Song of Sibelle 🎻 || 🏳️‍🌈 LGBTQ+ Friendly

Creating your character

Is your character a cleric or paladin of Valar who serves their pantheon of deities? A wizard or artificer on assignment from Kehlon's arcane corps? Or perhaps a druid or ranger, more comfortable in the wilderness of the frontier? Please think of a rough character concept before our first meeting. You'll want to pick a name, a class, a species, and a rough idea of where in this world your character hails from. 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 more serious 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 a (free) account before we meet, if you do not already have one. If you don't have a preferred way to make characters (it's totally okay not to!), I recommend D&DBeyond. I find that site is the easiest to navigate for character creation.

What Vi brings to the table

This game places equal emphasis on combat and social interaction. You will encounter a web of fantastical characters and locations to interact with as you desire, and tactical battles that will push your characters to their limits. The world will provide enough direction that you aren't lost, while leaving major choices 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. For our combats, you can expect handmade maps created using Inkarnate. I do not use AI in the creation of any of my maps, nor do I knowingly use AI-generated assets for any token art. I request that my players also not use any generative AI tools in the creation of characters or character art that they use for this game. As a GM 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 the Cracked Horizon, the hells are very different from most other D&D settings. Rather than a layered nine hells, five infernal maidens (like Sibelle!) rule different "organs" of a colossal underworld serpent. As such, different lineages of tieflings have unique damage resistances and innate spells available. If you're interested in playing a tiefling in this game, let me know and I can provide more information! I also use the common house rule that drinking a potion is a bonus action, but administering a potion to another creature still takes an action.

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.