The Thousand Tamzzyrian Nights: Insurgency

Game Ads

• Ad id: 12401
  Thread: Help shape the Legends of the Thousand Tamzzyrian Nights!
  

Game Description

A Thousand Tamzzyrian Nights: Insurgency is a Dungeons and Dragons 5e game set on the continent of Elanthia. In this campaign, players will embark on campaign story arcs ranging from levels 2-6 and then again from 6-11 and finally from 11-16. Rather than having one single plot that follows the PCs from levels 1-20, the campaign will focus on three adventure arcs that each span the level ranges described.



*The continent of Elanthia is adapted from the online MUD game known as Gemstone 4 (formerly Gemstone 3). It is a game I played for over 20 years and I have a very strong knowledge of the world and setting and believe it has a worthwhile flavor to add fun and flare to a DnD game. I think you will enjoy its particular quirks and find its familiar elements refreshing.

Campaign Background

[CENTER]Behold the Aradhul Valley


Long a region known for its rich soil and productive mines that rests in the shadow of the Elven Nations. Two countries, Dagyre and Olvan have struggled throughout history for dominion over their land. For centuries, their rivalry has seen alternate periods of tense peace and open war. Finally, from beyond the Shadowguard mountains to the west there rose a man from the race of the Jogai to put an end to this pattern of conflict.....

His name was Razvan.

Razvan invaded the Aradhul with his Jogai kin in a storm, taking the disparate races calling the valley home and uniting them as one. He encouraged marriage between clan and race, forging bonds to strengthen his newborn kingdom. Boldly declaring, "I am the Aradhul", he took the name of the valley as his own and declared the Aradhul Dynasty. For nearly three decades, King Razvan Aradhul reigned. With his rule came an era of prosperity. The Kingdom of Aradhul proved powerful enough to check their militant elven neighbors in Ta'Vaalor while still allowing mutually beneficial trade to pass within and beyond the Valley. Soon the security and safety of Aradhul made it a prime route for transcontinental trade between the city-states of the Elven Nations in the east and the growing human power of the Turamzzyrian Empire in the distant west.

But the old embers of discord still smouldered.

King Razvan spent much of his rule controlling the traditional power of the Arkatian Church and its ruling ecclesiastical Hierarchs. The Church's leaders had claimed both political and military power over the centuries of infighting that preceded King Razvan's conquest and they were eager to see that power reclaimed...

Ten years ago, King Razvan Aradhul and his young heir were betrayed and brutally murdered by Jisao Gemellan, a young Olvani human and member of the Royal Guard. "The Crownkiller", as Jisao would be known thereafter, escaped. In the void of power that followed, Hierarch Rugala declared the regicide a plot by Olvani nationalists intent on splitting the kingdom. In an effort to maintain the peace until a proper king can be chosen, Rugala declared himself Regent of the 'Dagyre-Aradhul' Kingdom and unleashes it's military might within Olvani territory with the mission of rooting out the conspirators.

When the Olvani Duke, Jonah Glendale, resisted the Hierarch's efforts, Regent Rugala declared a full Blood War upon all Olvani and secured an alliance with the elven nation of Ta'Vaalor to help support his own military against Olvan.

The result was a murderous bloodbath. The wholesale slaughter of the Olvani people ballooned into a full on ethnic cleansing. The Olvani forces of Duke Glendale attempted a military resistance, but they were far outmatched. From his seat in the Dagysh capital of Coritani, Ragent-Hierarch Rugala holds command of the army of Aradhul as well as the ibix-riding Jogai, the former kin of the slain king. From the elven city state of Ta'Vaalor came the Red Dragoons, led by their High Commander, Ariosh. Together, they broke the back of the Olvani, bringing the upstart country to it's knees in half a year.

The final act of the Blood War was the 'Burning of Revalin', where a final pocket of Olvani resistance had occupied old Fort Revalin and refused to surrender. In response, the Regent sent his allied Vaalorian elves to settle the matter. Their High Commander, Ariosh, flipped a single copper coin. The result determined which half of Revalin's surrounding town he would raze to the ground. The coin selected the southern side of the Mistydeep River and with the aid of the Dagysh military, Commander Ariosh set the town aflame and had his fellow Dragoons and Dagysh soldiers kill any living creature attempting to escape. In the end, Fort Revalin and it's hold-outs burned along with half of the town.

The slaughter marked the end of the Resistance. With Duke Glendale in chains, Olvan was left in the hands of the traditional Hierarchs who were all loyal in one way or another to the Arkatian Church and Regent Rugala.

In time, many of the Olvani allowed themselves to accept the peace that had been forced upon through brutality and war. For once, the battlefields of the Aradhul Valley are silent....

....but few believe that silence will last.

-

Game Style: A classic mix of roleplay, combat and partial-sandbox adventuring. The game will be based on an episodic campaign system. The characters (including their goals, motivations and desires) remain constant as they grow in power and prestige. However, the plot lines are shorter, concluding as players reach the next tier of power. As the PCs advance to a new tier of power, they find themselves confronted with and able to take ever more dangerous challenges. This format allows for me as a DM to craft multiple different storylines for the players to pursue (or not, as they choose) while still giving players the ability to push the campaign in entirely different directions if they so choose. This prevents the need to railroad players on a level 1-20 singular storyline that stymies player and DM creativity and forces places to commit to what could be years of gaming on Mythweavers. In this system, players commit only to the next level arc (levels 2-6 in this case) and can decide to continue on, bow out or replace their character once that level arc concludes.

-

About Me: I've DMd on the tabletop for over twenty-five years and have spent about four years DMing here on Mythweavers. Currently I run three campaigns, all of them maintain a minimum 1 post/day standard (excepting vacations, illness, holidays and so on) without much trouble. I am a DM you can count on to be here, see his game through and not leave dedicated players hanging in the lurch. My view on how a game of Dungeons and Dragons, particular one here on Mythweavers is detailed below. I encourage you to reach out to my current or past players if you have any questions about my style as a DM and/or the amount of fun I can offer in a campaign.

-

Expectations on Posting: Ability to post a minimum of one time every weekday is required. A single post is required at some point during the weekend. I have kept this requirement in my other campaigns and they have run successfully for years now. If you cannot commit to this, please do not apply. Exceptions for things that come up (as they do) is of course expected, but even the slightest development of a pattern will require me to ask another player to take your spot. I believe that the death of a PbP game is a lack of momentum. Be aware I consider momentum of the game to be its most important asset besides committed players.

-

Player expectations: I am looking for players who understand several simple and fundamental things about DnD or roleplaying games in general. If you do not agree with my view on these issues, this is not the game for you.

1. The game is more important than your character - This is a shared, group activity. Its success is dependent upon your ability to craft and play a character that is malleable enough that they can bend and flow with most group decisions. In fact, it is your responsibility to craft a character who is looking for like-minded people to join with. If this mentality is shared by the entire party, serious conflicts are unlikely. If you find yourself only able to play characters who are so set in their development and personality that they cannot yield to actions and decisions that move the game forward for the benefit of all, please do not apply. In game, I apply a 'majority rules' system. If the majority of the party wishes to take one course of action, I'll assume that if the minority of the party cannot change their minds, that their characters will go along with the will of the group to preserve party cohesion.

2. The show must go on - Campaigns work when players realize there is a joint responsibility to make them work. In pbp, this is especially true. We all need each other to keep the campaign fun, engaging and entertaining. The group needs four (or more) personalities to drive the campaign, not three personalities and an emotionless stat-block.

3. The campaign world is a shell, not straight jacket. - I am fully aware that this campaign world is the essential equivalent of homebrew to probably 100% of all other Mythweavers players. The background and history (the official canon, as it were) is there to provide a pretty background, names to organizations and places and so on. I am always willing to answer a question about any particular piece of campaign information the players would like to know. The short answer is that all of this information is available online, but the reality is that the vast, vast majority of it isn't necessary to help someone have fun in this game. If you like that level of crunch in your campaign background, I will happily share your enthusiasm and give you buckets of info. In general though, I don't ask my players to understand more about the campaign world than I have personally provided. If they want to go further, awesome. If they don't, that is fine also. See the list of "Ten Things that Makes the Tamzzyrian Nights Worth Playing" below for more info.

Combat: Combat will be 'theater of the mind'. No battlemaps will be used. We use a tiered initiative system. There are some houserules in this campaign that you will find in the Houserules thread in the campaign forum. Please build characters around this idea. For example, movement works differently in this system, so an extra 5' of movement is probably less powerful in this system than in a grid. We trade granularity in combat for drama, pacing and narrative. I feel those elements are better in a PbP format than the grid.

-

The Campaign Setting and Important Info:
As mentioned, the campaign is an adaptation of one used in an old text-based MUD online fantasy game. I am an expert in this world's lore and background. I also teach world history for a living and use my seventeen years of teaching experience to help convey the ideas of a plausible medieval-ish fantasy world in my descriptions and game world. To make things simple at the start, here are ten big ideas to know about the campaign setting, Elanthia.

1. The Arkati - The creation myth of the world (found in the documents section of the Game Forum) describes how a war between the world's creators and a mysterious race of demons resulted in the ascendance of a lesser group of immortals called Arkati. Strictly speaking, Arkati are not gods, but their power is so far beyond mortals that they may as well be. They don't often take direct action in the affairs of mortals but their influence is felt in everyday life in a very real and meaningful way. In game mechanics terms, Arkati are roughly equivalent in power to Demon Lords, Lords of Hell and Angelic Lords from a traditional DnD cosmology.

2. It's still medieval fantasy - Despite some of its twists and quirks, the game is still essentially medieval fantasy at its core. If you approach it as you would Greyhawk or Faerun, odds are good you will not feel at all out of place. There are some examples of Eberron like technologies at work, but they are few and rare.

3. The Central Tension - Each campaign set in this setting has a different central tension. In this campaign, the Central Tension is centered around an oppressed and conquered kingdom trying to throw off the yoke of their conquerors.

4. Factions - Games in this setting seek to strike a balance between party-based play and solo play. In general, I regard adventuring as a group activity and PC downtime as a chance to engage in personal goals. Factions tend to help fill the role of giving individual characters a secondary driving force in their development. Each faction is the game world is usually neutral in regards to the central tension of the campaign, though there are exceptions. Factions provide players with a chance to roleplay their PCs as an integrated member of the wider world's concerns while gaining mechanical benefits in the process. Joining a faction is not required, but most players enjoy what it offers and a particular settlement's most memorable NPCs are often tied to one or more factions.

5.Strongholds - If the party wishes to establish some sort of meaningful base of operations and derive benefit from it, there is a set of stronghold rules in place to help facilitate that. They are homebrew, and far from perfect. However, I have purchased a copy of Matt Colville's (of YouTube fame) upcoming Stronghold book and expect to receive the PDF in September. If those rules are good, I'll likely switch over to them. Strongholds are another way for your characters to have a stake in the game world, as well as have an element with which the world can react with your PCs. Again, this is optional. Individual players can choose to pursue this or not.

6. Persistent World - The goal of using this setting is that I want to be able to run concurrent campaigns within a single campaign world. The only campaign world I know well enough to do that in is Elanthia. While I love Eberron (and can stomach Faerun), to me the idea of having multiple adventuring groups operating in the same continent (with the potential of their plotlines and outcomes effecting each others campaigns) sounds like a massive amount of fun to me. This game represents the third campaign group to be in play in this world. One group is adventuring within the Frontier, while the second is adventuring within the confines of the human-centric Turamzzyrian Empire. This group will be adventuring in the hinterlands of the Elven Nations, on the eastern portion of the continent.

7.Magical Metals and Woods - This campaign makes use of many metals and woods with specialized magical properties. These are naturally occurring in the game world and some of the more common ones are regularly traded. The intent here is to give the DM and players a way of encouraging magic item acquisition that isn't simple another boring +1 item. More information on the various metals, woods, their uses and lore can be found in the Document's folder.

8. Soulburning and Magical Items - In this game world, any non-consumable magical item of uncommon quality or higher requires the sacrifice of a soul in it's creation. Called Soulburning, the process of extracting a soul and refining it into raw power is a difficult one and many cultures find the practice immoral. However, there are other cultures that use Soulburning as their chosen form of capital punishment, executing criminals by removing their souls and implanting them as a power source for magical items. The more powerful the item being created, the more powerful the soul used to power it must be. It is the intent of this flavor-change from standard DnD to give players a reason to look upon a meager Ring of Jumping with some respect, rather than as a useless bauble to be sold at the next civilized location. The selling of anything more than common magical items is literally the selling of soulburned mortal spirits. It is prohibitively expensive in almost all countries and even illegal in some, though black markets do exist.

9. The Void and Voidspace - The Cosmology of this world begins with the Void, which is something like the Astral Sea in traditional DnD. Floating within the starry skies of the Void are island-like realms which act like planes. The Void is a mystery to most people, and even scholars have no reliable means of accessing it, though many believe that the night sky is one and the same with the Void.

10. Familiar....yet different - Despite the core similarities to a typical DnD experience, there are notable differences from how classes are perceived in the campaign setting to what precisely a 'dark elf' is in this world (hint: It's not an underground dwelling, dark-skinned elf). There are number of small alterations to be found in the Document's section of the forum that applicants are encouraged to read before making any character decisions.

-

Starting Point: - The campaign begins in the town of Revalin, a former defensive post in the southeast reaches of the country of Olvan. Five years ago, Revalin was the last town to fall in the Blood War, where Dagysh soldiers alongside their Vaalorian elf allies razed and slaughtered half of the town as an example to those with thoughts of further resistance. It now operates as a forced labor camp, where the conquered Olvani are required to produce crops for their Dagysh overlords. Punishment is swift and severe. The locals live in fear, hunger and misery.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Character Creation (Nuts and Bolts):
**We use Milestone XP to determine advancement**

https://www.myth-weavers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=43733

The above link also contains the thread where all applications should be posted, along with a thread for asking any questions or discussing with other applicants about the campaign. There is also a folder on campaign information for those looking for help building their backgrounds, but it also contains necessary information for the application process.

Please ensure your application includes a full character sheet with all of the nuts and bolts of your character clearly listed.

-

Character Creation - Crunch

*I consider all requests. I recognize that sometimes, the mechanics just don't fit the concept. However, these are the guidelines for character creation.

All characters will begin at level 2 with the standard starting equipment in the PHB. HOWEVER! You cannot begin play with any weapons or armor. No one in Revalin is permitted to own such things.

Allowed Sources:
- Any officially published 5e book. PHB, DMG, Xanathar's, Volo's, Wayfinders Guide to Eberron, etc
- NO UA material. This includes the Mystic.
- You CAN take the Revised Ranger or the PHB Ranger as you prefer.
- You can use the Matt Mercer Blood Hunter if you wish. You can also take the Gunslinger, but be aware that there are no guns in this world and you would have to reflavor the weapon appropriately.

-We will be using the standard point buy from the rulebook for character creation. Rolling for stats is not allowed.
-You must select one of the backgrounds from the PHB (soldier, criminal, etc) or any other supplement in the list above. You can also create a custom background as per PHB rules.
-No character may be of any evil alignment without prior DM approval.

Multiclassing and Feats are allowed as described in the PHB.
- Nearly four years of DMing and playing 5e have taught me that some feats are just too powerful for the game's monsters as designed. Characters who take them and do a bit of planning can quickly turn a good combination into a shockingly overpowered one. As a result, several feats are not allowed in this game.
1. Lucky - Removed because it is almost always used to allow the PC to avoid any and all negative consequences of note. It is effectively a Drama-reducer, which is not good for the game.
2. Great Weapon Master - I've DMed PCs who had this. I've played PCs who've had this. It is too easy, particularly in large parties and with multiclassing, to offset the penalty to the attack. Even then, it is often still an easy way to gain massive damage spikes that the game is not designed for.
3. Sharpshooter - An even more overpowered version of GWM. It can even be offset by a basic fighting style. Not allowed.

All PCs can take a feat at 1st level.
- This is a free selection. As a result, the Variant Human race is not allowed in this campaign.

-

Character Creation (Roleplay): - Character Applications go here --> http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?t=344942

A complete character application will include all of the following

1. The character background - Not to be confused with the background selection in the PHB, this is a written history of the character. It should address the following, alongside your own creative ideas for the character.[/I]
- Why are you here? - In a single paragraph (or so), provide a separate explanation as for what would place your character in Revalin. Were you born here? Are you the son of a trader who has come to town? A foreigner?

-. How did you get to level 2? - In a single paragraph (or so), provide a separate explanation as for how your character achieved second level. Feel free to be as creative as you like (killing all the things! is not required to earn a level after all) but keep it in the realm of reason. If you already covered this in your background, please summarize it again in brief.

-. All characters will have an Ideal, Bond and Flaw as per normal D&D 5e character generation. The lists in the PHB are guides, you may invent your own. In addition, create a compelling reason why your character would want to see the Dagysh ethnic cleansing of Olvan end and it's people made free. Your reasons do not have to be altruistic or even nationalistic, but it is an assumption of this campaign that the party will seek to unite behind this cause early on.

- An IC post in which the character has a self-reflection while spending a typical day in Revalin. Length is up to you. Consider the background of the campaign to help inform what a day in Revalin is like.

-. Not related to your character, but please include your timezone in your app.

-

Character Creation (The Player): - Please answer the following questions about yourself as a player. These don't necessary determine if you get in the game or not, but help me craft adventures to fit the players. There are no wrong answers here. Some of the questions are Multiple Choice. The prefered format for these answers is that you copy and paste the question as well as any answers you are going to provide into your app.

1. Have you ever played DnD before? How long? What editions? How often can you post per day?

2. How important would you say it is to you to have control over your character's story arc?
-a.- Extremely important. I believe the role of a DM is to help a player realize their full vision for a character.
-b.- Very important. I like to be able to set the path my character walks down with the understanding that the DM may throw obstacles in the way for my character to overcome.
-c.- Moderately important. I don't mind if the DM decides to take my character down an entirely different path as long as the DM lets me know that I have the option of sticking with my own original plans as well.
-d.- Minimally important. I'm happy to let the DM have free reign over what happens to my character, I really enjoy the ride!


3. This game will be using Theater of the Mind combat. How much will this detract from your enjoyment of combat?
-a.- A great deal. I am a tactician at heart and enjoy the fine detail of a grid-based combat system. Highly tactical combat is among my favorite parts of DnD.
-b.- Somewhat. I prefer a grid battle system when possible, but I don't require it to be available for me to enjoy combat.
-c.- Not much at all. I prefer Theater of the Mind combat

4. Please rate the following on a scale of 1-4. A 1 means you actually dislike doing the activity in a roleplaying game. A 4 means you find it to be one of the main things you like about playing DnD and fantasy roleplaying games in general.


a. Combat
b. Optimizing a character mechanically
c. Creating and thinking up new character concepts
d. Social interactions with NPCs
e. Complex political plotlines centered around gray-area morality and intrigue.
f. Dungeon delving
g. Freeform sandbox gameplay
h. Linear (not railroad) campaign storylines
i. Settlement and stronghold building and similar mechanics.
j. Finding new and more interesting magical items.
k. Freedom to explore the limits of open ended spells and abilities (illuisions and so forth).
l. A game with lots of momentum and regular posting.
m. A game where the PCs are eager to interact with each other through roleplay.
n. Explore new DM introduced game mechanics like factions, crafting systems and so on.

* If there is an aspect of DnD you feel I haven't covered that is important to you, please mention it as well.

Anything beyond this may help, but is not required.