The Princess of Pirates | Swashbuckling High Fantasy

Creating your character

We'll create characters during the first session using D&D Beyond. I encourage players to brainstorm before the session but to not make any concrete decisions until we begin together. Characters will start at level three and will roll for stats. Players will have access to all options from the 2024 core rulebooks. Other officially published is generally allowed but should be asked about first. Custom spells and subclasses are normally allowed with permission if well balanced but custom classes are not. Party members will be either part of the royal court, the royal guard, or a pirate crew. Exceptions can be made if a player comes with an idea that can be integrated smoothly into the narrative. There are no class restrictions but there are two caveats. First, know that magic is exceedingly rare and outlawed in most nations (but is legal in Shafeldor). Second, if you play an artificer, it needs to be reflavored in a way that matches the technology of the setting.

Preparing for the session

All players will need to join the campaign's Discord server for calling during sessions and communicating outside of them. I encourage players to make a free account on D&D Beyond before the first session but I can also guide that process during the session for those without the time.

What Ethan brings to the table

Voices, music, battlemaps, and grand narratives: my campaigns have the whole shebang. One of my main focuses is immersion. That means I talk in character and support players to do the same. Combat can be tactical but they are first and foremost vessels for narrative progression. My goal is never to kill players but to challenge them. I believe that character death provides real stakes and is an important rule in the game, but I'm also not gonna complain if your backup character after the death of Garth Jenkins is Garth Jenkins the second. I keep my campaigns flexible and adaptable. I want players to feel like their choices matter and sometimes that means you beat my boss in a single turn or I have to make a new side quest on the fly. I normally overprep for sessions and the players will still find a way to surprise me. Ultimately, I am another player at the table who just has a special role as the director of the game. When there is a rules conflict, I'll ask the table what they want and make the executive decision for the sake of progressing the game forward. I strongly urge players to be as creative as they can be. There is never harm in asking and the answer is normally "yes" or "no, but how about this..."

Homebrew rules

For almost everything I'll be using official D&D 2024 rules with an emphasis on the rule of cool. These are the few homebrew rules I will be using: 1. Basic flanking rule: if you have an ally threatening an enemy within their melee range directly opposite of you, then you have advantage on your melee attacks against that enemy. 2. Rolling for HP: When you roll for hp on a level up, after you roll you can choose to either use your roll or take the average listed in the phb. 3. Food and Water: Players will not need to track every ration or every drink of water, but I will keep track of general supply levels and remind the party to restock supplies when they are low. This will act as more of a narrative feature than anything else. 4. Drinking a potion is a bonus action. Throwing a potion to splash it on a creature is part of an attack action but has a chance to miss. Feeding a potion to an ally is a full action. 5. No multiclassing stat requirements

How Ethan creates a safe table

In the first session, I will send a survey to all players covering which subjects they are okay or not okay with including in the campaign. At any point during a session if a player is uncomfortable, players may dm me and I will immediately stop and redirect. I will strictly follow people's boundaries. For players, when they accidentally broach an off-limit subject, I will ask them to change the subject or alter their backstory. If a player purposefully breaks boundaries or repeatedly offends others, they will be removed from the game. I have zero tolerance at my table for any form of hate speech or discrimination. If okay with the whole table, fantasy representations of discrimination may be present within the narrative but never directed at real people or groups.