Hiya, I'm looking for 2 players for my Discord PbP Ravenloft campaign, it's an RP-heavy medieval gothic/psychological/lovecraftian fantasy/horror, based on the Curse of Strahd campaign, using R20 for maps, but mostly reimagined by me and written with the players' characters backstories coming back to haunt them in mind. We recently lost a couple players,but we've been running it for a bit, so I'd prefer it if someone could fill in their characters, for continuity's and my own sake, since I already wrote major parts of the campaign around them, and it takes a lot of hard work and rewriting when a character joins/leaves; but if playing pre-made characters isn't your thing, you can make your own and we can write them in too. Mainly what I need are players with a love for character/dialogue writing and collaborative storytelling, since the bar has been set pretty high by the other players and me so far. I'm going to explain the biggest idiosyncrasies of the game so that peeps can know if its their style.

Tone/World

The campaign began in the Forgotten Realms setting, so all of them are from there, but the party was transported to Ravenloft, which is its own demi-plane, and I use the full D&D multiverse as a backdrop, so characters can technically be from any setting in the D&D multiverse (Greyhawk/Dragonlance/Planescape/Spelljammer/Eberron/MTG/Wildemount, or a homebrew world), they can even be native to Ravenloft.

Being predominantly a dark medieval fantasy/gothic horror, the campaign has a serious, grim, beautiful, and tragic vibe to it, and occasionally touches upon very dark and spooky topics (of which I will give specific warnings for before I bring anyone in, in case they're uncomfortable with them). That said, being a D&D game, it isn't all gloom and doom, the party and NPC's have their fair share of fun and funny interactions/moments.

Though magic, deities, and monsters exist in the world, we treat it less like a high-fantasy setting and more like a low-magic setting; magic, deities, and monsters are vague, hard to understand, and unheard of or unseen respectively; and many don't truly believe they are real, let alone experience them firsthand (for example: most of the party had never heard of a Vampyr, nor seen a druid transform into an animal, nor been teleported onto a different plane of existence before the events of the campaign). Not to mention, the players being level 3 adventurers, they're not terribly familiar with the lore of the multiverse beyond what they know from their backgrounds (for example: it isn't a given for the characters that dragons have different colors and factions, nor that vampires cannot enter a house without being invited in, nor that drow are ruled by spider demons in a cave world called the underdark). Racial prejudices are also a thing for some characters in the world (though not necessarily all of them); drow are seen as pure evil demon worshippers, tieflings as bad omens or unholy abominations, yuan-ti as conniving liars, dwarves as racist drunkard d**kheads, high elves as prissy and holier-than-thou racists, humans as stupid and short-lived disturbances, et cetera.

The vagueness/characters not knowing leaves me space to modify the lore to keep it fresh for even lore nerds like me, and therefore the ability to personalize it to fit the characters' stories/arcs better.

Combat/Mechanics/Homebrew

My encounters are sometimes pretty brutal, and often require a bit of cleverness, creativity, or risk to succeed or escape, as opposed to just blasting spells and hacking with your weapons. Healing is harder to come by, and undead creatures are particularly buffed to make them more scary (most of them drain hp maxes which can only be fixed via divine healing/magical restoration).

For a bit of added flavor, players usually flavor their spells to suit their characters.
For a bit of added realism in combat, supplementary effects sometimes occur from attacks like a person being knocked prone or back from an attack to the back of their knee or directly to their chest, or having a limb severed from a particularly damaging critical hit, et cetera (these aren't hard rules, it just all depends on the context and what I think makes sense/is cool).
To balance this out with magic users, certain items like gems can greatly boost the potency of specific schools of magic, depending on the in-world time of day/night.
Hit points dropping are seen as a measure of one's fighting endurance, stamina, and guard being broken down, as opposed to how much they've actually been wounded.
Players can use their whole turn except for their interaction to sprint 5x/4x/3x their speed (depending on armor weight class) to help them get into or out of the fray quicker, risking opportunity attacks at advantage and risking falling prone if they sprint over difficult terrain and fail an acrobatics/athletics skill check.
Players can only roll unasked for skill checks or use the help action if they are proficient in the skill, or if they can flavor it to make sense for their character. Also, sometimes I'll allow alternate ability skill checks (for example a Charisma History check, or a Wisdom Nature check, or a Constitution Intimidation check).
(I'm also considering making it MORE brutal, using the alternate flanking/shield rules where characters need to decide which direction they are facing at the end of their turn, and can be flanked if they aren't looking at someone, and using the alternate gritty realism rules for resting, but I'll leave that up to a necessarily-unanimous party vote.)

I have a high tolerance for homebrew, as long as its cool and balanced and fits the tone, it's usually cool with me.

The party is currently level 3, and set to go to level 10 or 12. Free point buy or rolled (in front of us) for stats. We're using all the new rules in Tasha's (although you can opt out of them if you want or if you prefer an older UA rule). Occasionally I'll throw out bonus feats to the characters too.

Right now, the party has a Half-Elf Bladedancer Wizard, a Goliath Phasing Dragon Monk (homebrew class), a Dwarf Battle Master Fighter, a Kalashtar Light Cleric, and a Grung Death Cleric, as well as a few NPC followers/side characters.

Characters to Fill

Ssrissana, Yuan-Ti Pureblood Swashbuckler Rogue, level 3: A sharp, seductive, Machiavellian, self-assured, and smarmy professional assassin/exotic dancer from Baldur's Gate, with a motherly protectiveness about her, and an exotic aphorism and derogatory for every occasion. She skipped town after a hit job went awry. (She has the gourmand and lucky feats)

Yuvari, Zariel Tiefling Moon Druid, level 3: A charming, curious, stubborn, and rebellious tiefling who was abandoned by her parents at a young age for an unknown reason, and raised in the woods by an ancient druid and primal animal spirits until said druid passed away, and she left to find her parents. (she has the wood elf magic feat)

All that said, my discord is Zionswasd#8143, add me if you're interested!

“Character and dialogue writing” so it’s text based then?

Yes, PbP means play-by-post, as in a non-scheduled and continually running text game.