Icewind Dale: The Long Night | Brave the Wilds, Forge Your Story

Creating your character

🔹 Level 3: Point Buy 🔹 2014/2024 Rules 🔹 Character Creation: Build together during Session Zero on D&D Beyond. 🔹 D&D Beyond: 50+ sourcebooks available for character creation. 🔹 Creative Characters: Unusual character concepts are welcome. 🔹 Your Story: Goals, relationships, and Background Knives may shape the campaign.

Preparing for the session

Before Session Zero, please have: ✅ A free or existing D&D Beyond account ✅ A Discord account ✅ A desktop or laptop ✅ A working microphone

What Von Mercer GM brings to the table

🔹 COLLABORATIVE STORYTELLING🔹 We work together to tell a weave rather than have predetermined outcomes. The world and story are there, but what happens with them depends on what you do. EXAMPLE: You decide to ignore something I thought would matter and go another direction. The story follows what you chose to do. 🔹 TACTICAL COMBAT🔹 Combat is tactical and tactile, not cinematic. The monsters know what they are doing and follow behavior patterns, including things like morale. EXAMPLE: Not everything fights until it dies. A creature might retreat, surrender, protect something, or change what it is doing when the fight turns against it. 🔹 TRANSPARENT ROLLS🔹 I never fudge dice. When character death is possible, my rolls are fully transparent. EXAMPLE: If a roll could kill your character, you see it. I don't change the result behind the screen. 🔹 ATMOSPHERE🔹 I use combat music and ambience tailored to the scene. Scenes are painted through words and reinforced with images. EXAMPLE: A blizzard might have wind ambience and artwork to reinforce it, but I am still describing what you see, hear, and experience in the scene. 🔹 RULE OF COOL🔹 I run Rules as Written as a baseline and use success for a cost with Rule of Cool to keep the table fair and balanced. EXAMPLE: If you want to try something the rules don't really account for, I may give you a roll or a cost for doing it instead of just saying no. 🔹 NPCS🔹 NPCs are critical to the story elements and how the world reacts to you. They have their own objectives and personas, but that happens behind the scenes to allow your story to be told. EXAMPLE: Someone you helped may be doing something somewhere else because of that interaction. Someone you crossed may be doing the same. You don't always see it happening, but it can matter when you run into them again.

Homebrew rules

Homebrew Rules 🔹 Rule of Cool: Creative ideas get a fair chance. 🔹 Keystone XP: Bonus XP for story goals and exploration. 🔹 Degrees of Success: Some rolls succeed, fail, or succeed at a cost.

How Von Mercer GM creates a safe table

All Safety tools will be addressed during session zero and posted in the game discord for easy reference.