Rats in the Vats: An Epic Basement Crawl

Creating your character

If you are confident with your character creation ability, you can feel free to show up with a level 1 character created already. I will make sure we have a session zero or some time before session 1 to create characters for the beginners that have never done it before. I prefer you use DND Beyond so its easier to keep track of your spells and inventories. Feel free to use any official D&D book for your class and subclass, but I recommend keeping it simple for this intro adventure. I give my players a choice for their stats. You can do either of the following - one of them plays it safe, the other is high risk with a chance for big reward in your stats: Standard array: you get 8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 16. Put each of them in the stat that makes sense for your character. Yahtzee!: Roll seven d20s. Re-roll any fives or less, cause thats just unfair and we are playing a beginner game. Remove the lowest number dice. Take the remaining six rolls and put each of them in the stat that makes sense for your character.

Preparing for the session

Please create accounts on DNDBeyond, Roll20 and Discord. I use Roll20 for battles, so you should also bring a digital "token" for your character. Use AI or Google images to get a small image of what your character might look like; best to just get a shot of them from shoulders up. I use discord for voice chat because the Roll20 voice chat is not great, and we will only need Roll20 open for fights. And I prefer we create characters in DndBeyond, so its easy to keep track of inventory and spells, and we will have spell descriptions without needing Players Handbooks.

What Drew brings to the table

I will add musical ambiance, and provide battlemaps on Roll20. I love doing the voices, but please don't judge if my accents are bad or I slip in and out of character! I'm running this for beginners so it won't be overly intense, and I won't be actively trying to kill my PCs. I want them to have fun and not stress too much. Rule of cool will be very much in play to make the game more fun, but I do have my limitations!

Homebrew rules

I have a homebrew Nat 20 rule. Nothing worse than rolling a Nat 20 and then fudging those damage dice. I think all crits should be rewarded with massive damage no matter how badly you roll the damage dice. Here's my rule: Max Damage + an additional damage die For example: if your weapon is 1D8+5, you do max damage automatically, so as if you rolled an 8, so in this case 13 damage. Then we add an additional rolled damage die, which for this weapon is 8. So it's max damage (13) + a rolled D8 1D8+13 is your crit damage on that weapon.

How Drew creates a safe table

A great game is one where everyone feels safe enough to be bold. To ensure we all have a blast while respecting boundaries, I utilize several industry-standard safety tools: Lines & Veils: Before our first session, I’ll send out a digital document for everyone to anonymously list "Lines" (hard nos) and "Veils" (things that can happen but should be "faded to black"). I will compile these into a master list for the group. Digital X, N, & O Cards: We use a digital safety deck. X (Stop): We stop immediately, no questions asked, and pivot. N (Nudge): We are getting close to a boundary; let’s ease up. O (Keep Going): We are doing great! Open Door Policy: Life happens. If you ever feel overwhelmed or need to step away for a moment, you are free to do so without explanation. Session 0 & Aftercare We will spend our first meeting (Session 0) discussing group expectations, tone, and triggers and I will outline all the safety tools. After every session I will make myself available to chat, and you can let me know how things are going and how you are feeling.