The following is a draft of an email describing a D&D campaign I might run sometime. Some Background Information (Not In Complete Sentences) ============================ Island. Human empire, founded about five hundred years ago. Elven forest, very elven, don't like outsiders. Lotsa undead, very nasty, wandering zombies at night sometimes, stay inside. Repeat, undead very bad. No orc/halfling/gnome towns, undead too nasty. Most races live in human cities instead. Terrain: temperate spooky. Rivers blah blah, forests blah blah, mountains up north, no swamp, no desert. Humans are big into Pelor (good at turning undead), and most gods are worshipped to some extent. Necromancy (the school of magic) is banned, punishable by death, then decapitation, then burning, then Burial Blessing and liberal sprinklings of holy water to make sure you don't come back as some sort of lich. Government is by king; the clerics, particularly the clerics of Pelor, have a major say in the process, but Pelor seems to discourage them from trying to actually rule. There are about five major human cities; I could list details but you don't really care. Learn in-game, more fun that way. Character Planning =================== The campaign will be a fairly cohesive one, in which the party tries to accomplish a single objective. Combat will occur frequently, and the characters will not always have the luxury of seeking out their enemies at their own pace. Please build a character who will be useful in combat; expecting your allies to defend you is a disservice to them, and additionally will get you less experience. Rogues and bards are explicitly forbidden. Also, wizards may face some unique disadvantages early in the campaign. Undead are quite common in the world of this campaign; please plan your character accordingly. Clerics and paladins, with their turn undead ability, will be useful. No restrictions are explicitly placed on your character's alignment. However, this is not a Paranoia game; inter-party bickering will be frowned upon. Please create a character that will like and respect the other party members (potentially including paladins), and will be liked and respected by them. Details ======== Please generate characters at fourth level (with 8000 experience). Use 28-point point buy to generate your stats (described on DMG p20, or in 28pt.txt). Don't roll dice for hit points, either; instead, take the average result (rounded up) for each hit die. (So, a fourth-level fighter with a 10 CON would have 10+6+6+6=28 HP.) Characters will have the standard 5400 gold with which to purchase magic items. Characters with the appropriate item crafting feats may _not_ spend experience when crafting items. Rather than paying 50% of a crafted item's price in gold and 4% of its price in experience, characters will pay 70% of the item's price in gold and no experience. (This is equivalent to buying extra experience at the standard rate of 5gp per point.) It is unlikely that characters will be able to use item creation feats during the campaign. Knowledge skills will be rewarded. Information on certain events may be available only to those with a certain number of ranks in a knowledge skill (no check required). Examples of knowledge skills that might be useful include (but are not limited to) Knowledge: undead, Knowledge: history, Knowledge: local, Knowledge: religion, and Knowledge: arcana. All sourcebooks that I have read are potentially canon for this campaign. This includes the three core books, the five class-based expansions, Magic of Faerun, and Manual of the Planes, but not the Psionics books or anything that was released after that. (If your favorite sourcebook isn't here, and you want it badly enough to buy/lend me a copy, we can certainly talk about that.) Certain classes and spells (notably Spikes, Miasma, and Polyother) may be subject to errata. If I discover a need to errata something that you have already incorporated into your character, I will permit you to rearrange your character as necessary so as not to penalize you for being effective. Custom character classes, spells, et cetera, are possible but discouraged: I prefer that you discover new spells and classes rather than create them. The policy on such things is, you send me a general idea of what you want, and I send you back the exact numbers. Logistics ========== So, you read through all that, and you're still interested? Great! Type up a character sheet online and send it to me. I will make copies and print them out before each session. Examples of the format I prefer are available online at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dkb1/dnd/fendel.txt http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dkb1/dnd/menet.txt http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dkb1/dnd/yennu.txt Please be detailed about your character's equipment; this will be important for reasons that may become clear in-game. Characters that do not have any clothing on their character sheet run the risk of being taken at their word. In addition to the sorts of things on those sheets, you should send me an idea of where your character will be going during the next few levels. Like, tell me what classes you're planning to take and what weapons/spells/techniques you plan to use in combat. This is mostly for your protection: it would suck if you spent five levels building towards a prestige class and then found out that class didn't exist in this world. You should also send me some sort of a character background, enough for me to get some idea of your character's personality. Roleplaying positive traits is much harder than roleplaying negative ones; they will be rewarded proportionately.