Genius Hour 2.1

Dungeons and Dragons: *spoiler-free for Allie and Hannah

Greetings fellow adventurers! This Genius Hour I will be teaching myself the ins and outs of Dungeons and Dragons, and teaching my players how the game works. I'll be functioning as the game's Dungeon Master, which is quite a demanding role considering the intricacies of the game. I will be in charge of creating an entire fantasy world for my players to explore. The world will be filled with lore and potential adventures, and I will be guiding my players through whatever decisions they make.

As for my players, the first thing I needed to do was find a group of nerds such as myself that were curious about the game. I then sat down with each player and we created a character for them to role play throughout the campaign. I used this as a tool to gauge what the players want from the game. The character creation process is somewhat complicated, so I won't be detailing the full process in this blog post. The basic premise is you create a creature, choose their adventuring class, make a backstory, and roll for their basic stats.

The Characters:

Snargog, played by Hannah, is a rock gnome and a wizard. His specialty of magic is necromancy, although is is weak right now because all characters are level 1. He is from the city of Larkbog, which was mostly comprised of other gnomes and small creatures, and has a pet mastiff named Blarkog. He has a mysterious and haunted past that motivates him to hunt monsters to find redemption.

Nyssaddi Immek, played by Allie, is a dragonborn fighter. Her military background and upraising in the military outpost of Blackridge leads her to be a warrior of legends and a local hero. However, she has grown tired of military life and is on leave to wander the nation in search of her next battle.

Xanaphia Amastacia, played by Rachel Bell, is an elven druid. She spends most of her time in seclusion in the woods between the town of Port Swordbreak and the Baldare Mountains. She spends most of her time communing with nature, but has been known to step in and protect the town from hostile mountain monsters. This has giver her the nickname "The Watcher" in Port Swordbreak and has left her somewhat of a town legend.

For locations and the world as a whole, I decided to start pretty small and simple for beginning. My descriptions of the world may seem a little much to those unfamiliar with the game, but they are nothing compared to some resources I've looked at.

The nation the adventure will be taking place in is the Wayrand Empire in the world of Calterra. The Empire has only been around for about 100 years and was created after a successful uprising against the previous Amakiir Dynasty. Aesir Wayrand, commander of the rebels, pushed the oppressive and elitist previous Dynasty north to the unforgiving lands of Wintervale. Even in current times, there is an ongoing border war between the old Dynasty and the Empire.

Besides the northern border and the Fey Wilds, the rest of the country is fairly safe and at peace. The Empire is run by a human monarchy, with local elected officials that report to the crown. Being a fairly new nation, there is still some Royal Guard presence in some towns with possible old Dynasty sympathizers. The nation has active industry fueling the northern war efforts, some sea ports for trading, and the capitol city of Venzor holds an illustrious magic academy.

Magic in this world is fairly common and is known to be the remnants from when the old gods lived on this plane. Magic users are esteemed in more rural areas, but not so much in cities, Most of the nation has a favorable view of the government, being a much needed reprieve from the restrictive old Dynasty. The elite of the old Dynasty, dark elves, moon elves, and silver dragonborn, are regarded with suspicion in most areas.

And that's all I have for world building this week. Next week I will be preparing for our first session of gameplay, which will be released Genius Hour 2.3. If you want to learn more about D&D, some of the resources I used were dndbeyond.com, a character building website and forum, The Adventure Zone, a D&D podcast I used to familiarize myself with playing, the official D&D rulebook set, and Critical Role, a Youtube channel of a bunch of professional voice actors and D&D players with very advanced and complicated campaigns.