of tatun

Prompt

In a word that’s not our own, but rather an inside of a snail’s shell, anthropomorphic bugs and small critters live out their daily lives peacefully. The inside of the shell is illuminated by many fluorescent plants and crystals, but most importantly, the Infinity Light, located right at the center of the shell. The infinity light is thought to be a gift from Tatun, the snail bearing the shell containing this world, and is worshipped alongside him. The country settled nearest to the Infinity light, Helixia, is a home to many kinds of bugs and critters, but the majority of it’s inhabitants are snails, also thought to be descendants of Tatun’s children, and as such viewed as a holy race. Helixia’s capital, Lucum, is located right under the Infinity Light and each ear a festival in the name of Tatun is held there. The whole city partakes in the preparations to make sure everything runs smoothly. But this year… something goes horribly wrong…

Info

In this campaing you will play as a group of chosen bugs to go all the way from the center of Tatun to the very edge, exploring many different landscapes in the process. No really modern tech is available, there might be some modern-ish objects or structures in some areas but all of them will be given a high fantasy aesthetic to fit the setting. All of the PHD races have been reflavoured as types of bugs. Racial traits for all races but gnomes are left the same, gnomes represent snails and get a few bonus racial traits which may or may not be balanced but they definitely fit with the idea of being a snail.

Themes

I plan on this campaign being mostly upbeat and fun, focusing mostly on adventure and party relations. You won’t come across many other (not hostile) civilizations, so you’ll mostly interact with each other. That being said however, social skills are not completely useless as they may help you with lowering the tension between the party and savage tribes. Fights will also be a big part of this campaign but I’ll mostly rule in the player favor as getting new party members later on would become much more difficult and would drastically limit character building options.

Creating a Character & New Rules

Your characters will be starting at 1st level. All of them have lived all their lives in Lucum or in the close region around it. They could be travelers from other places, but no further than what I’d show you on the map or what would make sense for their backstory and race. I can of course make exceptions to these two rules but I’d like you to try and make a character that’d fit into them before deciding if you’re really not interested in that. Most homebrew content will be accepted as long as you show it to me beforehand and have an idea for what kind of bug it could be represented by (if it’s a race that’s already an anthropomorphic bug then there’s no problem with that, even if it’s a bug that has a different race attached to it already). I think the campaign will end around levels 18-20. There will be no new rules aside from that, and the fact that we will be using the exp-o-meter instead of experience points.

Here is how all of the races convert to bugs:

Humans – Beatles
Elves – Butterflies
Half-elves – Moths

Dwarves – Cockroaches
Halflings – Ladybugs
Gnomes – Snails and Slugs
Half-Orcs – Flies
Thieflings – Fireflies
Dragonborn – Dragonflies