Shaded Seas - Forge your Ultimate Pirate Kingdom! | Open-world
Your pirate fantasy come to life! Gather your crew and sail an unexplored ocean full of mystery, foes and treasure. Will your crew rule the sea?!
About the adventure
WELCOME SWASHBUCKLERS AND SCALLYWAGS!! Your journey begins in the frontier town of Goldwater. A young, diverse settlement on the edge of the newly discovered Shaded Sea. The Shaded Sea is a vast region. It is full of islands that are rich in resources, treasure, native creatures and unforeseen dangers. You'll start as a scrappy little street urchin, work to earn your first ship, and start assembling your pirate crew to take control of the Shaded Sea. But be warned! there are others who wish to rule these waters too. You'll have to choose your allies and enemies carefully.... Good Luck! The goal of this campaign is to create a pirate fleet and take control of the shaded sea. You will have to collect power, gold, allies, ships, and magic along the way. The way you get there is totally up to you! The Shaded Sea is an open-world for you to explore and shape. This game will feature heavily: ☠️Sailing and ship to ship combat. ☠️Light survival elements. ☠️Exploration of many diverse places. ☠️Random encounters and environmental dangers. ☠️Interesting combat scenarios. ☠️Colorful characters. Reoccurring foes and allies. ☠️Strange sea creatures. ☠️Hordes of loot and treasure. ☠️Downtime activities. If that sounds like the kind of game you would enjoy, then sign up today, and get ready to rule the Shaded Sea!
Game style
Combat Heavy
Hexcrawl / Exploration
Realm Building
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Sandbox / Open World
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Creativity, Teacher, Sets the Mood
Average response time: Under 1 hour
Response rate: 100%
About me
Hello there, I’m Erik! I have been a Dungeon Master for D&D 5th edition since its release in 2014. Since then I have logged thousands of hours running games both in person and online. I love the adventure, laughs, gasps, and those nail biting moments where a single dice roll can shape an outcome. To me D&D is a cooperative story we tell together. I have always been a huge fantasy and gaming nerd. When D&D 5th edition dropped in 2014 I got interested in it and decided to buy the players handbook and some sheets. Got a little group going and did the Starter campaign "Lost mines of Phandelver" It was SOOOO much fun I decided to immediately start running more games. Since then Ive ran campaigns like: Curse of Strahd x4 Tomb of Annihilation x1 Ghosts of Saltmarsh x2 Lost mines of Phandelver x1 Homebrew campaigns x8 approx. I have experience in both virtual and tabletop games. I have tons of maps, tokens, music etc. I have my own Patreon page where I am a TTRPG mapmaker for games like D&D, Warhammer, Traveller, and much more! I love every minute of it and hope to add many more thousands of hours in the future! Most of my digital experience is on Discord and Roll20, but Ive been learning other engines as of late to try them out.
View Profile →Reviews (7)
Proficiencies
Players say this GM is great at:
Creativity
Teacher
Sets the Mood
I have played with Erik as my DM for a couple of years now. He has a very creative mind when it comes to his world building & item creation. He does a great job at designing maps & puzzles. Erik is also up for the group to decide the type of game they want to play, whether it is more battle-focused or storyline oriented. All in all, I can’t recommend Erik enough.
Erik has DMed for our group since fall 2020, and he's been the best DM I've had so far! We started at level 1 with Ghosts of Saltmarsh and carried our characters into Spelljammer to close out on level 20. No other DM I've known has tried to run level 20 campaigns because the encounters can become so tricky to run that can balance challenge with creativity. He's inclusive to players of all identities and play-styles. I play an artillerist artificer, but up until level 15, I ran my character, Lochlan, as an exceedingly low-damage build that has to solve problems through other means. Erik has accommodated this in-battle, such as letting me crawl through boss-fight arenas disabling battle mechanics while my party members fight on the frontlines. He's also worked with me to flesh out NPC personalities and their connections with my character for an immersive storytelling experience. Though I apologize since Erik did have about 40 NPCs to constantly track who were involved with us personally. Erik's been a joy to plan and play with for the last five years, and I can't recommend him enough. P.S. I've sometimes faced a few difficulties finding cohesive parties, and I'm typically the only girl in a party. Maybe we got lucky with our group, maybe it's the manner in which Erik runs his campaigns, regardless, I've always had a lovely time in our shared story.
Erik is an excellent GM. He has run both published campaigns and games set in his own worlds with me, and both were engaging and fun. He's great at communicating the rules to new players and strikes a good balance between adherence to the rules and ability to improvise to meet the needs of the current situation. He always puts a lot of work into preparation, bringing great maps and visual aids, dressing up and performing his characters' voices, which he keeps lighthearted and never takes himself too seriously. I've played in one-shots and long campaigns with him and he has always balanced the pacing of his sessions perfectly. He's also good at permitting player creativity without allowing one player to take time or fun away from the others. Overall, he's a great GM who knows D&D very well and has a lot of experience.
This guy has been my DM for years, and he’s one of the best I’ve ever played with! You can always count on him to have an entertaining story, and he’s a great map-maker too. I’m not sure exactly how long he’s been playing D&D, but I know it’s been a long time, definitely well before I started. He’s the kind of DM who, if something sounds cool and fits reasonably within the rules, might just let you pull it off. At the same time, he’s not afraid to say no if it’s clearly impossible by the rules or real-world physics. But I’d say he’s more than fair. Where other DMs might shut you down before you even finish explaining your idea, he’ll at least hear you out, and if it’s doable, he might even help you make it work. 9.5/10
While i may be one of the newest in one of the campaigns he's been running (an addition from nearly a year ago in a four-year-old campaign), it's genuinely been one of my favorite campaigns i've been in so far. From what i've gathered, it's a combination Ghosts of Saltmarsh and one of the SpellJammer books with a healthy dose of complete and total chaos (affectionate). Currently, we are doing a series of battles structured akin to the map of Slay the Spire, or similar roguelike games to build towards a final boss. During this all, we have had multiple boss encounters, all of which are types of antagonists i've never dealt with before, getting interesting with how the bosses handle themselves both in character and playstyle. Take the Barbarian for example, a boss structured off of Storm Herald Barbarian who had both an Install aura (Increased lightning damage both incoming and outgoing) and a lot of lightning related crowd control that encouraged us to fan out a lot, to the point where it made healing quite a challenge. It's a godsend that our party is all spellcasters and ranged combatants (mostly, one of us uses a functional Dancing Blade which is an entirely custom magic item with that as it's only link). In between all of that, we have quite a few chunks for RP, scouting out the future maps and planning, dragging allies from the starcraft fight above to lend a hand (favorite was a Warforged who we double-enlarged and used to Titanfall a building), and, apparently, make a Magic E.M.P. Now, to be clear, my character is totally a person who is normal and can be trusted with explosives (Arti/Sorc with no regard for his own safety), so this is a fantastic development and surely won't be used to entirely skip an encounter with many casualties (probably). Heck, even before that, there was the Anti-Avengers (i don't remember the proper name, it's been a minute), a group meant to parallel our team, including a custom Time Wizard, an Artificer (related to a Party NPC) in a Mini-Gundam (which i got to dissect and apply to my little MechaDeer companion), the Protagonist (literally, he has a legendary sword and everything, no plot armor though), and the sassy Lancer Rogue Tiefling, who had a lot of really cool weaponry that unfortunately was pacted to her (debating trying to summon a devil to get some of that, magma whips are so cool). It was one hell of a fight, definitely built with purpose to screw with us (e.g. my gimmick is Teleports, and the Arti had the ability to rig minefields, stuff like that), and i l o v e that. TLDR: Quick-Thinking fella with a penchant for causing problems (in the best possible way), who knows that the ultimate purpose of TTRPGs is to have as much fun as possible, to be whatever you truly want to be in whatever way you want to do it.
Character creation
Creating your character
We will be using the new 2024 rules. If you would like to use a class/race that's not yet released in 2024 yet just let me know and we can work it in, but the races that exist in the 2024 book are the main ones that will populate the Shaded Sea. Bring 1 or 2 rough character ideas to Session 0. There we will work on creating characters together in Roll20 as we discuss the setting, backstories, lines and veils, and more. If you want to put your character together beforehand and feel comfortable doing so on your own please feel free. I generally allow all available classes and races. I am unlikely to allow homebrew unless its really on theme and well balanced. BUT!!! If there is a certain type of playstyle or character your trying to emulate let me know and I can see how we might make it work. This is a campaign designed for players with at least Intermediate knowledge of the game. Players should be comfortable filling out a 2024 character sheet. I will not have time to teach players how to make a D&D character in session 0, only how to make one that best fits within my world. ALL CHARACTERS MUST BE APPROVED BY ME BEFORE SESSION 1 STARTS. ☠️You will start at Level 1 with no equipment or gold. (You'll get gear right away don't worry.) ☠️Point Buy for stats ☠️Custom backgrounds allowed ☠️Reflavoring your abilities and spells is allowed ☠️No exotic (Abyssal, etc.) languages unless it fits your character. ☠️Choose a free General Feat at level 1! ☠️Homebrew world with 2 main gods and many lesser gods to follow. We can also create a god that fits your character. ☠️Being Evil is allowed, but keep away from excessive gore or torture. If you have any questions about character creation please feel free to message me and I will respond promptly!
We currently have a Dragonborn Fighter and an Dwarven Artificer.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
You will need: - A computer that's not a total potato, as well as a mic and headset. Camera is optional. - Roll20 account. - Discord account. Once you join the Discord message me and Ill get you access to the campaign channel.
What Dungeon Master Erik brings to the table
---GAME STYLE--- I am a extremely good at improv. Whether that means roleplaying as some wacky sailors or coming up with an encounter on the fly, I enjoy those unexpected and fun moments where the party has a crazy idea they want to try. I love when players find creative ways to approach situations, and I try to reward that. Rule of Cool is definitely in effect, but reasonably done as to not weaken the integrity of the game. The tone of this game will be much like Pirates of the Caribbean. Lighthearted fun, lots of action and adventure, but some darker and supernatural elements too. ---VOICES AND ROLEPLAY--- I am a pretty good voice actor. I have a range of characters I can do from gruff sailors to stuck up nobles to wrinkled old hangs and more. I tend to match the RP style of the players I'm interacting with. ---IMAGES AND SOUND--- I am a VERY visual DM. I love having lots of maps and graphics and portraits of characters. I am a professional map maker and will hand make most of the campaign maps myself. Pictures paint a thousand words they say! I make extensive use of background ambiance, sound effects and combat music. All chosen to add to the atmosphere. I'm very careful to choose music that's not distracting or harsh to listen to. ---COMBAT--- Combat is moderately frequent. My combats usually play like a fast paced action scene. Lots of trash talking foes, over-the-top moves, and interactive environments. Players will be challenged, but usually come out on top. Small combats are usually fast-paced and straight forward, sometimes even done in theater of the mind. Larger combats will be more gritty and tactical, making use of all the 5e game elements like cover, stealth, and more. Ship combat will use a modified system from the official books that is a lot more fun for the players in my experience. ---LOOT AND REWARDS--- I tend to be fairly generous when it comes to giving out loot. I enjoy giving my players useful items that give them more choices in how they can play their character. I am good at balancing combat, so I prefer to lean towards being more generous and just scaling things up a little to match. I will create custom items or spells that I know will work well for one or more people in the party and place them throughout the world to find.
Homebrew rules
Modified critical hits: 1st set of damage dice are taken at MAX value, the extra dice from the crit are rolled normally. Drinking a health potion as an ACTION gets you the full amount of healing. Drinking it as a BONUS ACTION makes you roll for the healing as normal. You can choose a different damage type for most spells when selecting them. (e.g. taking the fireball spell but making it cold damage) I don't track ammo. I don't really use encumbrance or survival rules as long as the players are being reasonable. There will be a light survival element in making sure your ship has enough supplies and navigating the environments. But we are not gonna track daily food or anything like that. I'm sure I have more homebrew rules that will come up, but my homebrew almost always leans in the players favor, and usually just removes elements that make the game less fun. I don't change any fundamental aspects of the game.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Headphones
Platforms used
Safety
How Dungeon Master Erik creates a safe table
In session 0 we as a group can establish if there are any game/rp elements we want to avoid. We can also decide what we want to do if a player does hit a limit for themselves. I as a general rule don't do anything grossly sexual or violent or traumatic. But since this is a Pirate themed game there will be more adult elements like slavery, execution, heavy alcohol use and more. If there is every anything a player wishes to express to me privately as a limit for them they can always message me outside of the group and I will keep it confidential. Same goes for in-game. If there is ever a moment that crosses a line for a player they are welcome to message me privately and I will steer the scene away. I am also available anytime outside of the game to do aftercare or discuss any other issues on the players mind.