Dungeons and Dragons, "My Favorite Group of Characters"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 8- Favorite Group of Characters

            This is one of those times in which I will go beyond the original framework of this 30-day challenge (spoilers: I already did that by reordering and retooling the original prompts).  Like I mentioned too many times before I am often the DM and beyond that I like players who work together and judge them on those criteria.  What is more, there is really no way to write this that won’t be slighting one group over another.

            But, here is the thing, I am also a part of this.  I can’t really award one group I have played with all the cookies because they got me at a different point in my life.  I was more mature, more level headed, or just had more time to write and think things out.  So, when I point to a group I had in 2014-2015 as the best experience, it had a lot to do with my ability to give them what they were looking for.  It is the single longest campaign I have ever run at 18 months which also had a mid-season finale and a series finale that were both super satisfying.  It was a good experience.

            The characters were a Kenku Druid named “Talon Greyfeather” or as I would make funny of him, “You basically named your character ‘Bird Bird’.”  An Oread Monk named Adrian, because he wanted him to be Adrian Monk (like from the USA show “Monk” which I guess is better than Bird-Bird).  And a Catfolk Ranger-Archer who had a normal goddamn name, which I have no complaints about.   

            Remember when I mentioned “Go weird or don’t bother not being human” a couple days ago?  They decided to go weird.  I had bought the Advanced Races Guide to go along with my 3.5 edition books and it allowed for some uneven but interesting elements to be brought in.  Typical for a 3^rd edition game, the rules were insanely detailed… To the point of it being hard to smoothly mix things in, even when they were supposed to be completely compatible.

            They managed to go thru numerous adventures that were totally my idea, let me know what kind of adventures they would like to go on, met 3 dozen different named NPC’s that they grew attached to on various levels, and made a name/place for themselves in the world they ventured in.  There were some people we gamed with along the way and some afterward that I think would have been great to have along on a more permanent basis, but circumstances kept them from showing regularly.  It is a shame, but that’s life.

            I am still friends with the players from this group and took the lessons I learned from their playing and have done my best to apply them to my modern attempts at the game.

            We should all try and learn to be better at what we do.

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about a character I will not play again.

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