CLOSED! Thank you to everyone who applied!

About Me

Hello everyone! You can call me Ray or Journey (he/she/they). I'm 21, live out on the east coast of the US, and am a college junior studying chemistry. I have about 1 year's worth of experience DMing thus far (and I am currently DMing another weekly 5e campaign on Fridays) and 3 years overall with nearly weekly play of 5e. Outside of D&D and school, I'm a singer, radio DJ, and theater-lover who plays way too many video games and sees way too much live music.

I'm a DM who cares a lot about consistency, fairness and balance between players, and open communication about rules. I'm known for making quite a few homebrew alterations to rules in order to ensure this, not necessarily doing everything exactly RAW, though RAW/RAI remains a basis for decision-making. I am always open to talking about whether or not certain rulings are fair and/or fun for players and potentially changing them for the future, but I also do seek to limit the amount of debate happening around a ruling mid-game for the sake of flow.

If you are expecting a DM who goes 110% all-in on making visual aids like city maps, tons of minis, etc. then I'm probably not the DM for you. As a student, I have to spend what little free time I have developing the actual content and world y'all will be playing in, and I find creating visual aids like the aforementioned the biggest time sink, so I rely on theater of the mind for many things. It is possible that unplanned combat encounters may not get maps, not all NPCs will have art, etc. I can guarantee that there will be a world/regional map, that I'll play music most of the time during the session (for as long as there is still a bot out there with YouTube integration...), and that at least some NPCs of import will get Hero Forges made for them, but that's about as much as I can promise.

I get very involved in roleplaying, but I'm no voice actor. I do my best to differentiate characters with the limited number of tones and accents I can do, but sometimes they'll be just my voice with a certain mannerism of talking. Again, if your immersion really depends on something like this, I may not be a good DM for you.

My Ideal Player...

• is 18+. Although the campaign will not feature explicit sexual content (ie., all encounters of that nature will fade to black), the campaign will feature adult themes that are not appropriate for minors. Even if it didn't, I'm not comfortable playing with people under 18.
• is LGBTQ+; please respect this if you're considering applying! Special consideration will be given to other trans and nonbinary people, as we rarely have spaces where we can feel welcome, but you can absolutely still apply if you're a queer cis person.
• is rules-knowledgeable and has at least some experience playing in a long-term 5e campaign—the more the better, preferably. I have nothing inherently against new or inexperienced players (I have several in my other game), and they are welcome to shoot their shot and apply still, but this is going to be a very dense campaign, so I need players who are very familiar with the base rules, know how to take notes effectively and maintain a character sheet, can get into character, and all-around are able to keep up without a lot of hand-holding. I also need players who are knowledgeable about what hue of the rainbow I prefer, which is purple.
• is committed. For several reasons, I don't run sessions if not all players can be present, which makes player attendance even more crucial. I expect players to be there and to communicate when they can't be in as timely of a fashion as possible for the situation. I'm not going to impose arbitrary limits on how many sessions you can cancel in X period of time, as I know both other things you can't/don't want to miss and emergencies will invariably happen sometimes—just don't be a chronic flake, or you'll get the boot.
• doesn't act like a clown. You know what I mean.

About the Campaign

Style: Expect a heavy lean on roleplay and exploration-based encounters over combat (approx 80/20 split). The narrative is PC-driven. There tends to be an overarching plot, but what is done in the moment and how it gets done is pretty much always up to the players. Partially to compensate the low ratio of combat but also to go with the setting, expect combat to be difficult. I'm not out to kill you necessarily, but no punches will be pulled. Character death is on the table if you make enough stupid choices in a row.

Setting: As alluded to in the title, the setting is going to be grimdark, gothic, horror, and also low-ish magic in nature. I'm holding back on giving detailed descriptions of locations and lore because I find that they usually make little sense without more context and that a lot of it is built around PCs and different PCs will have different world knowledge. Predictably, the setting will be homebrew in essentially its entirety; it's also very collaborative. If you want to make a whole town as part of your backstory, that's *very* encouraged!

Characters: I'm not explicitly banning any official material from the game, but all mechanical choices should have narrative justification for them and be appropriate for the setting... so certain Spelljammer material, for example, might not be the best choice. I'm open to UA and homebrew material (I will even make you homebrew material like races and subclasses if you ask nicely because I enjoy doing it), but all of this is, of course, subject to my discretion and editing before being allowed. In the course of the campaign if we find it to be under- or overpowered, then it is subject to being tweaked. Don't let the low-ish magic setting make you afraid of building a spellcaster; it will be a hard road to take, but I will do my best to ensure that the payoff is worth it. Characters will start at level 1, level up through milestone leveling, and make it up until either level 20 (and potentially beyond) or the campaign reaches a satisfying end—whichever happens first (ie., I make no promises for how long long-term means exactly).

House Rules: We will definitely be using the *gritty realism variant rule* from the DMG, which makes short rests last 8 hours and long rests last 7 days. Other difficulty-enhancing variant rules are to be discussed during our session 0, but they will deal with things such as consequences of getting knocked to 0 HP, making resurrection more difficult, etc. Other homebrew rules will be discussed as well; I have a couple that are staples in my games but I will be of course running by everybody before enacting into law.

Session Time: Saturday evenings (currently EDT, UTC-04:00, as I live in an area that observes daylight savings). The start time listed as 6pm EDT is an approximation; it may get pushed forward or backward an hour or two depending on what works best for the party, but 6 is the default. My sessions tend to run for 4-6 hours with a couple of 5-15 min breaks sprinkled throughout where needed. They can run even longer if the party is alive, awake, alert, enthusiastic, etc., but I rarely go any shorter for the sake of everybody feeling like they actually got something done. We will run weekly-ish; I usually run 3 weeks on/1 week off if we don't already have other cancellations.

Party Size: My ideal number of players is 4. I may do 3 or 5 (which are my lower and upper limits) depending on how many suitable players apply, but this isn't very likely.

Audio/Video: We will be using mics and cameras for the sessions; please have passable quality for both. We will be using Discord for audio/video (and also general communication between sessions). The sessions won't be streamed or recorded or anything of the sort; I just find that things run much smoother and roleplaying is a lot more engaging when we can see each other's body language.

Platforms: Character sheets will be hosted on D&D Beyond, and Roll20 will act as VTT where necessary. Don't worry if you don't have much, if any, content on DDB—I own all of it and will be able to share it with everyone during character creation, so you will not be limited in this way. I am also very experienced with using the homebrew system on DDB and can make pretty much anything you might need for you.

Interested?

I'm currently planning to start the campaign (Session 1) on April 15th. Depending on how quickly I'm able to get the party together, the full-party session 0 will occur on either March 25th (this coming Saturday) or April 8th (I am unavailable April 1st), but plenty of deliberation over DMs or the group server can happen in the interim while people are making their characters.

If you're interested, please fill out this Google form: Here. Note that you will need information from the listing in order to fill out a particular question on the application form. I am collecting information in the Google form because I have put this post up in more than one place and would like all the applicants to be in one location for me.

This post and the Google form will stay open no matter what until the end of the day (for me) on Wednesday, March 22nd, but I may extend it. As long as this post doesn't have the closed tag and the Google form is accessible, I am still looking! I will be reaching out to people to schedule interviews throughout the coming week; you'll get a Discord friend request from sunshine#9357. Unfortunately, I know how popular posts like this can become (and I have posted this ad in several places), so it's unlikely I will have the time to interview every single person who applies. If you don't get a message from me by end of the day (for me) on Friday, March 24th, then I'm afraid you can assume I'm not considering you for the game. It's nothing personal! There's only so much I can do when I get more than four applications for a four-person campaign.

DMs, Discord friend requests sent to me, and requests for me to DM you will be ignored. If you have any questions for me about the campaign or otherwise, please post a comment below (so that others who might have the same question can see the answer).

Thanks for reading!

Howdy :)

I filled out the form. Very nice form!

I hope you get plenty of applicants to choose from, and hope you find some members who you really click With

Good luck!

I would love to join your campaign, it sounds amazing. i would just like to confirm about the time before filling the form. As I live in India with IST+5:30 time zone. Your suggested time is at 3:30 AM in India, if possible can the time be changed. 

All of this is such a cool concept, i hope to join the adventure, and if not then I hope all who do enjoy it to the fullest

Quote from suryanshsharma172004 >>

I would love to join your campaign, it sounds amazing. i would just like to confirm about the time before filling the form. As I live in India with IST+5:30 time zone. Your suggested time is at 3:30 AM in India, if possible can the time be changed. 

 No, sorry. The time is pretty set because Saturday afternoons/evenings for me are the only time I'm free as the DM.