A player should play in at least 3 Aethervane sessions before requesting to be a Dungeon Master. After that, if you are interested in being a DM, you may ask one of the Gamekeepers. You can find the GKs in the community chat or you can find their contact information on the Aethervane team directory.
In the process of preparing for adventures and running game sessions, Dungeon Masters often develop pieces of “lore” (creative content for the campaign), including non-player characters, items, dungeons, settlements, factions, planets, solar systems, and even entire planes of existence. Each DM is responsible for ensuring that their lore is internally consistent and that it is consistent within the larger setting of the Aethervane universe.
If you wish to alter or add to lore that is not under your control or run an adventure that affects another DM's lore, you must first receive the permission of the presiding DM (the “lorekeeper”). Any changes that occur to lore controlled by another DM must be reported to the lorekeeper. Any changes that were not approved beforehand may be retroactively overruled by the lorekeeper, even if that contradicts what happened in an adventure.
If you would like to add lore to the campaign or claim control over a piece of lore that is currently unclaimed, talk to the Gamekeepers. If you are interested in having some creative control over a certain aspect of campaign lore that has already been claimed, ask the lorekeeper if they wouldn't mind sharing it with you. Many DMs are quite willing to share control of lore with others, or may even be fine with letting someone take over for them.
Once a piece of lore has been assigned to you, you are free to do with it whatever you please, as long as you don't contradict or interfere with other elements of the setting that are not under your control or contradict the overall rules and spirit of the Aethervane game and community.
In order to maintain control of their lore, DMs must remain active members of the community. If a DM goes more than 2 months without participating in an Aethervane game, either as a player or a Dungeon Master, the DM forfeits control of their lore, and another DM may take over. As soon as the inactive DM is ready to be active again, they may request to have their old lore reassigned to them.
A DM signup page is posted once each month. When you are ready to run some sessions, sign up for slots corresponding to the times and locations you are interested in. If you would like to run a session at a time or location that is not included on the signup page, or if all of the slots have been filled for the date and location you wanted, ask the Gamekeepers about adding additional slots to the schedule.
By default, sessions are open to the general public, and seats are assigned on a first-come first-served basis. If you would like to run a more exclusive session (for example, an adventure in a series that is open only to people who participated in the previous adventure, or an adventure for mature audiences that is restricted to consenting adults), please ask the Gamekeepers for approval. If you run an exclusive Aethervane session without obtaining GK approval beforehand, the GKs may decide to strike events that occurred in the adventure from the campaign timeline and may remove any adventure awards the players received (e.g., experience, loot).
Each week that passes in the real world represents 23 days in the Aethervane campaign (1 “state” in the Bleak Haven calendar). After 16 states have passed, the game calendar advances by 1 year. Keep this in mind when planning adventures and considering how much time has passed since certain events occurred in the game. Also, please try to keep your adventures within about 23 days of game time. It's not a problem if you go over this limit, and it's not necessary to keep track of the exact number of days that elapsed in each adventure, but keeping the adventures close to that limit makes it easier to maintain the setting's chronology.
In general, adventures begin and end with the PCs in Bleak Haven, but this is not always the case. In between sessions, players may keep their characters in a location outside of Bleak Haven, with the permission of the DM who controls that area.
Occasionally, the time allotted for the session may run out before the adventure has been resolved, and sometimes the PCs may even find themselves caught in the middle of a life-or-death situation. Careful time management (on both the part of the DM and the players) can often prevent this sort of situation from occurring, but when it does, it is up to the presiding DM to handle it. The DM may allow the PCs to escape and return to Bleak Haven (even if it requires introducing a sudden “Deus Ex Machina”), or the DM may decide that the PCs are unable to leave, perishing at the end of the session or becoming imprisoned or stranded for the time being (until, perhaps, they are given a chance to escape in a future session). If the DM does decide to declare the party dead or permanently retired, the decision may be overturned by the Gamekeepers.
Each adventure awards a minimum amount of experience to the participating player characters (assuming they survive). There are various restrictions regarding the maximum amount of experience, money, and items (especially of the magical variety) that can be awarded as well.
Experience and money awards are based on the Average Party Level (APL) of the participating PCs. Add up each PC's level and divide by the number of players in the group. The DM may round the result up or down to the nearest whole number.
The minimum amount of experience points you can award for an adventure is APL*200 (the Average Party Level multiplied by 200). The maximum amount is APL*300. When deciding what amount to choose within that range, base your decision on how challenging you felt the adventure was and how successfully the characters overcame those challenges.
Any adventure that involves one or more PCs of 1st level should award at least 300 experience.
The total gold value of any coin, gems, equipment, and other mundane treasure obtained by the entire group should not exceed APL*500. It is up to the players in the group to decide how to divide material loot obtained during the adventure.
For the purposes of campaign balance, firearms and any items with significant homebrew mechanics must be approved by the same process as magic items (see below).
In general, you may award 1 permanent magic item and up to 6 consumable magic items (potions, spell scrolls, etc.) of a rarity appropriate for the APL that the adventure was designed for, as shown in the table below.
Soulstones (which, in this campaign, replace components of diamonds, etc. in resurrection spells) are consumable magic items but should be counted as if they were permanent for the purposes of considering magic item awards. That is, a soulstone is as valuable as a permanent magic item.
| Target APL | Max Magic Item Rarity | Max Soulstone Value | Examples of Appropriate Consumable Items |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-4 | Uncommon | 300 gp (revivify) | potion of healing, potion of greater healing, spell scroll (1st-3rd level) |
| 5-10 | Rare | 500 gp (raise dead) | potion of superior healing, spell scroll (4th-5th level) |
| 11-16 | Very Rare | 1,000 gp (resurrection) | potion of supreme healing, spell scroll (6th-8th level) |
Occasionally, DMs may award boons to player characters over the course of an adventure. A boon is a special ability, often a permanent part of the character, much like a class, race, or background feature, although boons with limited uses may be awarded as well. Boons are generally reserved for special events or particularly challenging or climactic adventures.
All awards of permanent magic items, non-standard items (such as firearms and homebrew), boons, and soulstones must be approved in advance by the Aethervane DMs. 5 DM votes are needed for approval. You may vote to approve items for your own adventures or characters. Any Gamekeeper may veto the approval of an award, and that veto can only be overturned by a majority vote among the current active Gamekeepers.
Consumable magic items (other than soulstones) do not need to be approved as long as they are not homebrew and follow the established guidelines.
Magic items (permanent and consumable) do not need to be approved if the item does not have any utility outside of a particular setting or series of adventures. In that case, only the approval of the DM who controls the related content is needed, and it is the DM's responsibility to ensure that the item is used only as intended.
Exceptions may be made to the normal award restrictions by the same process used for approving magic items, etc. For example, if you want to run an adventure that awards more gold than is usually allowed, submit the request to the other DMs, and it will be allowed if it receives 5 votes (and no Gamekeeper vetoes).
You may retroactively request approval for awards that were given during an adventure, but if the awards are not approved soon after, they will be removed from the characters who received them.
At the end of each session, the DM is responsible for submitting an adventure log, recording the following.
If a DM becomes especially negligent in submitting adventure logs, the Gamekeepers may ask them to stop DMing until their back-log is completed.
As a way of saying "thank you" for preparing and running adventures for the Aethervane campaign, Dungeon Masters also receive awards called “tokens” for the adventures they run. These tokens can be applied to any player character in Aethervane that the DM controls when not DMing. Only the DM who earned a token may use that token; DM tokens may not be applied to PCs controlled by other players.
You cannot spend a DM token until you have submitted a complete log for the adventure.
For every adventure you run, you gain 1 token that you can later redeem to advance one of your active PCs. When you redeem the token, the character of your choice gains an amount of experience points equal to 300 multiplied by the character's current level. In addition, when you redeem a token, the character gains an amount of gold equal to 100 times the character's level. Record the expenditure of your token in the log for your character.
When you redeem a DM token, you gain 1 downtime token for that PC. See “Downtime” on the characters page for details.
Once per character, when you apply a token to a PC of level 5 or higher, you can grant that character 1 permanent rare magic item of your choice. You can do this once more when the PC is level 11 or higher, granting 1 permanent very rare magic item. These magic item awards must be submitted to the Award Approval process (above).