Welcome to the Touch the Sky campaign

Touch The Sky

Geography and Politics

Welcome to the campaign. This game is set in a small town of roughly 700-900 people of which your characters are residents of, or were formerly residents of, or have some connection to, so in that your character would care and be concerned about the state and condition of the town. Maybe not all the people in the town, but definitely some.
The town of Highdale is where the campaign will start. It's also barely created. This is something I would like the players to participate in. As stated above, the size of the town should be roughly 700-900 people. It has its own farm lands immediately surrounding it of various farm animals and vegetation, although corn fields are the main crops that are exported from the town to the rest of the kingdom the town belongs to. It was settled roughly 80 years ago.
Speaking of the kingdom, the town is set near the western border of the Kingdom of Athesal. Its a rather decently sized kingdom covering the southeast corner of the continent of Eolias. Beyond that continent, not much is known, although traders from overseas do show up talking about strange, foreign and exotic lands.
To the west, the Empire of Dradolan rules that half of the continent (rumors say its emperor is a white dragon), while to the north are the loose United Confederacies of Rappwan (several smaller nations that agreed to work together to defend their lands together).
Trouble is brewing between Dradolan and Athesal with both sides accusing the other of striking first between an unfortunate skirmish of forces near a hotly contested diamond mine. This has caused massive troop movements to empty most garrisons, including in your town leaving a skeleton guard force to defend it against any threats.

The Gods

Please default to the standard Forgotten Realms pantheon unless you have a different idea of what the god of war should be then we'll replace it with your idea.

Characters

Each character is required to have some connection of some kind to the town so that they will feel a need to keep it safe. Even if they leave to go on adventures, the town is home. They could be the 3rd generation of the original settlers of the town, or just moved in last year.
Ideas for that connection can be the following:

• Job, such as blacksmith, cobbler, farmer, hunter, town guard, wizard apprentice, clergy, government worker, merchant, baker, waiter at an inn, bartender...
• Familial, such as you left town for whatever reason but your family still resides there and you're back and visiting or returned home because your reason for leaving didn't work out, or you're the mayor's child...
• Any other possibilities?

Because all player characters are from this town, every character will have at least seen every other character in passing, if not a deeper connection. They could be siblings, cousins, best friends, rivals (in good or bad nature), parent/child, or just a regular customer of someone else. This is something you should work together to figure out.
RACES ALLOWED
Race does not determine disposition toward good/evil, but the actions you perform do. Thus, when it comes to the humanoid races, nearly all are not inherently evil. Below is the list of races allowed:

• Human
• Elf
• Dwarf
• Gnome
• Halfling
• Half-Orc
• Half-Elf
• Tiefling
• Dragonborn
• Goliath
• Aasimar
• Orc
• Triton
• Something else? Let's talk.

Although humans are the predominant race, plenty of races exist as well. Enough time has passed since the Kingdoms/Empires formed that the typical geographical origins of some races (such as forests for elves or mountains for dwarves) have blended up.
ALL CLASSES ALLOWED...obviously. Please start your character at level 2. This means that every character has had some experience of some kind. It won't be much. It can be as simple as you are a bartender but have run into goblin war parties a couple times and have learned how to fight (Fighter), or have been with your church and have made your connection with your god/goddess and have helped the town with numerous issues with your spells (Cleric), or other such things. It could be completely unrelated to your backstory (like the Cleric helping the town has nothing to do with your parents actually being associated with the local crime organization that you don't agree with) or it could be entirely your background story (like the bartender who lost your best friend during the first fight with the goblin war party and now strive to eliminate local threats when you aren't working at the Frothy Scabbard). Subclasses though...unsure. Talk to me about your character and the desired subclass you're hoping for. It should be fine but there are so many...
Also, CHECK DnD Beyond for homebrew subclasses and backgrounds. Please get my permission on any you may find interesting, but there are a plethora of ideas there.
CREATION
Ability Scores...use the array or roll...hmm, asking you all now. In DnD Beyond, use the following settings when starting your character:

• Choose all sources by Rick & Morty
• Choose Optional Class Features, but I'll let you decide
• Advancement Type: Milestone. (Gonna try this route again)
• Hit Point Type: MANUAL (lets get that in place at the beginning this time)
• Use Encumbrance but ignore coin weight. I think I ignored encumbrance in the last campaign but I'm going to try to pay attention to it this time.

Homebrew rules I will implement

• Potions: Consume as a full action gets max healing. Consume as a bonus action, roll as usual.
• Critical Hits are going to be the max damage for the normal dice roll + an additional dice roll. So, if a long sword critical hits with 1d8, then take 8 and add an additional 1d8. Then add bonuses like strength or dexterity or magic +1. It gives a sense of critical damage being powerful, instead of rolling 2d8 and then rolling double 1's.
• No critical misses. A 1 is an auto miss but nothing crazy happens.
• Natural 20's on skill/ability checks don't necessarily mean magical success. It won't convince a king to give you all his money. It won't allow you to jump 30 feet in the air.
• Considering allowing initiative to use either dexterity or wisdom, as acting is either a physical quickness or perceptive understanding.

PLAYER/DM RESPECT

I don't have to say this as I think we did great last campaign. But I'll just say it again. We're friends or at least friendly. Lets respect one another. Keep topics off of potentially difficult topics like real world issues to avoid bad blood. Avoid talking over others and let everyone have a voice to speak up in the game. And I will surely do everything I can to uphold these for you all.