Quotable Quotes from Gaming Life

A lot of gaming quotes are really only funny in context. I know it, you know that. Some gamers don't.

Then, there are some gaming quotes that are funny regardless. May I direct your attention to: Out of Context D&D

We frequently have D&D going in my household (well, Pathfinder), but we've also had Shadow Run and most recently Fading Suns going on in our gaming group. I thought I'd wade through and find some gems from there.

30 Days of D&D Day 30: Best DM You've Had

Well, it's the last day of the 30 day D&D challenge. I'm glad you came on this journey with me....it ended up being far more nostalgic at times than I'd anticipated!

So today I'm talking about the best DM I've had. It occurs to me that throughout the month, I never actually mentioned what "DM" stood for; I assumed you'd known the lingua franca. But, "DM" means Dungeon Master. It's a role which also might, depending on the system, be referred to as the Game Master or the Storyteller. Same dude. He's the one telling the story, the one who comes up with the setting (if not using one of the published ones), the one who runs the NPC's (non player characters), the one who runs the enemies and monsters when combat occurs.

Characters are important, but the DM is obviously the lynchpin of the whole deal. We players can make our own fun, certainly, but the DM's descriptions and stories are what keep us coming back and rolling those dice. And the best DM I've had? It's my fiancé, Jim.

30 Days of D&D Day 29: What is the number you always seem to roll on a d20?

 What number do I always seem to roll?

I seem to roll 14's an awful lot.

Some nights, though, it's 7. Or 6. Or 4.

Other nights? I'll get a natural 20 not once, not two times, but three times. Four if I'm super lucky.

That's the funny thing about the dice. They're random, and that randomness seems fickle. A low rolling night will follow a high rolling night. Or some characters are never lucky, until, say, you get dominated and start killing your fellow party members. Other characters are extremely lucky, even missing out on that early levels clumsiness we're so typically faced with.

So 14 isn't such a bad number to roll. Depending on what you're adding, it's more than sufficient.

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 24: Favorite Energy Type

Favorite energy type? That's....weird. Do people have favorite energy types?

I guess "force" might be my answer. Non-elementally typed damage. So, what Magic Missile does, say. It bypasses most basic damage reduction (or did in previous editions? 5th does interesting things with resistances, I think. Though we've only seen a little of that so far), it doesn't leave you stuck with only fire spells to fight the red dragon, etc.

That said, I have seen electricity damage put to amazing use. "Touch of the Eel" was a spell our wizard would cast on me in the Temple game; the next enemy struck would then take my weapon damage plus the spell damage. At one point I literally exploded a 4 armed gorilla (I forget what they're called) when I walked into a room and rolled a 20 on that trusty purple die while Touch of the Eel was cast on me. Then there are the majestic lightning bolts I've seen cast (and have, on occasion, cast myself).

30 Days of D&D Day 22: Favorite Monster Overall

My favorite monster overall, hmm?  This monster thing might be getting a bit tiresome. As a player, I tend not to just page through and read the Monster Manual. I like being surprised, and a little bit scared. I like not knowing what the terrible beasties might do to us. It lends a sense of mortality, and danger, to the combat. These things aren't cakewalks, and one tends to want one's character to live through things, to achieve hopes and dreams.

But....favorite monster overall. There's a couple I'm fond of, that I didn't touch on in the previous posts.

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 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 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 7: Favorite Edition

Favorite edition is another hard one for me. I started playing in 3rd edition, and there are things I remember fondly from it. I play with people who started in 2nd, and I've heard their stories throughout my gaming career.

3.5 fixed some stuff that 3rd hadn't gotten quite right, but it also bungled some of them. We actually had a couple campaigns running when the change happened; one DM had us change, midstream. The other did not.

Overall, the edition I'm most familiar with is Pathfinder. It's 3.5 compatible, technically, though we've never mixed any of the 3.5 books with it. I have a good handle on the rules for a variety of classes and situations, and in a way I think it's what we played the most games in, anyway. The online Pathfinder SRD has also been a game-changer (figuratively and literally) because it is free, many people have smartphones and tablets, and though we do purchase most of the books it's nice to have them accessible, searchable, and alphabetical. You don't have to look at 4 books to see all the spells your Witch has access to, say, it's just there on that page of the SRD. You don't need to look at every single book to look at the feats, the feat requirements, etc. etc. because it's there alphabetically. I only hope 5th edition does such a thing as well.

5th edition has a lot of neat things going for it, and a few odd changes, gaps, and discrepancies. It's too early to say if it's "the new favorite", or even what the table is necessarily sticking with. We've started the Princes of the Apocalypse adventure, a 5th edition in the Forgotten Realms corollary to the 3rd edition Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil which was such a formative gaming experience for me.

30 Days of D&D Day 6: Favorite Deity

Favorite Deity? That's a tough one.

I actually tend not to play religious characters. Maybe it's a holdover from my Catholicism? I don't know. D&D is playing pretend, it isn't demonic blasphemy. I know that. You know that.

(you should know that)

30 Days of D&D Day 5: Your Favorite Set of Dice/individual die

Favorite die or dice is an interesting question. Some gamers are very superstitious about their dice. We met somebody once who was affronted if another person deigned to touch his polyhedral pieces of plastic. Don't get me wrong; anything that's a repetitive ritual gets superstitious attachments to it, whether you mean to or not. While at the table, and my die is "in repose", I set it down 20 up, regardless of what die I'm using. Maybe it's a mental thing; I think positive, I think 20, I roll higher (you want to roll higher, typically). Maybe it's a physics thing; the plastic settles so the side opposite the 20 is heavier, and rolls higher. Regardless. It's a thing I do. It doesn't mean I don't have dice I lend to people.

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.

Selective Listening

I talk a lot about how I listen to music while writing. I won't say I make a playlist for every new project I have, especially since I have a much-evolved playlist I created for my first NaNoWriMo and manipulated a lot since. I don't always use that one, but it's there to fall back on while I'm writing. It tickles the right things.