Because I just love making poor life decisions, feel like trying to run a 5e game that's Persona themed. Each one of you is a student at a boarding school for troubled youths: you had, either proven or not, done something that has forced you to leave your old life and home behind to attend a far-off school for students with behavior or possibly criminal records. It's here that you all are originally just trying to make the most out of your life, but strange and fairly occult circumstances arise in which you must act, less you be just another lost soul caught in a wave of conspiracy.
The finer story details I haven't put too much thought in, but I have a general idea of what the story beats are. As far as the mechanical aspects, here's what you would need to know as far as Character Creation goes:
While everyone is effectively human in the real world, your Persona is your D&D character, so feel free to make them any race you want that isn't just human, since presumably that's just your persona.
Stats will be standard 27 point buy, you start at level 3, and because I'm a kind and generous DM, you all do start with a free feat at character creation.
As for what is allowed, I will allow pretty much any official materials, however not the backgrounds from the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, Astral's Adventure Guide, and Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. This is mainly because those backgrounds actually give a useful background feature, be it expanded spell choices or straight up feats. I will however try my best to incorporate whatever other background you do have to be actually plot important. Failing that, you may use this custom background for the campaign.
As far as the overarching plot goes, the idea I have had rattling in my head is that as students who are part of a boarding school for troubled youths, most people look down on you and consider you "fair game" for cruelty and mistreatment. This will become a reoccurring theme as different antagonists will begin to target groups that they feel "Deserve" some form of mistreatment, and they will typically get away with it because said groups are marginalized and ignored by society as a whole. That's not to say that the people getting mistreated at just kind and misunderstood people: there are always bad among the good. But the problem is that people just default to "bad" when it comes to some groups, and paint a blanket statement over everyone.
To put it bluntly, I will be throwing instances of racism, homophobia, classism, and other such controversial instances of hate and target it at groups who themselves may have legitimate issues that attract said scorn. Things like a racist bigot going after a racial minority population because of the actual crimes of someone of that racial minority, and how the community might try to react to that and even defend the criminal precisely because everyone else has already decided that since one is guilty, everyone is guilty.
Your characters will play the rule of Judge, Jury, and Executioner in these instances. While I certainly have my own beliefs and opinions about these matters, ultimately it is you and your characters who will decide what is right and wrong through your actions and the ability to back up those beliefs. It's going to be a battle either way.
With that in mind, please try to make a character who can and wants cooperate with a group, or at least your fellow players. I don't want players who feel the need to go lone wolf and do things by themselves because they only care about what they want. Characters like that I'll be using as antagonists, and there'll be plenty of them. Additionally, I would like for your characters to be proactive as personally possible. That's not to say everyone needs to be gregarious people-persons, but if you intend to play a shy and meek character who's kinda hoping everyone else carries the plot on while you play support, I'll have a hard time actually doing anything in particular for you in lieu of characters who actively bite my plot hooks.
I'll be looking for 4 people at most. I myself will be playing a character as well, in a sorta Morgana/Teddie role who'll help as a sorta Mr. Exposition who'll tell you guys how the exact nature of the universe works with ya.
The finer story details I haven't put too much thought in, but I have a general idea of what the story beats are. As far as the mechanical aspects, here's what you would need to know as far as Character Creation goes:
While everyone is effectively human in the real world, your Persona is your D&D character, so feel free to make them any race you want that isn't just human, since presumably that's just your persona.
Stats will be standard 27 point buy, you start at level 3, and because I'm a kind and generous DM, you all do start with a free feat at character creation.
As for what is allowed, I will allow pretty much any official materials, however not the backgrounds from the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos, Astral's Adventure Guide, and Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. This is mainly because those backgrounds actually give a useful background feature, be it expanded spell choices or straight up feats. I will however try my best to incorporate whatever other background you do have to be actually plot important. Failing that, you may use this custom background for the campaign.
As far as the overarching plot goes, the idea I have had rattling in my head is that as students who are part of a boarding school for troubled youths, most people look down on you and consider you "fair game" for cruelty and mistreatment. This will become a reoccurring theme as different antagonists will begin to target groups that they feel "Deserve" some form of mistreatment, and they will typically get away with it because said groups are marginalized and ignored by society as a whole. That's not to say that the people getting mistreated at just kind and misunderstood people: there are always bad among the good. But the problem is that people just default to "bad" when it comes to some groups, and paint a blanket statement over everyone.
To put it bluntly, I will be throwing instances of racism, homophobia, classism, and other such controversial instances of hate and target it at groups who themselves may have legitimate issues that attract said scorn. Things like a racist bigot going after a racial minority population because of the actual crimes of someone of that racial minority, and how the community might try to react to that and even defend the criminal precisely because everyone else has already decided that since one is guilty, everyone is guilty.
Your characters will play the rule of Judge, Jury, and Executioner in these instances. While I certainly have my own beliefs and opinions about these matters, ultimately it is you and your characters who will decide what is right and wrong through your actions and the ability to back up those beliefs. It's going to be a battle either way.
With that in mind, please try to make a character who can and wants cooperate with a group, or at least your fellow players. I don't want players who feel the need to go lone wolf and do things by themselves because they only care about what they want. Characters like that I'll be using as antagonists, and there'll be plenty of them. Additionally, I would like for your characters to be proactive as personally possible. That's not to say everyone needs to be gregarious people-persons, but if you intend to play a shy and meek character who's kinda hoping everyone else carries the plot on while you play support, I'll have a hard time actually doing anything in particular for you in lieu of characters who actively bite my plot hooks.
I'll be looking for 4 people at most. I myself will be playing a character as well, in a sorta Morgana/Teddie role who'll help as a sorta Mr. Exposition who'll tell you guys how the exact nature of the universe works with ya.
