You do not have to read all 177 pages. You can skim through and read the stuff from the Dungeon Master himself and then go from there. That will get you caught up on the gist of the game and allow you some back ground to go with. Plus the back ground of your character. It does not take much to get the hang of this system and I am sure we all will assist you.
I wouldn't think so about reading all that. One of us or Daishain could give you a synopsis quite easily. You really wouldn't need to know much anyways. Your character would be new to the group and not have a previous history with us. We are in a city under siege currently. It would be easy to work your character into that. While we have 8 players it always feels like a small group. We usually end up in different areas. We have an epic combat going now with only 5 people involved. :(This campaign only started at the first of this year. We could definitely use another character.
Edited: Kyrroeth on 11th Apr, 2017 - 9:13pm
Indeed, you can pick up the gist of the story easily enough without reading through everything.
The short short version. Nasty army looting town of Greenest and taking prisoners, brought a dragon along to do heavy lifting. Party busy fighting it off.
We can get a character started easily enough, and work on the best way to insert him/her into the story.
Edited: daishain on 11th Apr, 2017 - 9:15pm
Now that's the truth, they could use some heavy artillery at the moment. EDIT: err, I meant the bit about showing up with a ballista is the truth Avoiding a dragonborn with chromatic coloring would help avoid friendly fire incidents though, a lot of unfriendly members of that race running around at the moment.
In any case, check the first posts of the support threat and character creation, some details there you'd want to be aware of. The latter also includes a list of characters that are in play, along with their race&class so you can avoid stepping on toes. (Just one note, the player running the ranger Cahleth has bowed out, his character will be retired shortly).
Edited: daishain on 11th Apr, 2017 - 9:22pm
Wow, you all are fantastic already! Thank you! Ok I'll take all of this into account and do some reading here tonight and try to come up with a good character to apply to join with. Hopefully I can gather enough information about the world to come up with an interesting persona and backstory. I noticed you have multiple clerics, bards, melee fighter/barbarian types, etc. No sorcerer, lock, paladin, etc. Is the party in need of certain skills, fighting styles, etc.?