The Yawning Portal and other Tales
Join our rag tag group of mercenary adventures as they travel the world doing good deeds for fun and glory. Okay, and gold. FINE! Mainly just gold.
$25.00
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Sunday – 7:45 PM UTC
Jul 27 / Session 9
Campaign Length / 4–90 Sessions
3–3.5 Hour Duration
5 / 6 Seats Filled
Schedule
About the adventure
In the city of Waterdeep, Meloon Wardragon creates a new branch of the Gray Hands as they expand their reach across the multiverse, travelling wherever quest and coin takes them. Join our rag tag group of mercenary adventures as they travel the world doing good deeds for fun and glory. Okay, and gold. FINE! Mainly it’s just gold. This is an anthology series following a guild of adventurers as they build their reputation and fortune. Each tale will be self-contained, last approximately 4-8 weeks, and feature a rotating cast of heroes. So if you are looking for a more casual experience where you can drop in for an adventure and then return a few months later, this may be the game for you! On the other hand, this campaign is being run on explicitly request of my existing player base, veterans from my previous campaigns, so if you are looking for a long term group you may well find a place here. Each adventure will be drawn from Tales from the Yawning Portal, Quests from the Infinite Staircase and eventually (at level 11+) the heroes will be drawn into a quest to save the multiverse in Vecna, Eve of Ruin! The anthology style will continue as the guild sends out different groups of heroes to deal with each problem. Players are welcome to run multiple different guild members, choosing one to head off on each adventure. We are using a meta progression system to determine gear for new characters, so your available gear and equipment will be determined by the previous successes of the party. The existing group have requested that we push towards dark tones and horror elements, so expect quite a bit of gore and NPCs to meet fairly horrible demises!
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(42)
4 years on StartPlaying
580 games hosted
Highly rated for: Creativity, Visual Aid, Sets the Mood
About me
Hi! I am GM Dargov, also known as Rob. Like a lot of GMs on the site, I have had an enormous passion for role-playing games and D&D in particular for... a very long time! My first experience of D&D was picking up the Rules Cyclopedia in a small bookstore in rural Canada- I don't even know what edition that was! As a GM, I run my game very much straight down the middle. They remain challenging without become too deadly, and while my rule calling is fairly generous, this applies to both players and monsters. I allow a free feat at character creation of 5e and use free archetype in Pathfinder 2e. This gives me the freedom to run some extra "deadly" battles, but gives the players that little bit of extra omph. I am very hot on game balance- on my Discord server you'll find a few tweaks to classes and subclasses that I feel slipped through the net, such as Twlight Clerics, Moon Druids(early game) and Echo Knights. I am venturing into the world of publishing my own adventures, and my Monday night game is the playtest for my soon to be released adventure module, Wrath of the Elements! I started GMing on SPG just over a year ago now, and I run 4 games each weekand have run over 300 paid games! That's a lot of dice rolls!
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Players characters shoudl be created using the 2024 rules set on D&D beyond using the campaign link. Players may roll their ability scores once on the discord server, and if you do not like your roll you may use the enhanced array: 17, 15, 13, 12, 10, 8 Custom backgrounds are allowed so you may choose your feat, ability score boosts and skill freely. This needs to be completed before the first session. Build a hero, play as a team! While your character doesn't need to be good- they need to be motivated to go into dark dangerous places for the promise of gold, power or glory. I would advice that you keep your backstory fairly concise, and you should be able to summarize it in 3 sentences or a 30 second introduction. This does not mean you cannot have a longer more developed story elsewhere, but you need to present something to the group that is digestable.
Party includes one Barbarian, Warlock, Rogue, and a Psychic as a stand in player.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
We use Discord voice chat and no webcams. I will send you the links for my Forge page and the campaign.
What Robert brings to the table
I use a pretty well developed Foundry VTT world. This said, we are currently in a moment... a very long moment... of flux for the 5e module, with the 5e tools slowly replacing a number of modules. Thus it is not possible to have the automation quite as polished as it was previously, and we are still awaiting the implementation of the 2025 Monster Manual I will be focusing on the visual style here quite heavily as this has been requested by my players and I have an enormous collection of maps and top down tokens. I also have an expansive collection of music from Audiio and Tabletop Audio. I keep my games and combat going at a fair pace but give my players plenty of time to be in the spot light and complete their turns. Out of combat, I make a point of going round the table on a regular basis and check in with each character to make sure everyone has a chance to take in character actions.
Homebrew rules
I use a small number of adjustments to game elements to improve balance. A number of spells have been adjusted so that they do not break the game (conjured woodland beings, suggestion, silvery barbs). I like the balance attunement brings- all items that grant "always on" bonuses will require attunement (I do not generally hand out weapons that only have a +1 except as starting gear). So that this is fair, everyone may have an additional attunement slot! Expect your magical armor, wands of magic missiles, flying brooms etc to require attunement! If I'm going to bend on rebalance rules, I most commonly do this by creating custom magical items for players that allow them to do so. Often specifically for their subclass. For example- I know that Rogue would like their sneak attacks to scale a bit more, and Rangers would like be able to use hunters mark without using a bonus action or concentration. Therefore, I have perviously created items that increase sneak attack either by die or die size, an item that gives arcane archers more magical arrows, and rangers can pick up items that allow them to place hunter's mark on their target as part of an attack, or use hunter's mark without concentrating(but not one item that does both!). I plan on using -2AC for flanking.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Robert creates a safe table
I will go over personal triggers with each player. Digital messages for X,N,0's. Open door policy. We have no on screen torture, sex or sexual violence.
Content warnings
Safety tools used