Elves should have mathematicians, too

(Because clearly I should continue using this space to tell stories about my D&D game.)

In the style of my gaming advice posts, although this is an anecdote rather than a request for advice, let me introduce you to the characters:

• Ath, human paladin/rogue.
  
• Chou, dwarf fighter.
  
• Emgeri, human ranger/fighter.
  
• Perk, gnome/halfling cleric/bard.
  
• Rino, half-elf scout (and Emgeri's uncle).
  

We take turns running the game (Rino's player is our current GM), and we try to play with subjective morality as much as possible -- so Detect Evil really turns out more like Detect Smitability (this does mean that the GM needs to have a fairly good idea of what everybody's gods think about stuff, so as to return the correct opinions). So when Chou's player joined the game and said she wanted to play an evil character, we said, "Sure, but be aware that the paladin has to try to reform you once he finds out, and we probably need to talk outside of game to keep things in balance."

So, Chou. We met him at the home of one of Rino's friends, and he started traveling with us once his spiritual mentor abandoned him to finish his pilgrimage alone, with only a highly inaccurate map for guidance. He seemed a fairly standard grumpy and taciturn dwarf at first, except that he wore a cabbage on his head as a sign of his devotion to the Cabbage Lord (a god none of the rest of us had previously heard of). He was the chosen Migrator, which meant that he needed to go to the Cabbage Temple at the Elvish Ends of the Earth and plant cabbage seeds. We didn't really know where that was, and neither did he (beyond the inaccurate map from his spiritual mentor), but Rino thought his father would know, so Chou tagged along when we went to see Rino's father.

Of course, there were warning signs. Out of character I'd decided to try to avoid hitting Chou with Detect Evil (because who detects evil at random people they meet unless they're expecting to be attacked or something?) for as long as possible, hopefully until there was some sort of party bond* to inform my reaction to the information. But there were non-magically-assisted signs. In a conversation about a recent civil war, Chou said it was "good business," and rephrased as "bloody business" when questioned. But we could pass that off as a translation error -- it wasn't his first language, or Ath's, and you don't go around assuming people like civil wars. Then there was the time he attacked a sphinx Perk was trying to talk to "because it was ugly". That got him a yelling lecture from Ath, because who does that?, but he seemed willing to mend his ways.

And then we got to Rino's father's village, and Emgeri and Rino and Rino's father (= Emgeri's grandfather) had some awkward family conflict time, and the rest of us tried to figure out what was going on with the main plot, and then that night we were attacked by mummies. (This was perhaps a bit a result of an out of character discussion of ways to try to get Chou to be more a part of the group. Things we came up with involved putting him in a position where he needed our help, or in a position where we would all be working to the same goal, e.g. winning the fight.)

It seemed like this had the desired result -- we defeated the mummies, but Chou acquired some kind of mummy disease/curse and we all banded together to try to do something to fix it. Ath even detected evil to try to figure out what was up with the curse, and assumed the result was the curse. And we were all going to race off to the Cabbage temple in the morning, because Chou said his reward for completing the Migration would cure him.

Well. That didn't happen. Because when Chou went to ask Rino's father for directions, he decided the man was untrustworthy -- so clearly violence was the only way of getting the truth. And the relatives clearly weren't going to be okay with this, whatever their personal feelings about the man. And Ath is severely not okay with torture because of consequences of past adventures.

So after a lot of awesome in character conflict and arguments, we've headed our separate ways. Chou's been abandoned to Eeelvish justice, and/or the mummy curse. Ath and Emgeri and presumably Perk (she wasn't here last week) are heading off to follow the main plot, if only because Ath said he was doing so and Emgeri wouldn't leave him (despite calling him an idiot). We look forward to meeting the replacement/temporary character, "calm, rational, nice mercenary".

And we'll see what happens with the cabbage seeds.



*This might have worked better if we hadn't introduced Chou right before a long bit of mostly elided traveling, where presumably everyone was getting to know him in-character, but we didn't actually see it.

I could post about how job-hunting is terrifying, and so is trying to make sure I have/will have done everything needed to graduate by the appropriate deadlines, or about how I have forty students in my class and the next largest section only has 30, but instead I'm going to pretend like life is all frivolity and happy butterflies and ask for advice about D&D.

So, through a series of less-questionable decisions than last time (at least the ones I was responsible for), half of the party seems to have found itself in a situation where it needs to rescue the other half and maybe some NPCs from mostly unknown conditions in the middle of a pretty much unfriendly country.

The rescuers: Ath, human rogue 1/paladin 4, and Rino, half-elf scout 5(? If he's multi-classed I don't know about it). Known collectively as "Team 7 strength". Also Sombra, Emgeri's greyhound animal companion.

The rescuees: Emgeri, human fighter 1/ranger 4; Perk, over-excited tiny person cleric/bard 5 (I don't know what the proportions are); Henry, human NPC performer previously seen as my nano protagonist; and Rusty, human NPC somehow associated to Perk and Henry's band of travelling minstrels.

They're listed about in the order we care about getting them out of there -- we don't want to leave anyone behind, but we barely know the NPCs at all, so we're not about to get killed saving them from a fate that's better than death.

The situation: On our way to the Elven Ends of the Earth, we were forced* to travel through Orkinya, aka No-Magic Land. It seems to be a theocracy of sorts, as uncooperatively monotheistic as it's possible to be in D&D ("all the other gods are evil"), big on avoiding sin (and it seems sin = just about everything), and any magic that's not from their god is EVIL. (And only certain people are allowed to do their god-magic.) And they don't travel much at all, so any strangers will stick out like crazy.

They somehow detect any use of magic in their territory, and send out elite squads to arrest the people responsible. And maybe innocent bystanders as well. We're still not entirely sure what happened when they captured us. (Out of character, we know it's because Rino's thunderstone, while nonmagical, sounded a lot like magic.)

So we were captured, and thrown into a dungeon. Oddly, they didn't take any of our stuff. Ath concluded that they must've wanted us to escape, but he didn't see what else we could do . . .

So we escaped. Only the party got very separated while doing so, and Emgeri never showed up at the rendezvous outside the city. We can only assume he got recaptured . . .

Perk showed up at the rendezvous with Henry and Rusty by sheer coincidence, since she didn't know about it, but she showed up trailing Orkinyan guards who recaptured Henry and Rusty, and she decided to go back after them without telling anyone . . .

The resources: Three or more people who escaped Orkinyan prison by pretending to convert to the Orkinyan religion, who are happy to tell us everything they know. Any reasonably available non-magic items (we're at a town outside the border and could purchase things), or magic items although they'd probably just get us in trouble. The random stuff we're carrying.

Ath's plans tend to involve lots of lying. He just can't figure out what lie to use. Rino's tend to involve explosions.

. . . Anyone have any brilliant ideas?


*To be fair, we could have taken a boat, but Emgeri gets seasick, and we could've gone north, but that would've been perilously close to a town Ath was banished from . . .

3rdragon, inspired by phantomcranefly, poses the question: ( What does [insert fictional female here] do when confronted with a jar she can't open? )

So, because I am experiencing unreasonable levels of frustration with the algebra review class during the week*, and because it occurred to me that it's been a long time since I've done any sort of gaming and I miss it, I'm reviving the Attempt to Play D&D over Skype plan.

The premise: We take turns running short-ish adventures, whether purchased, invented, or found on the internet**. No particular attempt need be made to explain how or why the characters move from one adventure to the next, although if someone comes up with a brilliant explanation and wants to start dropping hints while running the game go ahead.

The details: D&D 3.5, because I don't have time to learn another system well enough to run a game just now (and yes, I'm volunteering to go first). Important house-rule: Your first level should reflect your character's childhood background--multiclassing XP penalties, alignment restrictions, and restrictions on returning to a class are waived for this level***. Starting at level 2. Schedule to be determined based on availability of interested players, but almost certainly sometime on the weekend, perhaps approximately weekly, hopefully starting in or before early August.

So, anyone want to play?



*still delaying the rant.

**as time and brain-power of the current DM permit.

***Examples: Emeryis grew up in a troupe of traveling players, and then joined the Knights. So he would have one level of bard, despite being Lawful, and then paladin levels (you know, if we'd come up with this rule back when Emeryis was a D&D character). Cae was raised at a monastery, so her first level is monk. If she then proceeds to take her second level in rogue, but decides later she wishes to train as a monk, her first level and subsequent non-monk levels do not make her ineligible for the class.

Observation 1: Skype does conference calls, apparently with ridiculous numbers of people.

Observation 2: I still haven't managed to find a real-life game of, well, anything other than board games*.

Observation 3: I could probably use the first thing to solve the second. Well, sort of. For a given value of real-life. It would be real-time, at any rate!


Mind you, anything actually coming of this idea requires Plot and Organization on someone's part, and interest from some number of other someones. We'll see what I come up with over break. But I figured I'd throw the idea out there in case anyone else can do something brilliant** with it.


*That I haven't exactly gone out looking for one doesn't have to come into it, does it?

**Interest is good too. Or brainstorming. Brilliance is not necessarily required.

As 3rdragon said. Choose 10 characters before looking at the questions, and then answer them. Questions from 3rdragon, because she's awesome like that.

1 Sévérine (She's a French-African plant shaman/bioengineer, and she's slightly green because of a "lab accident" when she was in school.)
2 Laurea (Sev's ex-girlfriend. Also a bioengineer, and also green.)
3 Brin (Light-side Jedi who flirts with anything that moves.)
4 Edith (An inquiring socialite.)
5 Shirly (A conspiracy theorist.)
6 Lucian (He's a programmer, and he's afraid of germs.)
7 Lysander (He's not quite sure why he's traveling with ridiculous children, but he knows they'll get themselves killed if he leaves them alone. And he's a werebat.)
8 Jeanne (She's best described as a muddy peasant. But she might want to be a paladin.)
9 Sparky (An elven sorcerer, from a civilization that believes wizardry is the only real magic and sorcerers are therefore at best frauds and at worst dangerous.)
10 Caitrin (A pacifist half-elven druid diplomat.)

( Questions and Answers )