[5e][Friday 7-11pm US Eastern] One Shot, possibly into long campaign (long post because I'm an ambitious idiot)

First a note on inclusivity. I don’t care about your race, ethnicity, national origin, religion or lack thereof, gender, sexual orientation, or political beliefs. I game to get away from the real world. My games have no place for hate or any discussion of politics. If you feel the need to bring either of these things into fantasy escapism you are not welcome in my game. Otherwise anyone is welcome as long as you act like a decent human being.

Also a brief note: this post is not brief. Note the warning about my being an ambitious idiot in the title. If you're interested in joining my possibly idiotic ambition to form a hopefully really fun game, read on. You've been warned.

I'm looking to run one or possibly more one shot adventures set in my homebrew skypunk setting as test runs and, for lack of a better term, auditions for a long term campaign set in the same world. I tried putting together a group last year but folks just didn't really mesh well and it didn't work out. Since I've learned the most important key to a successful long running campaign (aside from everybody actually showing up) is a comfortable group that actually gets along and enjoys playing together. There are a lot of styles of D&D games and not everybody likes the same things, so this time around I'm going for a test run or two so everyone can get a feel for the game and decide if they want to commit to something more long term. The 7-11pm Friday (US Eastern) time is when I intend to run any eventual full campaign so any one shots leading up to that will be at the same time.

An important note: My ultimate goal for a full campaign is to record sessions to edit and publish as a podcast. Fame and fortune are statistically very unlikely, but I have two reasons for this (aside from maybe just being an ambitious idiot). First, I am a fan of actual plays as an entertainment genre and want to try contributing to it. Second, I'm hoping that the possibility of an audience will motivate everyone including myself to bring our A games, pay attention, get into character, and generally take the game at least somewhat seriously. On the off chance that, by some miracle, this endeavor actually produces a profit I will share proceeds with anyone else involved but that's not going to happen any time in the foreseeable future (if ever) so don't plan on quitting your day jobs. That being said you should have a decent quality microphone and be able to play without any distracting background noise.

Okay, what kind of game will it be?

I'm looking to do a story driven game with a roughly even mix of game time spent between roleplaying/social situations and crunchy bits (meaning exploration, combat, or anything requiring a battle map). The goal is about 50/50 overall but some sessions may swing more toward one or the other. Discord will be used for voice, Roll20 VTT for anything requiring a battle map and theater of the mind descriptions for socially focused roleplaying.

The style of play I prefer is linear storytelling, which does not mean railroading. It means I will be preparing material ahead of time and expect players to engage with that material, but I'm designing it to be flexible and allow for creative solutions. Additionally at numerous points I'll have multiple forking courses of action the party can choose. If there's a particular aspect of the world or style of adventure players want to explore they are encouraged to let me know and I'll see about working it into future preparations. That being said I have no desire or intention to run a sandbox game where players just run around doing whatever random thing they just thought of and expect me to pull a session's worth of game content out of my butt on demand. I acknowledge that improv sandbox is a valid way to enjoy D&D but that's not going to be happening in this game. If engaging with something that the DM (me) has prepared ahead of time is too much to ask from you, this is not the game for you.

Mechanically I run my game almost entirely RAW (Rules As Written). There are a few bits of homebrew and houserules I use that will be made available up front (mostly just a few things related to the skypunk elements of the setting and as simple as I can make them). I'm open to creative uses of abilities but if I can't apply existing rules to something with reasonable accomodation you probably won't be allowed to do it. This is 5e RAW without any of the One D&D playtest changes to core mechanics though a few things might be included. For example I do like the idea of guidance as a reaction and no crits for monsters/NPCs (in general I try to avoid instakill mechanics because that just isn't fun).

You may notice I used the word "skypunk" to describe my world. If you think that means airships, floating islands, stratospheric swashbuckling action, and people flying around on giant birds shooting bows and slinging spells like fantastical living fighter planes then you are right on. Not all of the story will explicitly revolve around being airborne in one way or another and there will be a fair bit of traditional feet on the ground adventuring, but getting from point A to point B will generally involve flying and there are air pirates, territorial militaries, flying monsters, and weird weather phenomena all over this world so it will be fair to expect such things to come up with some regularity. I'm basically going for a sort of Treasure Island/Pirates of the Caribbean in the clouds vibe, meeting all sorts of NPCs in different environments between and along the course of adventures. Bustling port cities, shady smuggler refuges, remote ruins, and everything in and beneath the sky in between. I have some general plans for an overarching story and hope to work in elements tailored to involve PCs backstories and goals into that as it develops. But that's for the full campaign and not the immediate one shot I'm advertising here.

For the one shot I have immediately planned, it's a pretty much an extremely brief introduction to the world and a simple mini-dungeon crawl as the party are freelance mercenaries hired to look for a relic in some mysterious ruins on a remote sky island. The main purpose is to serve as an icebreaker and introduction between players and myself and see if we vibe well. A bit of in character roleplaying and banter is encouraged but it will mostly be a crunchier session. Anybody who joins in the hopefully eventual full campaign will have the option of tweaking or even completely changing their characters so nothing is set in stone.

Player Expectations

No evil characters, murderhobos, or chaos goblins. You don't have to play a shining paragon of virtue but we are going for heroic adventurers with at least some basic "good guys" vibes. Furthermore along the lines of the above mentions of sticking to content I've prepared, activities such as bullying shopkeepers and barmaids, picking fights with town guards, habitual kleptomania, etc will not be tolerated. If you think that being proficient in Sleight of Hand equates to a moral mandate to pick the pockets of random people on the street and steal every shiny object you see, this is not the game for you, do not apply. Same goes for being a violent idiot as does for being a larcenous idiot. Such actions might very well be valid at certain points but if you're just doing them all the time (aside from being the kind of things heroic characters shouldn't be doing in the first place) you will roll low and get caught soon enough, very bad things will happen to your character, and you will be told you're no longer welcome in the game for being a "LoL sO rAnDoM" jackass. Seriously, just use some common sense.

I see D&D as a team activity and so should you. Your character can be a bit edgy and/or have a bit of a shady past and they don't have to be bubbly people pleasers but they should have some kind of motivation of their own for joining in the party and the adventure. It is not the job of other players or the DM to convince your brooding loner to join in the game you as a player said you want to be a part of. So don't play a character who's primary defining trait is being an antisocial brooding loner.

No PvP of any kind. This includes but is not limited to attacking other PCs, stealing from PCs, or otherwise acting against other PCs. The other PCs are your allies, act like it. You don't have to get along perfectly and a little bit of friction can make for interesting roleplay, but everyone is expected to not get into fights.

Any attempts to justify any of this behavior with "it's what my character would do" will result in immediate dismissal from the game because you chose to make the character that would do those things. Seriously, just don't be a jerk and use some common sense.

PG-13. Assuming we get to the point of a full campaign there will be a proper Session Zero to cover (among other things) boundaries, taboos, etc but for the one shot for simplicity's sake just assume that if you can't see it in a PG-13 movie it isn't allowed.

Character Creation

Characters will be third level, races, classes, etc from official sources only. UA (including One D&D playtest material) content may be considered on a case by case basis but are not guaranteed. Nothing from third party publishers, no self published online homebrew, and nothing you came up with yourself. Just no.

All characters get one free bonus feat. I have a slightly buffed version of Mounted Combat that makes you and your mount a bit more survivable and if you want to play a skyrider in the big campaign you should probably take that, but doing so is by no means required. You don't have to do that to be effective and the first one shot doesn't even have any aerial adventure in it so for this don't even bother.

No guns. There are no firearms in this setting. There will be no firearms in this setting. This is not negotiable. Any attempts to manipulate something like an airship's compressed lift gas tank or anything else into anything resembling a gun will immediately blow up in your character's face, they will die, and you will be permanently ejected from the game for not paying attention when I said no fucking guns. I hope this wouldn't be an issue but I have strong opinions and some people disagree with those opinions. If you're one of those people you should not apply to this game.

As mentioned in the title (yeah, I know, way up there), the intended play time is Friday 7-11pm US Eastern Time. If you've actually read all of my possibly pretentious sounding ranting an rambling, are still interested, and can play at that time, drop me a message here (click my name/link in the post header and there's an button at the top, I just had to check how that works here) and I can send you a link to the Discord I have for the game which includes some general setting information and the house rules I plan to use. For the one shot character creation will be handled one on one via DM in place of a full Session Zero.