A Return to the Table: Success from Failure

"Why do we fall? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up." Bruce Wayne's father, Batman Begins.

Before moving to Atlanta, the last tabletop roleplaying game session I played, if I'm remembering correctly, was back in 2001. It was a rather unpleasant experience, since it was a first attempt to have my wife, Caroline, get into D&D. She'd wanted to play for years, and my friends were starting a new campaign, and it seemed like the perfect opportunity. It didn't go very well, overall. She left the session feeling like the other players didn't want her there. I assured her that wasn't the case, and that they were just a little overbearing at times, but the damage had been done. I think that we played one or two more sessions, but it didn't last long. After that, up until 2006, I played online exclusively, through email, msn groups, online chat, and play-by-post forums.

That was fine. It worked for a time, and it offered a different medium to work with. I found that that I liked the extra time afforded to me by the play-by-post method, and it gave me the opportunity to do some good writing. The downside is that games took a LONG time to play.

When I got to Atlanta, I joined a D&D Meetup.com group, and went to a few dinners with the group. I also joined my first tabletop game in a long time. It promised to be an interesting group, with Monsters as the Player Characters. I was thinking "Cool! We get to play Monsters that decide to take up Adventuring, since it seems so lucrative for the human-types! :D". I still think that it's a good idea, and it would be kind of neat to run a side-campaign in 4eD&D based on it, but that's for a different post on a different blog.

Anyway, I created an Incarnate Clay Golem... which is an idea I'd been sitting on for a little while. If you're not familiar, this isn't Gollum, as in the ex-hobbit that craved after his "Precious". A Golem is a magical construct. For example, Dr. Frankenstein created a Golem. A Flesh Golem. Also, the episode of X-Files where Mulder and Scully are posing as the suburban couple, and that monster made of trash keeps killing people at the direction of the head of the HOA... that is a Golem. A Trash Golem.

In D&D, for a Clay Golem, a wizard or priest forms a humanoid shape out of clay, and performs a number of rituals over it, and it is imbued with a semblance of life. The golem's creator controls it, giving it orders, such as "Follow me and protect me" or "Stand here. If anyone tries to pass you without first saying the word 'Kalamazoo', hit them, and keep hitting them until they stop moving.". The idea behind an Incarnate Golem is that, by some means, the construct has been turned into a living being. I developed the idea from the rules given in the "Savage Species" book, and he basically started out with a lot of strength and hit points, but he was only a 1st level fighter. The idea of playing a "blank slate", and developing him from there was promising, but the game ended up being a disappointment.

Clay

The first problem was that the DM took my character concept and twisted it into something that HE liked better. Now, I admit that I didn't speak up and say "No, I don't want that" as he changed things and gave me more and more "stuff" for the character. "Clay" (heh) ended up being an Awakened Golem, instead of an Incarnate Golem. Now, what that means is that instead of being transformed into a living being, he had a living soul invested into him. So, he was still composed of clay, and still had all the traits that came with it, resistances and such, and he was a higher level fighter to start. I wasn't entirely pleased, but I put my trust in the DM, that he had a plan or something.

Now, I should say, at this point, that the experience wasn't entirely the fault of the group or the DM, though. I can't blame them entirely. I missed a few sessions, most notably the first one I was supposed to play, because I COMPLETELY forgot about it, only a week after I'd made the character (welcome to a glimpse of what the ADHD-PI mind is like. *sigh*). Apparently the DM was pretty upset about that, since he thought I'd quit without even trying, and took it as a personal slight. I smoothed things over with that, but I still had to miss a session a few weeks later that turned out to be a key one.

In addition, I'd created a character that was pretty much all melee-based, but he never got into a fight. Not once. The only time I rolled a d20 was for a perception check... oh, and a Knowledge: Arcana check, even though I didn't have "Knowledge: Arcana" as a trained skill, but I managed to roll a natural 20 on the die, so I actually ended up knowing something... somehow. I was told that the second session I'd missed contained a bit more action, but at the same time, I was told that even though there was action, it was still not a great session, and it ended with a massive Deus Ex Machina.

The entire experience was just a bit pedantic and there wasn't any tension, except what we created ourselves. The guy playing the giant insect (Thri-Kreen) felt that he needed to debate the merits of allowing any new people into "the Hive", and seemed to relish drawing the negotiations out as long as possible. Otherwise, we just wandered around this abandoned fortress we had claimed as our own, discovering new parts of it without any real challenges, and having more and more NPC monsters showing up and joining our group... each needing to justify, in detail, what they would bring to "the Hive" before they were allowed in.

During my last session, we had decided to use a portal in the fortress, which is apparently how one or two of the other PCs got here. It linked to a wizard's tower, and it promised to mean some action for us, so I got excited. Alright! Finally some action! However, just as those lines were ultimately a disappointment for Ed Gruberman, they were a disappointment for me. The moment we arrived and were about to begin exploring the tower, elements of one of the other character's past showed up suddenly, and whisked us all away to a far distant land. For the rest of the session, we all just sat around doing nothing while he was put on trial for something we didn't understand, and that wasn't really explained to us. Afterwards, I'd found out that the lack of action was because that particular player complained to the DM that there was too much action in the previous session (which I'd missed).

So, by this point, I'd had enough. When I got home, I emailed the DM and said that I was dropping out of the game. I wasn't mean about it, I just said that I was expecting something else, and the game just wasn't for me. I thanked him for letting me play, and told him that I hoped the game continued on successfully without me. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the case, because he emailed everyone saying "Anyone else?" and my friend Craig dropped out too, and that caused the game to collapse. Oh well. Sorry. I didn't know that I was a load-bearing player.

Even though that game ended, I was fortunate to have met two of the players. Craig and Dave, both of whom I have been playing with since, and both of whom have become good friends of mine.

Roll Them Bones Update.

I attended GenCon this year(2010), and it was the first time I could make it. When I found out that Wil Wheaton was going to be there, and he'd requested that people at the con give him dice, so that he could prove the theory that you can't have too many, I decided to give him one. As the idea fermented in my head, I came to the decision to give him a very special die. The following is a livejournal entry from today, which acts as an update to Rolling Them Bones.

I MET WIL WHEATON.

This was Wil's first GenCon. He posted about it in his blog. I noticed that he was having a talk on Friday, so I canceled a game to go see him. He related a story about he and his wife, talking about gaming while they were driving in the car. Go read it now. It's not long. I promise I will wait until you are done reading it before I continue with my story...

...

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Okay, good, you're back... So, Wil read us that story on Friday. It got big laughs.

The next day, I'm sitting in on a 4e D&D Dark Sun game DM'd by Chris Sims (formerly of WotC, with contributions to the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide, Adventurers' Vault, Monster Manual 2, Martial Power, Seekers of the Ashen Crown, etc etc). The players are myself, my friend Craig Campbell (who is a good friend of Chris' from back in the day, and has written a bunch of stuff for Dragon, Dungeon and the WotC website), Tracy Hurley (aka Sarah Darkmagic), Tracy's husband Fred, and Jobe Bittman (MetaDM). I'm setting up my laptop so that I can record the game (just for posterity), and I suddenly glance to my left, where Fred is sitting... and he has a Yahtzee cup. The first thing that pops into my head is "Like he's shaking them in a Yahtzee cup?" I stifled a laugh, but Craig and I exchanged a good laugh about it afterward, 'cause he was thinking the exact same thing.

I had some misses with Wil... on Thursday I didn't have the time to see him. On Friday I couldn't stand in line long after his talk because I had a game to go to. Then the line was capped before I got there after that game. Then on Saturday I forgot the d20 I was going to give him in the hotel room. Finally, on Sunday, everything matched up. I got into the vendor's room right at 10am and lined up. Within half an hour, I was walking up to his table. He wasn't shaking hands, due to getting Swine Flu at PAX Prime, and I respected that. I showed him a die that Craig's friend Rob gave me... a 10-sided "reaction die" with emotions in text on one side, and emoticons at the other. He thought that was cool. I gave it a roll, came up with "Surprised" and made a surprised face, which gave him a chuckle.

Then I pulled out my d20. It's my first d20, from 1979. I put it on the table.

"Wow, that die has seen some action!" he said.

"Yup, that's my very first d20. I bought it in 1979, and retired it around 5 years later, when I killed a medusa with it. It rolled around on the table for like, 5 minutes before finally coming to rest on the 20, and the DM ruled that my character cut the medusa's head off! I put that one away right after, and it's sat in my dice bag since. I've been reading the stories you've written in your blog about how much gaming has meant to you, and they've given me such a great sense of nostalgia that I want to give you back some nostalgia in return."

"Are you SURE that you want to give me your FIRST d20?" he asked, shocked at the prospect.

"Yes. Absolutely. At first, when I considered it, all I thought was 'No, no way. I can't do that...'. but as I thought about it more, I thought 'I have my stories about this d20, but how much better would those stories be if I gave that die to Wil Wheaton.' So please, take it, with my blessing."

He picked up the die, and put it into the cup beside him, on top of several other dice inside. "I shall place it with its brothers." he said, a smile on his face, and his voice full of respect and reverence.

I chuckled and said "I would only humbly ask that you afford it some small place of honor in your collection."

Both he and his "handler" chuckled at that. I was struck with a sudden thought that it was an ironic chuckle, like maybe all these dice were bound for destruction or something, but I chose to ignore that. His handler asked if I wanted a book or a picture signed, and I chose Wil's "Games Matter" chapbook. The one he read to us from, during his talk on Friday. He signed my book, and as he did, I told him the story about Chris Sims' game. Chris had signed the Dark Sun rulebooks while I was sitting there, which Logan Bonner was going to give to Wil. I made a few suggestions, the funniest (at least to the people at the table) being, after Logan told him to "speak from the heart.",... "Hi Wil. You're cool. I like you a lot. Signed, Chris Sims' Heart". heh. So there was some connection, instead of it just being a random mention of a random person he didn't know.

"So, I'm sitting in on Chris Sims' Dark Sun game yesterday, and while he was signing your Dark Sun books, I was setting up my laptop to record the game. I just put it down on the table, and opened it up, when I glanced to my left... and what did I see?"

"A Yahtzee cup."

He laughed. Loudly. So much so that he started coughing, and it sounded painful (due to the sinus infection). I felt slightly bad about that, but still, he got a good laugh out of it. That was awesome. I don't know what it is about making a star laugh like that. I felt the same as when I made George Takei laugh out loud during the costume contest of the '92 Toronto Trek convention, for insulting Larry "The Doctor" Stewart (geez, that guy was a blow-hole).

"Oh, that's great." he said, with a big smile.

"Yeah, my first thought would have normally been 'Really? Seriously?', but instead, it was your voice saying "You mean, like in a Yahtzee cup?" I said, mimicking how he had read that in his story.

Wil laughed and gave me an Iron Guard Salute in lieu of a handshake. I tapped Games Matter to my forehead in gratitude and respect, bowed slightly to him, and we parted ways.

Other than stumbling a bit at the start of my spiel, in telling him that I was sorry he'd caught a sinus infection, and having to COMMAND my brain to focus on what I wanted to say to him... nay, what I'd REHEARSED to say to him (I didn't want to screw it up), I think it was a pretty good meeting overall.

Of course, it would be totally awesome if, when he blogs about the weekend, that I would get some kind of special mention, even if it was just "Thanks to the guy that gave me his very first d20, even though I can't remember his name!". It's not required though. I'm just glad to pass it on to him. Also, Craig and I listened to the audiobook of Just a Geek on the way home, and it really drove home (ha ha) just what a down-to-earth nice guy Wil is, and removed any last vestiges of regret I might have at giving up that very special d20. Even if, worst case, it just ends up in a box or bag in Wil's closet, forgotten with a bunch of other dice, it has still become part of that die's story for me, and noone can take that away from me. =)

Actually, nevermind the reformat...

I've decided to just "let it go", regarding the format of this blog. It's here as a collection of my memories, not a chronological account of my gaming.

Speaking of which, I remembered something the other day about playing Alron, and this was something of the inspiration to drop the reformat, as I wanted to post about this now!

So, it was early on in my adventures with Alron. We had cleared out the smuggling ring in the "haunted house" in Saltmarsh. We'd mistakenly killed a lot of lizardmen, then made peace with them, and helped them destroy the Sahuagin threat. Then we moved on to other adventures. I'm not certain if we were told about the Caves of Chaos, or if we just discovered them, but we decided to go in and clean them out. They were infested with goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs, gnolls, and a few other nasty creatures. I mentioned some details of this here.

We had made some good progress through the goblins and hobgoblins, and then there was one session where only Steve and I could show up, but we decided to continue anyways. Boy, was that a mistake. We had cleaned out the goblin and hobgoblin parts of the caves, then exited out and went further up the ravine and into another cave, that turned out to be inhabited by humans... evil demon-worshiping cultists, it turned out to be. We made our way around around there, encountering some zombies and skeletons, finding a collapsed tunnel (apparently leading off to another cave system, "The Cave of the Unknown", that the Dungeon Master can develop on his or her own, according to the module text), a door that was nailed shut all around (we made unsuccessful attempts to open it... all the for best, actually. There was an undead Wight inside that room! Nasty beast! Probably would have made short work of us!), found that Medusa that Aubry killed (see the link at the end of the previous paragraph), and then we happened upon a temple, with a lone worshiper kneeling at an altar. Room #55, there on the left.



This is where everything went to pot.

Given that it was just one cultist, Alron stopped everyone at the entrance to the temple, lined up a shot with his bow and fired. He hit the cultist in the back, but only did a couple of points of damage... not enough to kill him... and the cultist started screaming bloody murder! We silenced him, but it was too late. The high priest cultist showed up with a bunch of others, and they were clerics, so they started casting spells at us... including "Cause Blindness", which Alron was hit with. Blind, unable to fight effectively, Alron surrendered.

This led to the group being chained up in a large cell. They were questioned by the high priest, and me playing Alron (still alone, so it was only me to answer questions and such), I continued with the cocky bullshit, and this ended with Alron being taken down, dragged off to a torture chamber, where an orc torturer used every method of dealing pain he could on him. I had Alron make an attempt to break the chains holding him down, and it was damned close, but the rolls didn't work out, and he was there for the duration. When the orc was done, Alron was dragged back to the cell and chained back up, this time, upside-down. One thing Steve had me rolling for every time the orc did something new was whether or not Alron screamed. He never did. Not even once. He never gave the torturer the satisfaction. Of course, this likely prompted the torturer to be even more evil when he tortured my elven bard (Aubry, the one that slew the medusa).

Now, they did escape from this... I think Alron broke his bonds (finally), then released everyone else, and we beat a hasty retreat out of the caves, back to Saltmarsh to lick our wounds. I believe this is when the whole "Alron runs off and becomes a wereboar" adventure happened.

However, the reason this whole incident popped up into my head is the idea of trends. It seems like certain characters of mine end up with trends that they get themselves into. With Alron, he had two... torture and blindness.

After Alron got back from his adventures as a lycanthrope, he was at the house in Saltmarsh for only a day or so when it was attacked during the night. He woke up, and was trying to find a torch he could light, to see what was going on, when Merlin reported to him that he already had a lantern lit... and Merlin was standing right next to him. He was blind. Again! Great. This blindness turned out to be very persistent too, if I remember correctly.

The trend for my current D&D character, Randall Forrester, is Dominated. He's been Dominated twice by opponents. First time the wizard forced him to throw away his cool magic sword (it was a Paired sword, so with his Quick Draw feat, he could draw the sword AND separate it into two identical swords, one in each hand, all as a free action), and he wasn't able to retrieve it when the rest of the group grabbed him and we made our escape. The second time, the opponent just made him attack his friends, and I think I missed (heh), but still... Dominated is becoming a trend for him.

New Blog... Always A Gamer

I have set up my new blog. You can find it at: http://always-a-gamer.blogspot.com/

As I work towards reorganizing this blog, I will be posting new material to that blog.

Upcoming Reformat

Hello to anyone reading this blog,

I am currently looking to revise the order of this blog, to put it more in chronological order. I'm sure it's fine, and noone out there has any complaints about how I've written it so far, however I strayed from my original intent, and it's likely an anal-retentive thing, but that bothers me. heh. :)

I am going to start a new blog, though, about my gaming experiences here in Atlanta. I've been taking a lot of photos at the games I've been playing here, and I think it would make for some interesting posting. Also, I'm sure that my local gaming friends would like to see the photos I've taken.

Gaming = Barely Controlled Chaos

Okay, I let that go a little longer than I should have.

I sort-of ran out of stuff to talk about, though. I was thinking of going back and re-organizing a bit. I had a style... a plan that I was following to start, and I went off track from that. It's a little disappointing that I couldn't keep it up. Oh well. Maybe I'll do the reorganization again and alter things a bit, but I'll keep the content the same.

In the meantime, a story.

One thing I love about RPGs is their unpredictability. No matter how you plan, no matter how you try to organize things, to lay things down in a line of progression, temporal or otherwise, the players will find a way to go astray... and it typically produces wonderful, highly entertaining results. There are those times when you are forced to deal with a total pooch-screw, to borrow from True Lies dialogue, but thankfully those times are few and far in between, and even when you have reached pooch-screw levels of boneheadedness, as long as everyone is having fun, it usually comes off as a success regardless.

When I think about campaigns gone astray, I typically think back to Steve's awesome campaign world that we completely boned... and it can all be traced to one specific event. I've gone over it already. Our fateful premature interaction with the entity formerly known as Ikthara (I think I got that right). However, I've gone there. This is not the time to go over it again. I've worn that tshirt before.

Instead, I will don another tshirt, one with colorful illustrations by the wonderful Larry Elmore. I come to my online game of 3.5e D&D Dragonlance.

I've mentioned this before, but this is about something specific to the game, rather than how long it was taking.

Now, if you haven't read the books, well, you're in for a spoiler here, so if you don't like spoilers, just stop reading now.

In the books, there is a blacksmith character named Theros Ironfeld, who lives in the hometown of the main characters. Early on, he is caught by the Dragon Armies, as he had been helping to hide elves (who were killed on sight) and sneak them out of town.

The characters arrive back at their hometown after an adventure in a ruined city, where they found The Disks of Mishikal, which contain knowledge of the gods and anyone who reads them can become a cleric. They find their town overrun and occupied by an army of dragon-men supported by dragons and led by a human "Dragonlord" named Verminaard. They also encounter an old friend of the main character, Tanis... an elf named Gilthanas. The elf came to find the other elves, which Theros had been helping, but he was too late. The elves were captured and killed by Verminaard's dragon in the town square. He almost ran in to his death, but Theros knocked him unconscious and dragged him off to his house to save him. The main characters catch up as Gilthanas is out and about the next day, and they are all captured by the dragon army. Theros is brought over shortly after with his arm cut off, and nearly dies, except for the cleric in the main group healing him... but his arm is still missing.

This is a rather large plot point, because there is a legend that the man who produces the dragonlances will have a silver arm... conveniently provided as a magical artifact by the story... so Theros is all set up... a blacksmith, with his arm missing... there you go. Just need some heroes to drag him along until they get him in the right place to get that arm, stick it on him to replace his missing one and the world is saved.... right?

Well, lemme tell yah. heh.

The characters in my game ended up being a day or two early in the "timeline" of the story, due to taking some alternate routes, and returned to their hometown just as the elves that Theros had been hiding were being killed by the Dragon. They helped Theros subdue Gilthanas and they all went back to his house to hide out. The next day, the group went off to the Inn to see what more information they could find, and overheard a dragon army officer saying that they were going to get the blacksmith. Well, a few members of the group took off to his blacksmith shop, and save him... and save him they did! When they arrived, a draconian had just raised a huge partially-forged two-handed sword, ready to bring it down on Theros' arm, when the party members broke in through the door and killed the draconians! It was all very dramatic and heroic and they were able to flee with the blacksmith intact...

BUT

there goes the prophecy out the window. hehe.

It wasn't a problem for me, because at that point, it actually opened up a lot of options for me. Now the story became about searching out the dragonlances that were still around, rather than forging new dragonlances.

Now, as I'd said in the previous post, we didn't get very far into the story, because it was taking too long, but it's a good example of how the actions of the players can completely change the direction of a campaign.

It's quite possible I -wanted- to forget this part...

So, the part that I forgot while writing the previous story...

I'm taking a guess that this was after the ogres, but before the drug dealers and druid and elves.

Alron was captured by orcs. I don't remember how. He was unarmed, so it likely wasn't difficult. He was taken away in a caged cart, to an encampment. When they arrived there, the orcs started herding people out... oh right, I just remembered something else, and that has jogged my memory about how he was caught... Alron had somehow broken a rib, which had poked him in the lung and he collapsed and blacked out... then woke up in the cart being taken off to the orc camp.

Upon arriving, the orcs started herding those captured out of the cage, but Alron, lying there with his broken rib, wouldn't go. Two of the orcs grabbed him, one by each foot, and started pulling him out. He reached out, wrapped a hand around a bar of the cage and flexed his arm, stopping all progress towards the door of the cage. The orcs pulled and pulled, but they couldn't budge him. Why did he do this? Because he KNEW that they weren't going to be gentle about it, and they were just going to drag him out until his head and shoulders slipped past the edge of the cart, and dropped the three or four feet to the ground with a painful thud. He wasn't going to give them the satisfaction.

However, that's when another orc got up into the cage and started smashing him in the face with a mace. He grabbed that orc by the tunic and smashed his face into the bars, knocking him out, which escalated the whole thing, and knowing that he wasn't going to be able to fight with the broken rib, he finally gave in and let go of the cage.

Predictably, they dragged him out until his head and shoulders slipped off the edge of the cart and he dropped the three or four feet to the ground with a painful thud, and blacked out again. =P

When he woke up, he was hanging from an upright post, his hands shackled above his head, with the chain of the shackles hanging over a nail to keep him up. His feet were secured to the post as well. He hung there for several days, the orcs degrading and demeaning him, throwing food in his face for him to eat, until eventually, weak, hungry and tired, they dragged him down and put him to work in the mines.

As he was trying to work out an escape plan with his fellow miners, a group of human warriors attacked the camp, and freed everyone, Alron included. They helped him get back into shape (he was here for awhile), and they reequipped him, and sent him on his way... which is when he encountered the druid and the elves and Amanda.

Certainly was a rollercoaster of a journey here... and all for going to hire some builders to expand the house they have... and it was all Milamber's (Francis' character) idea to hire these people. Alron should have punched him in the face when he got back.

All of this taught me two valuable lessons, though... never split the party, and never solo adventure with Steve as the DM. =D