Adventurers' Almanac

Character Creation

If you're brand new to role-playing games...

The character you're about to create is many things at once. They are a protagonist in the story we'll be telling together, their goals and drives changing the world as the world changes them. They are a role you'll embody at the table, performing or narrating their dialogue like an improvisational actor. They are a game piece, their skills and abilities playing out in session encounters and tense fights against monsters and bandits. And, depending on how into this you get, they are ways of exploring and expressing parts of yourself in cathartic and therapeutic ways.  

So how do we do this?

Don't be intimidated by the process. This edition of D&D (the 5th) is very easy to create characters for. There are lots of tools online that can help, but the ones here work especially nicely with the software we'll be using to play. Tinker around with the tools here. Make a few test characters and daydream some backstories for them.   If this is your first time playing, it is your God-given right to make an angst-ridden orphan, looking for revenge against the brigand who burned down your village.

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START HERE

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World Primer

There's plenty you'll discover in this world as your character adventures through it, but here are a few things to have in the back of your mind as a player, even if your character doesn't happen to know them.

Setting Basics

We'll be playing in a medieval/fantasy world with trappings familiar if you know The Lord of the Rings, the Witcher, Wheel of Time, The Name of the Wind, and their relatives. Don't worry if you're not intimately acquainted with all of these sources. No special knowledge is required to play in our game.

In this world, the flavor of cultures is similar to those from the Late Middle Ages in Europe and the Abbasid Caliphate in the Levant. It's a world where communication is slow, and travel slower. All music is live. All books are analog. Nights are lit by fire, moonlight, magic, or not at all. Towns and cities are few and far.

Arcane magic exists, but it is rare, achieved through intensive study, uncommon inheritance, or dear cost. If you wind up playing as an arcane magic user, you may expect to be feared by common folk, distrusted by burghers, or exploited by the ruling class. Divine magic, which is more common, is another story. Playing as a paladin or cleric may earn you different attitudes from those you encounter in your travels, and they may look to you for pastoral guidance or healing.

But maybe you're saying right now, "hol' up. Arcane? Divine?... What?" That's fine. Think about how conservative Christians often had a problem with Harry Potter, but they were fine with Narnia. Harry Potter is arcane magic; Narnia is divine magic. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

The Name Ard Tala

This is the name of the regions that together make up the known world. It means "gathered lands" in some ancient tongue. While a fair number of its valleys and rolling fields have been settled and cultivated, most of Ard Tala is still wild and hidden under dense forest canopy or the fog banks of mountain peaks. As for what lies beyond the known world, there is only the scattered reports of nomadic traders or the rumors of madmen and liars.

Calendar Year

Cathedral Reckoning: One thousand, one hundred, seventy-nine years ago, Medhevan masons laid the cornerstone of the Cathedral of the White Rose, marking the first year of the present era. This Cathedral Reckoning (C.R.) is the calendar observed by the Church of the Awakened and the human nobility of the southeast of Ard Tala, who hold the year to be 1179 C.R.

Years After the Transit: Chroniclers and scholars from all races, across Ard Tala, are much more likely to count the year from the ancient transit of the Dark Star, the culturally traumatic celestial event that marked the complete uprooting of the mythical memories of Ard Tala's peoples and their acclimation to a new world entire. There are few records of those early centuries, as well as some dispute over just how many years have passed since then, especially among human scholars, but it is generally accepted that we currently live in the year 3914 A.T. (after the transit).

Who's Here?

Our world is populated by the races given in the D&D Player's Handbook. Nothing revolutionary there, but here is a little background on the reputations these races have among the others and the broad strokes of their place in the scheme of things.

Humans are relative newcomers to Ard Tala, arriving from regions unknown around four thousand years ago and spreading quickly across the known world. Many settled down in fertile valleys or at the edges of bountiful woods, where they laid out acres of farmland and built forts and castles. Some went north, to live nomadic lives on the wide tundra and track mammoth across glaciers. Still others went west, called by weird whispers and dark dreams.

The Elves are the elder folk of the world. They alone of all the world's people remember the ages before the moon was in the sky, and before the year turned in seasons. Among them are one subrace characterized by permanence—the high elves—and three characterized by change—the wood elves, the moon elves (drow), and the sea elves.

The Dwarves