Niya-Yur DnD 5e Campaign Getting Started

Niya-Yur is an expansive world with over 30 years of world-building. It started as an unnamed city using the AD&D Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, TSR Module A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity, and TSR Module B2 The Keep on the Borderlands in 1980. In the first few years, it grew with a handful of other modules, a mixing in of other RPG rules that felt fun and right, and Cities of Harn giving us more cities to travel to and better maps. We also added World of Greyhawk map which we immediately started changing as the campaign went around the realms.
During the Christmas holidays of 1983, our group got together and organized our notes. We tossed out a lot of random sheets of notes and I took over (was volunteered) as full-time DM for the group. My friends gave me their character sheets, background notes, and hand-drawn maps. Over the summer of 1984, I combined all the materials and playtested some elements with my friends. We played or talked about AD&D practically every day, all day, when we couldn't get together in person I ran individuals through the game one at a time over the phone. It was so bad my parents called the phone company and had the operators listen in to be sure I was alive since all they got was a busy signal. (In case you don't know how phones worked in the before time. They were one person to one person with no voice mail, and you could only move about six feet, which was how far you could stretch the phone cord if you wanted to keep talking otherwise you stopped talking, put the phone down to get at something further away. Crazy but true. Apparently, the operators were alternately amused or horrified by what they heard. I can only imagine some poor phone operator tapping in to hear us describing cutting up a goblin or trying to figure out what spell components were needed to destroy an obstacle. Frankly, I'm surprised the police or child protective services weren't called in.)
That summer was when I came up with a hidden Easter Egg (well we didn't call them Easter Eggs back then, but that is another story) that the Niya-Yur world and universe would be in a far future from our Earth. I spent hundreds of hours organizing and researching histories at the library. (That is another thing, no Internet! Insane yes?) I found some really interesting ideas and tie-ins that let me assemble the fictional and real histories together into a complete world and single timeline. I decided magic was some kind of unknown energy source that was mostly missing on our Earth and then built an excuse to make it more abundant in the future. The ideas around how things worked were inspired by the books Nine Princes in Amber, Lord of Light, and World of Tiers. With Niya-Yur far in the future from modern-day Earth, I could have high-tech and magic in one place. Over the years as I went through advanced physics classes at University I consulted the professors on some ideas and adjusted the rules enough to match the speculative possibilities.
With the story of how it came to be, I ran many groups on campaigns that lasted years at a stretch. There were many weekends when I was in the Navy where everyone would come to my apartment Friday evening and we'd play AD&D nonstop till Sunday afternoon when we had to stop in order to get enough rest to report back to duty Monday. I believe there have been about nine separate extended campaigns running for six months or more with various groups. Four of my player groups figured out they were in the future and every time it was a brilliant OMG moment.
Even from the very beginning, we expanded our gaming rules by adding "group agreements" (now called "house rules"). We completely rewrote how magic worked, added in a lot of combat short-cuts, and many other minor changes. Our mid-1980s house rules made our AD&D play look a lot like D&D 5th Edition. There have been groups that played ongoing campaigns for years meeting every single week for four to six hours of play. As part of the 1984 world-building foundation for Niya-Yur, I introduced the immensely popular first house rule: "player actions affect the world and will not be undone by the DM." That rule means that every new campaign in Niya-Yur is usually set a little in the future and the current players may revisit locations or encounter the results of prior campaign player actions. Sometimes discovering caches of incredible treasures or changes left by the earlier players carved in the walls. This rule has forced Niya-Yur to evolve giving it a history unequaled in other role-playing realms. When I wrote my books I naturally used Niya-Yur as the setting.
The history and physics of Niya-Yur make a number of interesting elements for players to discover and play with. As much as possible I try to allow the 5e elements to work as written. The results may be the same but the effects or physics are not what the players think they are. Usually, this is okay. However, there are times when I cannot find a way to map to some of the D&D elements, locations, spells, or races to Niya-Yur. This does trip players up at times when something doesn't work as expected. I try to keep that to a minimum. So far, with some imagination and cooperation, we have been able to find a way to mimic the general effects or customize the results to fit.

Niya-Yur Gotchas

1. The largest gotcha with Niya-Yur is the lack of the D&D elemental planes. This means there are no other planes to summon demons, spirits, or elementals from. All the spells and artifacts that deal with such elements have to be recrafted to provide most, if not all, of the playable results. When we hit something truly world reality-breaking there can be issues achieving the results players have in mind for their characters. As we expand our usage of 5e these elements will be written up in the campaign setting descriptions with a breakdown of how it breaks the world, and exactly what is different from 5e rules as written. For an excellent example of this check out the Find Familiar spell .
2. The D&D flattened skill system is too flat and the whole tool kit concept simply breaks Leeland's brain even considering it. We are currently working on an easy to use adjustment to the skills system that will work with all the D&D 5e automation tools out there by leveraging the rules as written with some descriptive and roll adjustments. See Niya-Yur Skills for Specialists for the whole system.

Playing in the Niya-Yur Campaign

Requirements

At a minimum players must have read a copy (physical or electronic) of the D&D basic rules. These are available in a number of forms both free and paid (see Getting Started below for details.) You must also have a personal computer with an internet connection. Finally, you need a willingness to explore your imagination.
I highly recommend getting a comfortable headset or earbuds to help prevent echo and improve audio quality while playing online with us. In fact, it is almost a requirement, but the built-in audio on most laptops is good enough to start. You will also benefit from getting a notepad (if you have the means a Dingbat hardcover journal is my go-to-all-time-favorite (TM)) and a good pen/pencil (my personal favorites are the Papermate Ink joy 700RT and the Pentel Twist-Erase GT, 0.7mm, Mechanical Pencil are my all-time must-haves) to jot down ideas and notes during the game so you don't forget.

Campaign Technology Tools

The Niya-Yur Campaigns are run using:

• Dungeon and Dragons 5^th Edition
• Discord for Audio
• Fantasy Grounds for virtual tabletop (character tracking, combat, dice, maps, etc.), and reference sharing of the D&D books rule books paid for by Leeland.+
• World Anvil for world documentation and references
• Streamlabs to stream to Twitch.tv and record for publishing to YouTube.com

Getting Started

To join the Niya-Yur Campaign you need to do the following steps.

1. Install Discord for your laptop for all remote games. (Please use headphones for audio quality.)
2. Connect to Leeland's Discord server using the invite link sent to you in your new player email.
3. Create a Fantasy Grounds free account and Install the Fantasy Grounds Unity demo application (you do not need to purchase the standard edition you can play and do everything in this campaign using the free demo versions, but you will need a free Fantasy Grounds account.)
4. Connect to the Niya-Yur campaign using your Fantasy Grounds application and free account.
5. When you first join on FantasyGrounds you will need to go to the "modules" options in the campaign set up and load all the player's references.
6. Get a copy of the Dungeon and Dragons 5^th Edition player's rules. You can access the full D&D 5e Player's Handbook via the Fantasy Grounds application once you connect to the Niya-Yur Campaign. You may download the free PDF of the official rules from the D&D site at https://dnd.wizards.com/articles/features/basicrules. If you want a physical copy of the rules the only book required is the Players Hand Book, available from Amazon online (click here to goto Amazon.com). For even more details there are other reference books, articles, and there is even an online free Open Gaming License Systems Reference Document (SRD) published by the D&D group directly.
7. You should read the following items from the official rules or Players Handbook:
   1. The Introduction
   2. Skip Part 1 Character Creation for now.
   3. Read Part 2 Playing the Game, specifically chapter 7 Using Ability Scores, Chapter 8 Adventuring, and Chapter 9 Combat.
   4. If you want to play a spell slinger (Wizard, healer, etc.) also read Chapter 10 Spell Casting.
   5. Now go back and just quick read/browse through Part 1 Creating a Character
   6. If you want to use magic browse the spell lists for the various classes and think about what kind of character you want to play.
   7. Starting off will always be a level 1 character not multi-classed. If you feel up to it create your character in the Fantasy Grounds application in the Niya-Yur campaign. If you want a pre-made character to just start take one that is open or ask for help and I'll provide one.
8. Browse the World Anvil site for Niya-Yur. If you have questions bring them or email me and ask.
9. Why not add some random traits to your character? I suggest one from each table (two if you feel inspired) from my Character Trait Tables and then you can try to role-play them slowly discarding the ones that don't work. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/niya-yur-lartra/a/character-trait-tables-article
10. Watch some tutorials on YouTube for Fantasy Grounds and D&D. I recommend these to start:
    1. Gencon 2020 Fantasy Grounds Character and Combat Demo - this shows the latest version and a lot of the functionality of Fantasy Grounds.
    2. Fantasy Grounds Tutorial: Character Creation - Fantasy Grounds Master Series This is a little dated and the character manager has been replaced by the character creation wizard which is a little green button bottom right on the character manager.
    3. Ginny Di's 10 Things DMs wish players knew before playing D&D I really like Ginny Di she makes really good videos on roleplaying.
    4. Ginny Di's POV Healer Interview for a player A fantastic set of questions to consider answering about your character that will make roleplaying more fun. You might enjoy watching Ginny Di interview herself with the same video with some editing as she had her own character answer the questions in character.
    5. Ginny Di's Villain interview for players More questions to answer in character to build... well character. And of course Ginny Di interviewed her own character if you are interested. (Did I mention I like Ginny Di's D&D videos?)
    6. Ginny Di's 10 tips to be less selfish roleplayer
    7. Coddy Lewis Taking20 's 5 Tips to bring a better player
    8. Coddy Lewis Taking20 's Best Mundane Common Items in Dungeons and Dragons 5e
    9. Coddy Lewis Taking20 's Be a Better Dungeons and Dragons Roleplayer with these 7 Roleplay Tips and Tricks
    10. Ginny Di's 10 tips for shy roleplayers and actually these are good for all new players.

Available Player Character Races

Not all of the D&D 5e races can be found on Niya-Yur. Players are further limited to the "playable" races listed below.

• Dwarf (Hill)
• Dwarf (Mountain)
• Elf (High)
• Elf (Forrest)
• Gnome (Forrest)
• Gnome (Rock)
• Goblin (Rat Keeper)
• Goblin (Trap Maker)
• Goblin (Wolf Rider)
• Halfling (Lightfoot)
• Halfling (Stout)
• Human (all sorts)
• Yhatnar (Tilishna)
• Yhatnar (Vindrial)

House Rules

#1 Player Characters are a part of Niya-Yur.

Players have a direct impact on the world of Niya-Yur. If they build a building, burn a city, kill someone, save a kingdom, or any other action those changes become a permanent part of the history of Niya-Yur. Therefore, I will prevent massive self-destructive actions "just for the fun of it" or "hey it is just a game." I generally expect players to be heroic and their characters to worry about surviving and thriving.

#2 When leveling up new spell slots, additional ability bonuses, and additional HP are immediately available. However, new spells, skills, and other items requiring training and study cannot be added until following the DMG downtime and a training fee (both dependent on level) to actually finish leveling up.

Note, some characters can get the necessary training materials and work on them during downtimes during the campaign. Characters can study books before bed, martial artists can spar and do training exercises, rogues can practice with party members or have hard-to-pick locks they keep trying to get, etc. If this is the case you have to declare what you want when you get to the next level and ensure you have gotten the necessary instructions and materials to practice as you travel.

#3 We are playing D&D 5e rules as written from PHB, DMG, and MM. Any other feats, rules, or items from other sources must be reviewed and approved that they fit into Niya-Yur.

The game is set in the worlds and lands of Niya-Yur which is an established custom campaign setting also used in the published fantasy and science-fiction books by Leeland Artra. There are some D&D 5e items that do not fit with the defined campaign setting. The most impactful item is there are no alternate planes of reality and there are no spirits or elementals that can be summoned per se. That being said those effects may have a Niya-Yur alternative. For example, see the Find Familiar spell.

#4 Leeland's Specialized Skills homebrew rules are applied to all characters of Niya-Yur.

See Skills for Specialists details for how this affects character skill abilities. You should especially pay attention to this before making any assumptions about skill usage per the rules as written 5e ability and skill checks.

#5 Spellcasters chose their own arcane focus object (wand, orb, silver ankh, gold cross, etc.)

Arcane focuses should better reflect the tone and background of the type of magic being done and the backstory of the characters. Hence you may choose something that's extremely important or symbolic to the caster, but it can't be something ridiculous. DM gets the final say on if the focus is appropriate and allowed.

#6 Death saves are done by the DM in secret to everyone.

No one knows how bad a downed character is until someone can actually check and help stabilize them. This adds a lot of tension to the game when characters drop and the rest of the party is unsure if they should save their friend or if they have enough time to finish the encounter. It keeps everyone on their toes in dangerous situations.

#7 Leveling up after you roll for additional hit points you may choose to take the roll, use the suggested average number, or re-roll one more time (taking the roll).

Talk about tension building, it is like being on the Price Is Right and having to choose to change your door.

#8 IF PROPERLY PREPARED using a consumable or handing it off to another party member is a bonus action.

The consumable has to be in a quick stopper container or in some other way made it easy to grab and use. Feeding a consumable to another character is always an action regardless of the preparations.

#9 Critical hits (natural 20 attack roll) automatically do max damage.

This helps make crits feel more impactful and honestly, epic. I do have critical hit charts from many different gaming sources and real-world research. If appropriate or at request, I will use them instead. For all characters, a critical hit is defined as rolling a natural 20 on a d20. Some classes get critical hits on 18, 19, or 20 depending on their level.

#10 Rolling a natural 20 is always a success.

The DM will not allow the impossible like a low strength character to rip open an iron-bolted door. But, maybe their efforts will cause the key in the lock to fall or a secret cache will break revealing the locking mechanism, etc.

#11 Rolling a 1 or 20 (fumble or critical hit) on initiative means the character's first action will be with advantage or disadvantage respectively.

Why waste a critical or fumble?

#12 Fumbles (natural 1 attack roll) in combat makes the fumbling character open to their opponent's immediate reaction use to make an attack of opportunity against them.

A fumble table may be used by request. This applies to both players and NPCs.

#13 Before combat starts players may delay their initiative actions to take place after another party member or swap initiative rolls with another party member.

This allows parties to better coordinate and encourages working together instead of as individuals.

#14 Stealth rolls, in general, will be done via Dice Tower (or in secret) for passive detection checks and the DM will recheck in secret at the moment of possible detection.

Stealth is not an on/off switch. The characters always think they are moving stealthily. Characters trained in stealth, sneaking, and concealment may make a concealment check to determine how effective they really are. If a stealth roll is failed by more than 3 points or is a natural 1 the DM will inform the players of the failure (e.g. "you are easing the door open and a gust of wind yanks it from you slamming it open with a loud boom.")

#15 “I have a thing for that” rule.

Players may spend a point of inspiration to “remember” their character purchases a mundane item. This also works in the form of “I know someone for that” which allows a player to spend inspiration to describe a contact who can help with the current situation.

#16 Failure checks may be retried with a penalty or at disadvantage and will have a negative consequence associated with subsequent success.

There are times when a failed check is dire to the party or a major setback for the campaign. Players can ask to re-check but they'll be told what their choice means. Some examples:

Athletics

You successfully swing on the chandelier, but suffer a level of exhaustion.

Investigation

You manage to search the desk and find the hidden compartment, but you knock a vase to the ground, alerting enemies in the next room.

Deception

They’ll go along with your lie, but only for a bribe or a favor in return.

#17 Characters gain a level of exhaustion at end of combat if they failed a death-save during that combat.

There are always consequences.

#18 Characters may learn additional languages up to the number of Intelligence bonus points they have at a rate of one language per level.

The characters have to find or buy a language primer or hire a tutor and study with the learning resource at least four times a week during their long rest periods. Tutors may give lesson scrolls to study for character "excursions out of town."

#19 If the bard uses vicious mockery and their insult makes me laugh out loud, the target gets no saving throw.

The bard earned it.

#20 Luck.

In the world of Niya-Yur, just like real life, there is luck. Except in Niya-Yur, there is more magic around so it is a bit more obvious.
A character’s Luck ability score is equal to 10 + level.
Luck checks are d20 + ability score modifiers and their results vary but are always at the DM’s discretion. Players should be wary of relying too much on good fortune. Characters receive a number of “chance” points they can use to request Luck checks (a number of times per in-game week equal to their Luck modifier). Each time Luck is used this way it is temporarily reduced by 1 and does not recover until the next week (for Luck).

Difficulty	Luck DC	Luck Example
Likely	10	There’s a discarded simple weapon buried in the dirt of the cage you’ve been thrown in!
Unlikely	14	A merchant has the uncommon mundane item you are looking for.
Rare	18	The falling portcullis that is supposed to trap the party while the guards slaughter them has rusted so bad it closes slowly enough the entire party can escape and it won't re-open for the pursuers!
Unbelievable	22	A merchant has the rare item you are looking for.
Ridiculous	26	A party member stumbles into a hidden lever that drops a massive block killing the entire horde of attackers and then cracks open enough to let the party pass into the now broken open vault!
Impossible	30	A merchant has the exact extremely rare item you need to stop the villain.