, ie:
• Providing advantage opportunities for allies
• Healing allies
• Preventing damage to allies
• Gifting (food, items, wealth)
• Agents of the same faction
• Others (to be justified by player)

If the Charisma (Persuasion) check beats the DC (minimum of 5), then the difference is added to your 'influence' total.

(Healing allies, gogo easy -5 for me! :P)

And with that, I think I'm done.  All I need to start is:

• DirtyDogP (Valthana) to tell me if he wishes to belong to a faction, and to roll his 1d10 and 1d20.
• DirtyDogP (Valthana) to tell me his dark secret
• Jack_Joke (Tozer) to tell me his dark secret

I will be reviewing character sheets and getting into more details with some of you regarding your backstories.  But I will not delay the start of the actual campaign to hash those things out.

I have altered Valthana's traits some to make them a little more fit with your challenge.

Her equipment:

Valthana is not part of any faction.

1d10: 2

1d20: 1

The main thread is here:

https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/play-by-post/27393-official-thread-out-of-the-abyss-by-kerrec

Any and all OOC talk is to be done in THIS thread.  You may even metagame here, as long as you don't act on it with your characters.  If you are going to narrate what your characters are thinking as they are performing actions, then please use italics.

Otherwise, speech is in bold or color.  For example, "Welcome to the Underdark! Stay a while. Stay forever!  Muahahaha" or "Welcome to the Underdark! Stay a while. Stay forever!  Muahahaha."

If it counts...

DM inspiration for Post #2 for Flaw "I have trouble keeping my true feelings hidden. My sharp tongue lands me in trouble."

Quote from Quasimodal >>

If it counts...

DM inspiration for Post #2 for Flaw "I have trouble keeping my true feelings hidden. My sharp tongue lands me in trouble."

 Perfect.  Inspiration given!

FYI, Mistress Ilvara still considers you all to be valuable property.  She enjoys beating and torturing, but everyone that returns to their cells will not die as a result.  She heals enough to close open wounds and prevent infections or maiming.