Whispering Forest, part one: The Recruits

If you read last week's post, you might be wondering how D&D went this week. The real test would be to ask my friends that had to deal with my first attempt at DMing, but from the sounds of things, it went all right!

So far, I've successfully thrown in obvious Welcome to Night Vale references -- one of them being the theme of the first overall adventure (The Whispering Forest) -- and have plans to reference other things as well. It's fun learning to think on your feet when you're making things up as you go along with the input of crazy people.

Speaking of crazy, it has been brought to my attention that I didn't mention ALL OF THE THINGS of gray importance about Steev's character. Not only is he a minotaur named Dave, but he's a minotaur BARD named Dave... and he really loves killing Fey creatures.

It's beyond awesome having someone who actually plays music playing a bard character, because at one point, Steev was playing and singing "Lolth, I lift your name on high". Lolth is his character's goddess, who loves killing elves.

On top of that, we've got a Gnoll fighter (Gnoll are 7' tall and eat flesh), an Elf assassin with a mysterious secret, and a Warforged Swordmage (Warforged are sort of like constructs with a personality) just looking at them all like they're crazy.

I didn't even go the old route of having them all be friends. I just had them all recruited, so... maybe they'll go player-vs-player, and I'll get to moderate the Ultimate Showdown of D&D Destiny. :P

Anyway, less nerdy stuff is coming soon... Maybe.

I have become Death, destroyer of worlds

Greetings, adventurers! Welcome to another post of the Keeping The Bar Low blog.

Hopefully the folks over at Geekly Inc won't mind me blatantly ripping off the intro of their Drunks and Dragons podcast (which is awesome, as far as I'm concerned. You should really give it a listen), but it felt right! Yes, folks, it is finally happening... I'm about to become a Dungeon Master!

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I've got the start of a set-up going, for my first night behind the Dungeon Master screen: borrowing Steev's DM screen, and I've got a notebook with Super Secret stuff, as well as less Super Secret reference material (level goals, treasure parcel recommendations, etc). It's truly time to step in to a new level of geek... and that's coming from someone who listens to podcasts about Doctor Who and D&D, and writes a blog about an obscure comic book character from the 80s.

Monday night is going to be "kick-off" for my campaign, which is going to have all kinds of fun references for my players to figure out. Sounds like we'll be playing two days in a row, since Tony is leaving the state later this month. My hours after work until Monday are going to be spent working on new ideas, and prepping myself to be completely thrown off if my friends go completely off-the-rails on my story -- which would not be surprising, since most DMs seem to have that happen.

Still, if all else fails, this could happen....

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What will happen? Will I be an utter failure as a DM? Will the players follow the storyline? Will DAVE THE MINOTAUR start a bandcamp page? Find out next time on KEEPING THE BAR LOW!

When does "addiction" cross over in to "serious problem"?

Wherever that line is, there's a very good chance that my D&D habit is approaching it, if not leaving it choking on it's own dust miles ago. Here's a warning for you: this post will feature a lot of geekspeak. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here....

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For over a year now, I've been part of a D&D group with a mostly-continuous membership. We have Steev as the DM, and the only original players left are his fiancée Megan, and me. When we started, there was another guy, but his girlfriend's joining-and-then-getting-pissed-about-the-rules caused him to leave. Still, they have a statue of an auguste clown that kind of looks like him, so it's like he's still in the group!

I've mentioned them before, but our other two current players are Beau (someone I didn't know initially, but who joined at the same time as the departed player's girlfriend) and Daniel (an old friend who is probably a little more nerdy than me), and that's been our group for a while now. Close to half a year, I think. Our quest is going awesome, even if our players have been in the same area FOREVER -- part of that because we didn't play for a couple months.

If you're a D&D player, especially if you know much about 4e (fourth edition), here is our character layout:

• Megan: Githzerai Psion, Time Bender paragon path. Her whole idea behind the character was wanting to go all "timey-wimey". She's sort of become an adoptive mother to what might be a five-headed killer dragon goddess.
• Me: Longtooth Shifter Avenger, Hammer of Judgment paragon path. I've always liked wolves/werewolves in fiction, and longtooth shifters are descended from them. Plus, Avengers are like a (more) violent version of paladins. They exist to smite their god's enemies. My character worships Bahamut, but Bahamut might have died during our adventure so far. I'm not 100% sure.
• Conrad (the lost player): Dragonborn Paladin of Bahamut. Our DM threw in a variant of his character as an NPC since we all miss him, but he's been gone for a while now.
• Beau: Tiefling Swordmage, and I don't remember what he went for with his paragon. Tieflings are descended from demons, and so Beau's character is similar to mine: high HP, and some pretty significant damage potential. We refer to ourselves as the tanks of the group.
• Daniel: Razorclaw Shifter Monk, hasn't hit paragon yet. His kind of shifter is descended from werecats, so we have some fun like throwing him in to large bodies of water. And while his monk is very much of the "must be up close" type, he still gets some pretty decent damage in. Plus, he forces enemies to move a lot.

That's what is in store for me tonight. We are working our way through the Pyramid of Shadows adventure that Wizards of the Coast put out, and having a lot of fun on a regular basis. We always keep in mind the essentials for a fun D&D session: we bring/make food and snacks, we keep it light between players and serious between characters, and Steev makes sure to remind everyone of the most basic rule of D&D: "You can always kill Justin."