crit-role-ideas

[crit-role-ideas]

Help Save the World of TTRPGs and Their Creators.

Okay I’m being a little dramatic, but at the same time I’m pretty serious. This is a call to action, and the livelihoods of myself and lots of other people, many of them (like myself) disabled, are depending on it. This is a post about why, what you can do about it, and (perhaps least often answered) how.

This post is actually an accompaniment to another discussion by someone else. If you don’t want to listen to a 90-minute in-depth discussion of much of what I’m about to tell you, you can just keep reading. Otherwise, click here or here and listen to this either before or after you read this post. (They’re the same thing, just different sources.)

If you have ever made or reblogged posts urging people to switch from Google Chrome to Firefox, you should be willing to at least give a try to other TTRPGs besides D&D5e for much the same principle reasons. I’m not telling you you have to hate D&D5e, and I’m not telling you you have to quit D&D5e, I’m just asking you to try some other games. If you don’t like them, and you really want to go back to D&D5e, then go back to D&D5e. But how can you really know you won’t like other games if you have literally never tried them? This post is a post about why and how to try them. If you’re thinking right now that you don’t want to try them, I urge you to look below to see if any of your reasons for not wanting to try them are covered there. Because the monopoly that WotC’s D&D5e has on TTRPGs as a whole is bad for me as a game designer, and it’s bad for you as a game player. It’s even bad for you if you like D&D5e. A fuller discussion of the why and how this is the case can be found in the links above, but it isn’t fully necessary for understanding this post, it’ll just give you a better perspective on it.

If you’re a D&D5e player, I’m sure at some point or another, you’ve been told “play a different game”, and it must get frustrating without the context of why and how. This post is here to give you the why and how.

[The following paragraph has been edited because the original wording made it sound like we think all weird TTRPGs suck.]

Before that though, one more thing to get out of the way. I'm going to level with you. There’s a lot of weird games out there.

You are gonna see a lot of weird TTRPGs when you take the plunge. Many of them try to completely reinvent what a TTRPG even is, and some fail spectacularly, others really do even up doing something very interesting even if they don't end up being what a core TTRPG player wants. But not every indie RPG is a Bladefish, lots and lots of them are more 'traditional' and will feel very familiar to you, I promise. (And you might even find that you like the weird experimental bladefish type ones, these are usually ideal for one-session plays when your usual group can't play your usual game for any reason.)

You're also going to probably see a lot of very bad games, and man have I got some stories of very bad games, but for now I'm just saying to make sure you read the reviews, or go through curators (several of which will be listed below), before you buy.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to go down a list of concerns you may have for why not, and then explain the how.

“I don’t want to learn a whole new set of rules after I already spent so much time learning D&D5e.”

Learning a new set of rules is not going to be as hard as you think. Most other TTRPGs aren’t like that. D&D5e is far on the high end of the scale for TTRPGs being hard and time-consuming to learn and play. If you’ve only played D&D5e, it might trick you into thinking that learning any TTRPG is an overwhelmingly time-consuming task, but this is really mostly a D&D5e problem, not a TTRPG problem as a whole.

“D&D5e has all of these extra online tools to help you play it.”

So what? People have been playing TTRPGs without the help of computers for 50 years. To play a well-designed TTRPG you won’t need a computer. Yes, even if you're bad at math. There are some TTRPGs out there that barely even use math.

“I’m too invested in the narrative and characters of my group’s current ongoing D&D5e campaign to switch to something else.”

There are other games, with better design made by better people for less money, that are the same kind of game as D&D5e, that your current characters, lore, and plot will fit right into and do it better. And no, it's not just Pathfinder, there's others.

“I can’t afford to play another TTRPG.”

You probably can. If you’ve only played D&D5e, you might have been made to think that TTRPGs are a very expensive hobby. They aren’t. D&D5e is actually uniquely expensive, costing more than 3x more than the next most expensive TTRPG I can think of right now. Even on the more expensive end, other TTRPG books will cost you no more than $60, most will cost you less than $20, and a whole lot of them are just free. If you somehow still can’t afford another TTRPG, come to the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book club mentioned below, nominate the game, and if it wins the vote we will straight up buy it for you.

(By the way, if you had any of the above concerns about trying other games besides D&D5e, that really makes it sound like you are in a textbook abusive relationship with D&D5e. This is how abusers control their partners, and how empires control their citizens, by teaching you to think that nothing could ever get any better, and even though they treat you bad, the Other will treat you even worse.)

“If I don’t play D&D5e, which TTRPG should I play?”

That’s a pretty limited question to be asking, because there will be no one TTRPG for everything. And no, D&D5e is not the one TTRPG for everything, Hasbro’s marketing team is just lying to you. (Pathfinder and PbtA are not the one system for everything either!) Do you only play one video game or only watch one movie or only read one book? When you finish watching an action movie like Mad Max, and then you want to watch a horror movie, do you just rewind Mad Max and watch it over again but this time you act scared the whole time? No, you watch a different movie. I’m asking you to give the artistic medium of TTRPGs the same respect you would give movies.

“I want to play something besides D&D5e, but my friends won’t play anything else!”

I have several answers to this.

Try showing them this post.

If that doesn’t work: Make them. Put your foot down. This works especially well if you are the DM. Tell them you won’t run another session of D&D5e until they agree to give what you want to do at least one try instead of always doing only what they want to do. This is, like, playing 101. We learned this in kindergarten. If your friend really wants to play something else, you should give their game a try, or you’re not really being a very good friend.

If that doesn’t work, find another group. This doesn’t even mean that you have to leave your existing group. A good place to start would be the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club which will be mentioned and linked below. You can also go to the subreddit of any game you’re interested in and probably meet people there who have the same problem you do and want to put together a group to play something other than D&D5e. You might get along great with these people, you might not, but you won’t know until you try. Just make sure to have a robust “session zero” so everyone is on the same page. This is a good practice for any group but it is especially important for a group made of players you’ve just met.

“I only watch actual plays.”

Then watch actual plays of games that aren’t D&D5e. These podcasts struggle for the same reasons that indie RPGs struggle, because of the brand recognition and brand loyalty D&D5e has, despite their merit. I don’t watch actual plays, or else I would be able to list more of them. So, anyone who does watch actual plays, please help me out by commenting on this post with some non-D&D5e actual plays you like. And please do me a favor and don’t list actual plays that only play one non-D&D5e system, list ones that go through a variety of systems. The first one I can think of is Tiny Table.

“I can just homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e.”

Even though I want to, I’m not going to try and argue that you can’t actually homebrew away all the problems with D&D5e. Instead, I’m going to ask you why you’re buying two $50 rulebooks just to throw away half the pages. In most other good RPGs, you don’t need to change the rules to make them fun, they’re fun right out the box.

“But homebrewing D&D5e into any kind of game is fun! You can homebrew anything out of D&D5e!”

Firstly, I promise that this is not unique to D&D5e. Secondly, then you would probably have more fun homebrewing a system that gives you a better starting point for reaching your goal. Also, what if I told you that there are entire RPG systems out there that are made just for this? There are RPG systems that were designed for the purpose of being a toolbox and set of materials for you to work with to make exactly the game you want to make. Some examples are GURPS, Savage Worlds, Basic RolePlaying, Caltrop Core, and (as much as I loathe it) PbtA.

“I’m not supporting WotC’s monopoly because I pirate all the D&D5e books.”

Then you’re still not supporting the smaller developers that this monopoly is crushing, either.

Now, here’s the how. Because I promise you, there’s not just one, but probably a dozen other RPGs out there that will scratch your exact itch.

Here’s how to find them. This won’t be a comprehensive list because I’ve already been typing this for like 3 hours already. Those reading this, please go ahead and comment more to help fill out the list.

First, I’m gonna plug one of my own major projects, because it’s my post. The A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club. It’s a discord server that treats playing TTRPGs like a book club, with the goal of introducing members to a wide variety of games other than D&D5e. RPGs are nominated by members, then we hold a vote to decide what to read and play for a short campaign, then we repeat. There is no financial, time, or schedule investment required to join this book club, I promise it is very schedule-friendly, because we assign people to different groups based of schedule compatibility. You don’t have to play each campaign, or any campaign, you can just read along and participate in discussion that way. And if you can’t afford to buy the rulebook we’re going to be reading, we will make sure you get a PDF of it for free. That is how committed we are to getting non-D&D5e RPGs into people’s hands. Here is an invite link.

Next, there are quite a few tumblr blogs you can follow to get recommendations shown to you frequently.

@indierpgnewsletter

@indie-ttrpg-of-the-day

@theresattrpgforthat

@haveyouplayedthisttrpg

@indiepressrevolution

Plenty of podcasts, journalists, and youtubers out there do in-depth discussions of different systems regularly, a couple I can think of off the top of my head are:

Storyteller Conclave (I’m actually going to be interviewed live on this show on April 10th!)

Seth Skorkowsky

Questing Beast

The Gaming Table

Rascal News

Lastly, you can just go looking. Browse r/rpg, drivethrurpg.com, indie press revolution, and itch.io.

Now, if you really want to support me and my team specifically Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, our debut TTRPG, is going to launch on Kickstarter on April 10th and we need all the help we can get. Set a reminder from the Kickstarter page through this link.

If you’re interested in a more updated and improved version of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy than the free demo you got from our website, there’s plenty of ways to get one!

Subscribe to our Patreon where we frequently roll our new updates for the prerelease version!

Donate to our ko-fi and send us an email with proof that you did, and we’ll email you back with the full Eureka prerelease package with the most updated version at the time of responding! (The email address can be found if you scroll down to the bottom of our website.)

We also have merchanise.

[crit-role-ideas]

Image above found on pinterest

How about some more?

1d10 more plot hook ideas inspired by film

Groundhog Day. Escape a strange encounter that seems to keep restarting in slightly varied ways.

E.T. Help an otherworldly life form return to its own world/realm to prevent it from inadvertently causing escalating mass conflicts.

Jumper. Stop a powerful figure who is enacting a plan to control and prevent others from ever using their own gifts again.

Casino Royale. Covertly enter a high stakes contest to end a villainous plot conducted by one of its participants.

Spider-Man 3. Break free from the mind-altering influence of a powerful but consuming magic item and keep it from those who would enable it to achieve its dark purpose.

The Chronicles of Riddick. Stay out of the hands of an enemy looking to capture you long enough to bring down a genocidal tyrant.

The Dark Knight. End the crime spree of an agent of chaos whose elaborate plots risk vilifying the wrong people even if you succeed.

Watchmen/Civil War. Find out why heroes are being targeted and unite them in time before distrust and differences turns to violence between once-allied factions. 

I, Robot. Investigate a crime being blamed on an unlikely but far too convenient suspect before they and their entire faction face mob justice.

Apocalypto. Escape captivity, outrun and outfight an army of cultists long enough to disrupt their apocalyptic sacrificial rituals.

Care to reblog with a list of your own?

Let’s keep the community list going strong! And check out Tabletop Gaming Resources for more art, tips, and tools for your game!

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Actually fucking nuts. Capitalism ruins everything.

Push back against this. Be loud. Use #OpenDnD liberally.

Staying in 5e and ignoring 6e/"OneDnD" is not an option. I'll try to summarize below the cut, but I'm not an expert, so please seek out resources that aren't me for full info. This link is a good start. This is the full deep-dive I read up on a few days ago. Listening to the community is also worthwhile to understand from the voices of those affected most. To be more involved in the discussion yourself, a lawyer has set up a Discord server for the community to gather and converse in regarding this issue.

Again, for full context and information from more knowledgeable sources than me (including actual professionals), please go to the links I included above. If you don't have the time/patience/spoons to read those articles, scroll a twitter feed, or poke around a Discord server though, here are the things that made the most potent impression on me and why you should care about this issue.

As mentioned, staying in 5e and ignoring 6e/"OneDnD" is not an option. While OGL1.1 was made for 6e, the extensive parts of the document that have been leaked make it clear that with OGL1.1 going into effect, OGL1.0a (which has been the OGL for the past decade) will no longer be functional. 3rd party creators must choose to either sign the OGL1.1 and comply with it's insanely restrictive and predatory terms, or face legal repercussions for publishing the content they have made their livelihoods off of the past decade.

Per the leaked document, all 3rd party creators must register themselves and their creations with WotC. - 3rd party creators making over $50,000 USD per year must also report their earnings to WotC. - 3rd party creators making over $750,000 USD gross per year must also pay WotC a 25% royalty. This means it is not 750k in profits, it is 750k before any expenses that they are taking the royalties from. Anyone whose profit margin was 25% or less would be financially invalidated by this royalty, and can even end up losing money. Furthermore, the nature of Kickstarters for example is that there is no upper ceiling on earnings, so a KS for a 3rd party sourcebook will suddenly be facing a massive expense they may not have planned for if their campaign exceeds the 750k mark, potentially destroying their ability to deliver on the rewards when they otherwise could have. While currently only a small number of creators are known to make over 750k/year (gross, not net), that does not mean this will not affect you. It creates a very dire argument for why 3rd party creators should not even make the effort in the first place, especially with crowdfunding where too much success can suddenly ruin them.

Remember how those who make over 50k have to report their earnings? Well, the 750k threshold is one WotC says they have the right to change at any time in OGL1.1. This means they can see what people are making when creators are forced to report their earnings over 50k, and use that data to lower the threshold of income for their royalty fee, and they can do this at any time, however much they want. Per OGL1.1, they are telling you that they can decide on a whim that actually, anyone making over $5,000 USD gross a year has to pay the 25% royalty.

D&DBeyond / OneDnD are working towards creating a VTT to host OneDnD/6e. While Roll20 is licensed by WotC if I'm not mistaken, virtually no other VTT is. Platforms like Foundry VTT (my personal favorite and most beloved VTT) will not be able to host the D&D system on them under OGL1.1. What does that mean? Hard to say. But it will objectively become much harder to play D&D outside of WotC-approved spaces in the near future, and that is by design. They want to monopolize how this game is played, and that means making it difficult, inconvenient, or even illegal to play the game outside of their personal playground.

Under OGL1.1, WotC claims full and complete ownership over any and all 3rd party content created for D&D, and the rights to use it however, whenever, and wherever they want without paying you royalties. You made this? Hasbro made this.

I've only ever played 5e. But this link I put up above was very informative about prior editions and the drama surrounding them. 3e had an OGL, and the community began to flourish with 3rd party content. WotC didn't like that people who weren't them were making money off a passion for D&D, and they regretted the OGL--but that OGL was irrevocable, and could not be cancelled, removed, or in any way undone. So they put together 3.5e. They promised 3.5e would be backwards compatible, and all your resources for 3e would still work for it. So people jumped to 3.5e, only to find all their 3e content was now worthless, because that hadn't been true. And 3.5e, of course, did away with that open and welcoming OGL from 3e. Sound familiar? "OneDnD" is touted to be backwards compatible. And yet also comes with crushing restrictions in their OGL1.1 that make it impossible for the D&D community to exist as it has been. It is transparently clear that for WotC/Hasbro, an ideal world would be one where all the money people have spent on flourishing this community over the last decade would have gone exclusively into their pockets. D&D makes hundreds of millions every year, but it's "under monetized" according to their new CEO. It doesn't matter if "Honor Among Thieves" flops at the box office, WotC has already green-lit the production of multiple D&D movies. It's not about fanservice, it's about fan exploitation. Because they can't fucking stand that the game they made can be played obsessively and passionately for decades with only the one-time purchases of the DMG and PHB. And instead of fixing the apparent "under-monetization" problem by publishing more official content, they choose to poach 3rd party creators. The very lifeblood that has caused D&D's success. Because capitalist greed is a soulless poison to whatever it fixes its attention on.

The only way the community has any shot in hell to fight this is if the pushback is intense and loud. WotC has released statements mentioning an openness to listening to the community and revising their choices based on feedback; whether that proves to be lip service or not remains to be seen, but either way: the only thing they seem to care about is money. Fine, let your money do the talking, then. Wholeheartedly support the boycott. Proclaim your support of it loudly. Let Hasbro know that their attempts to milk more profits out of this franchise will be the very thing that kills it if they don't ease the fuck back and allow OGL1.0a to persist. They apparently didn't learn shit when this happened in 3e/3.5e. They can either wise up now before they fuck up beyond repair, or they can be fully destroyed by their own greed. Time will tell.

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haven’t seen this posted here yet

the ‘dragons’ part of dnd got me interested originally, but it was the fan creations like taz and critical role that really drew me in and kept me around

what a god awful decision

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So, what is the OGL and why are DnD creators thoroughly screwed?

Tumblr has not been doing a great job at talking about this, but:

With OneDnD, Wizards of the Coast has decided to update the Open Game License (OGL). Said license is what allowed people to create homebrew DnD content and sell it, and even larger companies to use certain sorts of content. Pathfinder, for example, is built on said OGL. This also allows streamers and artists to exist and benefit from said content.

With OneDnD (sometimes called “dnd 6e”), WOTC wants to create a much more restrictive OGL, which will, amongst other things:

Make WOTC take a cut for any DnD-related work (according to Kickstarter, a whole 25% of the benefits)

Let WOTC cancel any project related to DnD up to their discretion

Let WOTC take ANY content made based on their system, and re-sell it without crediting you, or giving you a single cent

And most importantly, revoke the old OGL, which will harm any company or game system that used it as a base, such as Pathfinder. And it means they GET ownership over any homebrew content you may have done for 5e in the past!

It’s important to note that OGLs are supposedly irrevocable. They were planning to use it for OneDnD initially, but they want to apply it retroactively to 5e, somehow. Which is illegal, but lawyers have mentioned there’s a chance they may get away with it given the wording.

This means that anything you make based on DnD (A homebrew item? A character drawing? Even music, according to them?), can get taken and used as they deem appropiate.

These news come from a leak of the OGL, which have been confirmed by multiple reputable sources (including Kickstarter, which has confirmed that WOTC already talked with them about this), and was planned to be released next week.

So, what can we do?

Speak against it. Share the word. Reblog this post. Let people know. Tumblr hasn’t been talking much about this matter, but it’s VERY important to let people know about what is WOTC bringing. 

Boycott them. Do not buy their products. Do not buy games with their IP. Do not watch their movie. CANCEL your DnD Beyond subscription. (Btw, they ARE planning to release more subscription services too!). They do not care about the community, but they care about the money. Make sure to speak through it. 

And maybe consider other TTRPG systems for the time being, Pathfinder’s Paizo has been much nicer to the community, their workers are unionized and are far more healthy overall

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A Breakdown of WotC’s OGL 1.1

Here’s some things to consider:

If you created any 5e stuff under OGL 1.0, you can’t keep creating it and the agreement that protected you from copyright lawsuits is “unauthorized”.

But LT, they can’t copyright mechanics!

Yes and no. They can’t copyright a d20. They can’t copyright a character having ability scores, or skills, or rounds of combat. But they can copyright the way it’s presented, and they can copyright the whole framework of all those individual mechanics. So no, scrubbing mentions of 5e out of your work isn’t going to protect you necessarily. Case in point:

This doesn’t just affect indie creators.

So yeah. Pathfinder in jeopardy, folks. And in case you thought the new OGL wasn’t explicitly trying to spite Paizo:

You cannot opt out of the new OGL.

If you create anything other than a print or digital ttrpg book, you cannot sell anything affiliated with DnD. Non-commercial use only.

So nice of them to give creators time to get their products updated:

Jan 13. That’s in 8 days, if you’re counting. I personally have a dozen products that would need to be submitted to the new OGL in that time frame, or changed so much that they don’t violate it. It’s over 1000 pages. To comply with the OGL, I would have to list every single thing that was covered by the original OGL and distinguish it from my original content.

I have a day job. Most creators in this industry have day jobs. This is an unreasonably short amount of time to get into compliance (which I don’t recommend anyway, for reasons we’ll discuss shortly).

Tiers of the Commercial License

So, that Expert Tier: Paizo is gonna fall in that. And if they want a custom deal that doesn’t force them to turn over 25% of their profits to WotC, WotC has to initiate it and set the terms.

Here’s the big kicker. Community surveillance. They’re relying on reporting of people who don’t register stuff. It’s meant to scare folks into compliance, most likely, and it will work. Most small creators couldn’t afford the legal fees if WotC decided to sue, and so have to decide if it’s worth the risk to keep selling without registering. The reason this is a big red flag is because they own, in perpetuity, your stuff. And they can change or revoke the agreement whenever they want.

They covered crowdfunding too:

TL;DR: The new OGL 1.1 is bad for creators and in line with WotC’s goal of wringing profits from DnD.

Source

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Currently trying to crowd-source a pantheon of “modern” gods that might come about through the internet a la Percy Jackson levels of belief. Found footage, the longevity of the characters, etc. all taken into account so far we have:

Sirenhead - God of Information

Mickey Mouse - God of Entertainment

and that’s currently it.

Suggestions welcome! My party will probably be fighting them all at some point.

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Phantom Rogue, but your Whispers of the Dead ability is a flashback/cut-away gag playing out in front of your eyes.

“Ah man, this reminds me of that time a Gnoll tried to teach me how to play fetch as a kid.” *Proceeds to describe their younger self pickpocketing someone and running back to a Gnoll, being pet like a dog a la Family Guy cut-away.*

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You ever just have an idea for a character, build it to see how it might work, and then go “oh no what have I done?”?

+13 initiative. Why? Who knows. Owlbear Man’s successor just built to be speed. Level 8 because that’s just what I do for most character ideas. Put them at a mid ground to see how they could do.

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Aeormatons, right? Love ‘em. Warforged are one of my favorite races in DnD conceptually. You know what else I love? The “unlikely survivor/hero” trope. By all means it was just dumb luck that had them survive whatever inciting incident they lived through. So why not smash those together? (Spoilers for EXU Calamity I guess?)

So we’ve already seen a lot of automatons in episode 1 of Calamity, and the one that really stood out to me was Brennan’s description of the cloth, scarecrow-like construct.

I’d love to play, personally, an Aeormaton who was maybe a tailor. Just that. A simple tailorbot, maybe they had extra arms for using multiple tools at once a la General Grievous. Maybe they happened to do most of their work for a seedy underbelly-type. Real mob boss of days gone by sorta deal. Now, when they’re powered on by some other kindly rowbits, they’ve got a knowledge of something that’s been lost to the ages (maybe a particular type of weapon if you want to make them an Artificer, calling back to them being a sort of craftsmans bot) or at least a general knowledge of how to bring people together, either through fear or through earning their trust.

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I for one don’t trust Ajit Dayal at all. I get the feeling when he brings up people who hunt Werewolves for their pelts, he is playing the long con and does the exact same thing. Maybe makes friends with the wolves first so they let their guard down.

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You use every Magic Item you get as a weapon. Boots of spiderclimb? Better vantage point. Alchemy Jug? drown your enemies after emptying that into the bag of holding a few days in a row and tossing the sack over their head. Hell, you could use an immovable rod as a quarterstaff, smack somebody in the face with it then click it and be able to hoist yourself up like Getting Over It.

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Play someone from the Earth Ashari nation, Terrah. Perhaps they are currently out on their own aramente, or the portal to the elemental plane of earth has shifted and they (as well as others to dot the land with NPCs your character might know) were sent out to see if they can locate it. I’m imagining they take up pottery as a hobby but it ends up being a big part of their spells. An artificer that makes golems out of the same clay as their pottery, for example.

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I, for one, would love to see the alternate take on Bells Hells, where the returning characters are instead completely new characters, and instead of Ashton we get old man Owlbear Man (or maybe Owlbear Man Beyond? Terry McGinnis?)

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ooh an idea for the c2 swap; calliope replacing caduceus (oath of the ancients paladin?) and cree replacing molly (blood domain cleric), just an idea!

I love both of these ideas, as the current 6 members aren't necessarily Strength based and I could definitely see Calliope having been a Strength based paladin. Unfortunately, the blood domain (Matt's version of it anyway) isn't on DnD Beyond due to issues with the original print of the Tal'Dorei campaign setting. Hopefully I can get my hands on the Updated version once it releases!

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Update: In case anyone is interested I have decided to make character sheets for these mentor-swapped M9. I had to change a couple of classes around so it didn’t feel like their mentors were just cosplaying the original M9. I am taking suggestions for Yasha, Caduceus, and/or Molly/Kingsley stand-in, as I don’t think swapping Yasha for Zuala would be enough of a difference to warrant the change, and I can’t think who would be an actual good fit for Tal’s characters.

So far I have Marion (Tiefling, College of Glamour Bard), Vandran (Human, Order of the Profane Soul Blood Hunter), Dairon (Wood Elf, Inquisitive Rogue), Luc (Lightfoot Halfling, Alchemist Artificer), and Ikithon (Human, Aberrant Mind Sorcerer).

Picture, if you will, an Alternate Universe where the roles of Parent/guardian and Child had been switched for Campaign 2. Young Marion Lavorre, the Tiefling Bard, leaving home in the company of Captain Vandran, the Human Warlock. When they come to port they meet a travelling band comprised of a Human Wizard named Trent, a Halfling Artificer named Luc, a Half-Elf Rogue looking to put together a circus, etc. 

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Picture, if you will, an Alternate Universe where the roles of Parent/guardian and Child had been switched for Campaign 2. Young Marion Lavorre, the Tiefling Bard, leaving home in the company of Captain Vandran, the Human Warlock. When they come to port they meet a travelling band comprised of a Human Wizard named Trent, a Halfling Artificer named Luc, a Half-Elf Rogue looking to put together a circus, etc.