Where Stars Hum: A Custom Folk-Themed Island Campaign
Use a magical, singing map to navigate a storm-ravaged island and claim a legendary hoard of ancient relics. And also for revenge on that damned wiz-!
$12.50
/ Session
Details
12 players following this game
Weekly / Monday - 12:00 AM UTC
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
Campaign Length / 12–16 Sessions
0 / 5 Seats Filled
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About the adventure
🏔️ Explore a folk-themed setting, a secluded and nature-ruled island with its own gods and rituals, and home to ruins and legends of ages past. ⛈️ Battle mythical and magical creatures that rule the island in tough combat encounters, from monstrosities that can conjure storms, to cunning evils lurking in shadows. 👁️🗨️ Encounter strange and isolated NPCs, some possibly even older than the island, who may or may not help you in your quest. 🌟 Piece together a star-map to open the resting place of a legendary bard and the treasures that may wait within. 🗡️ Take your revenge against the evil wizard that’s been hounding you ever since you found a piece of the magical star-map. 👥 Inclusive and beginner-friendly, this sandbox campaign is open to many character options, with official 2024 rules and species or subclasses ported over from 2014. In your recent adventures, you have found a trove of ancient notes that describe the adventures and deeds of a legendary bard who worshiped the goddess Seluna. A veteran of the demon war, Selistian battled against evil names such as Orcus, Kas, Vol, Vecna and wielded many powerful artifacts, some even capable of granting wishes. Among the notes you also find a parchment filled with musical notes, emanating magic. With it, soon came the voices, offering you money and more valuables in exchange for the parchment. You accept, but such attempts only conclude with assassination attempts seemingly made by the same wizard. Even though you sell the parchment, the attacks do not stop. Even though you kill the wizard, he keeps coming back. With a bit of magical aid, you decipher within the ancient notes the actual resting place of Selistian the bard: Stormshackle, an island in the North of The Great Middle Sea.
Game style
Combat Heavy
Roleplay Lite
Rule of Cool (RoC)
Rules as Written (RaW)
Sandbox / Open World
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
5.0
(5)
Less than a year on StartPlaying
Highly rated for: Creativity, Inclusive, Sets the Mood
About me
Hi! My name is Marc and I am a Game Master with ~8 years of experience with TTRPGs. I am an addict of stories and have used this to run or play across different systems like Dungeons & Dragons 5e, Pathfinder 2e, Vampire the Masquerade and Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. I like to take inspiration from books for characters and themes, from movies for epic scenes and from music to help grow my imagination. I am a sandbox GM at heart and rules-lawyer in my mind, meaning I allow players to explore and flesh out their characters in the worlds I describe. I don’t punish mistakes that players might make, but I do keep table limits, so players don’t go overboard or hog time, or abuse the rules of the game. I do allow a little bending of the rules, as long as the rest of the players still have fun. I do not enforce themes, but my games tend to adhere to these and I always cooperate with my players to sync on themes and expectations. That starts with character creation and I always try to subscribe to my player’s ideas of their characters. If themes don’t align, I would help with suggestions of adjustment and if I can see player conflict from the beginning, I try to address professionally and help build a better game group. My sessions feature a mix of immersive descriptions and short “here’s where you didn’t check” reminders. Meaning I always let players initiate transitions. I like to describe scenes, play out NPCs and their voices and, sometimes, get lost in the immersion. But I’ve learned to push my players ahead or give them hooks to continue on the story. Combat will be fun and lenient, or high-stakes and high-energy. My strong areas are atmosphere, exciting moments in combat, and creepy or funny moments during play. I’ve made players feel creeped out, scared, excited, curious, happy, laugh-out loud and I always try to entertain their ideas. I've run both published adventures and homebrewed one shots or campaigns for friends or strangers, beginners or veterans and role players or tacticians. See you at my table!
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
• Queer & Beginner friendly! • I recommend using DnDBeyond to create your characters, which can be joined to a campaign link shared by the Dungeon Master. You can also prepare a PDF or just tell the Dungeon Master your character picks and he will aid with character creation. You can also build your character in Foundry during Session 0. • 2024 rules for classes, feats, spells and play mechanics • Subclasses & Species from 2014 and other supplementary sources are allowed (share with DM first) - Homebrewed subclasses & species are allowed, you just need to check with the Dungeon Master so he may prepare the list beforehand and check for balance of play. • Campaign starts at level 3, and the players will get to level up to 8 • Fashion your backstory however you like, just remember that you play a 3rd level adventurer and that the events of this campaign take place on an isolated and storm-ridden island • Every player character gets to bring three magic items from the 2024 ruleset: one rare, one uncommon and one common. I guess that evil wizard had some stuff on him
What to expect
Preparing for the session
• Have a microphone, a browser, and a discord account prepared. • Accounts on Foundry VTT will be prepared by DM • Finish your character and share an artwork, that you think resembles your character, with the Dungeon Master • Make sure your character idea would be fun for you to play for 10-12 session onwards. You can change characters, but the Dungeon Master would restrict to one character rebuild per player. • Get familiarised with Dungeon & Dragons, via tutorial articles or YouTube play examples • Get familiarised with Foundry VTT
What Marc brings to the table
• Lots of ambient music from playlists I've curated in my years of playing TTRPGs • The predominant theme of this adventure is adventure and lightheartedness. • Social encounters and exploration scenes will be described immersively in the theater of the mind. Players are invited to role-play as well. • Combat encounters will be balanced, high-energy and some will require tactical thinking. All on battlemaps, with tokens. • Encounter Maps hand-made by me via Dungeon Alchemist • Each NPC encountered will be uniquely voiced and will bring a different character to the mix • A hand-drawn map of the island along which characters will travel • Access to my discord and the campaign main doc, where I will record every session and side quest the party has picked up, as well as any notable feats or terrible foe they've slain. • 7+ years of experience as a Dungeon Mastering
Homebrew rules
Bonus Action Potions: You can drink a potion as a bonus action. Drinking a healing potion as a bonus action allows you to roll the dice for healing. Alternatively, you can use your action instead of your bonus action to drink the potion. This will reward you with the maximum healing for that potion. Criticals: Critical hits resulted from natural 20s on attacks now double the total damage of the hit. We will roll the normal dice, add any modifiers or bonuses and double the result. This is for the sake of not having to roll so many dice. HP Rolls on Level Up: We will use the average number in place of rolling dice for gained hit points upon level up Flanking: We will use the optional flanking rule. Instead of giving you advantage if you manage to flank an enemy, you get a +2 to your attack rolls.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How Marc creates a safe table
We will discuss the content warnings listed here and apply Lines & Veils where a sensitive topic is listed by a player. Breaks are available and any player can issue a break when they wish during play. And of course, the campaign will only start after a Session 0, during which we test our characters, how well everyone interacts and the VTT. At the end of this session we will make group decisions to better shape the rest of the campaign.
Content warnings
Safety tools used