Shadow of a Broken Empire | Dark Fantasy, Cosmic Horror | Lvl. 3

Creating your character

Character creation takes place during free-of-charge session 0. I will introduce you to the world, setting, story and give you some points to hook your character to – but you are free to deviate from those! We will be using the 2024 ruleset with characters created during session 0 in Foundry and potentially some addition from D&D Beyond (classes from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything and species from Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Universe if there is interest). Your characters will start the adventure at level 3. Ability points are distributed through the point-buy system and hit points until level 3 will use the average. If you don’t know where to start with a character, you can choose from a few different premade characters, I provide you with. We’ll be using the milestone advancement for level-ups.

Preparing for the session

We use Discord as a voice channel and a place to store information for the campaign. You need to have an account on ForgeVTT which runs the game for us (through FoundryVTT): forge-vtt.com Should you want to chose from species of Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse or classes of Xanathar’s Guide to Everything you also need an account for D&D Beyond. https://www.dndbeyond.com/ If you have never used FoundryVTT before, send me a message so I make sure you get to know the details, although we will go through a few details in Session 0, and please read the info in this 5-minute-read-tutorial: https://foundryvtt.com/article/player-orientation/ You need a desktop pc or a laptop to play through FoundryVTT, a tablet or mobile phone won’t work. Please have a working headset ready for communication or headphones and a microphone. I would love to work with videochat and will personally be using a webcam, however, this is not a requirement. Be sure to have a stable internet connection and find a spot where you can play without major interruptions. You don’t need your own dice, we will roll within FoundryVTT.

What Yarnickle brings to the table

I enjoy working with character voices to capture the personalities of the characters I portray. To set the mood, I handpick professionally crafted ambient music, specifically designed for pen and paper. We will play with FoundryVTT, a powerful virtual platform with several advantages: - Automation for a good flow of play - Animation of attacks and spells - Animated maps and line-of-sight principle I apply the Cool of Rule. If you find a way to use your abilities that stretches the rules, but either makes sense or leads to a fun or creative outcome, I will try to find a way to make it work! You will get access to a vast option of rulebooks, including the classics: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. If you happen to have access to a class or species that I don’t provide, I will work it into my version of Foundry, so you get access to it! Don’t worry to know every rule or skill your character has, I’m here to help you navigate through the rules we need for the adventure!

Homebrew rules

• You roll your death saves yourselves, but only the GM sees the result, to keep up the tension. • You gain 1 point of exhaustion when dropping to 0 health points • Extra proficiency if you connect your character to another player's character during creation (or before starting the game) • Rules for Horror and madness are used • You can turn a narrow failure on a skill check (missing the DC by 1) into a success, but suffer in turn a narrative disadvantage that I will decide upon situationally.

How Yarnickle creates a safe table

To make sure everyone feels good I will implement several safety rules. The adventure has a few content warnings, please note them, they are highly likely to be part of the game. You will get a link to a Monte Cook RPG Consent List, where you can mark topics that you are uncomfortable with, so I can avoid them. I apply a policy of open door, where you can leave at any moment, if you feel unwell. There will be breaks after intense situations and X, N, and O cards incorporated into FoundryVTT always ready to be used. We will have a short debriefing every session that will include how you feel, if there anything that has been troubling you and also how your character is doing and if there is any change to his goals. In Session 0, we go through the meaning of these safety tools and their application and pin down topics to be avoided or to be veiled. This might seem like a lot up front, but don’t worry. Nearly all of this will be available all the time, but in its essence be mostly invisible during the game. The existence of these tools helps ensuring that there won’t be any pent-up feelings that lessen the joy this game brings.