They've Changed the Way the Magic Works 1
Spent all week writing the creative part of my thesis - it's basically my tale of my journey through Dungeons and Dragons. 4,000 words down (the pause on Romanticide can be attributed to this), totally raw and unedited, which puts me halfway through the creative piece, and leaves the exegesis.
Took this in to my supervisors today, and they're both really pleased with it, especially the dialogue. Notes taken, contextualising and further explaining needs to be done, so that's what I'm going to do now. Full draft is required in two weeks, then its on with the edit and the theoretical part.
~*~
“I’m starting a new campaign.”
Five simple words pique my interest and I turn in my seat in the car to look at the driver.
“I have this great idea,” he continues happily, settling in so that we can leave the carpark. “Everyone will have to have evil characters.”
“You know I can do that,” I grin back. After all, I have been playing an evil character in the computer game Neverwinter Nights, and Tim, my companion, knows this very well, having compared playtime with me.
“It’ll be the new version, 3.5,” he warns me, and I return to my drink with a nod. I had already been playing Dungeons and Dragons with my parents, the occasional game using the first ruleset of three (or rather, three and a half, what with the slight rejig 3rd edition had undergone.)
However, I wanted to play more and the only other players I knew were using the new ruleset.
“And a new character,” he tells me as we drive off through the rain. “I don’t think Celebrin will work so well for what I have in mind.”
“What do you have in mind?” I ask curiously. Celebrin is nothing concrete, given that I drag her around from Neverwinter, to Morrowind, to Dungeons and Dragons, always adapting her slightly for whatever I’m playing. Because of that, I’d never really gained a true sense of her and had been hoping for that here. Oh well.
“It’s going to be so awesome,” Tim reveals, as if that answers my question, the excitement barely contained in his voice.
I listen as he tells me all about the benefits of the new ruleset, trying my best to follow along and eventually deciding that playing it will be the best teacher.
There is one thing I’ve picked up on though. Unlike the reasonably restrictive 1st edition rules, 3.5 presents apparently endless possibilities for character creation.
This time, I can make exactly who I want to.
~*~
New Year, 2008 - a year and a half after that first rainy-day conversation about suitable character.
There’s Melissa, decked out in not much black leather, smeared in red paint that is meant to resemble blood, all of it stark against her naturally very pale skin. She has fangs firmly in place and on display with a wide grin and a katana in hand.
Sitting beside her, watching the party with a vague sort of interest Megan is sporting a trio of snakes, woven into a red wig, sashes tied all about her person, one holding a sword by her side.
I watch them from where I’m perched on a chair opposite, and doing my best not to touch the fabric with my hands. They’re covered up in purple paint, and it wouldn’t do to leave a mark.
And it’s not just my hands - my arms, face and neck are all the same, giving the appearance of purple skin, covered in runic tattoos. There are blue horns jutting up through the fringe of a white wig, and red-yellow contacts that are making my eyes ache. Emerging from somewhere beneath the black armour and velvet I’m wearing, is a purple tail, and a chakram (just think Xena: Warrior Princess) that has a tendency to disappear off my belt as people walk past.
A year and a half after we began playing in the world Tim had made, unfurling the story that he had in mind, here we are, dressed as our characters for an “alternate personality” themed party. There’s only one missing from our little group, but for tonight, it is almost as if we could take to the streets as Bob, Tesala and Zhavah respectively.
I admit that I kind of cheated when it came to “creating a new character” for the game. Zhavah was built around the idea of being Celebrin’s daughter. That dictated so much of her appearance - the colourings of a half-dark-elf, mixed in with a little red taint from her demon blood.
In those two years, she slowly become something more than the child of another character. I perfected her, even gave her flaws as far as game-mechanics go, so that she was a being, rather than simply a character. I’ve played her for so long that becoming her is as easy as slipping on the pair of blue theatrical horns that I wear, not only now, but when playing.
Outside of the game, she has a 200 year backstory, through which I’ve come to know her even better than I have by being her, and she will often demand I write her something new, particularly when we’ve been listening to music that catches her interest.
She has a beginning, and if she gets her way with some of Hans Zimmer’s music, an ending. The game is simply mapping out her middle, discovering the journey that will take her to her happily ever after - if you could call it that. Being the drama queen that she is, darling Zhavah wants to go out in a crumbling temple, liquid shadows dripping down her face.
But that’s a story for another day, and if I get my way, it won’t happen. I have too much left that I want to do with her, too many things left to explore and try. Even if I didn’t, I love her as mine, everything from her surly attitude to her very awesome appearance, and I’m not ready to part ways with her.
It was no secret to our group, or to anyone who knew the lot of us that we had a mild falling out a few months into the game. Power levels and interpersonal issues abounded, we argued and fought and abandoned the campaign for a while.
But, we came back together, and started playing again - a new campaign, slightly revamped characters and a desire to make this one work. Some of us weren’t willing to let the characters go, convinced that we still had so much more to do with them. Bless Tim’s soul, he allowed us to do so.
And, we all wanted to continue our social contact. The five of us see each other very little, with work and university commitments and overlapping timetables making co-ordinating a time very difficult. As Tim would later put it, being able to get a group together on a weekly basis makes the whole experience akin to religious. It is hard to schedule everyone, but we manage it because we wouldn’t have it any other way.
This group, which would later come to be known as the Saturday Group, became very closed off to the rest of the world, a clique, if you will. Over the years, everyone settled into their roles, had their own positions around the gaming table, and even the shy ones opened up and took familiarity in those around them.
A few others have tried to join the game, only to be rejected, unanimously. An addition to the game would change the entire dynamic of the group, and alter the gameplay that we’ve all become so very used to. Bob and Zhavah will talk a lot, generally threatening monster with bodily harm if they do not surrender information or arms immediately. Tesala interjects with wit that is, more likely than not, going to get us into worlds of trouble. While I tend to laugh and wince a little at the imagined effects of whatever insult Tesala has just tossed, Zhavah cringes on the inside, reaching down for her chakram with a sigh. And then there’s Siithaan, the one who didn’t make it to the costume party on New Year. She doesn’t say much, doesn’t do much, but when she does, you can be certain that you’ll remember it.
Of course, there’s our Dungeon Master, the one who started it all, the one who created the world, who writes the game, and takes us on our weekly journey. He’s our guide and our foil, our list of cheats and the rules that keep up in place.
~*~
The scorpion shrieked writhed in pain, sending up a spray of golden sand, flinging blood around with its flailing limbs. Eyes latching on its closest target, the huge creature lunged forward, snapping its tail over its head, the glistening end sliding over leather plates and finding one fatal gap in the armour.
The purple-skinned demon-spawn let out her own cry of pain, white hair whipping around her as she spun away from the barb. The poison, this was not-
“How is 30?”
Tim looks up from his dice, glancing at me expectantly and tearing me away from the sight of the purple miniature on the battle-grid. From the grin in his voice, tilting the tone just a little higher, he knows that he’s bested my armour rating. I know that he knows, having submitted all my statistics to him at game start. This is a formality, so that I know how closely I came to winning the die-roll.
“That hits,” I sigh, looking down at the 28 on my sheet and wishing it was higher.
“Take...” he, he pauses, tossing a handful of blue dice and a copper one not the copper!! And counting up the numbers. “32 damage.”
I’m already beginning to plan my next turn. Retreat and get the hell away from that scorpion, and heal myself up. My health isn’t looking too good at 21/90.
“And...” Wait, ‘and?’ “Take 8 constitution damage. What are your hit points now?”
I cringe and begin working out the numbers. Constitution damage is not pretty - it lowers your total health, and everything else goes down accordingly. 90 drops to 54, and 21 drops to...
“I think that...” Tim looks down at his own calculations of my health, his eyes widening. I nod dismally, glancing uncomfortably over at the miniature on the grid, the little purple demon poised before that rather large scorpion. We’d been together for two years, I’d glued her tail back on countless times.“Yeah...”
“You’re...”
“Very dead,” I agree, feeling a certain sense of unease grow in my stomach, as I consider my character sheets, every number a building block in my purple demon’s being. I haven’t even finished working out the damage and I know that her health - my health - has dropped below -10, the point of no return.
“-15?”
“Something like that.” I don’t really want to think about how dead I am. How dead my character is. The Dungeon Master and I stare at each other for a moment and the other players stare at us.
“Okay,” he says slowly, “Lets say its -9 and stable.”
The purple-skinned demon in my head smirks in triumph, knowing that she will live to snark another day. I breathe a happy sigh of relief, and turn to my spell lists, beginning to make plans of recovery.
By all rights, my Zhavah should have died that night. I could have very easily, and probably would have, created a new character and kept on playing. However, I would prefer not to. I would prefer to keep inhabiting my little purple demon, to continue to keep slipping into her familiar sulky countenance week after week.
Our Dungeon Master, Tim, knew this. He very possibly saw the misery on my face as I considered her imminent death. So, he allowed her to live.
“Why did you do that?” I later asked him, as we sprawled on either end of his large bed, watching Melissa whacking monsters on the computer and muttering obscenities at them under her breath. “Prevent the death of a character?”
“As a Dungeon Master, the player characters you are in control of are all your player characters,” he responds. I admit it wasn’t quite the answer that I was expecting. But its begins to put into place for me what it was that he was creating. Our dear Dungeon Master was telling his own story, and we were pieces, a part in the tale.
But, this was different to the normal writing of a story, because even though we were players in his world, we were still, for the most part autonomous characters. Although the end is predetermined, and the choices we make actually turned about to make it happen (or, so we assume, not actually knowing what goes on behind the Dungeon Master’s screen), what we say, and the strange way we fold those situations in on themselves in turn can come as a complete surprise to everyone. There have been sessions where Tim has forlornly informed us that the week’s game is at an end because we completely bypassed all the material he had written.
It has been explained that in order to write a weekly session for us, he has to write scenarios A, B and C, and then expect that we will actually carry out F and N. For the most part, he is very good at making up entire sessions on the fly because we have destroyed his plans at the get-go. However, sometimes we seem to discourage him so much (by killing all three of the backup information-giving characters, after we massacred the original, and all before actually receiving the information we needed) that he decides to call it quits after a few hours.
So, as haphazard as we may be, and as convoluted as our plans may all be, the story is built by all the players, each one with a different something that they want to get out of it. Tesala desires loot and Bob wishes for ultimate power. Zhavah seeks only to serve her Goddess in whatever end coems, while no-one ever seems to know exactly what it is that Siithaan is doing, bringer of chaos that she is.
“There are times, though,” Tim is telling me about not letting characters die, “That you have to give the players a taste of dying - the consequences of doing something stupid. Because leaping out and trying to take on both sides of the Western Front will get you killed.”
He smirks at me as I laugh, knowing full well what he is referring to - our very first gaming session, in which we were shifted across worlds to the Western Front of World War Two. In the confusion our characters suffered from these very new, very different surroundings, Siithaan took it upon herself to leap out of the pit we were hiding in, and attack the nearest person. This action, needless to say, saw her killed by machine guns from the side of those she was attacking.
We remaining three players had looked on in incredulity as she had performed this feat, knowing well enough that this was not the answer to our puzzle. We had all looked expectantly at Tim, awaiting the final word on his exasperated execution of our comrade.
“You know what?” he had said consideringly. “Siithaan is still in the pit with the rest of you, yet to have her turn. She does, however, get this strange vision that to perhaps leap out and attack one of these people will not end well for her.”
And onwards we went, all the wiser for knowing that stupid actions would see us dead. The next time we faced those odds, Siithaan was the first one to surrender.
~*~
Not long after New Years, Tim, Melissa and I were all invited to play in another game, this time with the very opposite rule of not being able to play evil characters. This new campaign was also quite different from any that I had played before, as it was a very humourous game, with the initial idea that varying random events could happen at whim, based on a condition that the world was suffering. This condition, known as the Weirdening, also extended to the characters, requiring that each of them have a quirk that would come into roleplay.
My own character was a pixie that had been reduced to a fraction of her normal size. She was crazy, and the class that I chose for her, the wildmage, was the very epitome of ‘random,’ with the outcome of almost all her actions dependent on a percentile roll.
I very quickly came to hate the character, even if the concept still intrigued me. Roleplaying the pixie was very easy to do, with her childlike mannerisms - simply play her as cute, and I was set.
However, I couldn’t enjoy playing like that. I’m not quick on my feet, able to come up with wit and snappy comebacks within the real-life timing of roleplay. The crazy atmosphere that the characters were walking in came in direct contrast to the realistic and serious (although, jokes still make their way in there) campaign that Zhavah inhabits.
And, as easy as playing the pixie was, I was not enjoying being her. She was a small, annoying prankster, and exactly the type of character that I hated.
Another player was also having issues with the playability of their character, and so, with the Dungeon Master, a plan was formulated to replace both of them.
The easiest way to believably remove the characters from the storyline was to kill them. Given that I had my eyes on playing a cleric as my new character, this quickly progressed into an idea of killing the entire party, requiring my cleric to resurrect them in order to continue on - again, inserting the character in a plot-consistent manner.
It was then decided, as we plotted the demise of the characters, that Melissa and I would cameo Bob and Zhavah. At that point, the two evil characters stood at level 19, as opposed to the mere level 6 of the good party. Between the two of us, we estimated that the six of them would last a mere three rounds - three turns each - and not because of their staying power, but our own limitations on killing them one by one.
In the end, the total party kill and the insertion of my new cleric were successful. The two removed characters actually didn’t end up dying in the campaign - both were simply evacuated from the game and left for both of us to play with as narrative characters.
Zhavah very quickly claimed the pixie’s soul as her plaything, and I happily conceded her fate.
~*~
My cleric, Menelion, was created to be Zhavah’s diametric opposite, for somewhere along the line, I was curious to see what I could make of an aasimaar - a quarter-angel, standing directly opposite the quarter-demon tieflings. From there, the natural progression of his character had seemed obvious - make him everything she isn’t. Angel to her demon, light to her dark, worshipper of a sun god to offset Zhavah’s devotion to a goddess of night.
Of course, the die rolls determine much of his abilities, and poor Menelion was saddled with a paltry 6 Intelligence - average being 10. His charisma, however, was very high, and being left with a half-elven angel male airheaded supermodel in armour, I decided to play him like Orlando Bloom’s Legolas. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Lord of the Rings elf, but even I have to admit that, as pretty as he is, there doesn’t seem to be very much upstairs.
Zhavah, in the meantime, very quickly decided that she did not like this new invader into her territory. Momentarily satisfied by the pixie’s demise, she watched me roll up Menelion with a scowl.
“You’re an idiot,” she all but snarls at me for betraying her, once again. “And I hate you.”
I ignore her in favour of making this conceptual character real, only to later discover that it wasn’t going to work.
So far, Menelion has not made an appearance in my mind, unless it be Zhavah dragging him out of the depths of my imagination to treat him to her special brand of pain. I don’t know if she hates him because its an inherent reaction from her, or if she despises him for replacing her in some of my time. I halfway suspect that it might be a bit of both.
Even during his game, Menelion is little more than an image in my head of what transpires in the game. It is far more like watching a computer game cutscene, while Zhavah leans against the closest piece of furniture, making snarky comments about his incompetence. I’m glad that she believes in his existence, because I’m having a hard time of it.
It makes the game very hard to engage in - the player’s character is the key to the door of Dungeons and Dragons. All I can do is stumble around in the guise of Menelion, citing it as his own dimwittedness (the boy believes his God is a sunflower carried on his back, I mean, honestly).
The truth is, I am still no better at quick humour, especially the very crude brand that is common with this group. Far more importantly, I’m so used to being Zhavah, to stepping back into her shoes and lowering my voice into her dusky snarl while deciding to obliterate something with a wave of negative energy, that I’m still trying to be her when I’m meant to be Menelion.
“And that’s what you get for playing a good cleric,” she snickers at me, as I sit back and realise that my first course of action is completely out of character.
I hiss at Zhavah to go away and let me play Menelion in peace, and though she will silence for a short time (really, until I make another slip up by trying to be her), she’s always a presence in the back of my mind, watching, and waiting for the slip so she can laugh at my lack of progress in the roleplaying stakes.
“We’d be playing right now,” Melissa tells me sadly, as we stand around in a bar none of us particularly want to be in. I can do nothing more than nod in agreement, wishing, more than anything, that we were back in our loft, with its cushions and our stash of sugar, gathered around the battle grid covered with miniatures and dice.
Instead, we’re here, which is decidedly not as comfortable. It is, however, necessary. We all still have friends outside of the game, and their plans of socialising, of birthdays and housewarmings and other random parties often clash with our weekly Saturday night game.
And so, the game is put aside for a week, which often leads to a lamentation of not playing, even if we are enjoying ourselves at wherever it is we have ended up this time.
Saturday nights were never seen as a sacrifice by those of us playing. With the exception of Melissa, none of us were doing anything else. If anything, the game actually provided us with social contact, rather than depriving us of it.
~*~*~*~*~*
It is because of Zhavah that 4th edition still rubs me the wrong way.
The first thing that I did when inspecting the new rules was to read up on the redesigned tiefling race. Zhavah had endeared me to the race that had originally been a curiosity to me, and I had since created two more of what had become my favourite of the Dungeons and Dragons races.
The entry that I’m looking at, however, is not a tiefling. Instead of watered down demon blood, the tiefling is now simply a descendent of a broken evil empire, an effort, I’m sure to remove the need for the aasimar, which has not yet been seen anywhere. The more I read of the entry, the more I dislike it, and something within me drags the entire new edition through the proverbial mud in disgust.
Zhavah glares over my shoulder at the page, and I can all but imagine the way her tail flicks angrily against her shins as she reads -even if I’m not entirely certain I gave her the ability to read English in the first place.
“Misery? Pain?” she’s muttering under her breath, until she turns that burning gaze on me. “We are not playing this,” the tiefling tells me, decisively, turning away and vanishing once again. She won’t accept an argument from me on this, and she won’t get one.
I don’t want to play it anymore than she does.
I won’t play it without bringing her along, and under these rules, she cannot come. So, together we’ll stay.
~*~
Took this in to my supervisors today, and they're both really pleased with it, especially the dialogue. Notes taken, contextualising and further explaining needs to be done, so that's what I'm going to do now. Full draft is required in two weeks, then its on with the edit and the theoretical part.
~*~
“I’m starting a new campaign.”
Five simple words pique my interest and I turn in my seat in the car to look at the driver.
“I have this great idea,” he continues happily, settling in so that we can leave the carpark. “Everyone will have to have evil characters.”
“You know I can do that,” I grin back. After all, I have been playing an evil character in the computer game Neverwinter Nights, and Tim, my companion, knows this very well, having compared playtime with me.
“It’ll be the new version, 3.5,” he warns me, and I return to my drink with a nod. I had already been playing Dungeons and Dragons with my parents, the occasional game using the first ruleset of three (or rather, three and a half, what with the slight rejig 3rd edition had undergone.)
However, I wanted to play more and the only other players I knew were using the new ruleset.
“And a new character,” he tells me as we drive off through the rain. “I don’t think Celebrin will work so well for what I have in mind.”
“What do you have in mind?” I ask curiously. Celebrin is nothing concrete, given that I drag her around from Neverwinter, to Morrowind, to Dungeons and Dragons, always adapting her slightly for whatever I’m playing. Because of that, I’d never really gained a true sense of her and had been hoping for that here. Oh well.
“It’s going to be so awesome,” Tim reveals, as if that answers my question, the excitement barely contained in his voice.
I listen as he tells me all about the benefits of the new ruleset, trying my best to follow along and eventually deciding that playing it will be the best teacher.
There is one thing I’ve picked up on though. Unlike the reasonably restrictive 1st edition rules, 3.5 presents apparently endless possibilities for character creation.
This time, I can make exactly who I want to.
~*~
New Year, 2008 - a year and a half after that first rainy-day conversation about suitable character.
There’s Melissa, decked out in not much black leather, smeared in red paint that is meant to resemble blood, all of it stark against her naturally very pale skin. She has fangs firmly in place and on display with a wide grin and a katana in hand.
Sitting beside her, watching the party with a vague sort of interest Megan is sporting a trio of snakes, woven into a red wig, sashes tied all about her person, one holding a sword by her side.
I watch them from where I’m perched on a chair opposite, and doing my best not to touch the fabric with my hands. They’re covered up in purple paint, and it wouldn’t do to leave a mark.
And it’s not just my hands - my arms, face and neck are all the same, giving the appearance of purple skin, covered in runic tattoos. There are blue horns jutting up through the fringe of a white wig, and red-yellow contacts that are making my eyes ache. Emerging from somewhere beneath the black armour and velvet I’m wearing, is a purple tail, and a chakram (just think Xena: Warrior Princess) that has a tendency to disappear off my belt as people walk past.
A year and a half after we began playing in the world Tim had made, unfurling the story that he had in mind, here we are, dressed as our characters for an “alternate personality” themed party. There’s only one missing from our little group, but for tonight, it is almost as if we could take to the streets as Bob, Tesala and Zhavah respectively.
I admit that I kind of cheated when it came to “creating a new character” for the game. Zhavah was built around the idea of being Celebrin’s daughter. That dictated so much of her appearance - the colourings of a half-dark-elf, mixed in with a little red taint from her demon blood.
In those two years, she slowly become something more than the child of another character. I perfected her, even gave her flaws as far as game-mechanics go, so that she was a being, rather than simply a character. I’ve played her for so long that becoming her is as easy as slipping on the pair of blue theatrical horns that I wear, not only now, but when playing.
Outside of the game, she has a 200 year backstory, through which I’ve come to know her even better than I have by being her, and she will often demand I write her something new, particularly when we’ve been listening to music that catches her interest.
She has a beginning, and if she gets her way with some of Hans Zimmer’s music, an ending. The game is simply mapping out her middle, discovering the journey that will take her to her happily ever after - if you could call it that. Being the drama queen that she is, darling Zhavah wants to go out in a crumbling temple, liquid shadows dripping down her face.
But that’s a story for another day, and if I get my way, it won’t happen. I have too much left that I want to do with her, too many things left to explore and try. Even if I didn’t, I love her as mine, everything from her surly attitude to her very awesome appearance, and I’m not ready to part ways with her.
It was no secret to our group, or to anyone who knew the lot of us that we had a mild falling out a few months into the game. Power levels and interpersonal issues abounded, we argued and fought and abandoned the campaign for a while.
But, we came back together, and started playing again - a new campaign, slightly revamped characters and a desire to make this one work. Some of us weren’t willing to let the characters go, convinced that we still had so much more to do with them. Bless Tim’s soul, he allowed us to do so.
And, we all wanted to continue our social contact. The five of us see each other very little, with work and university commitments and overlapping timetables making co-ordinating a time very difficult. As Tim would later put it, being able to get a group together on a weekly basis makes the whole experience akin to religious. It is hard to schedule everyone, but we manage it because we wouldn’t have it any other way.
This group, which would later come to be known as the Saturday Group, became very closed off to the rest of the world, a clique, if you will. Over the years, everyone settled into their roles, had their own positions around the gaming table, and even the shy ones opened up and took familiarity in those around them.
A few others have tried to join the game, only to be rejected, unanimously. An addition to the game would change the entire dynamic of the group, and alter the gameplay that we’ve all become so very used to. Bob and Zhavah will talk a lot, generally threatening monster with bodily harm if they do not surrender information or arms immediately. Tesala interjects with wit that is, more likely than not, going to get us into worlds of trouble. While I tend to laugh and wince a little at the imagined effects of whatever insult Tesala has just tossed, Zhavah cringes on the inside, reaching down for her chakram with a sigh. And then there’s Siithaan, the one who didn’t make it to the costume party on New Year. She doesn’t say much, doesn’t do much, but when she does, you can be certain that you’ll remember it.
Of course, there’s our Dungeon Master, the one who started it all, the one who created the world, who writes the game, and takes us on our weekly journey. He’s our guide and our foil, our list of cheats and the rules that keep up in place.
~*~
The scorpion shrieked writhed in pain, sending up a spray of golden sand, flinging blood around with its flailing limbs. Eyes latching on its closest target, the huge creature lunged forward, snapping its tail over its head, the glistening end sliding over leather plates and finding one fatal gap in the armour.
The purple-skinned demon-spawn let out her own cry of pain, white hair whipping around her as she spun away from the barb. The poison, this was not-
“How is 30?”
Tim looks up from his dice, glancing at me expectantly and tearing me away from the sight of the purple miniature on the battle-grid. From the grin in his voice, tilting the tone just a little higher, he knows that he’s bested my armour rating. I know that he knows, having submitted all my statistics to him at game start. This is a formality, so that I know how closely I came to winning the die-roll.
“That hits,” I sigh, looking down at the 28 on my sheet and wishing it was higher.
“Take...” he, he pauses, tossing a handful of blue dice and a copper one not the copper!! And counting up the numbers. “32 damage.”
I’m already beginning to plan my next turn. Retreat and get the hell away from that scorpion, and heal myself up. My health isn’t looking too good at 21/90.
“And...” Wait, ‘and?’ “Take 8 constitution damage. What are your hit points now?”
I cringe and begin working out the numbers. Constitution damage is not pretty - it lowers your total health, and everything else goes down accordingly. 90 drops to 54, and 21 drops to...
“I think that...” Tim looks down at his own calculations of my health, his eyes widening. I nod dismally, glancing uncomfortably over at the miniature on the grid, the little purple demon poised before that rather large scorpion. We’d been together for two years, I’d glued her tail back on countless times.“Yeah...”
“You’re...”
“Very dead,” I agree, feeling a certain sense of unease grow in my stomach, as I consider my character sheets, every number a building block in my purple demon’s being. I haven’t even finished working out the damage and I know that her health - my health - has dropped below -10, the point of no return.
“-15?”
“Something like that.” I don’t really want to think about how dead I am. How dead my character is. The Dungeon Master and I stare at each other for a moment and the other players stare at us.
“Okay,” he says slowly, “Lets say its -9 and stable.”
The purple-skinned demon in my head smirks in triumph, knowing that she will live to snark another day. I breathe a happy sigh of relief, and turn to my spell lists, beginning to make plans of recovery.
By all rights, my Zhavah should have died that night. I could have very easily, and probably would have, created a new character and kept on playing. However, I would prefer not to. I would prefer to keep inhabiting my little purple demon, to continue to keep slipping into her familiar sulky countenance week after week.
Our Dungeon Master, Tim, knew this. He very possibly saw the misery on my face as I considered her imminent death. So, he allowed her to live.
“Why did you do that?” I later asked him, as we sprawled on either end of his large bed, watching Melissa whacking monsters on the computer and muttering obscenities at them under her breath. “Prevent the death of a character?”
“As a Dungeon Master, the player characters you are in control of are all your player characters,” he responds. I admit it wasn’t quite the answer that I was expecting. But its begins to put into place for me what it was that he was creating. Our dear Dungeon Master was telling his own story, and we were pieces, a part in the tale.
But, this was different to the normal writing of a story, because even though we were players in his world, we were still, for the most part autonomous characters. Although the end is predetermined, and the choices we make actually turned about to make it happen (or, so we assume, not actually knowing what goes on behind the Dungeon Master’s screen), what we say, and the strange way we fold those situations in on themselves in turn can come as a complete surprise to everyone. There have been sessions where Tim has forlornly informed us that the week’s game is at an end because we completely bypassed all the material he had written.
It has been explained that in order to write a weekly session for us, he has to write scenarios A, B and C, and then expect that we will actually carry out F and N. For the most part, he is very good at making up entire sessions on the fly because we have destroyed his plans at the get-go. However, sometimes we seem to discourage him so much (by killing all three of the backup information-giving characters, after we massacred the original, and all before actually receiving the information we needed) that he decides to call it quits after a few hours.
So, as haphazard as we may be, and as convoluted as our plans may all be, the story is built by all the players, each one with a different something that they want to get out of it. Tesala desires loot and Bob wishes for ultimate power. Zhavah seeks only to serve her Goddess in whatever end coems, while no-one ever seems to know exactly what it is that Siithaan is doing, bringer of chaos that she is.
“There are times, though,” Tim is telling me about not letting characters die, “That you have to give the players a taste of dying - the consequences of doing something stupid. Because leaping out and trying to take on both sides of the Western Front will get you killed.”
He smirks at me as I laugh, knowing full well what he is referring to - our very first gaming session, in which we were shifted across worlds to the Western Front of World War Two. In the confusion our characters suffered from these very new, very different surroundings, Siithaan took it upon herself to leap out of the pit we were hiding in, and attack the nearest person. This action, needless to say, saw her killed by machine guns from the side of those she was attacking.
We remaining three players had looked on in incredulity as she had performed this feat, knowing well enough that this was not the answer to our puzzle. We had all looked expectantly at Tim, awaiting the final word on his exasperated execution of our comrade.
“You know what?” he had said consideringly. “Siithaan is still in the pit with the rest of you, yet to have her turn. She does, however, get this strange vision that to perhaps leap out and attack one of these people will not end well for her.”
And onwards we went, all the wiser for knowing that stupid actions would see us dead. The next time we faced those odds, Siithaan was the first one to surrender.
~*~
Not long after New Years, Tim, Melissa and I were all invited to play in another game, this time with the very opposite rule of not being able to play evil characters. This new campaign was also quite different from any that I had played before, as it was a very humourous game, with the initial idea that varying random events could happen at whim, based on a condition that the world was suffering. This condition, known as the Weirdening, also extended to the characters, requiring that each of them have a quirk that would come into roleplay.
My own character was a pixie that had been reduced to a fraction of her normal size. She was crazy, and the class that I chose for her, the wildmage, was the very epitome of ‘random,’ with the outcome of almost all her actions dependent on a percentile roll.
I very quickly came to hate the character, even if the concept still intrigued me. Roleplaying the pixie was very easy to do, with her childlike mannerisms - simply play her as cute, and I was set.
However, I couldn’t enjoy playing like that. I’m not quick on my feet, able to come up with wit and snappy comebacks within the real-life timing of roleplay. The crazy atmosphere that the characters were walking in came in direct contrast to the realistic and serious (although, jokes still make their way in there) campaign that Zhavah inhabits.
And, as easy as playing the pixie was, I was not enjoying being her. She was a small, annoying prankster, and exactly the type of character that I hated.
Another player was also having issues with the playability of their character, and so, with the Dungeon Master, a plan was formulated to replace both of them.
The easiest way to believably remove the characters from the storyline was to kill them. Given that I had my eyes on playing a cleric as my new character, this quickly progressed into an idea of killing the entire party, requiring my cleric to resurrect them in order to continue on - again, inserting the character in a plot-consistent manner.
It was then decided, as we plotted the demise of the characters, that Melissa and I would cameo Bob and Zhavah. At that point, the two evil characters stood at level 19, as opposed to the mere level 6 of the good party. Between the two of us, we estimated that the six of them would last a mere three rounds - three turns each - and not because of their staying power, but our own limitations on killing them one by one.
In the end, the total party kill and the insertion of my new cleric were successful. The two removed characters actually didn’t end up dying in the campaign - both were simply evacuated from the game and left for both of us to play with as narrative characters.
Zhavah very quickly claimed the pixie’s soul as her plaything, and I happily conceded her fate.
~*~
My cleric, Menelion, was created to be Zhavah’s diametric opposite, for somewhere along the line, I was curious to see what I could make of an aasimaar - a quarter-angel, standing directly opposite the quarter-demon tieflings. From there, the natural progression of his character had seemed obvious - make him everything she isn’t. Angel to her demon, light to her dark, worshipper of a sun god to offset Zhavah’s devotion to a goddess of night.
Of course, the die rolls determine much of his abilities, and poor Menelion was saddled with a paltry 6 Intelligence - average being 10. His charisma, however, was very high, and being left with a half-elven angel male airheaded supermodel in armour, I decided to play him like Orlando Bloom’s Legolas. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Lord of the Rings elf, but even I have to admit that, as pretty as he is, there doesn’t seem to be very much upstairs.
Zhavah, in the meantime, very quickly decided that she did not like this new invader into her territory. Momentarily satisfied by the pixie’s demise, she watched me roll up Menelion with a scowl.
“You’re an idiot,” she all but snarls at me for betraying her, once again. “And I hate you.”
I ignore her in favour of making this conceptual character real, only to later discover that it wasn’t going to work.
So far, Menelion has not made an appearance in my mind, unless it be Zhavah dragging him out of the depths of my imagination to treat him to her special brand of pain. I don’t know if she hates him because its an inherent reaction from her, or if she despises him for replacing her in some of my time. I halfway suspect that it might be a bit of both.
Even during his game, Menelion is little more than an image in my head of what transpires in the game. It is far more like watching a computer game cutscene, while Zhavah leans against the closest piece of furniture, making snarky comments about his incompetence. I’m glad that she believes in his existence, because I’m having a hard time of it.
It makes the game very hard to engage in - the player’s character is the key to the door of Dungeons and Dragons. All I can do is stumble around in the guise of Menelion, citing it as his own dimwittedness (the boy believes his God is a sunflower carried on his back, I mean, honestly).
The truth is, I am still no better at quick humour, especially the very crude brand that is common with this group. Far more importantly, I’m so used to being Zhavah, to stepping back into her shoes and lowering my voice into her dusky snarl while deciding to obliterate something with a wave of negative energy, that I’m still trying to be her when I’m meant to be Menelion.
“And that’s what you get for playing a good cleric,” she snickers at me, as I sit back and realise that my first course of action is completely out of character.
I hiss at Zhavah to go away and let me play Menelion in peace, and though she will silence for a short time (really, until I make another slip up by trying to be her), she’s always a presence in the back of my mind, watching, and waiting for the slip so she can laugh at my lack of progress in the roleplaying stakes.
“We’d be playing right now,” Melissa tells me sadly, as we stand around in a bar none of us particularly want to be in. I can do nothing more than nod in agreement, wishing, more than anything, that we were back in our loft, with its cushions and our stash of sugar, gathered around the battle grid covered with miniatures and dice.
Instead, we’re here, which is decidedly not as comfortable. It is, however, necessary. We all still have friends outside of the game, and their plans of socialising, of birthdays and housewarmings and other random parties often clash with our weekly Saturday night game.
And so, the game is put aside for a week, which often leads to a lamentation of not playing, even if we are enjoying ourselves at wherever it is we have ended up this time.
Saturday nights were never seen as a sacrifice by those of us playing. With the exception of Melissa, none of us were doing anything else. If anything, the game actually provided us with social contact, rather than depriving us of it.
~*~*~*~*~*
It is because of Zhavah that 4th edition still rubs me the wrong way.
The first thing that I did when inspecting the new rules was to read up on the redesigned tiefling race. Zhavah had endeared me to the race that had originally been a curiosity to me, and I had since created two more of what had become my favourite of the Dungeons and Dragons races.
The entry that I’m looking at, however, is not a tiefling. Instead of watered down demon blood, the tiefling is now simply a descendent of a broken evil empire, an effort, I’m sure to remove the need for the aasimar, which has not yet been seen anywhere. The more I read of the entry, the more I dislike it, and something within me drags the entire new edition through the proverbial mud in disgust.
Zhavah glares over my shoulder at the page, and I can all but imagine the way her tail flicks angrily against her shins as she reads -even if I’m not entirely certain I gave her the ability to read English in the first place.
“Misery? Pain?” she’s muttering under her breath, until she turns that burning gaze on me. “We are not playing this,” the tiefling tells me, decisively, turning away and vanishing once again. She won’t accept an argument from me on this, and she won’t get one.
I don’t want to play it anymore than she does.
I won’t play it without bringing her along, and under these rules, she cannot come. So, together we’ll stay.
~*~