Bard’s Gate towers over the center of the world. The great city-state, built around a bridge crossing the Stoneheart River, has maintained a strategic position as an independent trade hub for centuries, ensuring protection from and friendly relations with the surrounding kingdoms and borderlands.
Despite a series of mysterious invasions and tragedies befalling the city over the last generation, its inhabitants maintain their cosmopolitan and optimistic attitude, positioning the city as a center for commerce, learning, and the arts, with faraway visitors from up and down the Stoneheart, and East and West along the Tradeway that crosses the city.
For some reason or another, you now find yourself here, in Bard’s Gate. You may be a visitor, to whom the city’s walls have just appeared over the horizon, or a lifelong resident that grew up within them. Perhaps you intend to make a living here, or you are just passing through on your way to some other destination. Either way, as the Sun rises on this cool autumn morning, and the city wakes around, beginning to burst in activity, you get the feeling that the possibilities are endless.
I'm looking for one player (for now) to embark on a fantasy adventure in an open world of sword and sorcery. By default, we will be using a simple home-brewed system based on Old-School D&D, with character progression based on PF1e. Mechanically speaking, you just need to roll some die for stats (4d6 drop lowest, and assign to abilities as you wish), choose a fantasy race (we can make any PF race work), and begin as an untrained, class-less adventurer. Based on your interests, and the training and learning your character chooses too undertake during the game, you will be able to gain all kinds of different class abilities, from combat experience to magic. If you have a strong preference for playing a particular system, I can also take this into account.
Freedom and exploration will be emphasized: Your story will depend on your characters goals and activities, although I will offer lots of hooks for adventure so that you never feel like there is nothing to do.
Narratively, I'm going for an atmospheric and somewhat melancholic tone, inspired by 80s gamebooks, dungeon synth music, Zork, and fairy tales. I'm looking for a player who is interested in the aesthetic and narrative aspect of text-based RPs as well as the gamey adventuring of a D&D game. The setting I'm using is Frog God Games' Lost Lands, which is a pretty generic sword & sorcery world meant to be a canvas for us to build on.
Old-School RPGs often place an emphasis on clever problem-solving and avoiding combat, which is often dangerous. I will try to maintain this spirit as a GM while leaving space for us to go in narrative depth into your character and the world. Still, it will be helpful for your character to be cautious while adventuring, especially before they have grown in power.
Reply here or DM me if you're interested, and feel free to submit a character or include a writing sample if you'd like :)