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As y'all probably know, I'm a huge Dungeons & Dragons fan, but have rarely had a chance to actually play. In fact, the extent of my D&D experience was a fun but short-lived play-by-post game run by my friend Michael two years ago which I had to leave when my late father's illness started taking up more of my attention. In short, as a fan, I was kind of a poser.
That changed this past Wednesday, when, at Job Corps, I joined my first physical, in-person D&D campaign. It turned out that three guys in my computer tech workroom (which is filled entirely by pasty, out-of-shape male nerds - myself included) run a D&D campaign; when I brought in my laptop to be looked at for repairs, I mentioned that most of the space on my hard drive was taken up by my collection of D&D PDFs (over 22 Gigabytes, in fact), and I was quickly invited to join them. I was invited Monday, created my character on Tuesday, and was playing on Wednesday.
It's been an interesting experience - not always what I'd hoped, but still fun. (For starters, when I'm the most mature, best-socialized person in the room, something's wrong.)
(Note: The campaign setting is not, to my knowledge, actually the World of Greyhawk, but if I continue this "column" that's what I'll call it, since it's the most recognizable D&D place-name.)
To my regret, the DM, hereafter referred to as Sir Elder after his in-story NPC avatar, doesn't take it as seriously as I would (or Michael did). He didn't take the time to draw any battle maps for combat - he just took a blank piece of paper and moved our game pieces around free-form to represent movement. In a game where tactical movement is vital (how many spaces you can move, for instance), this is very frustrating. I brought my annoyance at this to his attention; we'll see if he improves next week.
There's also the character of Sir Elder himself, who is apparently (I'm still not sure) a well-dressed Goblin with godlike magical powers, who always talks like he's drunk and shows up at random to cause mischief. He's basically a walking plot device the DM uses to herd us into the situations he wants; I'm not sure if he even has any stats, or if he just does whatever the DM wants, no questions. Annoying.
The rest of the players are interesting. There are two Human Fighters, but I don't have much to say about them (I don't even remember their characters' names). One has a firm grip on the rules and plays competently. The other is kind of a nut; his player is only occasionally present, and when he is, tends to make illogical decisions that get him hurt easily.
There's Darigaz, the Elf Druid, but I don't much to say about him either. His player didn't show up, and the character was played by Sir Elder; I suspect he doesn't like the group much.
There's a character whose name I think was Taran. There's no way around this: he's a furry, and I mean the player, not just the character. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) In fact, he made up his own race, "Wolf-kin", to play (his class is Monk). He's very good at role-playing - I wouldn't be surprised if he was into MUSHes or play-by-post RP before coming here - and actually typed out an extensive backstory. Unfortunately, Sir Elder never got around to helping him stat out his character, so he spent the entire session not knowing exactly what his capabilities were.
Then there's Ayson Domovoi, the Elf Ranger. He's new to the game, but very eager, and he's picking up the rules at a fast pace. Sadly, his presence at the table isn't very strong, and Sir Elder often forgets to give him actions.
Finally, there's li'l ol' me: Burk, the Goblin Rogue. (Yes, I chose a "monster" race. Y'all who knew me in my days on Elendor MUSH know I suffer from acute Special Snowflake Syndrome. And, hey, +4 Move Silently bonus.) Not only am I the only one who isn't named after a character from a line of fantasy novels, I've also got the firmest grip on the rules (this includes the DM), though I need to brush up on combat. To my everlasting regret, as the only character less than 4 feet tall, I seem to have become the designated comic relief, though my race's connection with wolves has given me something over which to bond with Taran.
About the gameplay itself, again, not much to say. Taran, Ayson, and I, the newcomers, were literally just dropped (through a hole in a cave ceiling) onto the other characters. Although we played for about three hours, because Sir Elder has trouble staying on task, our party only ended up moving about 100 feet in one direction through the dungeon complex. We only had one combat - a trio of Blink Dogs (aren't they supposed to be Lawful Good?) that came out of nowhere and attacked us. The Random Number God was unkind to me that night, as I only hit once, but Sir Elder looked favorably upon me and granted me 20 extra XP for humming the Final Fantasy battle theme when combat ended.
So that's that. I'm thinking of making this a regular, weekly column if I can muster the energy every Saturday. (Hopefully y'all won't be too annoyed.) I look forward to continuing the game.
The adventure continues... |
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(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.) |
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So I've come to realise that most of my stories right now have some form of horrific abuse in them.
I'm pretty sure this is directly influenced by an early interest in Dissociative Identity Disorder and corresponding habit of reading every book I could find on it. (Like, middle school early.)
Actually, I think this explains a whole lot about me. >_>;
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Poll #1485255 The Big Questions
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 4Dr. McNinja is fuckin' awesome.
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Please feel free to comment on the Twittering.
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 If Kolkata was industry incarnate, old meets new in a clash of styles, then Pune is very much the French Riviera, or at least one of half a dozen Italian cities I can think of. It's not immediately by the sea, it's not even blazingly sunny, but there's an attitude that just screams 'Ciao, bella' at you as you walk down a street.
It's day four and I'm in the Taj Blue Diamond hotel in Pune. It's a nice yet slightly run-down hotel where reception is a makeshift corner of the first floor landing while essential building works occur in the main part of the hotel. And by building works, I mean the entrance looks like a meteor hit it. Which makes me realise how the average citizen in the Marvel comics New York must feel on any given day. And from the first moment I hit, I realised that Pune was different to Kolkata. It felt different. Not better, not smoother, cooler - but more cosmopolitan. Which was crazy because Kolkata was one of the most cosmopolitan cities I'd ever been in. I just couldn't put my finger on it, until I saw the man who picked his wife up at the airport.
She had a carry on case, a duty free carrier bag and wore a soft gold sari. He pulled up on a Bandit, a black, growling sportsbike. He had no helmet, wore simply a white shirt and jeans. She passed him the carrier which he hung off the right handlebar. She then clambered onto the back, sitting side saddle due to her sari and, with one hand around him, held the carry on case tight to her chest with the other. They laughed as they sped off at speed into the traffic which, although not as batshit crazy as the Kolkata traffic, is pretty intense nevertheless. And, as they rode off, I realised why I had such a 'Roman Holiday' vibe to the place. It's about a three - to - one ratio of bikes and scooters to cars in Pune. They're everywhere, weaving through traffic, nearly always with two people on them. Sports bikes and scooters, usually stylised Vespa clones whiz around the cars, beeping happily as their owners, un helmeted yet wearing the latested styles of sunglasses, shirts flapping free in the wind, no leathers on whatsoever sit on them, smiling, laughing, talking to their passenger, or chatting on the phone. It's an insane vision to watch, yet at the same time it gives an impression of such freedom that all you want to do is leap on a scooter and go for a spin.
The driver informed me that there was a law that required helmets to be worn - it was just that nobody paid attention, due to a clause that said that if your journey was less than a mile, it wasn't compulsary. Suffice to say, everyone's journeys were obviously under a mile.
(I was told later that there was a similar law about smoking on the street, told to me by someone who was, you've guessed it, smoking on the street.)
But yesterday, day four and my first in Pune, was my day off. And God knows, I needed it. I hadn't slept the night before, needing to wake and rise at four in the morning, and by the time I hit the hotel at Pune I'd been awake for over twenty four hours, several of these in lecture, mixed with a healthy helping of jet lag. I was slightly broken and managed three hours sleep in the early afternoon before taking a stroll.
In all the years I've been travelling this world, I've always had this one tenet - you can't truly see a city until you've been lost in it. And by lost I mean take random streets, walk into random places, leave that well guided path and play in the undergrowth. And with Kolkata I wasn't able to due to time, location and commitments. But here in Pune, with a day off, I was able to walk freely. And the first thing I noticed was the utter lack of interest I received.
I'm a stranger in a strange land, I know. But I've been in countries where I was the only pale skinned man around before, and often it creates a form of unconsious interest, you find yourself looking at the person who doesn't fit the picture because, well, they're different. And in Kolkata, I'd found a couple of times that I seemed to be a source of interest, often for people asking for money - but in Pune, nobody cared. I was totally ignored. Which was wonderful. I strolled around for a couple of hours, took in one of the large shopping centres, a Pune version of Debenhams, where they had a school of eight year old children singing Kareoke with what sounded like nursery rhymes or children's songs. Families applauded and even the customers stopped, watched and cheered. It was incredibly uplifting and once again I was touched with the strength of spirit that the Indian people have. I saw some dogs in the street, what looked like strays - and even they seemed happy, giving me little doggy grins and wagging their grizzled old tails as I walked on by.
Back at the hotel, I tried an 'Americano Pizza', having tired of rice dishes for the moment. I seriously suggest to anyone staying here? Stick to the rice. When in Rome and all that.
 And then it was the evening, and I met up with Twitter chums Aditya Bidikar and Nikhil Kumar Verma for some drinks at 'The Hidden Place', a bar down the road in Pune, and a good night was had by all. Aditya is an incredibly talented Indian writer who will one day be an even bigger name than he currently is and at that point will be competition and therefore need to be killed, but currently he is allowed to live by my will (and both of these fine chaps should be twitter followed right now) and we spent a very enjoyable hour working through an eight page story he'd written before Nikhil arrived - Nikhil is more of a reader than a creator and the evening was spent discussing the skill of writing, the comics that we loved and television shows that should be watched. They told me of their love for Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis. I told them that Warren was a scary old man who beat up midgets with French baguettes, this only seemed to make them like him even more.
And then the day was over, I said my goodbyes to my two new friends and returned to my hotel to sleep. Today I have two hours of television and radio interviews, a talk at the Pune British Library and then 'High tea' with consular officials before I return to the hotel late this evening. And then at early O'Clock tomorrow morning I fly to Bangalore, where I have an 11.30am talk.
Pune, our time was short, but you touched my heart. Now let me have a go on your scooter.
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