(no subject)
I played D and D for the first time in over two years tonight. It was with some techie guys from Benn's work, and while it was nice to be (quite literally) back in the game, it made me feel homesick, too. I'm realizing that playing DnD with some nerdy techies is NOT the same as playing with a bunch of people who live and breathe this stuff. I mean, come on: Greg, Matthew, Mike, and Jonathan all basically make their living off of fantasy gaming in one way or another. Greg and Matthew through art, Mike in game design, and Jonathan in critical review.
Playing with these guys is totally different. First off, they don't even use dice, or paper, just connect their laptops together into a joint server and use a computer game for their characters, their dice rolls, and the game mapping. Secondly, the DM clearly considers his own amusement to be the highest priority, and numbers to be the second priority. Minor things like the players actually getting into their characters or enjoying the game are not really factors of importance. He gave Benn and I quite good guidelines about what we could and could not do when drawing up our characters. We were joining into the game at 12th level, and were allowed to use all the new 3.5 stuff, which we conveniently have on Benn's computer now, thanks to our friendly neighbourhood torrent. They had to be dwarfs. I drew up a dwarf rogue/combat trapsmith, chaotic neutral (apparently the party is tending toward evil). Her intelligence is high, but her wisdom is in the negative modifiers, so I decided that she's a bit of a pyro maniac, and all of her feats and specialties basically are involved with blowing shit up. I decided that she was a clanless character (as described in Races of Stone) and had basically grown up on the street, being kicked around by respectable dwarf folk, which is why she is so weird now. I named her "Reigret", which according to Races of Stone means Vermin Child. I figured that's what people called her when she was being kicked through life. Benn made a Warlock, with an intimidation skill modifier of, like, 27, who can shoot awesome eldritch blasts out of his finger, and he picked a name for his character which was, like, Noble Stronghold or something.
When we actually started playing, we were told to throw our hand-picked names away, and instead roll two d10 to get randomly generated names from the naming charts that we had used to form our names. Benn's mighty character ended up being named Darel (which had the DM giggling hysterically and nerdily for a good long while) and mine ended up being called Thorlin, which means Noble Singer. Now how on earth would an orphaned, clanless dwarf end up with a name like that? She wouldn't. I protected, and explained my reasons for naming my character what I did. The DM dismissed it, saying characters shouldn't have backstory, that the GAME gives backstory. So apparently her first 12 levels are not important. In fact, they never happened. He said that her story starts now, and nothing really goes before at all. Then he went back to giggling about "Darel" and, to make sure that he had effectively taken me down a peg, insisted on calling my character "Noble Singer" (rather than Thorlin) on the computer and out loud all night. You know, just to teachme that I didn't have a right to try and give my character personality.
This game is clearly much more about numbers to the DM, that and trying to kill us, and he'd have a good long giggle whenever his orcs took a good hit on us. The poor guys playing with us were clearly a little frustrated by their attempts to fill out their character's personalities. The shape shifting druid guy hadn't liked the random name thing either. The guy playing the vow-of-poverty monk was frustrated because his vow-of-poverty abilities had been removed by the mysterious dimension that we are playing in, making him fairly useless and basically a big meat shield for the rest of us. His character was the only one that I really got a good idea of, looks-wise. Benn and I were not asked to describe our characters.
I know a lot of people enjoy DnD just for the number play, but I am not one of them. I like playing a character, get my imagination going a bit.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed myself, and I'll go again. It may not be perfect, but it's still the only DnD game I've had a chance to play since Jonathan and I broke up. That's... that's almost two and a half years. But it wasn't the same kind of fun... hopefully "Noble Singer" will be given a chance to show some personality down the line. But I feel like she isn't real - the person I have in my head could not, ever, ever, be NOble Singer. Unless maybe that was her birth name, and everyone had always just CALLED her Ratchild, and she still clings to her birth name for sentimental reasons. But I don't think she's the type to do that.
Or I can just play her as she is meant to be played - as a number and tactics generating engine for the little circle on the map on the computer screen. That's fun too....
Anyway, here's an interesting meme:
Everyone has things they journal about.
Everyone has things they don't journal about.
Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't journal about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: last movie watched, last book read, political leanings, favorite type of underwear, etc.
Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other!
Playing with these guys is totally different. First off, they don't even use dice, or paper, just connect their laptops together into a joint server and use a computer game for their characters, their dice rolls, and the game mapping. Secondly, the DM clearly considers his own amusement to be the highest priority, and numbers to be the second priority. Minor things like the players actually getting into their characters or enjoying the game are not really factors of importance. He gave Benn and I quite good guidelines about what we could and could not do when drawing up our characters. We were joining into the game at 12th level, and were allowed to use all the new 3.5 stuff, which we conveniently have on Benn's computer now, thanks to our friendly neighbourhood torrent. They had to be dwarfs. I drew up a dwarf rogue/combat trapsmith, chaotic neutral (apparently the party is tending toward evil). Her intelligence is high, but her wisdom is in the negative modifiers, so I decided that she's a bit of a pyro maniac, and all of her feats and specialties basically are involved with blowing shit up. I decided that she was a clanless character (as described in Races of Stone) and had basically grown up on the street, being kicked around by respectable dwarf folk, which is why she is so weird now. I named her "Reigret", which according to Races of Stone means Vermin Child. I figured that's what people called her when she was being kicked through life. Benn made a Warlock, with an intimidation skill modifier of, like, 27, who can shoot awesome eldritch blasts out of his finger, and he picked a name for his character which was, like, Noble Stronghold or something.
When we actually started playing, we were told to throw our hand-picked names away, and instead roll two d10 to get randomly generated names from the naming charts that we had used to form our names. Benn's mighty character ended up being named Darel (which had the DM giggling hysterically and nerdily for a good long while) and mine ended up being called Thorlin, which means Noble Singer. Now how on earth would an orphaned, clanless dwarf end up with a name like that? She wouldn't. I protected, and explained my reasons for naming my character what I did. The DM dismissed it, saying characters shouldn't have backstory, that the GAME gives backstory. So apparently her first 12 levels are not important. In fact, they never happened. He said that her story starts now, and nothing really goes before at all. Then he went back to giggling about "Darel" and, to make sure that he had effectively taken me down a peg, insisted on calling my character "Noble Singer" (rather than Thorlin) on the computer and out loud all night. You know, just to teachme that I didn't have a right to try and give my character personality.
This game is clearly much more about numbers to the DM, that and trying to kill us, and he'd have a good long giggle whenever his orcs took a good hit on us. The poor guys playing with us were clearly a little frustrated by their attempts to fill out their character's personalities. The shape shifting druid guy hadn't liked the random name thing either. The guy playing the vow-of-poverty monk was frustrated because his vow-of-poverty abilities had been removed by the mysterious dimension that we are playing in, making him fairly useless and basically a big meat shield for the rest of us. His character was the only one that I really got a good idea of, looks-wise. Benn and I were not asked to describe our characters.
I know a lot of people enjoy DnD just for the number play, but I am not one of them. I like playing a character, get my imagination going a bit.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed myself, and I'll go again. It may not be perfect, but it's still the only DnD game I've had a chance to play since Jonathan and I broke up. That's... that's almost two and a half years. But it wasn't the same kind of fun... hopefully "Noble Singer" will be given a chance to show some personality down the line. But I feel like she isn't real - the person I have in my head could not, ever, ever, be NOble Singer. Unless maybe that was her birth name, and everyone had always just CALLED her Ratchild, and she still clings to her birth name for sentimental reasons. But I don't think she's the type to do that.
Or I can just play her as she is meant to be played - as a number and tactics generating engine for the little circle on the map on the computer screen. That's fun too....
Anyway, here's an interesting meme:
Everyone has things they journal about.
Everyone has things they don't journal about.
Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't journal about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything: last movie watched, last book read, political leanings, favorite type of underwear, etc.
Repost in your own journal so that we can all learn more about each other!