Ghibli-Inspired D&D With a Live Artist -- Empire of the Arts

Creating your character

Unlike more traditional D&D campaigns, this is a campaign where your character will start as a child at level 0. This means that you will start out with below-standard attributes and limited abilities, gradually filling out your character sheet more and more as you grow up, until you reach level 1 at young adulthood. The intention of this system is to essentially act out your backstory, growing meaningful relationships with the other player characters, NPCs, and your community as a whole. This system is also designed to leave plenty of room for your character to grow organically--depending on events in the story, you might end up taking them on a vastly different path than you had originally planned, mechanically and narratively. The "children's adventure" portion of the campaign will serve as the prologue for the wider campaign. Before our first session, I will be happy to guide you through the process of creating your character sheet. I recommend using a tool like DiceCloud or even manually filling out the 5e character sheet PDF, but you are free to use things like DnDBeyond or any other tool that is most convenient for you (so long as I have access to it). You may refer to and use resources from any D&D 5 and 5.5e (2024) sourcebook, as well as anything created by the legendary homebrewer LaserLlama. Further custom content should be run by me for approval.

Preparing for the session

You will need a verified account on Discord, Miro, Roll20, a stable internet connection, and a working microphone. Character sheets can be created via the standard 5e/5.5e PDF (which will be provided) or 3rd party programs such as Dicecloud. This campaign is ideally meant for players who are invested and hungry for a story-driven campaign with a strong emotional core. A general understanding of the rules of D&D 5e is appreciated, but I don't expect anyone on this earth to know every rule by heart. More than anything, an openness to new experiences, patience, trust, good humor, and a commitment to telling a good and interesting story are what I ask for from my players.

What Fikhar Sjahrazad brings to the table

A primary draw of this campaign in particular is that you will be accompanied by a *Live Artist!*. What this means is that a very close friend of mine, Dan, with years of experience in the art industry and of drawing D&D characters and scenes specifically will be listening in on the campaign and digitally drawing scenes and characters from that session. During every session, Dan will be taking visual and written notes on the events of that particular session, with refined finished illustrations to come later that same week. No waiting weeks or months for your art to be finished, every week you will see your campaign come to life visually by a human, professional artist. The table is guaranteed two spreads, with at least two scenes on each spread, per week, where your player character will be guaranteed to appear, alongside any relevant NPCs. These spreads can include character portraits, action scenes, quiet moments, humorous sequences, whatever inspires our resident artist. I bring Dan into this not only for his skill and talent, but because I have been running home games with him ever since I started GMing, and he has for several years blessed our friends with incredible art of our campaigns, day in-day out. His consistency and experience doing this exact thing is what I hope will make this campaign extra special. You can find his portfolio, which includes examples of the types of art you can expect in this campaign, here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FvBZWaMT4EKKofcjCWfR_nHUidaiTZg8 From my end as a GM, we will be playing on a private Discord server utilizing Roll20 for combat, and a Miro board as a shared note-taking apparatus. Bots on the server will include Avrae for rolling dice, Beyond 20 for DnDBeyond/Roll20 integration (should you so fancy), and KenkuFM for music and ambient soundtracks. Maps will either come from supplementary creators such as Czepeku or myself. I am a generally lenient and generous GM. Rules exist to facilitate the creation of a fun, collaborative story, but are important for setting stakes and mechanisms for reward/punishment. It is always okay to ask if you can do something, and I am usually happy to go off-the-books for the sake of running an enjoyable session.

Homebrew rules

A short, non-exhaustive list of some of the homebrew rules we follow: - Drinking a potion as a bonus action - Crunchy Crits - Grouped initiative I am a GM who is generous with my rules and understand them as a means of facilitating a story; if you have a cool idea, ask me about how it can work and I will engineer a mechanism for you to be able to do it.

How Fikhar Sjahrazad creates a safe table

I take safety very seriously and will accommodate my games for my players to the best of my ability. Before the start of the campaign, you will receive a series of questions to help flesh out your character, and part of that is deciding how much tragedy you would like in your life. During session 0 we will also cover the topics and themes for this campaign, and I will encourage my players to voice their opinions and concerns over the direction and story, publicly or privately. I tried to be as exhaustive as I could in the content warning list; not all topics will necessarily make an appearance in this campaign and they will not necessarily effect your character; and I am certainly not the type of GM to actively engage in sensitive topics without strong reasons, clear warning, and signposting. At any point during a game, you may send me an "X" or "N" in private chat on Discord. An "X" is used to indicate that you are uncomfortable with whatever the current scene is, which we will skip over or rewind. An "N" is used to indicate that you may feel that we are approaching an uncomfortable scene, which will also be skipped over.