Player Handbook - How the game will run

This will be the rule document going forward for the campaign. This is a collection of responses from a survey I sent to people I have played with before + decisions I made.
Note: This is an evolving document and not a final decision, this willconstantly change as we move the campaign forward.

Out of game

Music?

• People seem to mostly want fight music + background ambience music, we will try with more music and see how it goes.

  Non-core book content? 3rd party book monsters, subclass options, spells, etc...

• Yes, everyone is on board with this.
• Any 3rd party content that is used (other than explicitly approved) must be approved by DM

  Map?

• We're going to try Foundry. I would love to have a physical map, but it would either be a single map with drawn lines or I could not keep up with the cost and time associated with full diagrams of every single map. Maybe in the future!

  Play cadence?

• We have a mix of bi-weekly and weekly. We will start bi-weekly to work with both, this can change as we go forward.

  (Virutal) Cameras while playing?

• The majority of answers was "Maybe" here, so its something we should discuss and decide on in session 0.

In game

  Character Stats/Building?

• Most responses want to continue how we did in the last campaign.
• 17 15 13 12 10 8 + your first ASI must be a feat.

  Flanking rules?

• Seems like people are saying no/maybe. We will leave it out for now, if people want it then we can discuss adding it as a mechanic.

  Should meta-game talking be allowed between characters? (I want to use X on X, move out of the way! (Without mind linking spells etc..))

• I think the majority here agrees, yes but at a minimum. Also anything said out loud during combat will be assumed in character (if combat related) meaning the enemies will also know your turn to turn decisions and plans.

  Should magical items be easily accessible (in shops etc)?

• Everyone agrees that large shops should have options, but not even close to everything, I will work on specific item lists for specific shops to make it easy.

  Using health potions?

• Everyone here agrees the best way to handle this is to have drinking of health potions as a BONUS ACTION.
• Administering a health potion will be an ACTION. Drinking of all other potions will be a ACTION.

Inspiration?

• Inspiration was a ton of differing responses, and accurate to how I feel on the subject. I don't want it to be specific to "I RPed well" or "something my character would do", play however you want, I don't want one person getting more into it and getting much more in game benefits if thats not what another player wants to get during the game. Needs to be discussed and decided during session 0.
• (Virutal) Nat 1s give inspiration but you can't use it on the roll it happened on. Pool of only 1.

  Death saves?

• We're going to change it up here and have the player making the death save roll privately to themselves and the DM.
• This will introduce more pressure to the characters not down, not knowing how low that counter is to introduce more fear, panic, and quick decisions.

  Crit fails in combat (for both PC/NPC)?

• (Virtual) No, but RP it out, if you want to give yourself a penalty then go ahead for fun

  Resting?

• 1 long rest per day, followed by X amount of short rests per day.
• Long rests take 6 hours of "sleeping" + 2 hours of downtime (can also be sleeping) like being on watch
• Short rests take 1 hour of light downtime (no walking)

  Ship/vehicle combat?

• Seems like something everyone is interested in. Will investigate new systems for running combat like this.

  Injuries on crit hits for PCs and NPCs?

• (Virtual) No, but RP it out, if you want to give yourself a penalty then go ahead for fun

  Supply of specific items?

• I got feedback that was positive on how we did not specifically track arrows, rations, and other things like "coin weight".
• I will continue to avoid tracking this in the future, unless it gets out of hand. (I am carrying 10000 arrows and 90 million gold)

 

How I want the campaign to run/feel as a overarching goal

Go do whatever you want. I built a world with story hooks, characters, locations, and secrets. But I do not want to plan a overarching story that the parties eventually fall down. I want the world and exploration and curiosity to drive the players and characters to want to do these kinds of things on their own. Why does this work this way? Should these people really have this power? How do we help this group we like? What can we do? Should all be questions and answers that will come up and evolve. Now obviously there will be a story, but I don't have it written or planned, this is something that will grow and be decided by everyone playing the game. I want the world to have consciences, you can't just go cutting hands off random people, there was weight to actions and decisions. This will be ever increasingly hard to keep track of with multiple groups and I may have troubles but the plan is to do this the best I can.  

Improvements/feedback

• Martials aren't as fun post level 10 - I will continue to try to improve this with cool magic items and gifts/boons that can give options for combat and roleplaying.
• More dungeon type things - I will try to reimagine what a dungeon is, I think what the "dungeon feeling" is, is more of a connected small set of things that has its own story and location that feels contained.
• Long combats - its a TTRPG problem, but hopefully we can fix this with Foundry automations and characters being invested and focused on combat. When everyone pays lots of attention it goes quite fast.
• Death is too easy to avoid late game - Aaaaaagreed! I will be looking for ways to make this more impactful as we move forward. My initial thoughts are it is more burden to revive stronger characters. Spell level and gold cost. Revive spells will be need to be upcast depending on character strength.
• More RP, less out of character friend discussions - I agree, this is something I can help facilitate as a DM by staying in character more often, but overall is something that lies on the players to work on as well.
• More downtime - Ok :)
• More character backstory inclusion - Ok :)
• More appreciation from the NPCs/World when we do impactful things - Ok :)
• Delving more into world building - Ok :) This should come with using WorldAnvil as a tool to see effects on the world changes as we go forward.
• Players get more into character - I can't ok this, but I can forward the message!

Game specific information

• Madness