DOPAMINA | Sonora - Mojave Desert Sandbox | Cartel Cops Campaign
You're a cop in Phoenix, 2096. Your station works for a cartel boss. Other precincts work for others.
$29.99
/ Session
Details
Weekly / Tuesday - 12:00 AM UTC
Session Duration / 3–4 hours
2 / 7 Seats Filled
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Meet your party members
2/7
About the adventure
Phoenix, 2096. The city's wired tight, smart infrastructure, constant surveillance, decades of social programming meant to keep people calm and compliant. It didn't take. Underneath the order, Phoenix runs on cartel money, and that money reaches every level of government and police there is. There's no real line between the cops and the cartels here. Local PD, federal agencies, city hall, it's all the same machine, just wearing different uniforms. The Sonoran Desert and the city itself is carved into plazas, and each one belongs to a different boss with their own corporate and political backers. Your station answers to one of them. The station across town answers to someone else, and the two sides aren't always friendly. You're cops, and you do standard police work: patrols, calls, paperwork, arrests when an arrest is what's actually called for. You also do the other kind of work, off the record. Running protection on a cargo shipment. Hitting a rival plaza's convoy before it crosses into your boss's territory. Making someone disappear because the order came down and asking why wasn't part of the job. Some nights it's a stakeout. Some nights it's a hit. The badge covers both. All classes minus Exec are playable. Players must take Lawman as Sub Class if choosing another Class.
Game style
Theater of the Mind
Roleplay Heavy
Sandbox / Open World
Game themes
Meet the Game Master
4.9
(30)
1 year on StartPlaying
152 games hosted
Highly rated for: Teacher, Creativity, Sets the Mood
About me
Storyteller specializing in grounded, character-driven narratives set in hostile, morally complex worlds. My campaigns draw from organized crime dramas and psychological thrillers, set against the Western states and Northern Mexico, regions I know firsthand and build with real geographic and cultural accuracy. I primarily run Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition. The system rewards moral ambiguity and factional tension, and that's exactly where I like to live as a GM: long campaigns where political maneuvering matters, every choice carries weight, and the cities, families, and factions you interact with keep evolving whether you're paying attention or not. I also score my own games. Original music, in-world songs, atmospheric audio, built specifically for each table, to make the setting feel less like a backdrop and more like something with a pulse. My chronicles center on cartel politics and mafia rule across the borderlands, spanning California, Baja, Nevada, Arizona, Sonora, Texas, and Tamaulipas, with every city and rural stretch in between treated as real, lived-in territory rather than a backdrop. I've also taken the Ashirra into the spiritual battlegrounds of the Sahara and Sahel, and run Tremere-focused chronicles of esoteric mage-mafia intrigue stretching across Southern Europe and the North African Mediterranean. For players who want something faster and louder, my Cyberpunk Red campaigns pull from classic sci-fi and underground rock and roll, scored with analog modular synths and distorted guitars driving every session. Whatever the setting, I run the kind of table where your decisions actually move the story. Sessions are immersive and character-first, built for players who want a world that pushes back.
View Profile →Character creation
Creating your character
Character creation is handled in Demiplane, which keeps the process straightforward from lifepath to final build. Every character must take Lawman, either as your only class or as a subclass alongside whatever else you build toward.
What to expect
Preparing for the session
Players will need four accounts to play: Discord, Alchemy, Demiplane, and Roll20. All are free, no purchases required. Roll20 is only used to log dice rolls inside Demiplane, you won't need to do anything else with it. Alchemy will be used for Audio and Visuals.
What D'Antonio brings to the table
I run grounded, mature crime stories built around characters players don't forget, the kind of people whose motives, families, and loyalties stay with you long after the session ends. As an audio engineer, I score every game personally: original music, field recordings, and sound design built specifically for each scene rather than pulled from a generic playlist. Every location is supported by custom photography and artwork, so the world isn't just something you're told about, there plenty of visual and audio aids to make the atmosphere easy to imagine and see! Factions have real internal politics. Characters have real stakes. I put significant work into cultural accuracy and representation across every setting I run, because the world only feels tangible if it's built with care rather than shorthand. My goal is a table where the line between the fiction and the experience starts to blur, and where every session leaves you with something to think about after it's over.
Equipment needed to play
Internet
Computer
Microphone
Platforms used
Safety
How D'Antonio creates a safe table
Session 0 is where all of this gets handled. I walk through the setting, the system, and the mature themes the campaign is going to lean on, and players bring their character concepts and any boundaries they want the table to know about going in. We also cover scheduling, play style, and general table etiquette, so everyone's working from the same expectations before the first real session starts.
Content warnings
Safety tools used