30 Days of D&D Day 28: A Character You Will Never Play Again

A character I'll never play again? Well, pretty much everybody I've named here is a character I'll never play again. Maybe we'll go back to the game with Dolly in it, I dunno. Probably not. And that's kind of the way it is in my D&D circles (and my gaming circles in general).

30 Days of D&D Day 27: A character you want to play in the future

Oh boy, there's any number of characters I want to play in the future. Infinity characters.

More tieflngs, of course. I mean, they're right there in the core book! Why not, right? And also more fighters, of course. As I said, I haven't made one in 5th yet (though I did draw the fighter in the quickstart, but we only did 1 session of that? 2?)

30 Days of D&D Day 23: Least Favorite Monster Overall

My least favorite monster? Let me tell you a story about my least favorite monster.

I've talked about Brigid in many of the posts her. She was my formative D&D character, the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil game really my formative D&D experience. It is what it is. This has been a fabulous nostalgia train, actually.

30 Days of D&D Day 18: Favorite Monster (Immortal/Outsider)

When it comes to Outsiders, there are several I like, but a couple which really stand out.

I already discussed tieflings, which are actually considered "native outsiders" (well, provided you're playing on the plane on which said individual was born. A tiefling born in Sigil but come to the Forgotten Realms, say, would be a plain ol' outsider I guess). The other side of the tiefling coin is aasimar, which are people descended from angelic influence rather than demonic or devilish. They have similar abilities (light instead of darkness, a different handful of small elemental resistances, etc.) and though they don't have a rad historic d100 table you can roll on (that I know of) you can kind of extrapolate; vestigial wings might be white-feathered instead of batty, as an example. That kind of thing.

Other than that, though, I really like Night Hags. Hags in general, I guess. We've had a couple of games which featured them heavily, and they're a thematic I enjoy. They have all that terrifying folkloric flavor I tend to enjoy, and are also not a terribly overdone beastie. They're powerful without seeming unable to be overcome, they're sinister and intelligent and more than capable of reason and diplomacy. They're a great baddie to have, because depending on the party, maybe they can just get along? But if they don't, it's sure to be an interesting and ruthless fight.

30 Days of D&D Day 17: Favorite Monster (Animal/Vermin)

Well, I can't say that I have a favorite "vermin" type when it comes to, well, anything. With animals in general, it's dogs, but most "normal" animals aren't in play very often when it comes to D&D. Horses, I suppose, and the occasional mule. So, I'm going to bend this one a little bit and pick my favorite Magical Beast, because that's kind of on the animal line.

My favorite magical beast is the Cockatrice.

30 Days of D&D Day 16: Favorite Monster (aberration)

My favorite D&D monster which is an aberration is the Cloaker.

It's one of my lifelong game goals to make friends with a cloaker that I will then wear as a cloak, and it'll be my buddy that watches my back in battle and in tight situations.

Cloakers are kind of nasty beasts to fight, in that they'll wrap somebody up entirely, grappling them, and it's possible it'll just strangle that person to death while they're in its clutches. It's then particularly difficult for the other people in the party to fight because, well, few of us like stabbing our friends.

30 Days of D&D Day 15: Favorite Monster (Undead)

What is my favorite Undead Monster? Well, I do warn you, as a player and not a DM I'm going to perhaps have different insight on the monstery end of things.

Well. I was actually a little surprised to find I had one which came immediately to mind: the ghoul. They're humanoid undead which has a paralytic touch, a pretty bad stench, and a long terrifying tongue with which to lick the marrow from bones.

30 Days of D&D Day 14: Favorite NPC

My favorite NPC (non player character) is a fighter named Agnor we picked up in the Fire Temple (I think) of the Return to the Temple of Elemental evil. He'd been a mercenary, and was doing it for the pay, not because he'd believed in raising the ultimate evil to come and rule the world or whatever. So he surrendered and then ended up coming along with our adventuring party as we sallied forth through the rest of the temples, and eventually he and Brigid hooked up. He's the reason Brigid didn't end up killing the party's wizard during a vampire fight, when the vampire case "Dominate" on her, she of course failed the save, and got to stabbin'; Agnor ended up getting her into a grapple before the final damage was done. But anyway, I'm sure after we "won" the Temple, they rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after, as retired adventurers do. They do, right?

Though we've had other magnificent and memorable ones.

30 Days of D&D Day 13: Favorite Trap/Puzzle

Let's see, my favorite trap or puzzle. Though my favorite play location is in fact ruins, and that seems like the most likely place to find traps and puzzles, I had to rack my brain a bit for this one.

And really, it's an odd question, because I find traps to more of a "I hope this doesn't kill me/us" far more than "ooh, a puzzle!"

30 Days of D&D Day 12: Favorite Dungeon Type/Location

My favorite dungeon type or location?

This might be a little awkward. I'm not sure I have one?

30 Days of D&D Day 11: Favorite adventure you have ran

I'm sure, if you've been following 'til now, you'd know the favorite adventure I've played in is Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

It was published when we were in college. My fiancé, the one who ran it, remembers remarking that he'd always wanted to run one of those old school big adventures. We were at the mall, in Waldenbooks (before it became Borders, before it closed), and I said/thought "well that would be really cool" and bought it.

30 Days of D&D Day 10: Craziest thing that's happened to you that you saw

 

The craziest thing that's happened to you that you saw (to party/character/your players, etc.).

This one is no contest. Though I'll also give you a runnerup.

30 Days of D&D Day 9: Favorite Character You Haven't Played

I at first thought this was worded kind of oddly, "favorite character you haven't played", but I figured it out. We're frequently required to interpret the wording on things.

30 Days of D&D Day 8: Favorite Character You Have Played

The favorite character I've played?  Can I do a top 5?  Top 10? Sure I can!

(I'll do as many as I want, apparently. Every time I thought I was done with this post, I was like "no, what about...")

These are in no particular order, other than Brigid.

30 Days of D&D Day 3: Favorite Playable Class

Fighter. Hands down, my favorite playable class for a very long time has been fighter.

The first character I put on paper, but did not play, was a human fighter who was escaping fighting pit slavery. The character I played to the highest level  I've to date attained was a human fighter. It was a great class for me to learn the D&D systems, learn how combat and the battlefield worked, and be able to have a pretty straight dotted line when it came to decision making. 

(this is kind of a funny point of comparison here, for me, as a gamer. I stuck with fighters in Dungeons and Dragons at the beginning, because of their lack of complication and their perceived ease. In Shadowrun, which we play once a week, I've been playing a Decker, which many other people at the table think is the hardest role to play. It's interesting, to see how different systems might appeal to you differently, and also to realize and recognize how you might have grown and changed as a gamer)

30 Days of D&D Day 2: Favorite Playable Race

My favorite playable race, hands down, is the Tiefling.

They aren't straight up half demon or devil, just....a little off. Something wrong in the family woodshed, as it were. Or right, depending on your alignment.

One reason they're interesting is yeah, they can be evil. You could be evil willfully, or as the product of your environment, whatever. But. They can be good too (or chaotic neutral, frequently a fun one). But their appearance is an immediate count against them. Walk into a room or down the street as the one with horns, and there's going to be whispers and opinions immediately formed. And that can bring an interesting dynamic to the person you're playing. 

30 days of D&D Day 1: How you got started

I didn't start playing Dungeons and Dragons until Sophomore year of college, and the Spring half of Sophomore year at that. Until that point, the only thing I'd done in that area is play the collectible card game, Magic: the Gathering. Well, I'd free-form roleplayed in the chat rooms designated for such on Prodigy Internet, but I've yet to meet anybody else who did. Or who would admit it. Or who heard of Prodigy Internet. I have known some people who RPed on AOL, anyway.


But my now-fiancé, then boyfriend, Jim was running a 2nd edition game for some friends of ours. I wasn't deliberately disincluded, but I was ignorant, and there was a point at which I asked to be taught. I never did join that 2nd edition game (though I did put a character on paper for it), and 3rd edition came out or at least caught on in our college gaming culture at about that times, so once the door was opened, D&D was on the table.

(get it, on the table? Tabletop role playing? Yeah. I'm here all month!)

May is going to be D&D month

The title says it all. See, somebody I'm Facebook friends with shared a post from Tumblr that had this picture in it....you get the idea.

Rather than post on Facebook, I figured I'd mine this for daily blog posts for a month, or 30 days of it anyway.

When I say D&D, I mean the spectrum of D20 based fantasy I've played, which spans from 3rd edition D&D, to 3.5, to Pathfinder, and now to 5th edition. Pathfinder was still "D&D", ish, as it was published using the D20 open gaming license.

 

But, I've talked a little bit about the characters I've played before, and thought answering these questions in blog form would be fun.

Also, it's funny that the die pictured is a 30 sided die, not 20; the only use I've ever seen for a D30 is a racing board game which was, I think, from France. I do not own a D30, nor do I aspire to. I wouldn't mind owning one of these rad metal D20's, though.

Categorizing Categoricals (themes, genres, age groups....)

I've realized (or perhaps known for a long time) that many of my novels (not necessarily the stories) are hung on a framework of restaurants and road trips. My recent delight in Google Street View has fostered this, as one must imagine, but even before Street View, I did this. I think part of it has to do with the impression that characters undergoing physical motion are getting somewhere. No pun intended. The characters drive somewhere, the plot moves. Certain things happen at certain landmarks. Read American Gods; Neil Gaiman does it. Read Neverwhere; he does it again. Read The Sun Also Rises, and Hemingway does it too. Characters in motion are learning and growing and speaking in motion, and so the plot carries itself along. Most books don't take place in one room. Even As I Lay Dying involved travel, motion, momentum. The Grapes of Wrath.

I say "my novels" in as grand a way as possible, of course. They live on my hard drive. Not a single other living soul has read them. I'm working to change that, obviously (it's always after something, though. After I finish this next draft. After I finish the query), but that's how it currently stands. I've even been researching agents who seem to be looking for what I offer! Genre wise, I mean. Not riveting descriptions of snarky conversation over coffee in a Southern roadside diner.

My short stories are less restaurant and road trip themed; I'm not sure I could attribute any one label to them. They aren't "literary" either, though that term for me has become so elastic I'm not sure it would hold my pants up. What is literary? What is genre? What the fuck does it matter? I mean, some things are so genre it hurts, and they've become a parody of themselves. You can look at a cover image and know how things are going to go, whether virtue is going to be chastely lost on page 120 after the gloves are taken off, or whether the main female character will be a badass, or whether the main male character will be somewhat bumbling but good-hearted. My short stories are not really O. Henry Award or Pushcart Prize contenders; it would be cool if maybe one of them made it into something like The Best American Nonrequired reading (Which tend to be awesome and interesting yearly collections; I especially like the year that had "The Death of Mustango Salvaje", which was about a female bullfighter. 2005? David Eggers may have been the editor). I like trying to think of story as character driven; perhaps my time as a tabletop role playing gamer has fostered this. Perhaps not. I once won second place in the Dungeons and Dragons "competition" at a gaming convention. I got a Hellboy t-shirt (it's when the first movie came out).

Which then brings me to the age categories for the novels. Children's (nope), MG (middle grade; nope), YA (Young Adult, which I guess my Steampunk offerings would probably fall under. They're full of plucky heroines, friendship, and fairly clean), the Learn to Howl Books (this is a toughie. I think they're Adult, though the narrator, Allie, is young. Like 17 young. But, the narrator in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is very young, and so was Scout Finch, and so is Huckleberry Finn, and Alan Bradley's main character, and those are "adult" books. But I keep hearing this term "New Adult" bandied about. Do we need that? What makes one thing one way and another not?").

Does genre affect classification? The Alan Bradley books (the first is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) are Mysteries. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is typically shelved in the Adult Fiction section (that I know of), and is certainly viewed as literary. The Chronicles of Narnia typically involve children, and my library has them in the Juvenile section (MG, I'd guess, in publisher speak). I'm trying to think of science fiction novels with younger characters. Orphans of Chaos by John C. Wright starts out at a boarding school, and revolves around known world mythologies; shelved in the adult section (in my library system). Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children; mostly adult, though some libraries in the system have it in YA.

Is it something worth fighting over? Is there any kind of "stigma" attached to being a "Young Adult Author" who then writes grown up books? An adult author who switches to YA? In the eyes of a lot of the reading public I interact with, there seems to be. There are people who were excited for a new John Grisham......until they realized it was YA. People who didn't read Harry Potter for its age designation (and, presumably, the fact that it was about magic) are clamoring for The Casual Vacancy. 

Frankly, I feel that "real" readers read across the genres, the ages, ignore the foiled covers, sink their teeth into the wordy worlds nestled in the pages. But sometimes I'm put off by a cover, or a blurb. I don't really read mysteries (though I will read thrillers, and there's some overlap there). I'll still read picture books (This is Not My Hat is one of the best that's come out recently, as its Caldecott win attests), Jay Asher's YA Thirteen Reasons Why, The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron (Juvenile), etc. etc. Good books are good books, across age and across genre.

Character Questionnaire

How well do you know your characters?

It's a simple question, and a complicated one.

When you're writing a story, it's sometimes the case that secondary and tertiary characters are really on there for the interactions that they have with your main character(s). Your main character is there for that particular arc of story that you're telling.

So, do you think about them otherwise?

Do you know what their comfort food is? Their fear when they woke up in the middle of the night at age 3? What's in their fridge? Do they have a fridge?

Most recently, while playing Mage this past winter, my fiance had each of the player's fill out a questionnaire as our characters. It was a stroke of brilliance, really. It was fun to do, and really put you in that person's head. The things that happen "off stage" are still important, be it in a book or in a game.

All these little things that we do, they make us who we are. Our characters would do them too. If we let them.