30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 11]: Favorite Adventure I Have Run

To this day, the most fun I ever had DMing campaign was the year-long trek with Michael, Amber, George, and Joe. It was my first proper campaign, I didn't know the rules as well as I should have and I'm not sure if it's because the rest of my life sucked SO badly that D&D on Friday Night was the most fun I had at that point, or if it was because those four crack me up and were extremely patient with me, but I still have fantastic memories of that time.

It was a little random sauce. I was a little terrible at it. But my players gave me things to bounce off of them and no one ever dropped the ball. It was a great way for me to get an idea of how the rules really worked and generally it was just a lot of fun.

I think it might have been more fun to me because I didn't know how it worked as well and because it wasn't nearly as much pressure at the time. We were just sitting around having fun.

...but that also might be the graduation goggles talking.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 10]: The Craziest Thing I've Seen Happen

A good D&D tale is like a war story, I think. The dynamic is pretty similar. You find someone that's played, you sit down to talk, everyone has a tale and they swear the dragon was this big.

My story comes from a time I was DMing.

Okay so I've already established I don't have the most orthodox group in the world. The one I am playing with now is even LESS orthodox than the one I had before. This particular story involves a wolfborn wizard named Beracav and a dwarf fighter named Falgrim. I gave them a DMPC for extra damage, by the name of Cyrie.

As a bit of backstory, earlier in the campaign Beracav begged me to let him learn to summon demons and I went ahead and let him figure out how it was done. That was my first mistake.

We get near the end of the campaign and Beracav pitched the biggest fit ever about not having used his summon ability, so I went ahead and let him because it was just Beracav and Falgrim at the table that night (we usually have a party of 6 or 7) and I figured they would need the extra help.

Beracav summons two Balor.

At this point I am already staring at him with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. What happens next goes a little like this.

Falgrim: You did say he could do it.
Me: I said he could summon some demons, not that he could summon too Balor.
Falgrim: We're level 18. -cites some obscure mechanic that allows Beracav to do this-
Me: okay whatever, you summon two Balor.

A round later, it got back to Beracav's turn.

Beracav: I cast enlarge on the Balor.

Just let me share a vague representation of the face I made.

=_______=

...but the boys had fun. That's what matters.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 9]: My Favorite Character I Haven't Played

Now, I'm a little bit unclear as to whether this means "concept I have had but not implemented" or "someone else's character". Since Pun went with "have not implemented", I shall do the same.

Lysan Shaiith, son of the aforementioned Demetrius Shaiith.

You see, Demetrius and Kaskara had three children. Galashon, Nymhora and Lysan.

Galashon was the strongest of the three physically and turned out to take after his mother, a very kind boy, a very gentle giant.

Nymhora had a rogue's hands and took after her father, going on to become an assassin.

Lysan found himself off to the side of this. He was not like his father's side of the family, not a rogue, and not like his mother, a warrior, but found himself taking after his maternal grandfather, Draco, who was a sorcerer. Lysan is physically the weakest of the three but is by far the smartest and has the potential to be an amazing mage.

But, of course, coming from a family of rogues, that doesn't mean a whole lot and has left him as a bit of a black sheep.

I will get to him eventually, I'm sure.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 8]: My Favorite Character I Have Played

Now this is one I can really sink my teeth into, but it's also probably one of the hardest questions I could ever be asked. I love my characters, all of them, and I tend to  get into them far more than a person should.

The first one that popped into my head was Cheris, my Avariel Ranger. I am not a minmaxy type player, but I just happened to get lucky with the way I statted her and some of the equipment she landed early on. She was a fucking glass canon. Cheris was doing ridiculous amounts of damage and getting +35s and over to hit at like, level 12.

But the thing about that is, as much as I liked her as a character, I think I had so much fun playing her because she was statted so well and was more or less THE party DPS. Shannanana would throw things at us that the party shouldn't have been able to handle and Cheris would still be able to hit them.

She was extraordinarily vain. When we ended up in one of those "worst fears" dungeons, it played on her vanity almost exclusively. She was also seriously racist against orcs, which became an issue on several occasions because earlier on in the campaign we had a TPK (Total Party Kill for those who don't know what I'm talking about, I really should make a glossary for this stuff) and one of the PCs at that point had been a full blooded orc.

Suffice to say he got resurrected. Shit hit the fan.

She also had a pseudo-doomed romance with another PC by the name of Galleon (who shared a player with the orc ironically enough) and when that campaign died off they were planning on getting married and founding a town somewhere so I'd like to think that happened.

That said...I'm going to have to cheat this entry because as much as I loved playing Cheris, the second character that popped into my head when I saw this prompt has been around longer and probably fits the prompt far better...

Okay let me put it this way. Cheris, from my perspective, was a really fun character to play. Demetrius, however, was part of a chain of campaigns that were arguably better organized and lasted longer and the DM made me love him.

...wow this is a shitty picture, I really need to draw an updated reference of him, but let's not quibble over the details right at the moment.

Demetrius Shaiith, son of my first character that lasted more than two sessions, Caliel Shaiith.

Caliel was a half drow, half moon elf bard / rogue / assassin. Demi's father was a human assassin. Which makes him, statistically, a half elf. His father owed Caliel a favor for saving his life at one point during one of her campaigns and Demi was the favor she asked for because, what could she say, the man had good genetics.

And Demetrius turned out to be everything she imagined he would be.

He was raised in a house of rogues, taught to be sneaky and underhanded, and he was, in every way, destined to be an amazing killer. Until he started travelling with a half-dragon named Kaskara and shit hit the fan.

They were both pretty shitty people at the time, and they fell in love. They had a Bonny and Clyde thing going on for a while, and then they got attacked and separated. Each one thought the other was dead and Demi was more or less kidnapped by this cult of asshats and went along with it. There, he met this girl who called herself Satine and started a casual relationship with her because she reminded him of Kas.

...it turns out she was Kas's half sister.

Then finds out Kas is still alive but doesn't reveal himself to her because she's found a new party and has actually become a good person and he doesn't want to ruin her life.

WELL, he ends up in the middle of this whole irrelevent mess with other people and this guy named Shade whose basically Kas's uncle. He kept telling Demi he was a horrible person for not telling Kas that he's alive and eventually provokes him to attacking only to find out it was actually Kas disguised as her uncle and he more or less killed her.

Except big old Daddy Draco is an amazing sorcerer and manages to save her life, except she's still in this like, eternal sleep state.

Whereas Demi just snaps and lets the god Bane inhabit his body (and Bane at this point was on the shit list with the other gods for a lot of reasons that had been built up in the campaign but that i'm not going to get into here or this entry will be forever long). Cue Demi going on a bloody nasty killing spree for like a hundred years give or take a decade.

Finally, his atheist mother (Caliel acknowledges gods are real but refuses to worship them) lets the goddess Jaden take over her body and there's this massive ass god-avatar fight and Bane gets forced out of Demi's body and he goes to wake up Kas and they live happily ever after.

Except for the part where he had a son he didn't know about with Satine and Draco still hates him.

Somewhere after that whole mess he ends up becoming a half dragon through divine intervention and he and Kaskara have three kids of their own and live up in some mountain somewhere.

That campaign lasted /forever/ and it was the /best/ campaign /ever/.

Still all the happy memories when I think of Demetrius.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 7]: My Favorite Edition

I cut my teeth on 3.5 and I know it the best. I've played 2nd Edition and found it lacking in certain respects, and don't even get me started on 4th edition. Okay, actually, the truth is I think 4th probably has its merits, but I won't be playing it any time soon, at least not seriously.

The fact is, I bought all these books for 3.5...I don't want to buy them all over again for 4th. And if I played it I'd have to buy the materials. Yeah, no, no thank you, 3.5 is good for me. It's not broken, it doesn't need fixing. And if it does we house rule.

Then again I presently have a group of players that are ridiculously good at breaking the game (Josh and Michael I am looking at you).

Usually trying something new is a good way to trip them up so they can't do that for at least three sessions, although Josh managed to break Mutants and Masterminds after 2 hours of having the book.

I've veered off topic. Honestly, though, this isn't something I have a whole lot to say about. I like 3.5, it's the edition I know and love, I can DM it decently, so that's my answer.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 6]: My Favorite Deity

Please don't get the wrong idea of me when I tell you this. But it's Bane.

That might have something to do with the fact that when we need an evil deity my good friend Amber Sherman always grabs Bane first. He's got his own set of problems, she presents him in a way that makes him extremely interesting and accessible.

And I mean, just look at the guy. You look at Bane and you see The Power. He's fucking scary and I love it.

30 Day D&D Challenge [Day 5]: My Favorite Set of Dice / Individual Die

My favorite set of dice is a purple-red set with silver numbers. It's newer than some of the others, but it always rolls high and the colors are very me. I don't let anyone else use them, it's the one set I get squirrelly about. And you know how superstitious gamers can be with their dice.

My favorite individual die...now that's a difficult one. They all have their purposes, but give me a minute to show some love to the d12.

12 months in the year. 12 signs of the zodiac. 12 is one of those magic numbers, it's pretty easy to make something symmetrical when there are 12 pieces.

It's more stable than the d20 but just as big and easy to roll and it doesn't hurt as badly when you step on it as the d4 does. At the same time, most people reach for the d20 automatically. And plenty of things use the other dice for damage, but what love does the d12 get?

When it gets to the point of using d12 usually people just go "Roll 2d6" which makes sense mathmatically, but seriously.

Give me some d12.