Dungeons and Dragons, "My Worst Player Character"

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to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).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 9- PC I have Sworn off Playing

            LOUD CATCHPHRASE!

            This was a brief period in my life in which I sought to test out being more boisterous.  This is a factoid which leaves those of you who actually know me in real life saying something akin to, “You were never quiet.  You are the loudest person I have ever met in my life.  What the fuck are you on about?”

Thank you for your support Mister Brian Blessed.  It is appreciated.

            It is true.  I am a loud person.  I sneeze loud, I talk loud, I laugh loud.  I think there might be some kind of regulator switch busted somewhere in my brain.  I am loud.

            So, when I decide to play the kill crazy berserker character who yells a battle cry…

            THE JOKE GROWS OLD QUICKLY.

            The character’s name is lost to the ages, 7+ years ago, I was playing a Dragonborn Sorcerer whose characterization could be summed up with the word, “BURN” said in all capitals.  Often underlined and with multiple exclamations points.  Sometimes it was bolded.

            It was funny, to me, for a very short period of time.  I guess the idea was to unwind the character down.  Make him into more of a level-headed team player as the constant yelling and rage was revealed to just be some kind of veneer.  That didn’t happen.  I liked the mechanics of being a Sorcerer in 4e and had just played a DM juggling multiple characters so I didn’t have any hankering to play a nuanced or interesting person, just someone who had fun blowing stuff up.

            Thing is, I just don’t find that at all fun for any length of time.

            I like the talking and ultimately did not get as much fun out of playing something so far outside my comfort zone.

            I guess the lesson is to play to your own strengths, maybe stretch your boundaries every once in awhile, but not in a way that makes things shallower.  I tried to stretch by playing something dumber, blunter, and louder.  I have no idea why I thought that would work for me.  A departure for me would be playing deceitful, malevolent, and slothful (which would have been a problem in other ways, but certainly more interesting than loud and dumb).

            Not a great deal of complex insight in this entry.  Let’s do a follow up on one of last week’s entries to pad this out, I wouldn’t, but yesterday’s entry was short too, so let’s do something more.

Follow-up: “My Favorite Setting”

            I belong to a facebook group that focuses on roleplaying games, it has thousands of members.  I decided to ask which Dungeons and Dragons setting from my blog last week was each person’s favorite.  I guess I should have specified that I wanted to know people’s preferences among published materials, as they immediately used the write in feature to add “Homemade” and blew the conceit of the survey.  My fault.

            Anyway, here are the results.

            First things first, I have significantly underestimated the popularity of the “Forgotten Realms”.  Like, holy shit.  More than a quarter of respondents gave that as the answer.  To put that in perspective, my preferred settings, the Imaginatives (Ravenloft, Dark Sun, Spelljammer, and Eberron) highlighted in blue are 4 whole percentage points behind.

            Ravenloft, the setting I complained the most about being absent from the multiverse discussion in the 5e Dungeon Master's Guide is a Dark Horse on this list coming in 3^rd?  That is unexpected.  And all the more reason Birthright was a bad pick for mentioning in the core book over it.  Again, Birthright was good for its Rules system, not the setting.

            The reason Mystara also has (Hollow World) next to it has to do with people not knowing that the Hollow World is inside Mystara.  I would have done something similar had regions like the Savage Coast or Maztica been mentioned, but they did not.

            Another thing I want to note is the poor performance of Greyhawk, which for 3^rd edition was the almost default setting and is actually pretty common in discussions of the game’s early years.  I think it suffers from being super generic, much like Birthright and Mystara.  If you are going to play a more typical setting for DnD that is published you are maybe going to start with Greyhawk, but then will move to the ones with deeper lore (hence the popularity of the Forgotten Realms, it in many ways is an upgrade on Greyhawk as far as depth of material is concerned).

            The obvious joke submission of Pizza is also there.  Take from that what you will.

 

Remember when they were playing DnD in the film "ET the Extra Terrestrial"

Coming Tomorrow

            Tomorrow I am going to talk about a smattering of character ideas inspired by my short time with Dungeons and Dragons 5e.

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