“Constitution Check, 1d20.”
I have recently joined an adventure. Not one I thought I’d be a part of. Not one I ever thought I might have the interest to be a part of, or indeed even the imagination to be present; but here I stand. A semi-drunk monk guarding a convoy of strangers across the treacherous deserts, fighting off carnivorous beetles the size of cocker-spaniels and avoiding giant Dune-like worms stalking the sands beneath us.
Clearly I need to back up a little.
There is absolutely no doubt in anybody’s mind that I’m a giant nerd. I work in IT. I can quote the works of Monty Python, Graham Linehan, and Matt Groening at will. Somewhere deep in the bowels of my desk is a well thought out, planned Yu-Gi-Oh deck, lovingly crafted to absolutely obliterate opponents. I own lightsabers. Yes, lightsabers, plural. ICH BIN EIN NERD.
Despite geek chic and the efforts of the Marvel Cinematic Universe making nerd-dom generally cool at the moment, I’m still on the unfashionable side of geekery. I’ve never gone full tilt though; I have plenty of friends much further down the rabbit hole than I, and the odds are if they’re having completely rational conversations about Cthulhu or own dice with more (or less) than exactly 6 sides, I’m more than likely to think “Damn. That’s a proper nerd right there.”
Now it is apparently my turn.
Don’t drink the grey stuff.
I’ve very recently been invited to join a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and I really don’t know how to feel about the fact that I so willingly accepted. When asked about the whats and whys of my character’s race and class, I rather unimaginatively opted to be a true-neutrally aligned half-elf monk. Essentially, my character is a tall, diplomatic martial artist who either promotes reason, or failing that, punches things. Twice.
I don’t want to say “I’m playing me”; there’s no way in hell I’m as agile as something elven, but it appears I’ve definitely lacked imagination thus far as I really had no clue what to expect or truly, what to do. I’m very clearly only dipping my toe in the pool of tabletop RPG.
The first session started last week during which I met the other members of our party, who are all quite delightful: Zi, our Dungeonmaster and voice of many NPCs; Noell, playing a Tiefling Paladin with a disposition so ridiculously sunny it could rival 2009’s chief meme, Boxxy (although this is no doubt augmented by Noell’s San-Francisco accent); Alessya, who’s running with a Tiefling Rogue, attempting to be dark and edgy (but coming off more as Kylo Ren); and Mike, who’s just as new to this as I am, playing a well-meaning but ultimately inexperienced human ranger.
(I confess, I have forgotten all but my own character’s name, so references in the post will either be to class or the person playing them)
The campaign starts, and whilst Mike’s Ranger, having never seen anything but humans before, is considerably freaked out at being paired with two Tieflings and a Half-elf. Our Dungeonmaster (or DM) coaxed the idea that he was nursing a horrific hangover from a desert mushroom ale and may be hallucinating. In the real world, I’m gearing up with the first of many pints of Guinness, amused at the parallels of it all. As it’s the desert, we travel at twilight; it’s too hot to travel by day, and too cold to travel by night. As a party we kill time by either going to the temples to pray to our respective Gods, stock up on supplies, or, like I slowly was in real life, sitting in a tavern and getting slaughtered.
Whilst curious to see what DnD was really like, I was fairly uncomfortable. A big drawback is not knowing the lore, nor the capabilities of one’s character. I arrived at the notion very early on that it is literally a role. Playing. Game. I was so unprepared for this that I made the very boring (and if Reddit’s /r/dnd subreddit is to be believed, frequent) mistake of applying a gruff, mistrusting personality to my character. Not only does it make things difficult to open up later, but it also makes it quite hard for both fellow players and NPCs to interact with my character in a meaningful way. This would be the first occurrence in a very long time that I have used alcohol as a coping mechanism. My character, Icadius, had pounded three pints of a bizarre mushroom ale (Mike’s Ranger’s early downfall), matching that of my real-life tally.
I was hoping the Dutch courage was enough to help, but the moment Noell started talking chirpily in character, I gave serious consideration to the idea of utilising my teenage skill of blind-texting onehanded under the table to our DM “Nope. Nope nope nope. Can’t do it. I can’t hack this. I.. don’t. I can’t even.”. The only thing stopping me was that we were only a party of four; not only did I refuse to quit on the first night, I truly didn’t want to screw the group over.
In game, my character is still drinking whilst Alessya’s rogue is attempting to make conversation, and my novice (and no doubt frustrating) RP’ing is consisting of drinking in real life, and silent staring. This is dickish on my part for two reasons: Not only am I giving Alessya nothing to go on in terms of interaction, it also forces him to progress whatever this side-story may be. Thankfully our DM decides now would be a good time to begin our journey, and our well natured Ranger comes to the inn to summon us. I stare at Alessya (both in game, and out) and necked a full pint of Guinness, in an attempt to roleplay more than just a mute bastard. This would later be a mistake (both in game, and out). Before leaving the tavern however, our DM decides that we need to ascertain how drunk I was (considering I had been anti-social, or perhaps even rude, to not only Alessya, but a rather hench Orc, and her two elven companions).
With beginner’s luck, for all my rolls involving a twenty-sided die thus far, I’ve hit nothing less than a sixteen. This means Icadius is not drunk; just possibly tipsy, and evidently, an arsehole.
Skipping ahead a little, and we’ve come to a stop, taking guard duty shifts whilst the rest of the party sleeps. By this point, I’ve had enough drink in real life to start to feel a little more confident about what I assume is and is not acceptable actions within the game world to try and inject a little variety into the world.
Alessya’s shift for protection comes to a close, and he comes to ask for my relief. Trying to be a bit more monkish, I chose to meditate a short way from the group. Alessya’s rogue decides the best way to return me to the land of eyes-being-open is to prod me multiple times. I allow it the first couple of instances, and on the third, inform the DM of my intention to intercept the rogue’s poking hand, and summarily throw my unsuspecting colleague in a swift motion as punishment for the unusual interruption to my deep concentration (this may or may not have anything to do with my very recent learning how to floor somebody one-handed in real life with Hapkido, effortlessly).
I roll a 17, plus my dexterity bonuses (the current stat of which, I forget). Unfortunately, Alessya’s rogue has a ridiculously high acrobatic stat, and lands quite comfortably as if we had been working on a simple choreographed routine. I was probably quite visibly disappointed at this outcome, as I thought it was quite a nice aside from Icadius being just antisocial and gruff. Thankfully, my turn at patrolling the area was without incident, and I was presented with the option of how to fetch Noell’s Paladin from slumber.
There was a catch, of course.
Due to the aforementioned sunny disposition, the NPC family we were guarding invited the Paladin to sleep in the wagon with the children, whom were entertained and eventually tuckered out by Noell’s cheeriness. The downside is that like tiny, ADHD armed landmines, I had to navigate the sleeping children before reaching Noell to wake her up.
“CONSTITUTION CHECK!” My monk is still being drunk-tested after the sheer amount of mushroom ale inside of him. As for me, I’m on Guinness #7 and starting to get into the swing of things. I roll an 18, determining that I am still fine. “I’m fairly agile. I roll to vault over the children without disturbing a single one”. I realise this was ambitious, and as a level 1, I’m desperately trying not to play my monk with an overpowered ‘look-at-me-I’m-the-master-of-all-fighting-ever’ type immaturity. None the less, I roll to see if I succeed.
20.
I smirk as our DM informs me of the sheer level of acrobatic feats performed, successfully reaching the Paladin. The only thing going through my head right now is not dissimilar to Yoda flipping about all over the place in his duel with Count Dooku in Episode II, but it’s enough to make me forget how awkward I’ve felt thus far. Noell awakens with relative ease, and being a Paladin, starts to bless the Caravans, much to the annoyance of some of the sleeping inhabitants, waking them up and pissing them off considerably. Unfortunately the commotion also draws the attention of several Scarab beetles, each the size of a cocker spaniel.
This is our first combat event (not including my brief physical tête-à-tête with Alessya earlier) and I’m onto my eighth Guinness. Through our various choices, the majority of us end up either range-attacking the beetles (poorly) or on top of the wagons, protecting those inside. After Noell springs into action, half the beetles decide the Paladin with a giant sword is a credible threat, and head straight towards her, whilst the others split off and head towards the other end of the Convoy, about to meet a very angry Orc, and myself, wielding a Bo staff.
Hopefully without giving much away to the party, I’m pretty much blotto at this point (I had been drinking on an empty stomach) and decided it would be a good idea to make my attacks as creative as possible.
“I take my Bo Staff and swing it by the long end, essentially aiming at the beetles like they’re giant golf balls.”
20. The hit lands. I don’t recall what the 1D8 value was to wield my staff with 2 handed damage, but the result was beetle carapace flying across the sandy dunes, whilst my companions deal with their similar insect problems. Nodding at the giant Orc I’d previously been quite short with, the DM informs me I’ve made a violent and unlikely friend.
After the last of the beetles were mopped up by Noell’s longsword, Mike’s archery and Alessya’s twin Kukri, we called it for the evening. I don’t believe I’ve actually assigned a God for Icadius to worship (very poor character development on my part), but I can rather sheepishly say that after being in bed for 15 minutes on my arrival home, I immediately bolted upright, fell to my knees and began to worship the porcelain God for a good amount of time before making it back to my bed.
The next session is tomorrow night, and I have made the executive decision not to double-park my Guinnesses this time. Turns out, my real life +CON stat isn’t nearly as good as I thought.
