Knead to Succeed - A Bakery Adventure || Queer+Beginner Friendly

Creating your character

Is your character a druid who grows their own ingredients in an herb garden? A wizard whose spellbook includes magical recipes? Or a dastardly thief who steals culinary secrets for themself? Please think of a rough character concept before our first meeting. You'll want to pick a name, a class, a species, and your character's favorite baked good! Before the official start of the game, I will host a (free!) session zero where we'll brainstorm ideas for first-level characters, then build them together using 2014 rules. You're free to use whichever character sheet software you'd like, or just paper and pencil :) If you're a new player who doesn't know what any of that means, don't worry! I'll do a step-by-step walkthrough of D&DBeyond's free character creator the first time we meet. For players who are more experienced or have made characters before, you're free to use classes and species from any officially published source books that use the 2014 ruleset, including the customization options in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything. All I ask is that you be mindful of the game's tone.

Preparing for the session

This game will be hosted over Discord. If you aren't familiar, Discord is a voice and video calling platform that will allow us to play face-to-face. You'll be able to join once you sign up for the game. We'll also be using the Roll20 VTT (Virtual Tabletop) for the game's maps. You'll want to make an account before we meet! There's a link to join our Roll20 page in the Discord. If you don't have a preferred way to make characters (it's totally okay not to!), please also make an account on D&DBeyond. I find that site is the easiest to navigate for character creation.

What Vi brings to the table

This game is a cozy, social-heavy, urban fantasy adventure. A character built exclusively for battle might have fewer opportunities to shine, though there will likely be some combat! If I'm successful as a GM, you will have a web of fantastical characters and locations to interact with as you choose. I aim to provide enough direction that you aren't lost, while leaving major choices (and the direction of the game) up to the players. I tend to use character voices for my NPCs. This doesn't necessarily mean an accent (it usually doesn't), but vocal quality can often help distinguish different characters. Plus, I like to have fun with it! As a player, there's no expectation at my table that you must do a character voice as well, but I do my best to create a safe environment for players to try one out if they'd like. All I ask is that if you do a character voice, you be sensitive to other real-world cultures. More than anything, you can expect me to be fair. This game will largely stick to D&D's rules as written, because I find that limits and restrictions often spur creativity. When this isn't the case, I can be flexible, but I will never bend the rules in a way that doesn't lean in the players' favor.

Homebrew rules

In my games, I rule that drinking a potion is a bonus action, but administering a potion to another creature still takes an action. Other than that, I don't have any specific house rules :)

How Vi creates a safe table

During our session zero, I'll present a Lines and Veils document that we'll build as a group. Lines and Veils is a technique for managing trauma triggers and sensitive content at the game table. Creating this document will provide the groundwork for our safety system—it'll let me and your fellow players know what content to avoid. Safety isn't just something that happens before the first session, though. During gameplay, we'll take a few steps to make sure everyone is comfortable. Our group will pause for a routine break at the midpoint of each session, but I also have an open door policy. Open door means you're free to step away from the table at any point, for any reason, without any explanation, and without any judgement. We'll also use an X, N, O system to manage triggering content that might not have come up during the creation of our Lines and Veils discussion. What this means is that, at any point in our sessions, you can discreetly send me an indication of your comfort level with the content at the table. I'll discuss all these safety tools more at our session zero!