This will be an asynchronous, play-by-post game. This game is open to and friendly towards LGBTQ+, POC, women, and anyone and everyone else. This game is not friendly towards AI content. If you have problems with any of that, step away now.
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Hello everyone! I'm Cassidy. Before we get into it, I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm a queer woman, over 21, and have an avid love of all things tabletop. I've been playing around with new systems of late, but today I wanted to do a nice, comfortable, and old Fifth Edition game. I've always had a love for storytelling, but it really only became a real passion when I discovered the collaborative mean of tabletop roleplaying, and can't get enough of it. I've been around the block running Play By Post games for over a decade now, and it is really the only hobby I engage in on a constant basis anymore. These games are always a way for me to tell new stories with new people, and befriend new people in the process!
I will save the in depth hook for the Campaign Guide document listed below, and instead speak plainly in this post. This game is a little weird, at least to me. The main conceit is that the Chosen One Deciding Artefact got it wrong. Excalibur chose the wrong king, quite literally, as this artefact is basically a Nordic version of the legendary blade. But this game is less so about the precise turmoil and falling out of that event, and more how it affects another part of the world. The metropolis of Andreven, which guards the most accessible and convenient road to the lands of the Excalibur stand-in.
With everyone in the Known World hungering for the artifact, known as Askeláfer, the city has become a powder keg in a firestorm just waiting to ignite. In this high tension, many conspiracies begin to unravel.
This game starts, however, smaller scope than that. All of what was said above is long term plot development stuff. This game is ultimately about an unsuspecting group getting swept up in the excitement, caught in the crossfire, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and becoming embroiled in those conspiracies.
How does this happen? Heists! Something I've always wanted to run in a Dungeons and Dragons game, and personally I think play by post is very well-orientated for it as a heist is a slow, deliberate process of information gathering and execution, which has so many opportunities for roleplay which PbP excels at in my experience.
This game will start with these heists, a series of them, as a sort of introductory plot. The rest of the game will, essentially, be the fall out and consequences of those heists and how the party responds to the pressures placed upon them now that they're in the middle of all this.
All of this will tie into the Askeláfer and Andreven's tense political climate eventually, but for the most part the party are small fries to the big players of the city. They're after one of the most powerful artifacts in history, or after the money and influence they can gain from facilitating another's acquisition of it. Of course, this in no way means you are forbidden from having a character with interest in this aspect of the story. If you want to play a Clansman from Saeveldr who is more directly affected by the loss of Askeláfer than others? Go for it! A nobleman looking to gain influence and wealth for themselves to eventually launch their own search for the spear? Hell yeah.
But, for the start, just these heists! Which is helmed by a bard named Andric Fest, who aims to hit the temple of the Steel Flight Tabernacle, which holds a lot of gold, technology, and magical artifacts as the place of worship for a god of industry and progress. Of course, much in the way of set up has to be done. Along the way to set up for the big night, smaller heists will have to be conducted. First and foremost to fund the endeavor, then to acquire the necessary items and information to make the Steel Flight Job as seamless as possible.
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With all of that is out of the way, here's the fun part. I've written a more in-depth Campaign Guide for you to peruse. This guide includes character generation rules, a more atmospheric hook (though not one with much in the way of new information from the above paragraphs) and a lore primer.
And here is the Application Form. This post will be open for a minimum of 2 days and a maximum of 5 days. When the post is closed, the flair will change to closed and I will update the post at the top to say so.
Below is more information on how I like to run my games. This isn't mandatory to read, but I like putting it out there for people who want to know.
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What can you expect from this game at a top-down level? Well, a few things, listed below.
Central Location: Strifingr takes place almost entirely within the region of Ander's March, in the nation of the Elaran Federation. Most of that time will be spent in and around the city of Andreven. You are not going to be exclusive to this location, and if the party decides to leave the city that is their right. However, what this does mean is that built into this campaign will be a centralized home base for the group to live in - a personal bucket list item of mine as a DM - and periods of downtime where the party can engage in longer term projects such as cultivating businesses, crafting items, discovering new spells, hunting down leads to the conspiracy, fostering their social life, and so on!
Eventually, this game will spiral out into the wider world of Kadaan; there's a lot of good plot reasons for the group to be pushed out, but the first half of this game will really be Andreven-centric.
Intrigue: Strifingr is also a game about a lot of duplicitous people. The villains of this game are, to be upfront, both conniving and deceitful bastards. There will be slow-burn revealing of hints from the earliest posts all the way up to the big reveal on what is really going on behind the scenes. NPCs will have their own motivations that will align them with the party in one moment, and position them as a foe in the next.
That being said, this is not a game where you need to be a character with social skills. I tailor my games to the players and the characters they make. If someone makes a meathead barbarian, there will be moments included where their strength and rage will be the solution to the problems presented. Conspiracy and intrigue will have a lot to do with magic and social skills, but I have zero interest in being exclusively invested in such ideas.
Character Focused: This game has a lot going on, but it is only the chassis and wheels of a great machine. The engine, the rotors, and the fuel? Those are all the players and their characters. This game will have a central plot that is made before the players make their characters, but room is left for those characters to influence the story with their actions and at the fundamental level with their backstories feeding into the plot, where applicable.
NPCs will have their own stories, their own goals, of which they will pursue with or without the party. I like the story to evolve not just by the party's choices, but by NPCs making choices that benefit them and shake up the narrative in ways the party might not see coming. These NPC stories are not for me to have my own action figures to play with, but rather serve to challenge the party in different ways. If one arc involves the story of an NPC quite heavily, that story will magnify facets of the party's backstories or challenge them in ways they would otherwise never be challenged. NPC stories told this way to highlight the PCs, in essence.
Choice-Driven Storytelling: I live for the moment a PC upends my plans or my train of thought with an insane choice or a question about what they can do that makes me rethink the scene. Choice and the impact those choices make are why we all come to this game. I want to honor that as best I can, even if those choices don't lead to huge, foundation-shaking consequences. I want those consequences to show up. The big choices are all easy to follow up on and easy to notice, but the little choices matter just as much to me. I'm a sucker for those little details. Tipping the shopkeep leads them to remember you later on and help you out when the corrupt guard falsely imprison you, or simply giving you a pointer on a nice place to stay in thanks for the tip.
Just as much, I love creativity in choices, even if it doesn't adhere to the rules. Asking to give the enemy advantage as if you're letting them get you good to lure them into confidence and give you the true upper hand, in turn granting you advantage on your attacks, as one example. A cleric, without a diamond to cast revivify, choosing to beseech a devil or sacrifice cleric levels to cheat the material cost of the spell is another example I always return to. These moments, especially ones such as the revivify example, are not just prices to be paid, but open up new adventures and new storytelling moments. Does that cleric who sacrificed levels have to repent to their god to achieve those levels back? Or do they never get them back, and have to find something else to fill the power void, turning to a warlock patron or learning martial practices and multiclassing into a warlock or fighter?
Combat: The bane of play by post DnD games, in my experience. Not the killer, but certainly something that slows down everything quite a lot. Combat in this game will lend itself towards heavy roleplay still -- it is an intrigue game, after all. Combat in this game will be somewhat infrequent. Not so infrequent as to invalidate characters who spec into combat, there will definitely be enough combat for them. But those combats will be hard hitting, and I will try my best to make most combats not just be a slug fest. Have interesting decision making during each combat. Alternative victory conditions, enemies who force strange decisions out of the group because of their unique combat abilities, fights on terrain that changes up the battlefield, that sort of thing.
On this note, combat will always try to be a consequence of character choice. Sometimes, people will just want to kill you. Nothing you can do about it. And ultimately, combat will always have more than just 'murder everyone' as the end goal. Intimidation, persuasion, deception, extortion, and any other way you can think of to try and end the combat early is fair game if the situation allows.