The Ultimate D&D Starter Adventure | Beginner Friendly Campaign

Creating your character

Everyone: - We will be using Roll20 to house our character sheets. This way, both you and I have easy access to them, and you won't need to worry about keeping track of a physical sheet. New Players: - We will create your character during the free session 0! I will talk with you about the kinds of things you're interested in playing, and we'll pick something you'll find fun. Then I can either make your character for you, so that you only need to worry about the finishing details (hair color, personality, etc.), or we can fill out the character sheet together, so that they are exactly how you want them to be. Experienced Players: Starting Level: - Level 1 Stats: - 4d6k3 (with the total of all stats before modifiers being 74 at least and 79 at maximum, to even out power level) When do you make your character: - You can come to the Session 0 with a character already made, or you can bring concepts if you want to see what others are looking to play before you decide. Either way, the Roll20 character sheet just needs to be filled out by the start of Session 1. Ancestry/Class Restrictions: - Anything official D&D 5E 2014 is fair game, except: - Setting specific books like Ravnica or Spelljammer. If it's from Faerun or is generic, it's chill. If you have questions, just ask! - Ancestries with an innate fly speed, like Aarakocra. These I will allow, but with some homebrewed rules regarding flight Background Restrictions: - No backgrounds that give a free feat Plot Related Stuff: - Please make sure your character is able and willing to go on a potentially lengthy heroic quest. If they don't want to be there (they're a loner/they just want to go home/etc.) you probably won't have as much fun playing.

Preparing for the session

We will be using Discord for our voice calls, and Roll20 to play. We will have a Discord Server specifically for this game, so you'll need an account. When we play, we will be in a voice call. I prefer a video call if players are comfortable with it. I find it brings players together more if we can see each other, and it helps eliminate the "oh, were you going to talk" issue, as you can see when someone else is going to talk. If you are uncomfortable with having your video on, or are unable to, that is perfectly fine too! For Roll20, you will need an account. You will join the game via the link, and if you're new to the site, I will explain everything you need to know about it during the Session 0.

What Gideon Atlas brings to the table

I have Spotify connected to my Discord account, and play music there. If you have a Spotify account, you can join in and listen to the same music. I have a bunch of different playlists for every kind of scenario. You are of course welcome to listen to your own music, or none at all! When combat happens, I tend not to run it very tactical (as it is something I'm working on getting better at in other games), so don't worry if you don't play very many war games. If you are interested, I can try to run combat more tactically, as long as everyone finds it fun. I love to embrace the Rule of Cool. If you are trying to do something rad, I want to help make that moment come to life, not shut it down (unless what you are asking is quite literally impossible, like flying an airship through the head of a sewing needle. Rad, but impossible. And will honestly probably lead to some hilarious moments if attempted).

Homebrew rules

I have a few standard house rules that I use, but I always discuss the final list of rule changes with my players. Here is my standard list of house rules: - Drinking a potion takes a Bonus Action. With this, if you are to roll any dice (as for a healing potion), you do so as normal. However, if you take an action to drink the potion, any dice you roll instead give you their maximum value, instead of rolling. - Drinking a healing potion outside of combat automatically heals the maximum value. - When leveling up, we always reroll 1s when rolling for hit points. - If you give me a full backstory I will give you a free bonus related to the backstory. It does not have to be a lot, it can even be bullet points or a short paragraph, I just want to know what your character's life was like up until now (please no novels tho).

How Gideon Atlas creates a safe table

I will be sending a link to a Consent in Gaming google form that goes into a lot of detail regarding what you are and are not comfortable with, with spaces to elaborate if you want. Results of this will be compiled and discussed anonymously at the Session 0, so we can go over expectations of what is and isn't allowed. This includes discussing content warnings. After our sessions, I allocate a few minutes to go over Roses (things we liked), Buds (things we're looking forward to), and Thorns (things we didn't like or wish we did differently) for the session, as a way to wind down and debrief.