RPGaDay2023 - Days 8 - 14
8. Favorite Character
This is hard because I don't typically play, although I've forced myself to do so lately to learn and grow.
Right now, my most interesting character is Sidreed, a bard/thief in a play-by-post Arduin game. He's interesting because he's the opposite of how I play most RPGs. Sidreed is cowardly, cautious & not into feats of heroism. He's made running from creatures into an art form.
The game is run by "OGM" who also plays in my Western Borders AD&D game. He's doing a fantastic job!
9. Favorite dice
Quite simply, 2d6. Versatile, giving me enough randomness and yet a bit of structure.
Some say it has a bell curve, others call it a triangular curve, but whatever your distribution preference is, it provides me the all important "reaction table" results, which I've come to use in a number of different ways (determining difficulty of a situation, determining morale, determining outcome between unlikely and likely scenarios).
I like all of the standard tropes for fiction and sci-fi and enjoy games that involve them, but I also very much enjoyed one trilogy so much that I took to Ebay and Abe Books to find the third volume. I'm talking about the Penhaligon Trilogy by D.J. Heinrich: The Tainted Sword, The Dragon's Tomb, The Fall of Magic.
It ties into the Mystara world of BX/BECMI, which is a setting I'm not too familiar with, but the books definitely made it come alive. The writing was decent, the plot was, to me, interesting and I enjoyed the growth and evolution of the protagonist through the trilogy. Highly recommend if you enjoy D&D, especially so if Mystara is your thing.
11. Weirdest game I've played
Keeping with the theme of being positive, this will be a "fun" weird game - and that would be a "Mork Borg" game I played with one of my players from my OD&D/Dungeon23 campaign.
Mork Borg is a game of a grimdark future in which the world is about to end horribly. I got to play a selfish, narcissistic nobleman on a quest to find a lord's son or somesuch. I channeled Loki (the Tom Hiddleston variety) - ended up being nearly as evil as the baddies. Which is weird because I *never* play evil PCs. The more the GM tried to crank up the horror, the more I leaned INTO it. We both had great fun!
I actually completed the module/mission successfully AND didn't have to fight the BBEG, we ended up as best buds!
12. Old game that I still play
All of my regular games are "old" versions and this is is similar to Day 5's answer: OD&D (1974 w/out supplements) + Chainmail (3rd ed, 1975); Traveller (1977); AD&D (1977).
Why do I enjoy them so much more than more modern versions? That's a hard question to answer because all of my answers are subjective and come down to "I just enjoy them more." I can still find great players who want to play them! And that's enough for me.
13. Most memorable character demise
I don't play all that often, and most of my playing is done at events where I expect to die in glorious and bloody spectacles!
But then there's George.
Back in early 80s, I managed to get an adult (to me, as a 14 year old) group at a local gamestore to allow me to play in their AD&D game. This was the Super Bowl to me! Finally, I would be allowed in on the mysteries and subtleties of this strange set of books that I (mostly) understood, but still seemed somewhat impenetrable to me.
The first character lived and died very quickly, and this character seemed destined. I don't remember which chargen approach the DM used (Method III - roll each attrib 6 times, pick highest or Method IV - roll for 12 characters, pick the best) but I somehow got an 18 on strength. Before I rolled the percentile of strength, the DM made me an offer. He would give me the 100, but I had to take a 3 in some other attribute. Thus, George was born - 18/100 strength, 3 intelligence.
Well, we went after a huge red dragon and its hoard. The party was very nervous, they'd been hunting his lair for months in-game and the fearsome villain had sent its lackeys after us time and again. Finally, we were near its cavern and the party planned... and the illusionist FORGOT to cast the spell! One of the party members had sarcastically said "How are we going to distract it? Have someone go pull its tail."
Right after that, the illusionist remembered! She tried to find George but he was nowhere to be found! I had slipped the DM a note, which the player had seen, which reminded her of her forgotten distraction!
Yes, George went to yank the dragon's tail and given his prodigious strength, the DM ruled it caused a chunk of damage! The dragon ROARED at my Leroy-Jenkins attack and immediately flamed at me... which I made the save and took only half damage! I survived!
The battle was pretty epic and two party members were killed (raised from the dead soon after) and we found a ring of wish in that hoard.
What was George's wish? That the sky always be pink. The DM thought about it a moment and ruled that to George, the sky was bubblegum pink with yellow fluffy clouds and sunshine and all sorts of birds chirping. It. Was. Glorious!
So how, after all this, did George die?
Well, the DM had been on a module kick and what I didn't realize at the time was that we were playing on the GDQ series of modules. So - spoiler alert - we were playing in the last module - The Queen of the Demonweb. In that adventure, George apparently made the drow so upset at his insistence that the Underdark sky was pink, that he was targeted and ultimately was killed so thoroughly that raise dead wasn't possible.
The other players were most upset, having finally opened up to me as a young teen and me having played George in such a fun manner! I remember that my next character was pretty boring in comparison!
But GEORGE LIVES, in my memory, and hopefully in those other players as well, who would probably be now in their 60s and 70s.
14. Favorite convention purchase
Not "from a" convention, but "for a" convention - Hirst Arts blocks to create a city gates model for a Ral Partha Chaos Wars wargame at GaryCon!
RIP George, what a great story.
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