Our past session marked the beginning of a new campaign here at Fat Rat Games. This campaign is set in the Forgotten Realms and using the 5e D&D rules (since everyone still seems to be enjoying them). The campaign is starting centered in the area around Daggerford using the map by Mike Schley from Scourge of the Sword Coast. We are not, however, playing that adventure.
Instead, we’re just going with Forgotten Realms as a bit of a backdrop and this map as our playground. We aren’t concerned about staying true to Forgotten Realms’ canon in any fashion whatsoever. Instead, we’re starting with the old “Grey Box” Realms and treating it as a dark and grim, “points of light” type setting with islands of civilization floating in seas of wilderness. The ancient empires of elves and dwarves have fallen and the lands of mankind have not yet grown strong enough to replace them. Even where the dim light of civilization of humanity shines, foul things lurk at its porous edges and may even hide in plain sight amongst those very lights of civilization. Our Forgotten Realms will become a thing of its own…which is, in my opinion, what every campaign should do!
Our “theme” for the player characters is something along the lines of “mercenaries with hearts of gold.” We are not going with an outright heroic campaign this time around. Instead, my analogy was something like the crew of the Serenity from Firefly…as a whole, not your goody two-shoes nor black-hearted villains.
The cast of characters include:
- Adran Amakir: A half-elf draconic sorcerer played by RJ.
- Bran Lackman: A halfling barbarian played by Todd.
- Drusilia Moonwhisper: A high elf ranger played by Muse.
- Luther Brightbriar: A half-elf warlock (Great Old One patron) played by Andrew who is a new player joining us.
- Rory: A half-elf rogue played by Rachel.
- Sabrina: A half-elf ranger played by Bridgett (when she can join us).
- Strik: A half-orc cleric of Shar played by Thomas.
For a campaign setting where humans vastly outnumber demi-humans, that sure is a lot of demi-humans. 😉
There is an initial plot hook that I’m “requiring” that the players buy into but after that, we’ll just see where things go. The hook, which was not shared before character creation or the first session, is that one of the PCs (who had to be human or half-elf) is going to have the opportunity to inherit a keep of some sort. They came across this plot hook in the initial session and it is Adran who had an uncle recently pass away. Yes, for those who remember it, this is the premise from an old Dungeon Magazine adventure, “The Inheritance,” and I’m shamelessly employing it here.
The writeup of the first session will follow later this week.