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RISE OF THE DROW | 🛡️ New 5E Rules | 🌟 New Player Friendly

RISE OF THE DROW | 🛡️ New 5E Rules | 🌟 New Player Friendly

The Drow raided your village and kidnapped your family. Now, you're headed to the Underdark for some payback. Save your family. Save the world.

TYPE

Campaign

LEVELS

1–16

LANGUAGE

English

EXPERIENCE

Open to all

AGE

18+
FULL
$20.00

/ Session

Details

Bi-weekly / Tuesday - 12:00 AM UTC

Session Duration / 3 hours

6 / 6 Seats Filled

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Schedule

This game will begin once 3 players have joined

Meet your party members

6/6

About the adventure

Embrace the Darkness: Journey into the Underdark 🕯️ 🌘 Epic Level 1-20 Campaign 🛡️ New 5E Rules As Available ⚔️ Battle Horrors of the Underworld 🌍 Explore the Depths Below 🎭 Rich Roleplay and Mature Themes Tonight, a ceremony of light takes place on the surface. Meanwhile, in the city of spiders, a drow matron solidifies a pact with soul-consuming entities, trading great sacrifices for unimaginable power. Drow eyes turn to the surface. After all, they will need many sacrifices! The Underworld Awaits: Enter the Underworld, a dark and dangerous place inspired by Norse mythology and popularized by the late, great E. Gary Gygax, as well as authors Ed Greenwood, R.A. Salvatore, and many others. A twisted and dark place with a myriad of cultures and creatures, the Underworld is an entire world buried below the surface, hidden from the light of day. Deep caves and dark passages wind and honeycomb throughout the earth, with distinctly unique species plotting against each other and unknown horrors slogging about looking for an easy meal.

Meet the Game Master

3 years on StartPlaying

341 games hosted

Highly rated for: Creativity, Storytelling, World Builder

Average response time: 2 hours

Response rate: 100%

About me

Hey there! I'm Gamersaurus Lex, a longtime player and GM who owned a local game store for about a decade. I am a happy-go-lucky extrovert that spent the last decade of his life running a FLGS and professionally nerding out with gamers of every age and disposition. I love running games with lots of excitement, fully realized NPCs, and a true open sandbox approach, even when we're running an established module. You want to ignore the module's storyline and chart your own course? I will make it happen! Prefer to play in one of my homebrew campaigns set in the Moonsea Region of the Forgotten Realms? Buckle up, you're in for a wild ride! I have decades of experience introducing new players to the hobby, at my game store, conventions, and at my home table, so you couldn't be in better hands if you're just starting out with TTRPGs or if you're switching systems. I have been a pro GM for about 20 years, and only recently started offering my services online with StartPlaying. Veterans will enjoy my games, too, especially with all the Easter eggs that pop up in every session. I tend to run D&D 5e, Pathfinder 2e, and Starfinder these days, but I have plenty of recent experience with 3.x, Savage Worlds, GURPS, and the many varieties of the Cypher System. And, let's be honest, given time to prepare, I can run any system if there is a group that really wants that system.

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Character creation

Creating your character

Characters will begin at level 1 and we'll be using D&D Beyond (I have a GM subscription so you'll have access to all the options). Characters will be built prior to the beginning of the game, and I will be available for 1 on 1 conversations and questions about your choices. Our first session will include some Session Zero content to make sure we are all on the same page, before diving right into the story.

What to expect

Preparing for the session

You'll need a webcam (if you opt into video), mic, and free accounts on D&D Beyond, Discord, Zoom, and Forge VTT (which is the version of FoundryVTT hosted in the cloud instead of on my home computer). Don't worry about knowing the rules by heart or having experience with TTRPGs: I am a walking/talking human tutorial for new players.

What Gamersaurus brings to the table

I am a storyteller and we are going to tell the story YOU want to tell. I create scores of NPCs and try to give them all unique personalities, voices, habits, and motivations. No two campaigns have the same plot, because I customize everything for your PCs. This is as close to an open sandbox as possible while still using a 5e module. I reward investigation, planning, and social interaction. I always reward players who come up with unique or creative ways to solve problems, and there are no stupid questions (e.g., "Can I swing across the room on the chandelier?" "Heck yeah, roll an Acrobatics check!") I generally follow the rules as written, along with some modifications to keep the game moving (e.g., if the battle is clearly won, rather than sit around for another 4 rounds whittling away at a monster's HP, I may ask if "How do you want to end it?"), but I am also not opposed to the Rule of Cool, especially in climactic moments! My games are high on RP. For important interactions, I use an easy-to-learn social encounter system based loosely on Pathfinder's Intrigue rules. The Underdark is dangerous, but there is often a way to avoid combat, including running away, if you want. That said, my combats are challenging and interesting (lots of modified monsters and varied settings) and character death is always a possibility. If you want to use a voice or accent, that is awesome, but you are also free to narrate your character's actions in the first or third person: e.g., "Beatrice is suspicious of this haughty noble and tries to direct the conversation to learn more about his background" or "I don't believe him, but I want to convince him that I do." As far as resources go, I use FoundryVTT on ForgeVTT (so you just need access to the ForgeVTT website and not your own copy of FoundryVTT). I have a subscription to D&D Beyond for creating characters and even making rolls and using your character sheet during sessions if you prefer. I also use a ton of add-ons and other services, such as Syrinscape, dScryb, assets and mods from Patreon accounts for awesome maps and art, and even some custom-created maps and tokens, plus the Collectors Edition module customized for FoundryVTT (all of which I own). (I do sometimes use a bit of generative AI - like that provided in Photoshop - to modify maps, assets, etc.)

Homebrew rules

*Hero Points (max 3) instead of Heroic Inspiration. *Can choose to take expected average on healing rolls instead of rolling.

Equipment needed to play

Computer

Headphones

Internet

Microphone

Safety

How Gamersaurus creates a safe table

I am a firm believer in getting everyone's input at the first session about what kind of game we want to play. I have DM'd for shiny-faced children and grizzled grognards alike. I used to host game nights at my game store (owned a FLGS for 10 years), so there is literally no kind of player I have not had fun gaming with!

Content warnings

Safety tools used

Frequently asked questions