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Shadows of Waterdeep
Go on adventures through the Forgotten Realms and explore rich, vast lands and histories on the Material Plane and beyond!
$10.00
/ Session
Details
Bi-weekly / Wednesday - 10:00 PM UTC
Session Duration / 2–3 hours
Campaign Length / 15–20 Sessions
4 / 4 Seats Filled
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Meet your party members
4/4
About the adventure
The Forgotten Realms are home to myriad worlds, planes, and all manner of being. Mainly, these adventures will be fantasy-themed, following a shared narrative that will unfold as a result of player choices, actions, and interactions with the world and its beings. All adventures I run in this series take part in the same cannon, all impacting the same world; sometimes simultaneously, and other times years, decades, centuries apart. As such, some details may vary from established 1st-party cannon. I enjoy threading the characters into the narrative, whether a player his written an extensive background for me to pull from, or only a few short details and want to leave the rest up to me. I encourage player creativity, and love to work in your ideas to the story, incorporating overarching group narratives, as well as character-focused arcs. There will be opportunities here for a wide variety of players, from green-as-grass newbies to battle-hardened veterans, and everything in between. This particular game will be pretty simple and straightforward: a group of Adventurers solving the myriad problems of a small frontier mining town called Phandalin. It's on the more open-ended side, operating with a bounty board/quest-giver style of play, giving you the agency to decide which jobs you do, and which you don't, and new jobs becoming available as you complete the ones you choose to accept. And, of course, there are the PCs personal quests to consider, as well. ...Oh! And I believe there was a rumour about a dragon roaming the surrounding area...
Game style
Roleplay Heavy
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Rules as Written (RaW)
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(6)
2 years on StartPlaying
56 games hosted
Highly rated for: Inclusive, Creativity, Storytelling
About me
Hello! You can call me Arthur, he/him, 30 years old. I've been directly involved with D&D for about 4 years, with my first introduction to it back in high school through YouTube shows (Force Grey, Heroes & Halfwits, and later Dimension 20). I have some experience as a player, having done some one-shots and played in 3 Campaigns (two still on-going). I DM one campaign currently, a bi-weekly game set in the Forgotten Realms. I like to have decent preparations, often playing with multiple ideas behind-the-scenes and adapting to the actions of my players. I like to play NPCs, I was a Drama kid in high school (not much has changed) and I'll always do voices for characters and try to make NPCs feel distinct. I'm also working on my flexibility, so I like not to over-prepare, to leave some things unwritten/undecided and open to Improv. I want to start hosting games because I want to experience more D&D and increase my understanding of the game, and what better way than by playing?
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Character Creation will be handled individually, and I am happy to offer assistance/guidance to any who need it. Please refer to the following guidelines for Character Creation: - Characters will start at Level 1. - Character Stats will be determined using Point Buy. - Character Sheets will be created and maintained on D&D Beyond. - Any material from 1st-Party sources (officially published WoTC books) are welcome. 3rd-party or homebrew options require DM approval before use. - Each player should come up with a reason/motivation for their character that explains what brought them to Phandalin, our starting town, and work with me to flesh out the idea and incorporate it into our game. For example, perhaps you are hunting a particular monster that is said to live in the area; perhaps an old rival of yours is known to frequent the town; perhaps a lost love lives here and you seek to rekindle the flame; perhaps a friend of yours who lives in Phandalin has gone missing recently, and you seek to find them; or any number of other ideas that could be thought up. This will be the driving force for your character in our story, and inform the personal questline that they undertake during our adventure. - Lastly, once we have finalized our play group, we will discuss and decide on whether the PCs have interconnected backstories (knew each other prior to this adventure), or if they are strangers brought together by happenstance. This will help shape the beginning of our story.
The adventure is set in Waterdeep, following a group of (seemingly) randomly-brought-together miscreants, vagrants, cutthroats, murderers, thieves, liars, and psychopaths as they are coerced and pressganged into working for the Blackstaff after trying to steal an artifact belonging to him from someone who had already stolen it, at precisely the time that the Blackstaff had decided to come and collect it back himself. Seeing this group of highly capable, driven, and unscrupulous individuals who nearly succeeded in stealing from the thieves who stole from him, Blackstaff offered the crew employment, rather than disintegrating them. He has charged them to investigate the dark dealings of someone plotting against him. His son was involved in the theft, and he believes that someone else was behind the scenes, pulling the strings. Having very little to go on, the crew use the Blackstaff's son to make contact with his "manipulator" and try to trick them into a meeting in the City of the Dead, where they might gauge more information about their targets. The meeting quickly turns south, however, when a large group of gang members emerge from nearby hiding places to ambush the crew...
What to expect
Preparing for the session
In preparation for this game, players should have the following: 1. A D&D Beyond account (no subscription necessary). This is where we will create and maintain (rollable) character sheets. 2. A Discord account. We will use Discord text chat in dedicated channels for our play-by-post. 3. At the bare minimum, please take the time to brief yourself with the Players section of the "Basic Rules" (available for free on D&D Beyond), and feel free to ask me any questions you have while reading.
What Arthur brings to the table
I have a fair amount of books on D&D Beyond, including the 2024 Core Rulebooks. I also have an annual Master sub on DDB, so I have access to the Maps VTT they offer, which is what I use to keep track of combat. I like to play monsters lore-accurate, so a group of Goblins will gang up on a target while their Hobgoblin leader commands them from the rear awaiting his opportunity to close the distance when an advantage presents itself, for one example. I enjoy using rules-as-written as guidelines for the most part, and thoroughly enjoy creative rule-of-cool style ideas. I love players coming up with creative ways to resolve encounters. As long as you can justify/describe to me exactly how you intend to accomplish something, I'll usually go along with it, unless I have a good reason not to. There will be some expectation from the players to contribute to the "world-building." Since this is a more open-form game to start, I would like to work closely with the players to establish them within the world and build personal quests driven by the PCs you create. That said, I won't try to force anyone to put forth more effort than they are willing, but I might annoy you at times with a million questions about little details that don't seem important to you.
Homebrew rules
There are a handful of homebrew/table rules that I implement, all detailed in the Discord channel. I use Flanking rules, have specific rules surrounding Critical Success/Hits, and allow Bonus Action healing potion usage. The long-winded details of these are all on the Discord server for reference at any time.
Equipment needed to play
Computer
Internet
Platforms used
Safety
How Arthur creates a safe table
I have a Consent Checklist that each player will fill out to establish our boundaries (Lines & Veils), and rather than a traditional Session Zero, we will simply have text chat discussions before we begin playing. As far as in-game safety tools, I keep things pretty open. If I ever cross a line or make someone uncomfortable, I welcome them to stop me and make me aware of their feelings. This can also be done in a private message, if that is more comfortable for a given individual. Any other tools players would like to use, we can discuss during Session Zero.
Content warnings
Safety tools used