Relatively New D&D 5e OGL Setting: Pugmire/Monarchies of Mau: Dogs & Cats D&D! No-Risk FREE Session Zero

About the adventure

Join our campaign's Discord! https://discord.gg/xq5nRcnqBZ Open chat all the time. Everyone welcome to check out our games and our gaming community. Check out our campaign's YouTube channel, featuring things characters are experiencing in the game! https://www.youtube.com/c/jonklement This game uses the D&D 5e open gaming license. If you can play D&D, you can play this. The Player's Handbook and DMG even has the spells and magic items. In the Ancient Future, humans have been gone for a long, long time. It's not clear what happened to them. Was there a zombie apocalypse? Was there nuclear, biological, or nanotech annihilation? Did humanity just leave to colonize space? No one knows. It's been long enough for Nature to heal whatever happened. Some select animals, including dogs and cats, have been "uplifted" into humanoid forms. It's their world now. However, their societies are deeply shaped by us, not by what we REALLY were, but by what they THINK we were. The dogs think we were gods. The cats think THEY were the gods and we were the servants who rudely left without telling them where everything was. Magic exists. The animals have developed a D&D type of society complete with fighters, clerics, mages, rogues, paladins, druids and all the rest. The ruins of humanity are still out there. In a recent adventure, the player characters found an ICBM military base. Prepare for WILD game sessions! In "No-Risk FREE Session Zero", we'll do the same thing Session Zero is like in-person. We'll work out character backgrounds, teach any mechanics that might be new to you, and provide a basic orientation to the setting---just a basic one, just the things your character would know at the beginning. Deep, secret mystery reveals have to be earned in play. And YOU get a chance to bring me up to speed on your character's goals, needs, ambitions, etc., so they can be weaved into the campaign as it continues to go along. Welcome to the Realms of Pugmire!

Additional Details

How to prepare

Discord is what I usually use. I award bonus xp just for having your camera on during the session, because seeing each other's smiles, eyerolls, laughter and goofy faces is all part of the experience, and make it pretty close to the feeling of us all being together. However, since some people are shy, it's definitely not required. A mic is necessary. Typing text back and forth really wouldn't work too well. You can use physical dice or computer/app generated die rolls. I will probably ask at some point for you to email me a copy of your character sheet to help me DM for them better, especially if you play in the ongoing campaign. Even if you own no books and have never played D&D before, we CAN work with that. In such a case, though, realize that game play may be slower as we take the time to teach. Also, if you need teaching time, experienced players in the session who prefer a faster game may feel bored. It's ok. We're all noobs to things in life sometimes. If you're truly new, it might be good to have a session with your good friends who would understand and be patient with you, or be in a session with other new people who also need teaching time.

What I provide

I use physical dice. I show maps and pics by screensharing in Discord. I am not above sending screenshots of a page or two of a rulebook for certain situations, but I'm not sending out entire copyrighted works as a pirate. In some campaign worlds, there are character species, classes, spells, magic items, abilities, etc., that your character may get that are not in the commonly owned core books. If you're playing a rare character type or have a rare spell or magic item, I'll often send you a page here and there, especially if I can find it for you in a free wiki in a way that doesn't violate copyright.

Gameplay details

Safety Tools and Content Advisory Info You may have heard the old adage that working with groups of humans is like herding cats. This can certainly be true at a TTRPG table, especially one at which the players didn’t really know each other before they joined the campaign and who don’t really get to know each other outside the campaign either as friends, coworkers, classmates, or what have you. Let’s face it, sometimes there are innocent misunderstandings between people, sometimes there are conflicts in different expectations of playstyle, and sometimes, sometimes people are just jerks. For example, once I had to permanently ban someone from the Discord server for consistently showing up drunk and belligerent to the game. Safety Tool: PM the DM In our games, the most important safety tool for your use is the Discord private message feature. I personally have been pro-DMing full-time (40+ hours per week) since May 2021. That’s quite a lot of hours gaming. Here are some examples of real instances which have gotten handled by PMing the DM: Once, a rogue in D&D used slight of hand skill to hide some treasure from the party. Another player felt that this was “PVP” and talked to me about it privately. Then, I talked to the rogue’s player privately and all is now good. They still adventure, laugh, and play together. Some players founded a new time slot and a new table to avoid another player who was really bringing down their gaming experience. The player whom they wished to avoid wasn’t doing anything “wrong” per se. He wasn’t threatening anyone, or using profanity, or posting porn in the Discord thread, or behaving in any kind of bigoted way. In other words, he wasn’t doing anything bannable. He was just, simply…..annoying. In a private conversation, we found another timeslot that was good for the folks who preferred to not game with him, and problem solved, without hurting anyone’s feelings or offending anyone. In the beginning, in May 2021, players were allowed to roll dice any way they wished, including physical dice at home, apps on their phone, whatever. Eventually, several players contacted me on Discord about certain players whose characters never missed saving throws, never missed to-hit in combat, never bombed skill checks, and never did anything less than awesome top-end damage. This was really negatively impacting other people’s chance at enjoyment that they had paid for. After hearing them out, I instituted a couple of Discord dice bots that I like and now all dice rolls are public. Players then reached out privately to thank me and assure me that things were much improved. So, if there are any issues at our games that you think should be addressed, don’t hesitate to PM the DM. Chances are, it can be taken care of privately so that no one is embarrassed or put on display in front of their peers during a game, because that would be…...awkward for all. Together, with a little patience, discretion, and maturity, maybe we can herd cats, after all, in a direction that’s fun for everyone. :) Content Advisory “To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women!”--Conan the Barbarian when asked “What is best in life?” “The most evil monsters in D&D aren’t drow or dragons or vampires or any of those things in the Monster Manual. The most evil monsters in D&D are humans beings, because there is no limit to what one human being will do to another human being.”--Ron Watson, the man who taught me how to DM In case folks haven’t noticed, most TTRPGs, especially D&D, are violent games. If a player wasn’t ok with pretend violence (slicing into enemies with swords, blasting enemies with magically conjured lightning, taking advantage of a distracted enemy for a rogue’s “sneak attack”, etc.), then they’re probably not playing D&D or most TTRPGs. That said, there are some topics of content that can make the game a more mature-themed fantasy as opposed to fantasy in say, an episode of My Little Pony. (There actually IS a My Little Pony TTRPG that focuses on problem solving without combat. It’s incredibly cute and my character is a pegasus. Don’t judge!) In many D&D worlds, there are cultures loosely based on historical Earth cultures as well as cultures imagined more whole cloth out of fantasy. Many of those cultures have institutionalized injustice, just as they did in real Earth history. The Empire of Thyatis in Mystara, for example, is a Roman Empire knock-off culture and has a huge and vibrant slave trade. Drow cultures based on Lolth are misandrist and matriarchal, while other cultures are misogynist and patriarchal. How player characters function in a world with widespread wrongness and unfairness gives them a chance to be the heroes and the fully-developed characters they can be. Sometimes heroes aren’t the toughest physical combatants in the land. Sometimes the heroes are the Rosa Parks’s, the Martin Luther King, jr’s, the Sparticus’s, and the William Wilberforce’s of the world, the ones who found a different path than to just shrug their shoulders and say, “I’m just one person. What can I do against an entire system?” They are the ones who took action anyway, and made a difference. There are themes that are unfortunately part of human nature and human experience: war, slavery, violence, racism, misandry, misogyny, and persecution of the “different” simply because it is different. In a realistically portrayed game world, with these things portrayed realistically, they are easily seen for what they are: wrong. They are not glorified, glamorized, romanticized, or excused. Whenever they may appear, their ugliness is on full display. While we do laugh and have a lot of fun in our games, there is a gritty side to my DMing style. One of my favorite villains to use is the Iron Ring, an international slave trade organization. They make great villains because it’s so easy to stir up players to hate them. They’re clearly evil. Also, since they are an international organization, they won’t go away simply because the PCs won a boss fight. There will always be new Iron Ring bosses. So, if you’re up for fun but gritty D&D, ask me to run D&D. If you’d like to try a world of literal unicorns and rainbows and non-combat centered encounters, ask me to run “Tails of Equestria”, the My Little Pony RPG, because I will. ;)

Content warnings

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Safety tools used

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How will character creation work

Characters can be created one of two ways: 1.) entirely from scratch at Session Zero, 2.) partially finished up at Session Zero.

Players can expect

• Find a game to join solo or search for a professional game master for you and your friends/coworkers/family.
• Book your session and wait for the Game Master to approve you.
• If you don't have a blast with your first game, your next game is on us.