Wizard School in Arthurian Sandbox
It is time you decide what ought to become of you in a kingdom of knights, fables, and magic. Hunt down foul enchanters, or learn to be one yourself?
TYPE
SYSTEM
LANGUAGE
EXPERIENCE
AGE
$15.00
/ Session
Details
Bi-weekly / Saturday - 12:00 PM UTC
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
1 / 5 Seats Filled
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Meet your party members
1/5
About the adventure
This is a sandbox game set in an arthurian-styled realm where the player characters will at least initially be joining a school of magic that the kingdom and it's rulers are trying to keep obscured from their common men. Because the game is a sandbox however, the players are free to go unto the world as they may and pursue whichever things that spark their own interests, be it attaining knighthood, courting the fey folk or simply looking for treasures to delve out of dungeons and grave perils! This means that character death is a present possibility, but also that any achievements and victories will truly be the players' own as they will have been acquired over very real dangers. Do note that due to my personal preferences as a GM, as well as the open-ended nature of sandbox play, the game may feature horror as one of it's themes. Players will however be able to affect how heavily it is featured both by their own actions during play, and as part of the free Session 0. Beyond this point you will find the pitch for the in-fiction premise of the campaign. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Around fall, mysterious letters always turn up around the kingdom. They'll appear with no regard to the recipient's social status or wealth. With no messenger to bear them, sealed envelopes are found by the young and the old alike. Likewise around every fall, the kingdom of Camaret receives a reminder from the wise King Arthur. Those who share blood with the mage Merlin will receive sealed envelopes, and are to gather in the capital so that they may receive tutelage to the abilities they may soon begin to exhibit. Failing to do so would make those newly waking to the blood of Merlin a danger not only for themselves, but also to those around them and even the kingdom at large. Only a select few mages at a time will ever be recognised as Merlins by the Round Table, and a single Merlin could have dozens of apprentices working underneath them who would all seek to eventually inherit the title and name in order to help better the kingdom. Yet when those letters arrived, sealed with wax and written on rich parchment, the words within were not what the kingdom had went to such lengths to make sure even those who couldn't read would know them to be. "Dear Young Master or Maiden, Do not despair, we offer support true. Your blessings you need not hide from us here. For modest sums, we'll make those gifts bloom; Well-water'd, grow to magic without peer. From a crossroads of your choosing, in summer's decline. Hold out this invitation, and ye will be giv'n a sign. ~Brechewold School for Curious Individuals" -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Game style
Sandbox / Open World
Theater of the Mind
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(4)
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Storytelling, Creativity, Sets the Mood
About me
After not finding anyone in my friend groups willing to run the types of games I wished to play in, I decided to do something about that and began running games myself. I've now been on that "guess I'll have to do it myself" for a good six-ish years and pretty much prefer running games over playing them at this point, having quite comfortably settled within my own niche when it comes to the style and tone of games I enjoy running. I do have often self-described my games as "walking simulators" or "misery porn", or perhaps a bit more positively sounding as "slowburn horror", due to this preference of keeping the "power level" of my games more grounded. Other great monikers I have seen others use for their own stuff that I have really liked the sound of and that I like to at times throw around to describe some of my GMing style include hits like "Weird-Sad", "Quiet Horror", "Somber" and "Gentle Dark". What this means in practice is that I vastly prefer games that have a "low power level". Where the world doesn't treat the player characters much different from anyone else living within it, and where obstacles and adversaries are not defeated by flashy special power but rather outsmarted or completely avoided, and only on the rare occasion faced head on. And even then with an understanding that when violence gets initiated there are no winners walking away from it in the end, only people who have lost less or more than others. Within all that, I think there lies a core of something oddly cozy despite all the misery.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
We will create the first batch of characters together during Session 0, with all starting PCs being of some kind of class able to cast spells (Cleric, Magic-User, Elf). If any replacement characters are needed during the game, players will either be assuming control of friendly npcs and hirelings or rolling new characters in the background while play moves on. Thankfully character creation is only a matter of minutes in most old-school systems.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Discord account is required to join, Google account to access and save google sheets documents is recommended and a Tldraw account is 100% optional and not needed. We will be using Discord for voice, a link to a server will be provided upon joining. Text chat over discord will also be used for containing any side chats, oneliners, joke comments or notes by players and/or GM to keep play moving. A dicebot will be available on Discord for rolling dice, but using physical ones is also allowed so get those pretty mathrocks on hand. Google Sheets template will be provided for filling in character stats and other details, but players are free to keep track of these things in whichever manner they prefer. Being able to show everyone else what is in your inventory, be it via screenshot or otherwise, is preferred as players tend to turn into vultures the moment a one of their own dies and has any semblance of gear on them. Tldraw will be used as an online whiteboard to handle maps and other visuals.
What Sahh brings to the table
You will join a sandbox game set in a so-far untouched nook of the game world that has had several campaigns taking part within it for over five years now. I will offer a world where the players are free to pursue the things they find interesting. If you wish to become something in the world like a righteous paladin or a grand warlock then begin acting like one and seeking out the things they would seek out to see yourself slowly filling in the role of your aspirations, be it as a goodly knight or a dread necromancer. Aside from the world, I offer vibes and atmosphere along with a modestly slow paced game that leaves room for exploration of the player characters as their own personas as well as for player scheming and planning. There will be lighthearted moments, but just the same there will be slowburn horror and dread when a situation takes a turn for the worse. The game will not feature tactical battle maps and detailed character tokens but instead run mostly in theater of the mind, meaning that spoken descriptions are the main form of conveying what is going on even during bouts of violence. Maps of larger areas like the general region or kingdom along with potential key visual are likely present, supplemented by scribbles from player and/or GM side. The fiction is the most important thing that we play the game for, rather than the rules. This means that many situations are likely to be resolved by GM rulings and common sense. What this doesn't mean however is that the GM will be arbitrarily deciding how things go, but will rather be following the internal logic of the world and the spirit of the rules and genre, and many times if players disagree with a given ruling it can be brought under scrutiny and be negotiated about.
Homebrew rules
Rulings will feature heavily in the game over rules, and players generally don't need to bother with knowing about rules too much, but for those curious these are the notable additions to the LotFP core that have been seeing extensive use in my games before. - Natural 20s crit, dealing max damage. - Natural 1s fumble, and player has to tell the table what went absolutely wrong with what they were attempting. - On max damage, a wound is inflicted on target. Players get to nominate how they would like to wound those they are attacking, and monsters/baddies will get to do the same. Any gear or other circumstances that would negate the wound then apply, like helmet visors protecting eyes etc. There also exists a collection of rules and procedures for wilderness travel and hexcrawling.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Sahh creates a safe table
The game will include a free session 0, during which we'll go over things like the content warning tags and how they interact with sandbox play, any lines and veils both the players and the GM might in in the things that are fine to happen at the table in the fiction vs the things that are going to be kept as implications vs the things that just straight up will not happen. Aside from this the session 0 will also cover creating characters, perhaps setting up connections between the different PCs as well as talking about the general vibes of the game and explaining some of the more common principles of old school play to make sure we are all on the same page about what we are about to get into. Aside from this we are all adults and as such are able to talk about the things we might, sometimes even to our own surprise, find too upsetting or distressing to handle. I will try to check in on players if I think something more extreme like really gross body horror etc was depicted at the table even if in the moment nobody spoke out about the content. This is usually done as a part of a small debrief at the end of a session where we wind down from the game and can discuss even the non-upsetting things from a bit more distance than we'd have during the session.
Content warnings
Safety tools used