On Grief

Content warning: This post will be discussing death in some detail

There’s a saying, often attributed to Hemingway that “writing is easy, all you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.”

I definitely don’t think writing is easy, but I am going to be opening a vein. I feel like my writing has been blocked because I need to get the piece you’re currently reading out of my system before I can get started writing anything else.

Unlike the rest of my internet presence, I don’t often talk about my personal life very much on this blog. That said, there has been some major upheaval in my personal life which is going to inform the rest of this writing. I’ll go into details after the jump.

Thanks to one three day stretch, 2022 has been the worst year of my life by a considerable margin. It began on the morning of February 22nd. As usual, I woke up before my wife and got ready to work. Because of the pandemic, my office was still closed, so I’d be working from home. I went downstairs and made some scrambled eggs for breakfast, brought my wife’s plate upstairs and put on her nightstand. Went down the hallway to my home office with my own eggs and a big mug of coffee and logged into work. After being on a meeting call for an hour, I went and checked on my wife. She was still asleep, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that she hadn’t touched her eggs, since she usually wakes up, checks her phone and ears breakfast before going back to sleep.

I gently shook her, asking “not hungry today?” and didn’t get a response. A slightly firmer shake and she still didn’t respond, not even a muttered expletive as she rolled back over. At this point, something felt wrong and I was trying to remember how long she had been asleep in the same position. I realized that it had been well over twelve hours and started to panic a little bit. I stared at her chest and could see that she was still breathing.

I was concerned, so I called a friend of ours, who also happened to be my wife’s doctor even though she was based up in Albany, NY.

I told her the situation and she told me to do what I probably would have done in the first place had I been thinking straight and call 911. Roughly 15 minutes later, I had police and ambulance technicians (I’m not sure if they were EMTs or paramedics, as you might imagine I wasn’t able to concentrate fully. Though I did remember to ask to see ID.) The police asked me what happened and so I told them exactly the situation described above, and then the ambulance folk were transferring my wife from the bed to a stretcher and then to an ambulance.

The police officer told me which hospital they were taking her to and advised me to wait and take a few deep breaths before heading that way myself, since they didn’t want to see me in a traffic accident. I did wait, sitting on my stairs until I could feel my heart rate slow back down to normal. Which is just as well, as one of the police officers knocked on the front door about then to let me know they had taken my wife to a different hospital than the one they had initially told me. I still didn’t fully trust myself to drive, so I did a couple of displacement activities: feeding my pets, making sure that I had crated the dog, grabbed both my wife’s ID and my own, and checking that my phone and de facto GPS was charged. It probably wasn’t longer than 10 minutes. I drove to the hospital and parked in the ERs visitor bay.

Once I got into the ER, my wife was hooked up to a heart monitor and a painkiller IV drip. They had done some tests, but still had some neurological things to check. I squeezed her hand and told her “I’m here.” I still think she squeezed back before they wheeled her over to whichever machine they used for brain scans. When the scans were done, the nurse showed me a “massive” shadow on them, which was probably a brain bleed. The next step was to have a neurologist examine the scans. He did just that, concurred with the nurse that it was “massive” and described it as a “non-traumatic brain hemorrhage.” At least now I knew what was wrong, which was a crumb of relief. Unfortunately, the neurologist’s next sentence utterly obliterated that sense of relief. “I’m afraid it’s inoperable.”

My wife wasn’t ever going to wake up. I reached out to my ex-wife and son to let them know. I also sent a message to my father, mother, and sister to let them know. It had to be messages due to the time difference. I did get hold of a local friend and told her what was happening, and she said she’d come to the hospital.

I remember just sitting in the hard plastic chair in the ER section looking at my wife fighting to breathe (she had never been one to give up without a fight), and just feeling drained. The friend came by and just sat with me for a little while. It wasn’t too long after that the hospital moved us out of the ER to a room in the neurology department.

This was when my life was effectively on pause. For two days, I either sat in a scratchy recliner or in a plastic chair in front of a desk in that room. Because I both needed some kind of displacement/distraction activity and to continue earning income since my bills didn’t go on pause, I was logged into my work laptop and trying to work from the hospital room. I imagine my contributions weren’t up to their usual standards but it was a grounding which I desperately needed. I was still working eight hours a day but they were rarely consecutive and certainly were not remotely on a 9 to 5.

For most of the time though, what I was doing in that room was watching my wife in the one fight that she simply could not win. She was fighting mightily against her brain to stay alive and I could hear every loud, rasping breath even as they became less and less regular. This was really the only time since we had said “I do” that I was completely unable to help her in any way. I was hoping that the morphine drip meant that she was at least comfortable. Even if it wasn’t helping, I did continue to talk to her, reassuring her that I would be there for her no matter what. I would occasionally hold her hand or just watch her breathe.

I couldn’t stay there the entire time, so I did run home a couple of times to feed the dog and cats, as well as walking the dog. Those were some of the fastest walks I had ever taken him on, since I wanted to cover the usual distance and get back to the hospital room as quickly as possible. I don’t know if my presence helped or not, but I knew these were to be my last moments with her and I wanted as many of them as possible. That said, I would not wish the experience of sitting in a small room mostly by oneself just waiting for someone to die on anyone.

A little before noon on the 24th of February, I ran home to take care of the animals but instead of rushing straight back to the hospital, I took maybe ten minutes to shower and change clothes. Of course, the moment I stepped out of the shower I got a phone call from the hospital. My wife had died, and despite what I had told her earlier I wasn’t there for her when she did.

I still don’t know how I managed that final drive to the hospital. I remember my head was pounding, that I had a lump in my throat the entire way there. I did make it back to that room. It was immediately obvious that she had finally lost her fight. It was remarkable to me just how different a dead body was from an unconscious body. One last kiss on the forehead and a whispered “I’ll always love you. Goodbye” before she was taken to the funeral home and cremated.

That was six months ago, and that is the reason that grief is still very much on my mind. The Kübler-Ross model says there are five discrete stages of grief and we move through them in an orderly fashion. Bluntly, that is a lie. Human emotions are all a lot messier than that and defy easy categorization. I’m sure it’s different for everybody but my experience is the only one I’m familiar with so it’s the only one I can share.

Firstly, and possibly the simplest consequence of things , I haven’t had a full restful night’s sleep since the 21st of February. My sleep cycle is mostly starting to coalesce into something resembling a pattern but it’s not there yet.

One of the reasons the Kübler-Ross model doesn’t work for me is that the very first stage is denial. I’ve found it impossible to deny that she’s gone. Every room in the apartment I’m typing this in has memories of her and she’s simply not there anymore. When I wake up in the morning, there’s nobody on the other side of the bed. When I’m in the kitchen cooking, something that we loved doing together as a big couples activity, I’m only making food for me. I no longer have my sous chef to help, nor do I get to be her sous chef. When I’m watching Jeopardy!, I no longer have to compete to shout out the question first. When I go somewhere, I’m always the driver now, and I no longer have to take five minutes to load her wheelchair into the back of the vehicle. There’s a hundred other activities every single day that I do by myself that we used to do together. The older cat has a distinctive “where’s mama?” meow and I tell her “Mama’s gone.”

So denial has never entered into it. I still talk to her memory most days, telling her about things I’ve done or things I’m going to do. One of those things I’m planning on doing is attending DragonCon this year because a lot of people who helped my immensely by contributing to a medical bill fundraising stream online will be there, and I want to thank them personally and I don’t think I’ll have a better opportunity.

Unfortunately, I feel incredibly guilty about going, because I know she wanted to go, to meet those very same people, since they had become online friends over the course of the pandemic. Now, I’m going without her and I worry that I’ll feel bad if I enjoy myself there because it’s enjoyment that she should have had.

So guilt is one of the stages of grief that does apply to me, but it’s very cyclical. Any time I do anything that I think she would enjoy, I feel bad about it. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t attend various meetups for groups we belonged to for roughly four months, and it’s sporadic even now. There’s some things I just won’t do even now because, to me, doing them dishonors her memory. An example of that is a local club does a “Rain” event where they have the sprinklers on indoors and everyone’s there having a good time under the warm water. It was one of her favorite things to do, and easily our best night of 2021. I think it happened this past weekend. I probably would have loved it, but I just could not go.

The other of the major stages that applies to me is depression. Thankfully, it’s not an ever present thing, again running somewhat cyclically. In the initial few weeks, I had a lot of “why couldn’t it have been me instead?” Which was somewhere between depression and survivor’s guilt. For the most part I can get through my days in a relatively calm fashion, but every once in a while, I’ll get hit by sadness like a ton of bricks. I can mostly trace those days by looking at my bank statements, as I indulge in retail therapy for those. It sometimes helps, but it also often leads to more guilt in that I think “I wouldn’t have gotten this if she was still here,” or “she would have loved this.”

I’m doing a few things to try and get myself straight. Because of the “memories in every room” thing, I’m making changes where I can. Small things, like different bedding, or a new desk, or a sofa slipcover. Really, anything that makes the room look different to what it did when she was alive. This even extends to my own appearance. I had been growing my hair out with the pandemic, partially because it was kind of fun and partially because she enjoyed playing with it. I think it was the weekend after she passed that I just got it cut so that the “me” in the mirror didn’t look like the “me” she hung out with.

I’m in a strange place when it comes to memories, because I don’t think I could watch a video of her, or hear a recording of her voice, especially her magnificent laugh, without being overwhelmed. I’m almost grateful that there aren’t that many photographs of the two of us together because she was the photographer and had crazy high standards for how she looked in photographs and would delete any that weren’t to her standards. Personally, I thought she looked beautiful in all of them but I’m biased. That said, there are certain things that are mementos of her that I’ll never even think about parting with. One of the less obvious ones is a Valentines gift she got me, a set of polyhedral dice that are “coffee and sugar” themed in a collapsible cup. They don’t look like anything special, but they were the last thing she gave to me before dying and as such, will be the only dice I won’t share or loan out to people.

I don’t really know how to finish this blog, so I’ll thank you for reading and indulging me in some catharsis. Actually, I think I’ll end with a quote from my favorite author, Sir Terry Pratchett

“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”

I find a great comfort in that, for I know her ripples won’t be dying away any time soon.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

A Cinematic Autobiography: 40 Years, 40 Movies

Firstly, I’ll admit that this particular blog entry is a rip-off of homage to Matt Singer of Screencrush’s own “40 Years, 40 Movies” column. In that, to celebrate turning 40, Singer highlighted one movie from each of his 40 years and what it meant to him personally.

Since I turned 40 on January 18, 2021, I figured I would do basically the same thing. There are a few fundamental differences though. Most obviously is that he works as a film critic, so some of those movies have an effect on his career trajectory, whereas I’m just some goober with a WordPress blog.

Another difference is that he gets to include a movie from all 40 of his years, since he has a late in the year birthday. I only actually have 39 movies as I type this because basically nothing has released in 2021 yet and I haven’t seen what scant offerings there are.

Also, these movies aren’t necessarily the best movies of their respective years, nor are they always my favorite movies of those years. Indeed some of them are downright terrible. These are just movies that have had some influences or associations with me. I haven’t necessarily watched them in the year of release, and I’ve been lazy and used Wikipedia as my source for all the release years. With that preamble out of the way let’s begin with:

1981 – For Your Eyes Only

I had to include a James Bond film. Like many a Brit, bank holiday Mondays meant a day off school/work, sitting at home and watching an edited-for-TV version of a film. More often than not, that was an adventure of secret agent 007. Much of my pre-teen bonding with my father would be sitting and watching Bond while he drank a whiskey and I drank a ginger ale.

Why this particular Bond movie though? Partially because of how the years worked out. Mostly though, and here’s the dirty little secret, when I picture James Bond, I don’t think of Sean Connery, Daniel Craig, or even Pierce Brosnan. When I think of James Bond in my head, he looks like Roger Moore. And this is probably Moore’s best Bond movie (The Spy Who Loved Me is the only other contender). It’s not exactly gritty but it is a curse correction after the over the top goofiness of Moonraker, the previous installment.

1982 – Blade Runner

My second movie, and I’m already technically cheating, because the version of Blade Runner I think of is the so-called “Director’s Cut” without the voiceover and tacked on happy ending and that was only really widely available after 1992.

This is one of two movies that I associate with going to college. And it’s entirely because a store near my dorm was doing a “buy one get one free” offer on DVDs, and I’d just got my first computer with a DVD drive, and therefore my first DVD player. So when I wasn’t doing coursework or drinking (this being the UK, where 18 was both the legal drinking age and college freshman age) I’d have Ridley Scott’s rain-drenched vaguely dystopian Los Angeles as the background vision in the first place where I lived without either of my parents. Well that or Hugh Grant flop-sweating in front of Julia Roberts in a curiously all-white version of Notting Hill. I think it’s unsurprising that as an unabashed fan of science fiction (as the rest of this list will show) that it was the Harrison Ford starring neo-noir that left the lasting impression.

1983 – Return Of The Jedi

If you’re a geek of my vintage, you’ve seen all the Star Wars films. It’s practically law. Like just about everyone else, I can’t remember a time in my life before I’d seen a Star Wars movie, and this is the first one released theatrically during my life time, so it gets the spot to honour the franchise. Jedi might be the weakest of the original trilogy, but the redemption scenes of Vader, Luke, and Sheev Palpatine in the throne room of the second Death Star showing the redemptive part of the hero’s journey structure still manages to shine through the fighting teddy bears of Endor, and the fact that Harrison Ford has so obviously checked out on playing Han Solo.

1984 – The Karate Kid

Another disadvantage that I have compared to Matt Singer’s original version of this article is, as my wife never tires of pointing out, I haven’t seen many movies! Which sometimes means that certain movies win their year by default.

That’s kind of the case here, but in this case, the movie is iconic enough that I’ve seen it plenty of times (though never any of the sequels, oddly) and it still some cultural cachet even in 2021.

At Karate Kid‘s core, it’s an anti-bullying story that says that most problems can be solved by a combination of menial housework, menial yardwork, and sweet highly telegraphed, kicks to the face, and I think we can agree that’s a message that resonates for the ages.

1985 – Back To The Future

Another 1980s movie that I would describe as utterly iconic. I think it’s fair to say that DeLoreans are better known as time machines than they are as cars at this point. I love time travel movies, and they’ll pop up as later movies on this very blog entry. But what I really love about this movie is its score. The main theme might still be the best piece of music Alan Silvestri ever composed.

Plus, this is a movie that wired late Generation X/Early Millennials into nostalgia culture for good or ill, and the veritable torrent of reboots, remakes, and sequels we’ve otten from that age group ever since just underscores that.

1986 – Labyrinth

My single favorite musician of all time, hamming it up as the villain? I’m immediately sold. But this movie has things beyond just David Bowie as Jareth The Goblin King (not that it needs it), with absolute top notch work from Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.

There’s also the frustration and wish fulfillment aspect of wanting to be rid of a young interloper in your household (my little sister would have been two when this movie came out, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence) and realizing the reality of that set against the fantasy backdrop. Also “It’s not fair. But that’s the way it is,” remains an effective life lesson.

1987 – Masters of the Universe

As I said before, these aren’t necessarily the best movies, my favorite movies, or even good movies from their year. This one gets the nod for 1987 for an incredibly simple reason – this was the first movie I remember ever seeing in the theater.

A no-budget adaptation of an even lower-budgeted cartoon starring Courtney Cox and Robert Duncan McNeill (or as I think of him here Baby Tom Paris) as boring humans interacting with actors playing lamer versions of the toys I already had was probably not the most auspicious start to the cinematic experience, but the combination of me being a pudding-brained six-year-old, and Frank Langella having an absolute blast playing Skeletor at least kept it fun.

1988 – Who Framed Roger Rabbit

It always strikes me as odd that the title doesn’t have a question mark…

Simple reason for including this one. I like special effects movies, I like animation, and this movie does a great job of blending the live action and animated characters together pretty seamlessly. Which is impressive enough when you consider everything was either hand drawn or a practical effect.

This film also has its memorable nightmare moments for younger kids. I’m pretty sure the shoe getting dipped, and the reveal of Judge Doom’s true nature are seared into a lot of folks’ memories.

1989 – Batman

In the post-MCU world of 2021, it’s impossible to state just how big the impact of marketing hype for this movie was. If Jaws and Star Wars are credited with really inventing the blockbuster movie as we know it, Batman was the first hypebuster. Its marketing campaign was omnipresent in a way few movies before it could even dream of. It’s also the first movie I can recall that was marketed almost entirely as a logo. I don’t think there was a flat surface anywhere that didn’t have a black background and gold bat symbol on it at some point. What’s odd is that the symbol in the marketing didn’t match the symbol on Michael Keaton’s Batsuit.

I remember being able to see this movie in theaters because I absolutely had to, so that was a triumph of marketing. What’s odd was that this movie introduced the “12” rating in the UK which meant that you had to be 12 or older to see it, but I would have bene 8 and got in, so I guess enforcement was more lax backthen.

1990 – Goodfellas

Now, I know I wasn’t watching this as a nine-year-old, so it must have been one I came to later, probably as a miserable teen. It remains my favorite Scorsese movie, and quite possibly my favorite gangster movie.

Mostly because it’s so tightly directed and well made, I’m probably the billionth person to praise that kitchen tracking shot, but there’s a reason it gets called out so consistently. The language if this movie is also almost poetic in its profanity as well, wielding every curse like a scalpel. Its also the movie where you see Joe Pesci, who I mostly knew as one of Home Alone‘s wet bandits show just how good he is at playing utter psychopaths.

1991 – Terminator 2 – Judgment Day

I mentioned before how I deeply enjoy science fiction movies, action movies, and movies with time travel plots. This has all of that, and is the rare example of a sequel being better than the original. It’s still the high water mark of the entire Terminator franchise, even if the trailers did spoil the first big twist of the movie – that the T-800 was in fact the good guy this time.

This movie is peak Cameron, and peak Schwarzenegger. The morphing CGI does look a little bit dated, but the action scenes and various chases still look really bloody good.

1992 – A Few Good Men

Everybody has that one film that if they catch a second of it while channel surfing on the cable box, they’re all in to the very end. A Few Good Men is that movie for me. I’d love to have a rational explanation but I’m not sure there is one.

I know nothing of the UCMJ and the legal underpinnings of the movie might well be utter and complete nonsense, but I’m not sure that matters because Sorkin’s script is just that well constructed. The cast is pretty uniformly excellent. Even if both Cruise and Nicholson are just playing their usual movie star personas more than the actual roles they have.

1993 – Jurassic Park

There are some things that are basically unavoidable in pop culture if you’re my age, as mentioned way up there in 1983’s entry, one of them is Star Wars. The other is Steven Spielberg. I’d wager the he was the first director a lot of people my age could name. He held something of a unique place in that I think even people who didn’t care about who made films behind the camera could name Spielberg as a director, and that his name was generally a byword for a quality movie, 1941 aside. It’s less the case now, but in the 1980s and 1990s he might have been the most reliable name in Hollywood.

1993 was probably peak Spielberg with the release of both the critically acclaimed Schindler’s List, and the commercial juggernaut that was Jurassic Park. I went with the latter because I have very boring mainstream tastes and because Jurassic Park evokes the sense of wonder that I always associate with the Spielberg movies of my youth. When you first see the dinos and that John Williams theme ramps up…

1994 – Interview With The Vampire

A movie I watched so much that I literally wore out the VHS tape. I’m not a big fan of Anne Rice, but this adaptation of her first Vampire Chronicles novel manages to capture the feel of the book so well. The absolutely sumptuous art direction and set design standing in for absolutely acres of purple prose. The cast being a murderers row of 1990s Hollywood pretty boys, with even the minor part of the interviewer being Christian Slater. Never mind that Tom Cruise looks absolutely nothing like book Lestat, he effortlessly captures the somewhat creepy charisma and darkness.

And Brad Pitt’s magnificent, tortured Louis is exactly what I imagined reading the book. The movie also gets into the sheer eroticism present within the vampire myth, which was always subtext in the older stories, is very much the text in Rice’s work, and pervades just about every single frame of this film.

1995 – Get Shorty

For the longest time, this was my go to answer for the “what’s your favorite film” question. I’m not entirely sure why. I think a lot of it is that it retains Elmore Leonard’s dialog from the novel it’s based on, and Leonard writes absolutely crackerjack dialog.

It might also be a triumph of timing. It caught John Travolta after his Pulp Fiction comeback had made him respectable again and before the twin whammies of Face/Off and Battlefield Earth had returned him to the realm of self-parody. Maybe it’s the meta nature admitting that making movies really isn’t that far from organized crime, just with better accountants.

It’s a film that remains endlessly rewatchable.

1996 – Different For Girls

Now, this one is a shamelessly obscure movie. It’s a British/French co-production that made roughly $300,000 at the box office.

This is one of the first movies I recall that was framed around a trans narrative and portrayed it in a positive light. I’m sure it doesn’t hold up great now, what with having the main trans woman character played by a cis male actor, but 1996 really was a different, less aware time for LGBTQ issues in general. I remember it being fairly sympathetic.

But the real reason I’m picking this movie here is for the soundtrack, which has a lot of great punk songs on it. The big three it introduced me to were “Another Girl, Another Planet” by The Only Ones, “Whole Wide World” by Wreckless Eric, and “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)” by The Buzzcocks. All 3 of which still pretty regularly pop up on my “pump yourself up” playlists, despite the relatively melancholy lyrics.

1997 – The End of Evangelion

This one is another sort of cheat, in that I’m crowbarring it on to the list to talk about the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise as a whole. This franchise was my first real exposure to anime, and it really isn’t a good introduction to a medium, since it’s very concerned with the deconstruction of the tropes associated with that medium, or at least the robot genre within that medium. I think it’s a great series, though it is undeniably nihilistic, and perhaps no more so than in this movie spin-off/alternative ending.

I think this franchise might by the ur-text of a lot of my interests. I’m an enormous fan of giant robots (There are several Gundam model kits in eyesight from where I’m typing this, and I’m going to build an EVA-01 kit for my office desk once we’re allowed to return to actual offices, I’ve seen/read just about every Transformers episode, movie, and comic since 1984, and I’m assembling Steampunk-esque mecha for the Warmachine tabletop game), religious imagery/allegory in my science fiction (big reasons for enjoying the book Dune, and the Babylon 5 tv series) and Evangelion has that by the bucket load. If they had somehow managed to work in a King Arthur angle, I’d be almost certain that it was made secifically for me.

1998 – Lock, Stock, And Two Smoking Barrels

Another crime caper film, and one with Guy Ritchie’s London wideboy sensibilities shot all the way through it. It’s arguably a low-stakes, extremely British take on the Tarantino action movie, with a lot of profane and funny dialog mixed in with the violence. Less bare feet shots here than with Tarantino though.

This is another movie I watched a bunch because I appreciated how the plot just keeps on adding more and more complications without ever quite breaking under it’s own weight. It’s also the only good film that Sting has ever appeared in.

1999 – Fight Club

Yeah, it’s the movie every try-hard edgelord teenager was into around the turn of the millennium, and I’mnot exempt from that. It’s also a really good movie that tries to address the issues with toxic masculinity in the third act. I don’t think it succeeds at that goal, but I appreciate the attempt.

I’ve always thought of Fight Club as a pitch-lack comedy, and don’t think much of it was ever to be taken seriously. It’s practically drowning in it’s own cynicism. The other thing I’ll say is that watching it more or less back-to-back with The Usual Suspects inspired my love of meta-narrative and identity twists in fiction.

2000 – X-Men

Superhero movies have definitely become the dominant genre now, but a couple of decades ago, that wasn’t the case. It had been a good long while since a superhero movie had been a critical and commercial success when X-Men came along. Arguably, the last movie to fulfil that criteria was Batman Returns a full eight years prior.

I’ve always been a fan of comic books, but typically more of DC than Marvel. That said the side of Marvel I did read was the merry mutants. This is because most of the first volume of Uncanny X-Men got released as a DVD compilation around this time. Being a completionist, I started reading with issue 1 and the Silver Age stylings of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. I think it’s fair to say that in comics, the X-Men didn’t become the X-Men until Chris Claremont arrived in the mid-70s. The X-Men films naturally concentrate on this era, because that’s when the most popular members joined the team (though Scott “Cyclops” Summers and Jean “Jean Grey” Grey were there from the very beginning) including a certain surly be-clawed Canadian.

This is one of the movies that won it’s year by default for me, but it still works well, and Sirs Patrick and Ian are great as Professor X and Magneto.

2001 – The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

And speaking of a perfectly cast Sir Ian McKellen, here he is again, this time as Gandalf the Grey.

Lord of the Rings is in many ways the fantasy book. It’s only a trilogy because of post-war paper shortages and Tolkien famously viewed it as one book. A book that has a significant amount of pop cultural heft,and hadn’t been adapted to film beyond a split Ralph Bakshi/Rankin-Bass animated duology.

The task of turning that into a movie had to be onerous, but to my mind Peter Jackson and company absolutely nailed it at the first time of asking. This remains my favorite of the trilogy, and it definitely is how I visualize Middle Earth when I read the books.

2002 – Signs

Not the best movie, probably not the best M Night Shyamalan movie, and Mel Gibson brings a raft of issues as well, but this is the single film I most associate with moving from the UK to the USA. This is mostly a quirk of timing. One of my first dates with the woman I moved to America for was seeing Signs in the theater. And when my UK family did a surprise “goodbye/sendoff” party, one of the movies rented was also Signs.

2003 – Old School

An extremely dumb Will Ferrell comedy. This is on here because I find it funny, more than anything else. It’s more of a bunch of sketches loosely strung together by a plot than it is a coherent film,but that’s a strength for background watching.

The reason it’s here is that this is a movie that I saw in theaters when the only people in the theater wre the group I was with, so maybe six or seven people. Normally that’s not great for a comedy, but something about the atmosphere that day led to just uproarious laughter at almost every joke. I remember the tranquillizer dart sequence in particular as absolutely slaying us.

2004 – Shaun of the Dead

Looking at the rest of this list, you’ll see that I’m not really a big horror movie guy. That doesn’t mean I’m unfamiliar with the general tropes of horror movies simply from the process of pop cultural osmosis.

That’s probably why I appreciate this zombie movie spoof on a meta level, since it’s done with such obvious affection for the genre, plus the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg/Nick Frost trio are exerts in the language of film, something that they showed at least as far back as their UK sitcom Spaced, which was another one of those things I watched constantly on DVD throughout my University years. I will say that I slightly prefer Hot Fuzz when it comes to the Cornetto trilogy but the years didn’tquite work.

2005 – Kingdom of Heaven

The second Ridley Scott directed movie on this list, and the second one where the theatrical version is basically garbage compared to the director’s cut. If you’ve seen the theatrical version of this movie, then you haven’t actually seen the movie in my opinion.

We have religious themes and knights, since we’re dealing with the Crusades here. Specifically, the Second Crusade and (in the epilogue) the Third. The film’s narrative is a good story, but not remotely historical, so don’t go in assuming it’s based on anything like a true story. It just borrows the names of some historical folks for the characters. I occasionally watch this or the theatrical cut when I reach a writer’s block moment in editing, because the different cuts show the power of what can be salvaged (or savaged) in the editing process.

2006 – Cars

Possibly the least respected of all the Pixar franchises, the reason this automotive remake of Doc Hollywood makes my list is simple. It was my son’s favorite movie when he was between two and six years old, as any parent will tell you, that means you’ll have seen that movie possibly hundreds of times.

I don’t think it’s as bad as it’s reputation, and the voice cast is mostly pretty good, especially Paul Newman as Doc Hudson.

2007 – No Country For Old Men

I enjoy pretty much all of the Coen brothers movies that I’ve seen, and this was the first one I recall seeing theatrically. It has a real sense of menace about the antagonist, Anton Chigurh that’s enhanced by the movie having effectively no score. You don’t notice the lack of musical cues the first time you watch (or at least my half-deaf self didn’t) but something feels off providing an undercurrent of uneasiness that can’tquite be placed.

It’s also one of the best recent Westerns I’ve seen, even if it’s set approximately a century after most of the frontier was tamed.

2008 – Iron Man

Like an awful lot of people based on the box office numbers, my film viewing for the past decade-plus has been dominated by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a ludicrously ambitious crossover project with a ton of interlocking movies and now TV shows.

It all started here with a relatively unassuming picture about a comic book character who was, at best B-list. I knew barely anything about the character of Iron Man going into this one. It just happened to be a slow weekend and I wanted to see a movie with some action in it. The powers that be at Marvel Studios managed to get the perfect casting for the character with Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark, and the rest is pretty much movie history. This won’t be the last time a Marvel movie pops up on this list, for sure.

2009 – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Another absolutely mammoth movie franchise, and one that doesn’t get or deserve anywhere near the levels of critical respect the Marvel movies do. This entry, the second of the live action Transformers movies came out during the writer’s strike,and so didn’t even have a script, making it even less coherent than the “shards of random metal parts” robot designs common to the Michael Bay movies.

I mentioned earlier that I’ve been a die-hard fan of the Transformers overall meta-franchise since the mid-1980s, and while it’s definitely had its shares of highs and lows, this one s firmly a low. So, why is it here as my choice for 2009? Embarrassingly enough, because this is the movie I’ve seen more times in the theater than any other. This wasn’t intentional, it’s just that different groups I was hanging around with wanted to see it on the big screen, because this type of special effects heavy blockbuster belongs there. So I’ve seen the movie where John Turturro says “I am standing directly beneath the enemy’s scrotum” no less than five times in the cinema.

2010 – RED

This is another one of those years where the entry basically wins by default. This particular movie wins for having some just incongruously great action scenes and lunacy. From Helen Mirren with a machine gun, to John Malkovich as an LSD-addled conspiracy nutcase who’s right about absolutely everything.

Watching the movie, it honestly looks like the cast was having so much fun making it that it becomes infectious. It might also represent the last time Bruce Willis pretended togive a crap about anything in an acting performance.

2011 – Thor

I said we’d be coming back to the Marvel movies, didn’t I? This is another default pick (I was having a tough time of things in the early 2010s for reasons I won’t go in to), but is less arbitrary than most. I’ve always enjoyed Norse mythology, and while Marvel’s version of it is very much its own take with many of the relationships changed to better generate conflict between the characters or the wider Marvel universe, it still has roots in the Asgardian mythos.

And Jack Kirby’s version of the Asgard aesthetic is all over this movie, tot he point that it’s almost disappointing that Thor spends so much of the runtime on Midgard.

2012 – The Cabin In The Woods

The second horror movie to appear on this list, and the second one to be really all about the comedic interaction of meta narrative of horror tropes and their interactions. Apparently, when I do like horror, I have a hyper-specific taste for the type I care for.

I also like exactly how downbeat the ending of this movie is. It absolutely commits to the only way its mythos could end and goes all the way there. That’s something no amount of eye-rolling slightly bored scientist observers could prepare you for.

2013 – I Know That Voice

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, I’m a fan of animation, and I find the craft of voice acting to be pretty amazing. As someone who can barely do my own voce, I’m in awe of people like Frank Welker, Billy West, Cree Summer, or Tara Strong who can do literally hundreds of them.

This documentary, narrated by John DiMaggio (no slouch himself) is an absolutely fascinating look into the world of voice acting and how it’s different from on camera acting, and why specialty voice actors are still going strong despite the common practice of casting celebrity voices in big name animation movies.

2014 – Birdman, or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

2014 was the year I met my now-wife, and she is a very big movie/film person. To that end, this was the year where I tried to make sure I had seen all of the Best Picture Oscar nominees before the ceremony. It gave us something to talk about during our online chats as we negotiated the long distance part of our relationship.

I went with Birdman out of the nominees for this year over Whiplash by a hair’s breadth. I think that’s mostly because I was impressed by just how well edited Birdman was to appear like a single take, as well as an absolutely stellar central performance by Michael Keaton as the titular character’s washed-up alter ego.

2015 – Mad Max: Fury Road

George Miller made the best action movie in a long time by stripping everything down to its bare essentials. The characters are archetypes, something that’s also true of the original Mad Max trilogy, and the entire movie is essentially a two-hour chase scene, but that’s all it eeds to be to keep the adrenalin pounding from beginning to end.

Also of note is that so many of the effects are practical, even if they are sweetened with CGI. So the reason the Doof Warrior’s guitar flamethrower looks so damned good is because it’s an actual real guitar with flame thrower built in. That’s utterly, gloriously insane!

2016 – Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Only he second time a Star Wars movie makes this list, and it’s not even one of the Skywalker Saga episodes. In our current era of reboots, remakes, relaunches and sequels, I feel like I have to at least mention the Disney-era Star Wars movies.

The smartest thing they did was to try and expand the IP beyond being the story of two families, since the Galaxy Far, Far Away is one heck of a sand box to play in, but the prequel trilogy had shrunk the universe by making everything so tightly interconnected to the original trilogy. The smart move was to do side stories, and of the two currently extant side story movies, Rogue One is the best one. It’s aping the structure of a war movie in the same way that A New Hope aped the structure of The Hidden Fortress. It’s possibly still too tightly bound to the original movies (I don’t think we needed a Dr Evazan cameo, for example) but the main characters aren’t.

I did mildly lie to describe this movie when I described it as a Star Wars movie that doesn’t feature a single lightsaber. Since there’s one scene that features one rather prominently towards the end.

2017 – Paddington 2

A ridiculously wholesome film, and one where Hugh Grant is enjoying himself playing the villain of the piece so much. While it is a sequel, I don’t think you need to see the first film to appreciate this one.

It’s very much a low key and relaxing kids film, there’s the tiniest bit of political subtext with how Mr. Curry patrols the Windsor Gardens, but even that’s a stretch.

2018 – Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse

The animated superhero movie that feels the most like reading a superhero comic. This movie is remarkable in how clever it is in blending the different art styles of the different characters into its own synthesis. The simple thing of Miles frame rate going up as he gets better at his powers resulting in more fluid movements is a wonderful trick and only possible in the animated medium.

There’s also enough variations on the classical Spider-Man formula that the plot isn’t as predictable as you think. I was particular impressed by the initial Doc Ock reveal for example.

2019 – Avengers: Endgame

Quite literally the biggest movie in the world. You’ve almost certainly seen it. There’s not much to say here, but this feels like the last time that a movie was a cultural event. Some of that is because 2020 and coronavirus put a dampener on literally anything being a cultural touchstone, as we had to become more anti-social as a survival technique.

I think even without that Avengers: Endgame might still be the last hurrah of a true monoculture moment, at least in the USA. It’s the last time I can recall where literally everyone I know just had to see it as soon as possible both to avoid spoilers, and to talk about and dissect it later. Even the final Skywalker Saga Star Wars movie didn’t have that energy to it.

2020 – Onward

Given the whole “global pandemic” thing, 2020 was a very strange year for movies. I didn’t visit a movie theater even once, which meant my movie choices were reduced to those available on streaming.

Considering that the big activity that kept me sane and in contact with friends was playing Dungeons & Dragons online, I think the most appropriate choice of movies was the one that felt the most lie watching somebody’s D&D campaign, and since Vin Diesel didn’t release a Riddick movie, which I’m pretty sure is just his D&D campaign at this point, that honor goes to Pixar’s first movie of 2020.

Something about the sensibility of magical creatures surviving and mutating into our current mundane age feels more like something I’d play, and the goofiness of all the voice performers certainly doesn’t lessen that impression.

2021 – You Ain’t Seen N-Nothin’ Yet

You ain’t been around!

Okay, so that’s 40 years and (not quite) 40 movies that have had an impact in most of those years. What are your thoughts on this? Feel free to drop a comment and let me know what you think.

Writing Promptly #1: Message in a Bottle

I realized that I hadn’t been doing much writing lately on this blog, which is ostensibly supposed to have a writing focus in among the gaming content and Supernatural recaps/thoughts. To that end, while doing a little bit of spring cleaning I found a “500 Writing Prompts” book from Barnes & Noble. I figured I could use that to ramp back up into more regular writing as November’s National Novel Writing Month looms on the far horizon.

The very first prompt, and therefore th theme of the first draft that follows is:

“While at the beach you decide to write a message in a bottle. What would it say? Who would you like to find it?”

Message in a Bottle

I hadn’t had a vacation in a while, so taking the occasion of the long weekend to head to the beach seemed like a good idea at the time. It also apparently seemed like a good idea to the entire metro Richmond population based on the traffic. Once that minor bugbear had been dealt with, it was close to noon. Hotel check-in wasn’t available until two, so I had a couple of hours to kill. Despite the saying this particular Englishman had no real desire to hang out with the mad dogs in the midday sun.

Instead, I enjoyed the air conditioning in a few of the little shops selling bootleg t-shirts with the the finest “Nije” swooshes,  “Rich and Marty” caricatures and other such almost pop culture ephemera. After politely refusing the option to have some mysterious Chinese characters painted on my arms in henna on at least two occasions, I figured I had better at least buy something to justify my presence in the store. An ice cold Coke on a hot day held a certain appeal. I evenn paid a dollar or so extra for the “Mexican Coke,” since that still had sugar instead of corn syrup, and because it came in a glass bottle.

After handing over my cash, i went to the sea front, planted my butt in the sand and enjoyed my soda while watching the ocean waves lapping at the shore. I leaned back and listened to the calls of greedy seagulls as they circled the beach goers.

In no time at all, my drink was done and i was lulled into a sense of peace between the salt smell of the air and the almost too bright blue of the sky and sea. Looking at the bottle, I remembered putting little notes in one as a kid and sending the word out to the world by dropping it off in the sea. i couldn’t remember if glass would float, but it couldn’t hurt to try.

Once I found a pencil and paper, I hit my first obstacle – what would the message be? It wouldn’t be anything of importance, since this probably wouldn’t go anywhere it mattered. At the same time, I wasn’t going to take the childhood option of just using “Hi!” and a mailing address, since I’m a bit more aware of danger and privacy issues now. I did want to give any hypothetical bottle recipient a chance at communicating back. I went with one of my favorite quotes, which I’ve seen attributed to Oscar Wilde. I have no idea how true that is: –

“‘I can resist everything, except temptation.’ If you’re reading this let your resistance down, and give in to your temptation to respond at [throwaway email address] and let me know where you found this.”

It’s not a missive that’s going to set the world on fire, but it might be fun. I rolled the note up, poked it through the neck of the bottle and reclamped the metal cap on top. I waded into the sea until I was roughly waist deep in the water. I let the bottle go. It bobbed up and down a few times before I lost track of it.

I check that email address every couple of months just to see if there’s anything there. It’s been more than a year and a half with nothing, but I still hold on to the hope that I’ll see the “1 unread  message” caption.

After all, what’s the point of indulging in a little nostalgia without a whole lot of hope?

The Backstory of Al-Hararat

What the heck is this? Well,if you remember in an earlier “It builds character” article I mentioned that I would endeavor to have less Dungeons & Dragons content here? I was wrong.

Yes, this is another D&D article,but it isn’t about creating a character (entirely) – This time, I found a local group and will begin an old school RPG campaign actually around a tabletop. This is old school-ish in another way as well, rather than using the current 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, or even the previous 4th Edition, it’s using 3.5 Edition, which was actively published between June 2003 and June 2008. Our Dungeon Master is also going to incorporate some elements from Pathfinder 1st Edition as well. Since Pathfinder has been nicknamed as being “D&D 3.75″ there shouldn’t be too many compatibility issues.

This campaign setting will be a home-brew, as will the campaign itself, so I have no clue what to expect. Our Dungeon Master requested a backstory for each character and was going to use information in said backstory as world building elements, hence the preponderance of proper nouns below. This is a very rough first draft, almost an outline, and will definitely grow in the second iteration.

As with my last character background article, I’m once again playing a race and class that I haven’t before – this time, a Gnome Sorcerer

Al-Hararat

Al-Hararat was born the fifth of seven children to Harun and Karima Marwazi. The family Marwzi ran an inn, the Scorpion and Cactus on the outskirts of the town of Khamaba, in the desert kingdom of Ma’bajjah.

He was raised within the family business where he discovered an aptitude for brewing different types of ales and meads. He was able to develop new recipes and flavors of drink that not only appealed to the traditional drinking race of dwarfs and gnomes, but were also popular among the humans of Khamaba, and even the occasional visiting Elf.

His ales become so renowned in Ma’bajjah that the Council of Elders that ruled Khamaba granted the entire Marwazi family the freedom of the town. This lead to the Scorpion and Cactus becoming both a minor tourist attraction and the unofficial Council drinking establishment.

Things were going well for the Marwzi until the fateful Town Founding day three months ago. Mayor Guryon Peled and his daughter Elisabete, the two most powerful humans in Khamaba came to the inn and held a whispered conversation with Harun. They were seeking a beverage to commemorate the occasion, but the rather portly Guryon wanted one that wouldn’t contribute to his ever-growing waistline, but still had potency.

Al-Hararat had already been working towards that direction at his father’s behest for some months, since he had noticed that lighter ales meant that customers, especially humans, ordered more meals and drinks, which in turn meant more gold pieces for the family. Not all his attempts had been successful. There were shards of kegs that had contained some of his more experimental brews buried in the grounds of the Scorpion and Cactus. As well as an unsettling tendency to explode, some of Al-Hararat’s concoctions would settle into substance’s resembling the alchemist’s fire of yore. The last couple of batches, however, had stabilized to a very drinkable light ale. Al-Hararat had stamped the two largest wooden kegs of this new ale with his mark, a water mill.

Al-Hararat tapped one of his Mill light kegs and poured a generous flagon for the Mayor, and filled two small drinking horns for himself and Harun. Elisabete didn’t generally drink, but she took a small glass of Karima’s mead. The two humans and two gnomes retired to the corner table nearest the inn’s kitchen to sample the wares. Harun drained his horn in a single gulp, though it didn’t seem to have much effect on him, merely a slight reddening of his nose and the tips of his gnomish ears.

It was much the same story for Al-Hararat, but he did allow himself a smile as he savored the taste. As Al-Hararrat slid the mayor’s tankard across the table to Guryon, the young gnome felt heat flowing through his temples and down his arms. This left him in a state of confusion as the ale in his drinking wasn’t that potent to taste. He was even more shocked when his hands erupted into a bluish-white flame, superheating the metal flagon as Al-Hararat passed it on to the mayor. The drinking vessel glowed red and then white with heat before the human could touch it.

Al-Hararat stammered out an apology. The mayor waved it off as unnecessary and insisted he preferred his drinks warm anyway. He would wait until it was cool enough to touch before quaffing any, though. Both gnomes thought this was an excellent idea. Elisabete gave her mead to her father, who drank it while staring at his cooling ale and discussing festival arrangements with the Marwzis.

Eventually, mayor Guryon’s drink was close enough to room temperature that he could enjoy it. The human supped eagerly and to the delight of the foursome, the ale went down easily. He praised Al-Hararat for the mastery of his craft. Moments later, the mayor thumped at his sternum three times and let out an almighty belch. The gnomes cheered but were suddenly silenced when the mayor’s head exploded splattering the back wall of the inn with gobbets of brain matter. Elisabete unleashed a piercing scream, which brought the attention of the rest of the Council of Elders to the inn. Unable to articulate what had happened beyond just pointing at Al-Hararat and screaming, Elisabete merely nodded as the Council declared a trial for Al-Hararat.

The trial was as swift as it was unjust. Neither Al-Hararat nor his family were allowed to defend the young gnome from the accusations of malevolent sorcery and murder. The verdict was given by the former deputy mayor, Ephraim. Al-Hararat was guilty. The sentence was, of course, death.

Al-Hararat’s oldest sister, Farah, managed to get the sentence commuted to exile after spending several days in Ephraim’s household as a servant, and according to rumor almost as many nights in his bedchamber.

So it was that Al-Hararat found himself packing a few meagre supplies into his backpack and setting out from Khamaba for the first and final time in his life and entering the great Talilakh desert.

He wandered eastward for five days and five nights, nibbling on his scant food and fastidiously metering out the water from the two waterskins the Council had permitted him to have.

On the sixth day, he was almost out of water, and completely out of food. The sun was mercilessly beating down upon him. Al-Hararat collapsed atop a sand dune and awaited the release of death, as he was surely going to die here in the center of the Talilakh.

It felt like days passed, but they couldn’t have because the sun’s burning light and all-consuming heat were omnipresent. As he slipped in and out of consciousness, Al-Hararat looked up to the sky, shielding his eyes from the blazing orb. He muttered words of benediction, begging either to die, or for a sign that he could survive.

Delirious with hunger, thirst and heat, Al-Hararat was convinced he saw the latter when a great triangular shadow blotted out the sun. The shadow looked a ruddy brown to him, and the speed in which it soared across the sky resembled that of the Great Brass Dragon that some of the more crazed town visitors had told tales about. Like the rest of the people of Ma’bajjah, Al-Hararat didn’t believe that dragons existed, but he could not deny the evidence of his own eyes. As he traced his way across the desert remaining in the vast triangular shadow, he knew now that there was a Great Brass One, and that it had chosen him for a purpose. He could not say what that purpose was, but he knew he needed to spread the news of the Great Brass One’s existence far and wide.

This determination was cemented when he noticed what had to be an avatar of the Great Brass One in the form of a much smaller creature, a reptile eighteen inches long, without the triangular wings. Nevertheless, Al-Hararat knew this was a sign from the Great Brass One. He named the creature Tanin and followed it.

The creature led Al-Hararat to a cactus, which the creature began to eat. As it did so, the plant exuded brackish liquid. He refilled his water skins. In this way, and ate of the cactus alongside Tanin. Though this did mean that he had to spend som time pulling barbed thorns out of his tongue.

Eventually, Al-Hararat was lead out of the desert by Tanin. As a symbol of his gratitude, he kept the creature, letting it reside on his shoulders as he wandered into a new town.

The town guards asked Al-Hararat what his business was.

“No business here,” he said, “just visiting. By the way, have you heard the good news of the Great Brass One?”

At that question, the guards picked him up bodily and threw him into the watch house’s small jail cell.

“It’s alright Tanin,” Al_Hararat whispered to his lizard. “One day, they’ll understand the Great Brass One and what it means to praise the sun.”

Tanin closed its eyes and its tongue darted out, plunging into Al-Hararat’s ear. It rasped against the gnome’s flesh.

 

And that’s where we find Al-Hararat as the campaign begins…

It Builds Character #12: Vampire: The Masquerade

Welcome to the twelfth in an occasional series called It Builds Character in which I use the character generation rules of various tabletop role-playing games to create a character and attempt to flesh them out into something distinctive.

The Game

For the twelfth entry in this series, I’m finally escaping from Dungeons & Dragons. Instead, I’m going slightly old score with a game that was originally published by White Wolf, who were also the publishers of the game I used for the fourth entry, Aberrant. The game I’m using today is probably the most famous of the games the studio released: Vampire The Masquerade. While the game and studio have recently been revived for a fifth edition, that’s not the version I’m using here. There’s a few reasons for this, notably there’s been some controversy around the new owners of White Wolf and some of the things they’ve incorporated into the backstory (notably links between the Chechen government, real-world LGBTQ persecution and in-game vampires), other elements are changes in the game’s focus. But honestly, the biggest reason I’m sticking with the 20th Anniversary Edition released way back in 2011 is simply that I own a copy of it, and not fifth edition.

So, what’s the game itself actually about? Unsurprisingly enough, vampires. It’s set in a worse version of our world, known as the World of Darkness, where supernatural entities lurk in the shadows. Thematically, the players are vampires who are battling the beast within in order to keep their humanity (there are exceptions, of course). Since they have to drink blood, this becomes a challenge. Vampire: The Masquerade in particular has a lot of political intrigue between various sects and tribes that result in a strict hierarchical structure based on how powerful the vampires are with older vampires generally more powerful and having stronger powers linked to the potency of their blood (we’ll go into more detail than that as we create the character below because things get complicated quickly. There’s also rumors of an impending vampire apocalypse, known as Gehenna, which has been prophesied, and in the backstory of the world, some of these earlier events have definitely happened. The game is designed to be kind of angsty…

The Character

I don’t have a full concept of the character here, other than they’re definitely an aesthete, and somewhat tortured in the grand tradition of Anne Rice style vampires. Though more Louis de Pointe du Lac than Lestat de Lioncourt. Also my characters are generally less sexually charged than Anne Rice’s tend to be…

So, let’s get started.

STEP I: Character Concept

Well, this is a minor problem, since I didn’t have a concept in mind. The game uses concept as a general catch all, and based on the very short list of concepts presented in the character creation overview, it’s more the job the character held whilst still mortal than anything else.

Also in this step is figuring out the character’s Nature, Demeanor, and Clan. All of which I’ll go into in greater detail as I go.

For the overall concept, I decide that the character was a Professional in life – specifically, they were a lawyer. Not sure why, but it seemed to fit.

Nature and Demeanor are chosen from roughly the same list of options, which the game refers to as Archetypes. The game specifies that Demeanor is the “face” that the character shows to the world and Nature is their true self. They don’t have to be different, but I feel like there’s more role-playing opportunity if they are. As for most of this section, this isn’t really related to game mechanics, but Nature can make a difference to the character’s Willpower points (see STEP V: Finishing Touches below for more on that).

Also, I feel like a character who was a lawyer would definitely present a different front from their true self, or they’d probably have been bad at lawyering…

I decide since I wanted the character to come across as something of an aesthete, so they present the Demeanor of a Bon Vivant to the world, so they’re going to be role-played as having fairly low self-control and as something of a hedonist looking for a good time.

The character’s true nature is much closer to being a Director, trying to forge some kind of order out of the chaos of everyday reality. That means they can regain willpower  by influencing/aiding either a group or a particularly influential individual.

The last part of this step is to choose the clan that the character belongs to. There are thirteen different clans in the game, and they all have different outlooks on what vampirism means and also suggests the priority the character places on later steps. Each clan has a different collection of Disciplines, which can be thought of as special powers available to vampires. Arguably, a clan is the Vampire equivalent of what would be considered a class in D&D.

The clans are also predisposed towards joining a different sect. The sects are the Camarilla, which is a group dedicated to vampire politics and the titular  Masquerade, which is keeping the existence of vampires hidden from mortals, the Sabbat, which is a more anarchic group dedicated to vampiric supremacy over humanity. Then there are four independent clans who don’t really ascribe to either of the sect viewpoints.

The clans are:

• Assamite – a religious blood cult of assassins that are independent from the sects
• Brujah – a rebellious group of agitators who were originally responding to the betrayal of Carthage
• Followers of Set – A cult dedicated to the corruption of humans and vampires in the name of the Egyptian deity Set
• Gangrel – A more animalistic clan. More loners and nomads, tend to be more wilderness-based and less civilization-based
• Giovanni – A family of Italian necromancers who adopted vampirism by usurping an older clan. Very much not trusted
• Lasombra – One of the primary clans in the Sabbat. Ruthless, social Darwinist, and aristocratic tribe. Manipulates shadows.
• Malkavian – A clan that suffers from madness/mental illness, but are powerful as they share a kind of hive mind
• Nosferatu – Cursed with hideous appearances. Often live in sewers or other boundary places. Very good as spies and getting information, so often act as spies. Nominally aligned with the Camarilla.
• Ravnos – A trickster clan with origins in the East. This is a clan that is fading away in modern times.
• Toreador – A leading clan within the Camarilla. Often artistic and the most social of the clans, so they tend to have more connections to humanity and culture.
• Tremere – The warlocks of the vampire world who specialize in blood magic, and they have the most rigid pyramidal structure
• Tzimisce – Scholars and clergy among the Sabbat. they specialize in reshaping the flesh of themselves and others.
• Ventrue – The other leading clan of the Camarilla. These are the most aristocratic and “old money” of the clans, and  tend to be the power players and kingmakers.

Looking at the various archetypes, the three that make the most sense for the character as I conceive them are the slightly more cultured ones: – Lasombra, Toreador, or Ventrue. I feel like the Bon Vivant Demeanor doesn’t fully gel with my conception of Ventrue.

I also think that the vampiric politics and maneuvering among the Camarilla has more appeal than the somewhat more anarchic nature of the Sabbat for a lawyer, which effectively rules out the Lasombra. So, by process of elimination, the character will be a member of Clan Toreador.

STEP II: Select Attributes

The first step of determining a Vampire character’s attributes is deciding what to prioritize among the three categories: Physical, Social, or Mental. There are three attributes under each category for a total of nine. Each attribute is ranked from one to five “dots,” and by default most characters have a dot in each attribute. On top of that, they get seven dots to spread among their primary attribute category, five for their secondary category, and a mere three for their tertiary category.

As a Toreador, it makes the most sense for the primary attribute category to be Social. Given the character is more of a manipulator/lawyer than a fighter, it makes the most sense for Physical to be the tertiary category.  spreading the relevant “dots” around gives the following:

Physical (Tertiary)

Strength: *

Dexterity: ***

Stamina: * *

Social (Primary)

Charisma: ***

Manipulation: ****

Appearance: ***

Mental (Secondary)

Perception: **

Intelligence: ***

Wits: ***

STEP III: Select Abilities

Much like Attributes, a Vampire character’s abilities are divided among three categories that must be prioritized. Those categories are Talents, Skills, and Knowledges. A talent is an intuitive or inherent ability, a skill is an ability that the character has learned through training and determination, and a knowledge is a mental ability learned through research. Unlike attributes, there are no free dots in any ability. Primary category gets 13 dots, secondary gets nine dots, and tertiary gets five. Also, no ability can have more than three dots at this point in character creation.

Based on the character concept so far, to me it makes sense to prioritize Knowledges as primary, Talents as secondary, and Skills as tertiary. Distributing the dots gives:

Talents (Secondary)

Alertness: *

Athletics:

Awareness: *

Brawl:

Empathy: *

Expression:

Intimidation: *

Leadership: **

Streetwise: *

Subterfuge: **

Skills (Tertiary)

Animal Ken:

Crafts:

Drive: **

Etiquette:

Firearms: *

Larceny:

Melee:

Performance: *

Stealth: *

Survival:

Knowledges (Primary)

Academics: **

Computer: **

Finance: **

Investigation: *

Law: ***

Medicine:

Occult:

Politics: *

Science: *

Technology: *

STEP IV: Select Advantages

For me, this is the step where the Vampire character becomes both more distinct, and also more vampiric, since the earlier steps (other than Clan selection) could apply to human characters. Like the last two steps, this is also divided into three subcategories. Unlike the prior steps, there’s no prioritization here, instead each gets a fixed number of dots.

The first category is Disciplines which are blood-based special vampire powers. Available disciplines are clan dependent with each clan offering three disciplines, and each character gets a grand total of three dots to spread across their disciplines. As a Toreador, the character has access to the disciplines of Auspex (ESP and sensory powers), Celerity (speed powers), and Presence (emotional manipulation powers). Thinking about the character concept, I don’t see a reason for the character to have super speed, so none of the three dot are going into Celerity. Since they specialize in emotional manipulation, I opt to spend two of the Discipline dots on Auspex, which gives the character both Heightened Senses and Aura Perception. The last Discipline dot goes to Presence, which allows the character to Awe others.

Our second category is Backgrounds, where the character has five dots to spend on various aspects such as Allies, Mentors, Contacts, Resources etc. most of the background names are fairly self-explanatory. Based on the concept so far, the character should probably have a couple of dots of Resources, since they clearly have access to cash, and possibly a fairly nice place to live. They’d also have at least a dot in Contacts, since they probably know someone at the law firm they worked at in life. I also think that they probably have a little bit of either Influence or Status.

Our final category is Virtues, where we have seven dots to spend, and we also get a free dot in each of the three default virtues of Courage, Conscience, and Self-Control. There are alternative virtues that can be selected if we want the character to have less contact with their humanity. In the case of this character, it doesn’t make sense to switch from these defaults, so let’s stick with those. I go for the most boring option initially, and put two dots in each of the three standard Virtues, and the seventh dot goes into Self-Control

Disciplines

Auspex: **

Celerity:

Presence: *

Backgrounds

Contacts: *

Influence: *

Resources: **

Status: *

Virtues

Conscience: ***

Self-Control: ****

Courage: ***

STEP V: Finishing Touches

We have most of our numbers figured out now, but there’s still a few more stats to generate here. To start of with, there’s a couple of derived stats, first up Humanity, which is the total of Conscience + Self-Control, so seven dots.

We also have Willpower, which is equal to the Courage score.

There’s also a single roll of a ten-sided die (d10) to determine the amount of blood points the character starts with, in this case it was an 8.

Humanity: *******

Willpower: ***

Blood Pool: ********

And now, we have fifteen of something called “Freebie Points” to spend, and they can be used thusly:

• 5 Freebie points for an attribute dot
• 2 Freebie points for an ability dot
• 7 Freebie points for a discipline dot
• 1 Freebie point for a background dot
• 2 Freebie points for a virtue dot
• 2 Freebie points for a Humanity dot
• 1 freebie point for a Willpower dot

I opt to spend 7 of those freebie points bumping up the character’s Presence by a dot to two (which grants him the ability to use a Dread Gaze). That leaves eight to work with. I decide to spend 6 of them on three different background dots, one in Firearms (giving the character 2), one in Etiquette, and one in Investigation (also giving the character 2). That leaves two freebie points to spend, and I opt to use them both to bump up the character’s Willpower score.

Now all we have left to do is decide on some of the physical details of the character. First up, I decide that they are going to be female New Yorker who now unlives in the suburbs of Atlanta after graduating from Emory Law, and would have been in her late thirties when she was Embraced into vampirism. She’s also a willowy brown-eyed brunette, coming in at roughly five foot ten inches tall, favors business clothing in general and her name is Kaitlin di Scenza.

---

What do you think, loyal blog followers? Is this a series worth continuing? If so, are there any particular games and editions you’d like me to use to create characters?

Please leave some comments and let me know!

The Backstory of Dra’Torrn

What the heck is this? Well,if you remember in my last “It builds character” article I mentioned that I would endeavor to have less Dungeons & Dragons content here? I was wrong.

Yes, this is another D&D article,but it isn’t about creating a character (entirely) – This cae about because I got invited to play (as opposed to run) a campaign online via Fantasy Grounds and Discord. I like to create backstory for my characters as it gives me something to get my hooks into when I play (not that you can always tell).

This campaign is based on one of the newer campaign settings, Eberron,which I knew nothing about. 

I would be playing a Ranger, which I don’t often do,and hadn’t since before D&D3.5 cme out.

I would be playing as a Half-Orc, which I’ve never done before.

I would be playing an online game, using Adventurer’s League rules,which are also new to me.

So, I took a deep dive into the Player’s Handbook, perused the Wayfarer’s Guide to Eberron and put the following together. It’s basically just a first draft so I could both have content out quickly, and count this entry as 3,000 words towards my CampNaNo project

Shadow Marches – Zarash’ak, the City of Stilts – 979-980 YK

The orc woman’s name was Guhrta. Her life mate was a Brelander human named Aodghan. Like so many others, he had died in the meat grinder that was the Last War. Aodghan claimed he had seen his death in battle coming months before it happened. That was one of the reasons he had fled from the fighting in the former Kingdom of Galifar to live out his life here in the Shadow Marches. While he clearly had the accent of an outsider, such were becoming much more common among the Marchers. After eighty years of conflict, everywhere on Khorvaire had a share of burned-out dead-eyed combat veterans who had simply seen too much.

Unfortunately for Aodghan, he didn’t have many skills or abilities beyond being extremely skilled at swordplay, limiting his options for earning enough Sovereigns to keep himself in comfort. Guhrta hadn’t much cared about that and had told him as much, often. They might struggle, even here where the beggars had crowns, but they would be struggling together.

For a time, her arguments had worked and Guhrta and Aodghan had been happy together, despite some of the Marcher tribes frowning upon their union. It was a short time, merely the six months from early Olarune to late Lharvion, but Guhrta had found them idyllic. Aodgahn had chafed slightly at the perceived weakness her fellow orcs had seen in him, accusing him of hiding behind his mate. This lead to Aodghan hiring himself back out as a mercenary and returning to the Last War. This time he would be fighting for Aundair against his native Breland.

It had taken a mere month before Guhrta received the message that she had been dreading. Aodgahn had taken a lance to the heart while serving as a pike man against a charge of Brelander cavalry and died.

She had cried in private, refusing to let the other orcs of the Shadow Marches see her in grief. Guhrta never had the chance to tell Aodghan that he had left her with child. Initially, she had tried to keep that news from the orc tribes as well. Several months later, her body had made such deceit impossible. Guhrta swallowed her pride and visited the Circle of Gatekeepers druids and healers to assist with the birth.

And thus, on the eighteenth day of Zarantyr, 980YK, a Wir, Guhrta gave birth to her and Aodghan’s half-Orc son, whom she named Drach. In exchange for their aid in her labor, Guhrta dedicated herself to the Gatekeepers as an acolyte of their beliefs and a beneficiary of their protective influence..

So it was that the Gatekeepers had a strong influence on Drach from a young age. As he grew older, he was indoctrinated in their beliefs that the natives of Khorvaire, and indeed the entire world of Eberron needed defending from the aberrations of the daelkyr.

Shadow Marches – The Ruins of Karthoon Tor – Far, Olarune 20 994YK – The Day of Mourning

There was a sense of trepidation in the air. Drach didn’t have to be as attuned to nature as the druids who had helped raise him to know that something was coming, something big. The other civilians of the Shadow Marches were on edge as well, though none of them could articulate quite why that was. The Gatekeepers said it was because the presence of the daelkyr had grown stronger, but then they said that about any ill-starred omen or occurrence. Drach knew that some of them believed it, but he thought that for the majority of the faithful, it was just a rote mantra, blame anything bad on the daelkyr. That’s certainly how Drach always treated it, as mere lip service, even though he definitely believed in the darkness that was the daelkyr.

It was not darkness that signaled the presence of the reinvigorated servants of the daelkyr, if that was indeed what the foreboding was, but a flash of light far, far to the northeast. Even here, from the top of the broken tower of Karthoon, the light itself was barely visible. Years later, Drach discovered that this was because the source of the light was over two thousand miles away. The light faded almost as quickly as it had appeared.

Some of the more experienced druids seconded to House Tharashk staggered to their knees, and some of them collapsed into unconsciousness, overwhelmed by an ineffable darkness. Naturally, those who remained conscious attributed this to the machinations of the daelkyr, some even claiming that this meant it had returned to the world.

Drach had his doubts about such claims, but the low buzzing inside his skull told him that something fundamental had changed about the world. Drach would not be able to articulate what it was he knew, let alone how he knew it.

Once the senior druids had regained consciousness, it became apparent that the world had experienced a massive number of instantaneous deaths, possibly of magical origin. Drach heard that over a million lives had been snuffed out. He could not comprehend such a number. The largest city he had ever experienced was Zarash’ak, the City of Stilts, which had barely six thousand occupants. The idea that the equivalent of a hundred and seventy Zarash’aks were just gone was entirely incomprehensible to him. Drach was scarcely alone in this. Events spiraled even further beyond Drach’s understanding. Envoys were sent from teleportation circles to the source of the light. Hours later the envoys returned, looking haggard and talking about how the “grey mists” had killed everything within the kingdom of Cyre by transforming their bodies into horrific twisted parodies of living forms. Whoever or whatever had sent the mists had been comprehensive and their horrific intent was clearly still active, as the first of the envoys to arrive had also succumbed to the deathly metamorphoses the instant they stepped out of the teleportation circles. From that moment on, Drach swore that he would never use a teleportation circle himself.

In later days, this became known as the Day of Mourning and was remembered annually, but none were able to discover the cause. Even here in the distant Shadow Marches, the people were weeping for the loss of the people of Cyre.

Shadow Marches – The Vile Marsh – Zor, Zarantyr 20 995YK

Drach’s stomach roiled. He dry swallowed to try and contain his nerves. It was a mere two days after his fifteenth birthday and House Tharashk had granted him the honor of joining his first hunt. The date was mostly coincidental, as the real reason for the hunt was that one of the minor human House Tharashk agents, Alain Torrn had manifested a Dragonmark. This wasn’t especially unusual as many of the retainers of Tharashk displayed the bruised bluish-purple Mark of Finding as they reached adolescence.  Alain’s case was unusual in that the Mark didn’t appear until he was in his early twenties.

Alain felt that the Mark meant that he was finally a true member of theHouse, and he adopted the house honorific of d’Tharask as his surname.

The more senior agents didn’t approve of this change, and claimed that Alain had no right to the honorific until he had used the abilities of his Dragonmark. He was tasked with hunting down an enemy of the House and bringing them into custody.

Alain scoffed at the idea, and said that the suspect wasn’t a true concern and was beneath one such as he. Instead, he would bring in one of the children of the daelkyr to prove his worth. As he made this claim,his Dragonmark glowed softly.

Senior members of the household felt that Alain’s boast was an idle one, but indulged him. He would be granted two assistants of his choosing for the hunt, and would be granted the honorific if he could return evidence of the demise of the daelkyr’s creature.

To nobody’s surprise, Alain’s first “assistant” was his current beau, Eavan Mayer, a former member of a cavalry unit, who was admittedly something of a dab hand with a light crossbow.

Drach being Alain’s second assistant had been more of a surprise, since there was no real connection between the two of them. Drach was inordinately proud to discover that he had been hired for his skill. Word of Drach’s exploits at bringing in wanted criminals in the last couple of years had not gone unnoticed. He had acquired quite the reputation among the newer associates of House Tharashk as a finder of folk who didn’t want to be found. It had become Drach’s primary source of silver Sovereigns. Alain had promised Drach that he would receive enough golden Galifars for this job that h could take the rest of winter off, which Drach could scarcely imagine.

It wasn’t an easy job. It started, as these things often seemed to, with a multi-day hike broken up by nights sent on rotting beds in the flea-ridden common rooms of lousy taverns.

The trio of Alain, Eavan, and Drach made their way to the southern tip of the Vile Marshes, not far from the dark woods known as Balinor’s Sorrow.

Drach was surprised to discover that Alain’s intuition was accurate and there was a vile creature of the daelkyr present. The few inhabitants they had come across described a creature the color of oxygenated blood which oozed slowly through every type of terrain. When the blood creature oozed over any other animal, that animal disappeared, the bloody ooze grew ever larger, and manifested the eyes and mouth of its prey. Worse,as each new mouth appeared on the creature, it would begin to ululate and babble in the voice of the mouth’s  original owner.

This started with several hunting dogs, so the bloody child of the daelkyr sounded like a cacophonous baying of hounds strong enough to paralyze anyone who heard it.

This was first discovered when a woodsman trying to reclaim his deer hound was rendered catatonic and subsequently absorbed by the creature, which now developed a human mouth screaming for help on top of its gibbering babble of animal noise.

The woodsman was the creatures first sentient victim, but not the last. The creature had taken several orcs into itself. Most of the local humans hadn’t cared about them, something which infuriated Drach given his half-orc heritage. It was the disappearances and presumed deaths of the families of a few of the local human bartenders that had prompted them to reach out to House Tharashk for help. Though Alain’s Dragonmark mean that the trio had arrived in the marshes before their messenger had reached Zarash’ak.

The blood creature had been spotted to the west of a clearing in the swamp, and Alain had led the trio close enough that they could see the creature in the distance, roughly a hundred feet away.

Given the number of its victim’s eyes the creature had manifested it saw the trio immediately and began to slither towards them.

Instinct took over immediately.

“Don’t let it get too close,” Alain shouted.

Drach and Eavan both nodded their assent, neither of them wanted to be the latest mouths and eyes of the creature. Alain traced a complicated knot in the air in front of him with both hands, pointed at the ground around the blood creature and murmured a single word. Vines erupted from the marshy ground and coiled around the blood creature. The vines squeezed the creature to the ground, pinning it in place for a moment before the creature contorted its mass towards its lower body and burst from the vines.

Alain swore. ” I hoped that would hold it still.”

“Maybe I can pin it in place with this,” Eavan said, stepping forwards as she loaded a bolt into her trusty light crossbow. She snapped off a perfect shot at the creature, despite the distance, and the bolt ended up embedded in one of its many hound eyes.

Drach followed Eavan’s example, and nocked an arrow to his longbow string, pulled back and fired. The arrow also found purchase in the creature.

Neither projectile was able to slow it down though, and it continued to ooze towards them.

Alain tried his trick with the vines again, but it was even less successful this time, as the creature ‘s mad fury once again won out over the swampy plants. It oozed ever closer to them. The creature was less than sixty feet away and closing in.

Eavan followed up with a second crossbow shot. The bolt thudded against the creature but didn’t stop it.

Drach fired his longbow once more, and he lined up perfect shot straight down the throat of what had once been an orc mouth. The creature let out a keening wail on top of its usual cacophony of noise, but kept up it’s inexorable approach.

Alain said “It seems that I don’t have nature’s favor on my side today. I’m going to have to do this the old fashioned way.” He drew his scimitar, used his wooden shield to cover his torso and began advancing towards the creature.

“Alain! What are you doing?” You don’t want to get close to that thing!” Eavan yelled. Alain’s foolhardiness must have bothered her more profoundly, as her crossbow bolt went flying well wide of the  creature and dropped into the fetid swamp.

Drach’s bow did no better, as he left the string too slack and the arrow dropped well short of it’s intended target.

The spawn of the daelkyr crept ever closer. Alain closed the gap between himself and the creature to what Drach considered to be a completely unsafe distance.

“Get back!” Eavan yelled, firing her crossbow once more. She hit the creature’s amorphous torso with a bolt for emphasis.

Drach grunted his agreement as he tried to draw back his longbow. Once again, he had misjudged the distance and the arrow sauntered harmlessly over the vile creature.

The creature slime it’s way closer to them. Alain was now close enough that he could see the thing did not breathe. It did, however, spit. The creature reared back and blasted a globule of saliva at the trio,the spit exploded in a burst of eldritch light. Alain screamed.

” I can’t see!” He swung his sword in the direction of the creature,to no avail.

Eavan doesn’t even attempt to take a shot, instead, she runs towards Alain, grabs him around the shoulders and attempts to pull him back. She’s able to drag him slightly, but the creature’s slimy trail, intermixed with the swampland means she’s unable to get enough grip to retreat.

Drach is now genuinely worried for his allies, but isn’t foolish enough to get any closer to the monster that’s attacking them. He fires another arrow at the creature, permanently shutting another of its eyes.

The creature attempts to bite at Alain with multiple mouths, but Alain is able to jam his scimitar in the creature’s maw to avoid the worst of it. Alain is able to shake off the after images of the light, but is tuck in the swamp. He swipes at the creature with his sword and knocks out a tooth.

Eavan is driven mad by the noise of teh craeture’s overlapping voices and isn’t able to do anything except run to the creature’s left.

That gives Drach a clear shot, but he misses wildly. He backs up to give himself another chance.

The creature goes to bite at Alain once again. This time, Alain is too weak to defend himself, and the creature tears into his flesh with many sets of powerful jaws ripping gaping wounds into Alain’s body. He passes out from the pain, shock and blood loss.

Eavan is unable to move closer to Alain, and she fails to fend off the creature’s maddening screams. She draws her warhammer and flails wildly with it. A lucky blow glances against one of the creatures human eyes, rendering it puffy, bloody and closed.

Drach loose what has to be his last arrow at the creature. It pierces the body. The creature is still attacking, but it’s clearly having trouble maintaining any stability now.

Eavan attempts to dodge the creatures bite but fails, and it tears into her fleshwith all it’s remaining jaws, ripping her entrails out and leaving her dead.

Alain bleeds his last, and he too is no longer of this mortal coil.

Insensate with anger, Drach charges through the swamp at the creature, drawing his shortsword as he does so. He plunges the sword into the creature which evaporates with an earsplitting noise and dissolves, leaving nothing but a collection of teeth and bloody eyeballs behind.

Exhausted from the fight, and overcome by grief at the loss of two people he had started to consider friends, Drach sinks into unconsciousness.

A little under an hour later, Drach regains consciousness, collects all the teeth and eyes from the now dead creature as evidence of it’s destruction.

After asking around,he’s also able to procure a cart to return the bodiesof his companions to Zarash’ak and the auspices of  House Tharashk.

A few days later, after Drach returned to Zarash’ak, he was rewarded with the full bounty for the spawn of the daelkyr that he slew, rather than the thirty-three percent cut he had been anticipating. It was more than enough golden Galifars for him to rest for the winter. In fact, it was so much gold that he could afford to take his leave of the Shadow Marches, something that both the Gatekeepers druids, and House Zarash’ak had been tacitly encouraging. Especially since he had opted to change his name from Drach to Dra’Torrn to honor the tribe that both Alain d’Tharashk (who got to keep the honorific in death rather than having to return to his tribal name) and Eavan Mayer belonged to.

With his mother passing away peacefully in early Nymm, Dra’Torrn had nothing to keep him in Zarash’ak or the Shadow Marches anymore, and he decided to escape the memories by leaving them beh9ind.

Between his meager savings and the proceeds from his last few hunts, especially the one against the daelkyr spawn, Dra’Torrn had enough to go just about anywhere on Khorvaire. Like so many of the dispossessed, he found himself drawn to the bustling metropolis of Sharn, in Breland. Dra’Torrn spent a little more gold then he needed to to ensure himself safe passage on a House Lyrandar elemental galleon to the City of Towers. Since he was nominally still attached to House Tharashk and still was known for being very good at finding people who don’t want to be found, Dra’Torrn ended up living near one of the lower class mercantile districts of that great city. Specifically, he found a run down apartment in the Broken Arch district of Middle Dura, where his services remain in demand.

Okay, if the rest of this is a first draft, the fight here is a zeroth draft, as it’s literally a dice roll by dice roll translation of a D&D “deadly” ranked encounter between a Level 2 Druid (Alain d’Tharashk), a Level 1 Ranger (Drach/Dra’Thonn), a Level 1 Archery Fighter (Eavan Meyer) and their opponent, an aberration known as a Gibbering Mouther– We played this honestly without fudging any of the dice rolls. It comes out rather well for Dra’Torrn, but does make Alain look a bit of an idiot, but I think that was a solid roleplaying choice for  a minor servant of a noble house clearly in over his head. The encounter is ranked as “deadly” based on XP budget, so we expected not everyone to survive, but didn’t expect it to go down quite how it wound up.

Breland – Sharn, the City of Towers – Zarantyr 1, 998YK

Murder in the Skyway

What happens when Dra’Torrn meets the wood elf fighter Cyren Moonwhisper,  Ted Nugget, a halfling bard with a questionable relationship with the truth? The three of them sit in a tavern and talk about how they would solve a murder, apparently.

Want to know more – listen in to Dra’Torrn’s first adventure on the DancesWithKobolds network on Twitch (Contains mature language & content, might require a Twitch account)

Now that that’s all covered, here’s what Dra’Torrn’s character heet lookslike now that he’s officially a second level Ranger (PDF link) :  

Dra’Torrn Character Sheet

It Builds Character #11: Dungeons & Dragons IV

Welcome to the eleventh in an occasional series called It Builds Character in which I use the character generation rules of various tabletop role-playing games to create a character and attempt to flesh them out into something distinctive.

The Game

For the eleventh entry in this series, I’m returning to the game I used for the eighth, ninth and tenth entries. And I promise this will be the last entry to use Dungeons & Dragons for a while. I’ll be using the current 5th Edition rules from Wizards of the Coast.

 

The Character

Again, not much of a character concept beyond “the party needs some kind of rogue to finish out the classical D&D party archetypes.”  Let’s see what happens when we combine that with D&D character generation rules. I imagine we’ll have a character to spit out at the end of it.

STEP I: Choose A Race

For this one, I decide that for what is typically one of the stealthiest classes in the game to go for one of the most conspicuous and least stealthy races, and one that I still think of as something of a Johnny-Come-Lately among the current “core” D&D races – A Half-Orc. As per usual, this gives the character a few racial benefits and drawbacks. So let’s take a look at those:

 

Half-Orcs get +2 to their Strength score, and a +1 to their Constitution score (see STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below).

 

Half-Orcs are considered Menacing, which grants proficiency in the Intimidation skill. On top of that, they have a trait known as Relentless Endurance, which means if they’re dropped to 0 hit points without dying, they drop to 1 hit point instead, an ability they can use once between long rests. The final trait Half-Orcs have are Savage Attacks which lets them add an additional dice of damage to a critical hit.

 

Half-Orcs have a base walking speed of 30ft, and a 60ft Darkvision range.

Half-Orcs can read, write and speak Common and Orc.

STEP II: Choose A Class

Since I had decided that I wanted the character to be a Rogue type since that’s a class underrepresented in the D&D characters so far, the class chosen is obviously a Rogue. Since all the classes get special abilities even at first level, let’s see what this Rogue gets:

First off, Rogues get 1d8 per level as their hit dice. At 1st level that’s 8 hit points, plus their Constitution modifier (since we haven’t officially rolled ability scores yet, we don’t know what that modifier is, and we’ll solidify this number in STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below).

 

On top of the hit points, the Rogue class grants the character proficiencies in Light Armor, Simple Weapons, Hand Crossbows, Longswords, Rapiers, and Short Swords. They are also, perhaps unsurprisingly, proficient with Thieves’ Tools

The character also gains proficiencies in Dexterity and Intelligence saving throws and four skills from Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Investigation, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and Stealth. I opt for Acrobatics, Deception, Insight and Stealth as my quartet.

The Rogue class also grants some equipment, several of which are multiple choice options. Working through the list, the character ends up with’

• A rapier
• A short sword
• An burglar’s pack
• Leather armor
• 2 Daggers
• Thieves’ tools

 

The Rogue class grants an Expertise class feature, which doubles their proficiency bonus in either two of their skills, or one of their skills and usage of Thieves’ Tools. I choose the latter, and the character is now an expert in both Stealth and Thieves’ Tools.

 

Another thing that Rogues get is a Sneak Attack ability, which grants an extra 1d6 damage on any attack with advantage that hits, provided it uses either a finesse or ranged weapon. Since the rapier is considered a finesse weapon (we’ll clarify what that means a bit more down in STEP V: Buy Equipment later on.) Another class feature is the knowledge of a pseudo language of signs and signals known as Thieves’ Cant.

STEP III: Determine Ability Scores

In Dungeons & Dragons, characters have six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. They are determined by rolling 4d6 and discarding the lowest, generating a number between 3 and 18. You do this six times and then assign the scores to the various abilities. As has apparently become my depressing standard, I forgot to record the exact dice rolls for this character, so I can’t tell you what the lowest score for each was, but my six totals were:

11, 14, 14, 14, 14, and 17.

I decide to assign them as follows:-

Strength: 14

Dexterity: 17

Constitution: 11

Intelligence: 14

Wisdom: 14

Charisma: 14

But as we saw back in STEP I: Choose a Race, being a Half-Orc increases the Strength score by 2 and the Constitution score by 1, which results in the following. The numbers in parentheses are the ability score modifier each of these scores represents.

Strength: 16 (+3)

Dexterity: 17 (+3)

Constitution: 12 (+1)

Intelligence: 14 (+2)

Wisdom: 14 (+2)

Charisma: 14 (+2)

An average score is 10 or 11, but adventurers are seen as a bit special and so have slightly above average scores to reflect this. In the case of this character, the rolls were ludicrously high, although I think I got all four of the 14 scores by completely different dice totals. I decide to put the 17 in Dexterity since that is the key Rogue ability, it’s also (I think) used with finesse weapons and I feel like this Half-Orc is going to be using his rapier as his primary weapon a lot. I put the 11 in Constitution, mostly because the boost from being a Half-Orc bumps it up a little bit, and I am starting to see this character as a bit of a swashbuckler type, so the more mental type abilities, especially Charisma being boosted seems to reflect that.

Now that we know the character’s Constitution modifier is +1, we can finalize the hit point total. It’s a respectable total of 9 points, and between the character’s high dexterity modifier and leather armor, they should be pretty darn difficult to actually hit in the first place.

STEP IV: Describe Your Character

For this version of the character, I’m definitely going to be using one of the pre-existing backgrounds presented in the Player’s Handbook, though to be consistent with the previous D&D characters, I’m not going to use equipment provided in the background, instead choosing to purchase equipment for the character on top of what they already have from their race and class in a later step. Of course there’s a few things to do before going through the background

The first thing we do here is choose an Alignment for the character. I’ve often found D&D’s Alignment system to be slightly too rigid, but it’s generally nice to have one of the alignments as at least a starting point to inform the character development. I decide that the character can be Chaotic Good, as someone who tries to do the right thing but isn’t overly concerned with the strictures of legality and the greater good over the individual good.

Since describing them as “the character” over and over gets a little monotonous, the next aspect I’m going for is a name. The Player’s Handbook gives a decent spectrum of Orc and Human names. I decide that our Half-Orc character is going to be male, and is going to have an Orc first name and an Iluskan Human surname, so he’s officially Feng Windriver.

Rolling for height and weight, Feng comes in at 5’3” and weighs a solid 165lbs.

Because I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed 2 lately, I kind of see Feng as wearing an outfit similar to Ezio’s default white cape/armor in that game, so that’s kind of the “look” I have for him, but his attitude and how I’d roleplay him is as Westley being Dread Pirate Roberts/The Man In Black from The Princess Bride.

The standard backgrounds in the Player’s Handbook have certain skill proficiencies, as well as potential Bonds, Ideals and Flaws that inform the character. Because of the Dread Pirate Roberts thing, I decide that, like his fellow party member Cade, Feng has the Sailor background, specifically the Pirate variation thereof. This grants Feng proficiencies in the Athletics and Perception skills, as well as with Navigator’s Tools and Water-based Vehicles.

As a Pirate, Feng gets the background feature of Bad Reputation, which means that he can get away with some minor crimes like not paying for food in a tavern, or breaking down shop doors, since the townsfolk are afraid to report him to the authorities. The fact that Feng is actually kind of a nice guy these days, and would willingly submit to the authorities in these situation is an irony that he chuckles at.

Rolling on the background tables, Feng’s major personality trait is that he “never passes up a friendly wager,” though that definitely isn’t limited to just money, in that he’ll happily do dumb things for bragging rights, just to prove that he can do those things. The ideal he strives towards is Freedom in that “The Sea is freedom – the freedom to go anywhere or do anything.” His Bond is that “The ship is most important – crewmates and captains come and go,” which I’m choosing to interpret that his ultimate goal is to retire from adventuring and purchase and crew his own ship and return to the sea, presumably as his own captain. And finally his big Flaw is that he “Can’t help but pocket loose coins and other trinkets he comes across,” so he indulges in low level kleptomania. That’s probably a bit of a side effect to his enjoyment of wagers and gambling.

STEP V: Buy Equipment

Time to gear up! Since a Rogue starts with 4d4 x 10 Gold pieces, and I rolled 11, which means that Feng has 110 Gold Pieces to spend. Unfortunately, since I’m using the purchasing rules, and not the default equipment from Class/Background abilities, I interpret that as having to buy the equipment listed back up in STEP II: Choose A Class.

 

To whit with default equipment costs:

• A rapier (25 gold pieces)
• A short sword (10 gold pieces)
• An burglar’s pack (16 gold pieces)
• 2 daggers (4 gold pieces)
• Leather Armor (10 gold pieces)
• Thieves’ Tools (25 gold pieces)

 

That’s a total of 90 Gold pieces. Which leaves Feng with 20 Gold pieces left to spend. Feng Windriver decides he’ll save those coins for himself in case an interesting opportunity or stake comes up later.

As mentioned way back earlier, some of these weapons are classified as Finesse weapons (specifically the Rapier, short swords, and daggers) which means they can use either the Dexterity modifier or the Strength modifier on both to hit and damage rolls (but must use the same modifier for both) to use the weapons in combat. Given the current modifiers are identical (even though Dexterity is 17 vs Strength of 16) that means that if Feng gets to add +5 to these rolls.

I think that’s a pretty complete picture of Feng Windriver, Level 1 Half-Orc Rogue.

What do you think, loyal blog followers? Is this a series worth continuing? If so, are there any particular games and editions you’d like me to use to create characters?

Please leave some comments and let me know!

It Builds Character #10: Dungeons & Dragons III

Welcome to the tenth in an occasional series called It Builds Character in which I use the character generation rules of various tabletop role-playing games to create a character and attempt to flesh them out into something distinctive.

The Game

For the tenth entry in this series, I’m returning to the game I used for the eighth and ninth entries. And it’s probably also going to be the case for the eleventh entry too, Dungeons & Dragons. I’ll be using the current 5th Edition rules from Wizards of the Coast

The Character

Again, not much of a character concept beyond the “So far, the party has a Cleric and a Fighter. They probably need a dedicated arcane spell caster as well.” Let’s see what happens when we combine that with D&D character generation rules. I imagine we’ll have a character to spit out at the end of it.

STEP I: Choose A Race

Once again, I go for a race that I don’t use much, and one of the classical D&D races – a Hobbit Halfling. Those little guys don’t seem to get a lot beyond being burglars and thieves. I blame either Bilbo Baggins or Tasslehoff Burrfoot for this. Since I’m going for a spell caster, this Halfling will be a little different from the standard Halfling image. Also, Dungeons & Dragons has two sub-races for Halflings – Lightfoot or Stout. I decided that the character would be a Stout Halfling. This gives the character a few racial benefits and drawbacks. So let’s take a look at those:

 

Halflings get +2 to their Dexterity score, and the Stout sub-race also gets +1 to their Constitution score (see STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below). Stout Halflings also get Stout Resilience, which manifests as advantage on Saving Throws against poison, and also have resistance against poison damage.

 

Halflings in general are Lucky, which means that if they roll a 1 on an attack roll, ability check, or saving throw, they get a reroll. Halflings are also Brave, which gives them advantage on saving throws against being frightened. On top of all that, they also have a Nimbleness which means they can move through the space of any creatures larger than themselves (I’m not entirely sure what this means, but we’ll see if it comes up in game)

 

Haflings have a base walking speed of 25ft.

Halflings can read, write and speak Common and Halfling.

STEP II: Choose A Class

Since I had decided that I wanted the character to be some kind of arcane spell caster, which means there are three potential classes to choose from: Sorcerer, Warlock, and Wizard. Since I’m more of a traditionalist I decide to go for the most old school of those classes, the Wizard. Since all the classes get special abilities even at first level, let’s see what this Wizard gets:

First off, Wizards get 1d6 per level as their hit dice. At 1st level that’s 6 hit points, plus their Constitution modifier (since we haven’t officially rolled ability scores yet, we don’t know what that modifier is, and we’ll solidify this number in STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below).

 

On top of the hit points, the Wizard class grants the character proficiencies in Daggers, Darts, Slings, Quarterstaffs, and Light Crossbows. Notably there are no proficiencies for any Armor or Shields, which is mildly worrying.

The character also gains proficiencies in Intelligence and Wisdom saving throws and two skills from Arcana, History, Insight, Investigation, Medicine, and Religion. I opt for Arcana and History as my pair.

The Wizard class also grants some equipment, several of which are multiple choice options. Working through the list, the character ends up with’

• A quarterstaff
• An arcane focus (in the form of a crystal)
• An explorer’s pack
• A Spell Book

 

The obvious core of the Wizard class, though is the ability to cast spells. A first level Wizard apparently knows three Cantrips (Level 0 spells, essentially), and six first-level spells, although they can only memorize two of those to cast at a time. I decide that our Halfling Wizard is going to specialize in manipulating the elements around them, which means that they will mostly specialize in Evocation spells. That doesn’t mean much until the character progresses beyond first level, but it will be something to keep in mind as I choose their spells. In the end, these are the spells I opt for:

Cantrips

• Fire Bolt
• Light
• Shocking Grasp

First-Level Spells

• Burning Hands
• Mage Armor
• Magic Missile
• Shield
• Thunderwave
• Unseen Servant

 

For casting, there are two numbers that are important. The first is the spell save difficulty of 8 + proficiency bonus + Intelligence score modifier, and the actual casting roll is modified by the character’s proficiency bonus and Intelligence score modifier. Since we haven’t determined ability scores yet, we won’t know what the Intelligence modifier will be until we get to STEP III: Determine Ability Scores later on.

 

Another class feature a Wizard gets at first level is something called Arcane Recovery, which means that after a short rest, they can recover expended spell slots with a combined level that is equal or less than half the character’s Wizard level, rounded up. Since the Wizard level is a mere 1, in this case that “rounded up” caveat means they will recover a single first-level spell slot once per day from a short rest.

STEP III: Determine Ability Scores

In Dungeons & Dragons, characters have six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. They are determined by rolling 4d6 and discarding the lowest, generating a number between 3 and 18. You do this six times and then assign the scores to the various abilities. I forgot to record the exact dice rolls for this character, so I can’t tell you what the lowest score for each was, but my six totals were:

10, 10, 10, 11, 14, and 16

I decide to assign them as follows:-

Strength: 11

Dexterity: 10

Constitution: 14

Intelligence: 16

Wisdom: 110

Charisma: 10

But as we saw back in STEP I: Choose a Race, being a Stout Halfling increases the Dexterity by 2 and the Constitution score by 1, which results in the following. The numbers in parentheses are the ability score modifier each of these scores represents.

Strength: 11 (-)

Dexterity: 12 (+1)

Constitution: 15 (+2)

Intelligence: 16 (+3)

Wisdom: 10 (-)

Charisma: 10 (-)

An average score is 10 or 11, but adventurers are seen as a bit special and so have slightly above average scores to reflect this. In the case of this character, the rolls were average enough, aside from the 14 and 16. I decide to put the 16 in intelligence since that is a key Wizard ability. I put the 14 in Constitution, because between their low hit point totals and their inability to wear armor, Wizards are infamously “squishy,” and need all the health benefits they can get.

Now that we know the character’s Constitution modifier is +2, we can finalize the hit point total. It’s an utterly mammoth total of 8 points.

Now that we have the Intelligence score modifier at +3, and know that the Proficiency bonus at first level is +2, we can calculate both the character’s standard spell save difficulty (8+2+3) = 13 and their spell attack modifier is a nice, juicy +5

STEP IV: Describe Your Character

For this version of the character, I’m definitely going to be using one of the pre-existing backgrounds presented in the Player’s Handbook, though to be consistent with the previous D&D characters, I’m not going to use equipment provided in the background, instead choosing to purchase equipment for the character on top of what they already have from their race and class in a later step. Of course there’s a few things to do before going through the background

The first thing we do here is choose an Alignment for the character. I’ve often found D&D’s Alignment system to be slightly too rigid, but it’s generally nice to have one of the alignments as at least a starting point to inform the character development. I decide that the character can be Chaotic Good, as someone who tries to do the right thing but isn’t overly concerned with the strictures of legality and the greater good over the individual good.

Since describing them as “the character” over and over gets a little monotonous, the next aspect I’m going for is a name. The Player’s Handbook gives a decent spectrum of Halfling names. I decide that our Halfling character is going to be male, and based on the listed names, he now answers to the frankly ludicrous handle of “Cade Portis.”

Being a Halfling, Cade is a short person, coming in at 2 feet 11 inches tall. And weighing a mere 39 pounds. I think that means his quarterstaff is three times his height, which is a mental image that amuses me greatly.

I don’t have a sense of Cade’s look beyond that he’s clean-shaven, ginger, and tends to favor double-breasted waistcoats as a clothing choice.

The standard backgrounds in the Player’s Handbook have certain skill proficiencies, as well as potential Bonds, Ideals and Flaws that inform the character. Looking at the various backgrounds, I decide that Cade used to be a Halfling of the sea, and give him the Sailor background. This grants Cade proficiencies in the Athletics and Perception skills, as well as with Navigator’s Tools and Water-based Vehicles.

Cade also gets the rather handy background feature of Ship’s Passage, which means that he can wrangle free passage for himself and a group of companions on a ship when he needs to, though it might not be the most direct route needed.

Drilling down a little bit into what type of sailor Cade was, it turns out that he was a navigator on an exploration vessel. I’m thinking he might have bluffed his way into that position a little bit, but the crew didn’t mind because he could use his evocation spells to help send favorable winds and becalm the seas. Anything that makes safe passage slightly safer can’t be too bad.

Rolling on the background tables, Cade’s major personality trait is that he “stretches the truth for the sake of a good story,” which seems highly appropriate for a former exploration ship crewman. The ideal he strives towards is Respect in that “The thing that keeps a ship together is mutual respect between the captain and crew.” His Bond is that he “always remember his first ship,” which I think might be his only ship, though he wouldn’t present it that way to others. And finally his big Flaw is that “Once he starts drinking, it’s hard for him to stop,” so I think he might be role played as a bit of a drunken braggart when he’s in his cups, and would probably claim to have served on a lot more ships than he has, and to have been a captain or first mate or similarly highly respected position among the crew, and wants to be afforded a similar level of respect within his adventuring party.

STEP V: Buy Equipment

Time to gear up! Since a Wizard starts with 4d4 x 10 Gold pieces, and I rolled 10, which means that Cade has 140 Gold Pieces to spend. Unfortunately, since I’m using the purchasing rules, and not the default equipment from Class/Background abilities, I interpret that as having to buy the equipment listed back up in STEP II: Choose A Class.

 

To whit with default equipment costs:

• A quarterstaff (2 silver pieces)
• An arcane focus crystal (10 gold pieces)
• An explorer’s pack (10 gold pieces)
• A Spell Book (50 gold pieces)

 

That’s a total of 70 Gold pieces and 2 Silver pieces. Which leaves Cade with 29 Gold pieces and 8 Silver pieces left to spend. Rather than purchase Navigator’s tools, he decides to buy a few more writing supplies, allowing him to update his Spell book in the future, to wit:

• An ink bottle (10 gold pieces)
• 10 sheets of parchment (1 gold piece)
• An ink pen (2 copper pieces

That leaves him with 18 gold pieces, 7 silver pieces, and 8 copper pieces to spend later or just keep hold of.

I think that’s a pretty complete picture of Cade Portis, Level 1 Halfling Wizard.

What do you think, loyal blog followers? Is this a series worth continuing? If so, are there any particular games and editions you’d like me to use to create characters?

Please leave some comments and let me know!

It Builds Character #9: Dungeons & Dragons II

Welcome to the ninth in an occasional series called It Builds Character in which I use the character generation rules of various tabletop role-playing games to create a character and attempt to flesh them out into something distinctive.

The Game

For the ninth entry in this series, I’m returning to the game I used for the eighth entry. (Actually, I’m probably going to use it for the tenth and eleventh entry as well) because I actually found the process of generating characters in it to be fun enough that I’ll be doing an entire party of four, , Dungeons & Dragons. I’ll be using the current 5th Edition rules from Wizards of the Coast.

The Character

I have less of a character concept in mind for this character than I did for my previous D&D character, so I’ll be using the background section and rules to turn the character from a somewhat nebulous concept into a fleshed out character. Right now, the concept is basically some kind of ranged combat specialist because shooting arrows at things seems a smart way to hurt enemies without getting a sword in the face.

STEP I: Choose A Race

For once, I decided to roll up this character as a race I don’t play much in fantasy RPGs, but one that I play in real life approximately 100% of the time. That’s right, I went with a Human. Humans being something of the default racial option, they don’t get many of the boosts and bonuses that other races get. They do get a nice little way of reflecting their versatility though:

Humans get +1 to all 6 of their Ability Scores (see STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below).

Humans have a base walking speed of 30ft.

Humans can read, write and speak Common and one additional language of their choice. I opt for Elven as this character’s second language, completely arbitrarily.

STEP II: Choose A Class

Since I wanted the character to be a combat focused character, I looked at the more combat-attuned classes and decided on the most classically combat-based class, the good old Fighter. As mentioned before, each class gets a raft of special benefits, even down here at lowly first level. So let’s take a look at those.

First off, fighters get 1d10 per level as their hit dice. At 1st level that’s 10 hit points, plus their Constitution modifier (since we haven’t officially rolled ability scores yet, we don’t know what that modifier is, and we’ll solidify this number in STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below).

On top of the hit points, the Fighter class grants the character proficiencies in all Armor, Shields, all Simple Weapons, and all Martial Weapons.

The character also gains proficiencies in Strength and Constitution saving throws and two skills from Acrobatics, Animal Handling, Athletics, History, Insight, Intimidation, Perception, and Survival. I opt for Animal Handling and Perception as my two.

The Fighter class also grants some equipment, several of which are multiple choice options. Working through the list, the character ends up with’

• Leather Armor
• Longbow with 20 arrows
• Rapier
• Shield
• Light Crossbow and 20 bolts
• Dungeoneer’s Pack

At first level, a Fighter gets to choose a fighting style that gives certain bonuses to combat roles. The available Fighting styles are Archery, Defense, Dueling, Great Weapon Fighting, Protection, and Two-Weapon Fighting. Since the nebulous concept of the character specifically is to be ranged-combat focused, I choose Archery, since that appears to be the only one with any type of ranged combat impact. This grants the character an additional +2 to every ranged attack role they make, which between the longbow and light crossbow seems like a pretty handy ability to have. Of course we don’t yet know what that +2 stacks with until we get to STEP III: Determine Ability Scores later on.

Another class feature a Fighter gets at first level is something called Second Wind, which means that between rests, the character can use a Bonus Action to heal 1d10 + their fighter level (currently 1) hit points. The juicier Fighter bonuses come at higher levels, but we’re only dealing with first level here, so I just stare wistfully at the leveling tables in the Player’s Handbook

STEP III: Determine Ability Scores

In Dungeons & Dragons, characters have six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. They are determined by rolling 4d6 and discarding the lowest, generating a number between 3 and 18. You do this six times and then assign the scores to the various abilities. I forgot to record the exact dice rolls for this character, so I can’t tell you what the lowest score for each was, but my six totals were:

7, 12, 13, 13, 14, and 15

I decide to assign them as follows:-

Strength: 14

Dexterity: 15

Constitution: 13

Intelligence: 13

Wisdom: 12

Charisma: 7

But as we saw back in STEP I: Choose a Race, being a Human increases all those numbers by 1, , which results in the following. The numbers in parentheses are the ability score modifier each of these scores represents.

Strength: 15 (+2)

Dexterity: 16 (+3)

Constitution: 14 (+2)

Intelligence: 14 (+2)

Wisdom: 13 (+1)

Charisma: 8 (-1)

An average score is 10 or 11, but adventurers are seen as a bit special and so have slightly above average scores to reflect this. In the case of this character, the roles were mostly insanely good, aside from that lowly 7. While the main stat for Fighters is generally strength if they’re melee focused, for ranged combat, Dexterity is more important. Since that’s the case, I put high scores in both of those, and also in Constitution, since the Leather Armor isn’t the most protective option. I decide that the character will have a low Charisma score, which will probably be role-played as them being standoffish and more than a little surly

This also allows us to fill out a bit more detail from earlier. Now that we know the character’s Constitution modifier is +2 we can figure out his total hit points. We know it’s 10 + Constitution modifier which in this case works out to 12 Hit Points.

Since we know the character’s Dexterity modifier is +3, and that is stacked with the Archery Fighting Style, we know they get +5 to any Ranged Attack rolls.

For melee attacks, they only get +2, so the character will definitely be more shooty than smashy.

STEP IV: Describe Your Character

For this version of the character, I’m definitely going to be using one of the pre-exiting backgrounds presented in the Player’s Handbook, though to be consistent with the previous D&D character, I’m not going to use equipment provided in the background, instead choosing to purchase equipment for the character on top of what they already have from their race and class in a later step. Of course there’s a few things to do before going through the background

The first thing we do here is choose an Alignment for the character. I’ve often found D&D’s Alignment system to be slightly too rigid, but it’s generally nice to have one of the alignments as at least a starting point to inform the character development. I decide that the character can be Neutral Good, because sometimes it’s nice to play a pure good guy, unconcerned with the balance between Law and Chaos.

Since describing them as “the character” over and over gets a little monotonous, the next aspect I’m going for is a name. The Player’s Handbook gives a lot of human names for different cultures. The first thing I decide is the gender of the character. She’s a woman. Since the idea is to be a somewhat coherent party of characters, I opt to go for the same human culture as the one our previous character adopted his forename from, Illuskan. Being slightly lazy, I chose a combination form the suggested names, and our Fighter is now Kethra Hornraven.

Kethra is 5’10” and weighs 180lbs. Like most Illuskan humans, she has very fair skin, and greyish-blue eyes. She wears her black hair at shoulder length. Kethra tends to dress in muted earth-tone colors, with her only concession to fashion being a small silhouette of a horned raven picked out in black thread on the left shoulder of her uppermost tunic.

The standard backgrounds in the Player’s Handbook have certain skill proficiencies, as well as potential Bonds, Ideals and Flaws that inform the character. Looking at the various backgrounds, I decide that the reason that Kethra’s so standoffish is that she’s not super used to people, and plump for the Outlander background.  This gives her proficiencies in the Athletics and Survival skills. She also has a proficiency with a musical instrument of her choice. In this case it’s a flute. This background also grants Kethra another language, and in this case it’s Halfling. Part of the background involves coming up with an origin for Kethra’s Outlander tendencies. I roll on the table and discover that she’s either an Exile or outcast. I think she’ll be an exile, but don’t have a reason yet. This is definitely something that could be established in collaboration with the Dungeon Master as useful backstory elements for adventure hooks. While Fighter has class features, Outlander has a single background feature. In this case it’s something called Wanderer which means she has a general geographic knowledge of her surroundings and can easily forage for food and fresh water for up to five people every day.

I decide to roll on the various background tables to build up a little more information about Kethra’s character. First, her key Personality Trait is she places no stock in wealthy or well-mannered folk. After all, money and manners won’t save you form a hungry owlbear. The ideal that Kethra aspires to is Glory. Which she wants to earn in battle to honor herself and her clan. Her Bond is that she will bring terrible wrath to the evildoers who destroyed her homeland. Finally, her biggest flaw is that she won’t save those who can’t save themselves. Apparently she’s very committed to the idea of the strong surviving and the weak perishing.

This is a fascinating combination to me. I don’t have a full sketch of the character yet, but it seems that she became an exile after her clan was destroyed by evildoers (nature of which can be established later), and that’s left her extremely self-reliant, and really not caring for other folk. I feel this is what has led her to living in the woodlands off the grid like some kind of doomsday prepper, practicing with her bow and targets every single day.

STEP V: Buy Equipment

Time to gear up! Since a Fighter starts with 5d4 x 10 Gold pieces, and I rolled 14,that means that Kethra has 140 Gold Pieces to spend. Unfortunately, since I’m using the purchasing rules, and not the default equipment from Class/Background abilities, I interpret that as having to buy the equipment listed back up in STEP II: Choose A Class.

To whit with default equipment costs:

• Leather Armor (10 gold pieces)
• Longbow (50 gold pieces)
• 20 Arrows (1 gold piece)
• Rapier (25 gold pieces)
• Shield (10 gold pieces)
• Light Crossbow (25 gold pieces)
• 20 Bolts (1 gold piece)
• Dungeoneer’s Pack (12 gold pieces)

That’s a total of 134 Gold pieces, leaving a mere 6. Kethra opts to spend 2 of those on her trusty flute, and has 4 gold pieces to start her adventuring career with.

I think that’s a pretty complete picture of Kethra Hornraven, Level 1 Human Fighter.

What do you think, loyal blog followers? Is this a series worth continuing? If so, are there any particular games and editions you’d like me to use to create characters?

Please leave some comments and let me know!

It Builds Character #8: Dungeons & Dragons

Welcome to the eighth in an occasional series called It Builds Character in which I use the character generation rules of various tabletop role-playing games to create a character and attempt to flesh them out into something distinctive.

The Game

For the eighth entry in this series, I’ll finally be using what is without a doubt the single most famous tabletop role-playing game of all time, Dungeons & Dragons. I’ll be using the current 5th Edition rules from Wizards of the Coast. This came up for a couple of reasons. The first one is that I’ve been running the Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign from the introductory starter set for my wife and son. I’ve been very loose and forgiving about running those particular adventures. Mostly this is because each of them is running two characters, which is less than ideal. I’ve also been more concerned about keeping the game running and having fun doing things loosely rather than sticking to more precise tactics and layouts for combats and so forth. I do want to run things a little bit more in depth to get the players thinking more tactically about when they do things, and holding actions and all that fun stuff. I think that only works if every player only has a single character though.

A second reason I want to come up with a Dungeons & Dragons character is that I’ve gotten bitten by the actual play podcast bug, which means I’m listening to a lot of podcasts that are actual D&D games. In fact among my far too many podcast subscriptions: Critical Role, The Adventure Zone (Balance Arc), The Cool Kids Table (The Fallen Gods arc), JemJammer, Quid Pro Roll, and Not Another D&D Podcast all feature various flavors of D&D adventures. Incidentally, I may listen to far too many podcasts.

The final reason I went with Dungeons & Dragons is that I just want to play D&D! I may end up having to run a campaign instead,but if someone is interested in running a  campaign,this is an example of the type of character I’d like to play as.

The Character

I already have a concept of this character more or less fully formed in my head,so I’m going to lay that out here before going into the mechanistic step-by-step details below. The concept I have is is a “faith healer” type religious conman. The idea is the character would visit smaller towns and villages (those not necessarily big enough to have their own temples) and claim to be an acolyte of  the local healer deity. He would then work with an accomplice who played the “afflicted” sufferer. Using sleight of hand to pull the “affliction” from the sufferer in the form of some disgusting meat or fluids that the character palmed and “pulled” from the victim, curing them. He would then take donations and attempt to heal other villagers before disappearing in the night with a small pile of silver coins.

The character had been doing this for years and something strange happened one day. He was intoning the nonsensical mantra and removing the “lameness” from his accomplice when the character’s body was suffused with light and a nimbus of divine power was channeled through the character, who then actually healed people for real. Apparently all those villagers believing that the character was an agent of the healing deity attracted the attention of said healing deity to the character. Now the character is fighting hos own greedy conman nature to atone for those past sins. I almost view role-playing this character as playing a televangelist…

Also, I imagined the character as a dwarf, but since most fantasy dwarfs are depicted as honest and lawful, I decided this character had been raised by humans. Specifically a tavern-keeper and his wife from a village in the foothills of a temperate mountain range.

Let’s see how that translates into a character…

STEP I: Choose A Race

The Dungeon’s & Dragons Player’s Handbook approach to generating characters is similar to what we’ve seen before in Pathfinder characters (which is somewhat unsurprising, as Pathfinder began as a spin-off from the 3.5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons) but presented in a different order. The first of these steps is to choose the character’s race. Options for character race from the Player’s Handbook are: Dragonborn, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Halfling, Human, and Tiefling.

As I mentioned above, the character I have in mind is a Dwarf, for the very simple reason that I like Dwarfs. Not everything is particularly complicated. In D&D, there are two major subraces of Dwarfs, Hill Dwarfs and Mountain Dwarfs. Since my character backstory has this Dwarf living with humans in the foothills, I think making him a Hill Dwarf makes the most sense. This does mean that the character gets some bonuses and drawbacks. Let’s take a look now:

Dwarfs get +2 to their Constitution score, Hill Dwarfs get +1 to their Wisdom score (see STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below)

Dwarfs base walking speed is 25 feet but is not reduced by wearing armor.

Dwarfs have Darkvision up to 60ft

Dwarven Resilience makes them hard to poison, giving them resistance to poison damage and advantage on saving throws against poison

As a Dwarf, the character is proficient with battleaxes, handaxes, throwing hammers and warhammers.

Dwarfs also get to pick one set of artisan’s tools to be proficient with. In honor of his adoptive tavern keeper parents, I go with brewer’s supplies. It probably doesn’t hurt for a scam artist to be able to brew a decent  beer after all.

As a Dwarf, the character is also an expert in Stonework and gets some bonuses to cover that.

Dwarfs can read, write, and speak both Common & Dwarvish.

A Hill Dwarf also gets a bonus Hit Point per level, which I think is something that will get covered in STEP II: Choose A Class below.

STEP II: Choose A Class

The character concept includes him being touched by the power of a Deity, so it’s probably not a great surprise that he’s going to be a Cleric. Other Available classes include: Barbarian,Bard, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard. All of the classes have their inherent advantages and disadvantages, and are more where the characters begin to differ compared to the races. Each of the classes gives the character a raft of special abilities, even at 1st level. So Let’s take a look at those

First off, clerics get 1d8 per level as their hit dice. At 1st level that’s 8 hit points, plus their Constitution modifier (since we haven’t officially rolled ability scores yet, we don’t know what that modifier is) and in the case of a Hill Dwarf, we get the bonus hit point from that, so the character starts out with 9 hit points, pus whatever the Constitution modifier is (we’ll solidify this number in STEP III: Determine Ability Scores below).

On top of the hit points, the Cleric class grants the character proficiencies in Light Armor, Medium Armor, Shields, and all simple weapons.

The character also gains proficiencies in Wisdom and Charisma saving throws and two skills from History, Insight, Medicine, Persuasion, and Religion. I opt for Medicine and Persuasion as my two.

The Cleric class also grants some equipment, several of which are multiple choice options. Working through the list, the character ends up with’

• A warhammer
• Scale mail armor
• A hand axe
• An explorer’s pack
• A shield
• A holy symbol

The real meat of the Cleric class, though, comes in the form of their spellcasting ability.  At 1st level a Cleric knows three cantrips (I choose Light, Spare The Dying, and Thaumaturgy as my trio), and also has two 1st-level spell slots they can spend between long rests to cast prepared spells. The number of prepared spells is dependent on the cleric’s wisdom modifier,which we officially haven’t rolled yet, so once more we’ll have to fill that in when we get to STEP III: Determine Ability Scores later on. However, thanks to something called a Divine Domain feature, every Cleric gets two spells prepared that don’t count against the prepared spells limit. There are seven domains to choose from: Knowledge, Light, Life, Nature, Tempest, Trickery and War. Based on the con man back story for the character, I went with the Trickery domain, which gives him the spells Charm Person and Disguise Self. These are a little unusual in that they aren’t typically Cleric spells, so taking the Trickery domain is the only way a Cleric has access to them. The Trickery Domain also grants the character the ability to confer a slight Stealth bonus to allies in the form of the Blessing of the Trickster. Clerics do get access to quite a few other abilities,but not at 1st-level, which is what we’re dealing with here.

STEP III: Determine Ability Scores

Much like Pathfinder, in Dungeons & Dragons, characters have six ability scores: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. They are determined by rolling 4d6 and discarding the lowest, generating a number between 3 and 18. You do this six times and then assign the scores to the various abilities. I forgot to record the exact dice rolls for this character,so I can’t tell you what the lowest score for each was,but my six totals were:

8, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 17

I decide to assign them as follows:-

Strength: 14

Dexterity: 12

Constitution: 10

Intelligence: 8

Wisdom: 15

Charisma: 17

But as we saw back in STEP I: Choose a Race, being a Hill Dwarf alters those numbers, bumping up both the Constitution and Wisdom scores, which results in the following. The numbers in parentheses are the ability score modifier each of these scores represents.

Strength: 14 (+2)

Dexterity: 12 (+1)

Constitution: 12 (+1)

Intelligence: 8 (-1)

Wisdom: 16 (+3)

Charisma: 17 (+3)

An average score is 10 or 11, but adventurers are seen as a bit special and so have slightly above average scores to reflect this. In the case of this character, his lower intelligence shows that hes kind of “book dumb.” Hopefully the higher Wisdom score for his “street smarts” overcomes that. Also, even though Wisdom is the main ability for Clerics, I opted against making it the highest stat here,since the con man back story implied that he had to be charismatic enough to talk his way out of any trouble.

This also allows us to fill out a bit more detail from earlier. Now that we know the character’s Constitution modifier is +1 we can figure out his total hit points. We know it’s 8 + Constitution modifier + Dwarven Toughness which in this case works out to 10 Hit Points.

Now that we know the Wisdom modifier is +3, we know that the character has 4 prepared 1st-level spells they can spend their spell slots on (as well as the Cantrips and Trickery Domain spells mentioned earlier). After looking through the Cleric spell lists, I’ve opted for Bane, Command, Cure Wounds, and Guiding Bolt.

STEP IV: Describe Your Character

This is definitely the area with the most leeway for character development. The Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook does include a chapter on sample backgrounds for the characters which allows some customization of backstory and other elements. Since the character already has a little bit of backstory already established I’m going to pick and choose various elements from the different backgrounds that make sense for the character. I’m also not going to use equipment provided in the background, instead choosing to purchase equipment for the character on top of what he already has from his race and class in a later step.

The first thing we do here is choose an Alignment for the character. I’ve often found D&D’s Alignment system to be slightly too rigid, but it’s generally nice to have one of the alignments as at least a starting point to inform the character development. In the case of this character I think Chaotic Good makes the most sense. Chaotic because a conman character doesn’t really strike me as falling in the Lawful or Neutral sides of that aspect. Good because his overall goal is to atone/redeem himself for his sins,so he is generally trying to work towards what he perceives as being Good overall.

Since describing him as “the character” over and over gets a little monotonous, the next aspect I’m going for is a name. The Player’s Handbook describes Dwarf names as being a big deal, often granted by a tribal elder, and that it’s a great shame to be stripped of a Dwarven Clan name. The character, though, was raised by humans, so he doesn’t have a Dwarven name. He goes by the very human name of Ander Storsson after his adoptive father Stor. In the long term of the Campaign, he might seek out his Dwarven Clan or parents and discover his true name or even earn a Clan name. All opportunities for the Dungeon Master and player to work together and use elements in the campaign in the future (I find it pays to leave little story hooks in a character’s backstory for the DM to use to their advantage.)

Being a Hill Dwarf, Ander is 4 feet 3 inches tall and weighs in at 192 pounds. He has slightly ruddy skin with jet black hair and beard. Unlike most dwarfs, Ander waxes his beard and mustaches into distinctive points. He dislikes teh common dwarven fashion of leaving their beards mostly ungroomed, and spends slightly longer than necessary combing and waxing his out as part of his morning routine. His eyes are a dark grey and often described as “flinty.” Ander’s never been quite sure if that’s an anti-Dwarven epithet but usually lets it go.

Aside from his scale mail armor, Ander tends to dress in white outfits in attempt to both look pristine, and stand out as someone marked by a deity, whether or not that’s true.  He also wears cheap jewelry in the forms of amulets and rings that at least look like they might be gold, provided they aren’t subject to too much scrutiny.

For his personality traits, Ander is something of a fast talker, relying on his mouth to get him out of trouble that his brain doesn’t always see coming. He thinks he’s pretty clever,but unfortunately that’s mostly because he doesn’t know that he doesn’t know things. This can lead to a higher than average share of misunderstandings. In Ander’s view, if those misunderstandings result in him having more coin than he did beforehand then it was a good thing.

The standard backgrounds in the Player’s Handbook have certain skill proficiencies, as well as potential Bonds,Ideals and Flaws that inform the character. Looking at the various backgrounds, elements of the Charlatan, the Criminal, and the Entertainer all make sense for Ander. I base things loosely on the Charlatan, which gives Ander proficiency in the Deception and Sleight of Hand skills, as well as proficiencies with Disguise and Forgery kits. The False Identity background feature doesn’t make sense for Ander, so I look elsewhere for that. I see in the Criminal background, the feature is a Criminal Contact. Since the faith healing scam Ander used to run needed an accomplice, I decide that the accomplice can be Ander’s criminal contact. I figure I can collaborate with the Dungeon Master on the type of character that is and how they can be reached. This gives the DM a potential NPC and a bunch of possibleplot hooks they can use as well…

Looking at the various options for Ideals, Bonds and Flaws over and above what I’ve already established about  Ander, I decide that his Bond is that he fleeced the temple of his patron deity in the village he grew up in, and so he must make up for that to grant his adoptive parents full funereal rights that they may move on to the afterlife (I decided that his adoptive parents are dead simply as a consequence of the longer lifespans of Dwarfs vs Humans). That his ideal is Friendship. When he puts aside his petty facades and personas and reveals the real Ander underneath, he’s intensely loyal to those he calls friends. His flaw is an obvious one. Ander is greedy.He firmly believes that all money in the world should be his, and takes risks to ensure that more of that money ends up in hs coffers.

STEP V: Buy Equipment

Time to gear up! Since a Cleric starts with 5d4 x 10 Gold pieces, and I rolled 11, that means that Ander has 110 Gold Pieces to spend. Unfortunately, since I’m using the purchasing rules, and not the default equipment from Class/Background abilities, I interpret that as having to buy the equipment listed back up in STEP II: Choose A Class.

To whit with default equipment costs:

• A warhammer (15 gold pieces)
• Scale mail armor (50 gold pieces)
• A hand axe (5 gold pieces)
• An explorer’s pack (10 gold pieces)
• A shield (10 gold pieces)
• A holy symbol (5 gold pieces)

That’s a total of 95 Gold pieces, leaving 15 left over. While a Forgery Kit is 15 gold piecesand would theortically be in Ander’s budget (unlike the Brewer’s tools and Disguise kit he’salso proficient with), Ander opts to save that coin for now and hope to purchase them during the course of his adventuring.

I think that’s a pretty complete picture of Ander Storsson, Level 1 Dwarf Cleric.

What do you think, loyal blog followers? Is this a series worth continuing? If so, are there any particular games and editions you’d like me to use to create characters?

Please leave some comments and let me know!