D&D 5e: Guardians of Indir

Guardians of Indir was the first campaign of our podcast: a Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition game that we started after listening to a couple of other family-friendly RPG podcasts and deciding “Yeah, we could do that. And we want to do that.”

After you read the information on this page, you may also wish to view our wiki pages for this campaign.

Players

Harold is the DM of the Indir game. He’s been playing D&D in various editions since 1982.

 

Characters

Balasar – (PC, played by Korben) decorated soldier of the Indiran guard, veteran of the Dragon War

Kantu – (PC, played by Lucia) wandering birdman making a living by accepting rewards for doing good deeds in a world gone mad

Klyde – (PC, played by Kaleb) kobold grifter always looking to make a buck

Squeak – (PC, played by Blake) spy, mercenary, veteran, minstrel…this changeling is looking to belong, and he’s found acceptance with Balasar in Indir

Vhisuna – (PC, played by Aria) Klyde’s hulking friend, the hobgoblin who surprises everyone with how gracefully and quickly she moves despite her size

 

Dates

We started creating, playing, and recording Guardians of Indir on 11 November 2017. So far, we’ve continued playing the game through spring 2019.

Rules

Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition (5e) uses a basic rules set that is freely available online: D&D 5e Basic Rules

As all DMs do, the DM has implemented some new rules and modified some rules from the basic rules set. These are some of the custom rules used in the Guardians of Indir campaign.

 

Currency

Every nation has names for its own currency; Indir is no different.

Claws are the copper pieces that are equivalent to about $1 in spending power.

Scales are the silver coins that are each worth 10 claws ($10).

Wings are the golden coins that are each worth 10 scales ($100).

 

Training

Training is required for a PC to gain the abilities of a new level.  Each PC has a mentor or teacher with whom (s)he meets to learn new abilities. That person gets paid for their services at a rate of 20 wings per destination level and it takes 3 days per destination level to complete that training (so it costs a character 40 wings and 6 days of downtime to gain 2nd level). If a character cannot afford this, that character cannot gain a level until they can. Discounts or loans can surely be found.

 
 
Hit Points
Each time a PC gains a level, that PC’s player can choose to take the default HP gain (4 for a d6, 5 for d8, 6 for a d10), or choose to roll for HP. If they choose to take the default, they do all the work on their characters gaining a level and subtract the wings from their PC’s inventory. If they choose to roll for HP, they do all the work on their characters gaining a level EXCEPT for the HP gain. For those who choose to roll, we insist that they roll to gain HP where we all can see it happen. Dice rolling is a fun thing to witness, and this way we can all celebrate or commiserate a good or bad roll together.
 
 
Encounter experience
PCs earn experience for many things. One such thing is the game encounter; PCs earn XP for an encounter if they participate and are conscious/not dying at the end of the encounter. PCs who are unconscious or at 0 HP at the end of an encounter do not gain XP from that encounter.

Magic names/effects

Each player is expected to personalize spells and other magic effects, by coming up with a name for the spell/effect, and a description of what it’s like to use the spell/magic effect.

 

Resting and healing

For a short rest, a player declares how many HD they want to use to heal their PC, and they then roll them. A player can only roll once per rest. 

For a long rest, players still roll HD to gain HP just like they do for a short rest: they declare how many they will roll, and then roll them. A player can only roll once per rest. Then, after they have rolled, their PC regains all their Hit Dice as the long rest ends. Note this means that a PC may not always heal back to full HP from a long rest, particularly if they took a lot of damage before the long rest and the player rolls poorly or the PC doesn’t have a lot of HD remaining.
 
 
Travel Rule with Mounts
When riding a mount over multiple days of travel, the base distance traveled for the travel pace you select (Fast, Normal, or Slow) is increased in proportion to the ratio of the mount’s speed (X) to normal human speed (30).