::A Geek in Korea::

I never thought that I’d get involved in the whole Dungeons and Dragons thing. I made a character because someone had asked me to join their game. I was there because if I didn’t play, no one else could, so I sort of did it out of curiosity, having nothing else to do, and just to be a team player.It gave me an excuse to get out of the house, and I didn’t have to spend money on Magic: The Gathering cards, so I was more than willing to give it a try.

Right away, I got interested in the dynamic storytelling method and the idea of shaping an adventure through our actions and a little dice rolling. The mechanics seemed alien and overly complex, but the basic framework was pretty cool. All the rule books were there to basically support the story telling, but weren’t desperately needed unless you were doing something you didn’t know how to resolve another way. It was there more as a clarification than something that needed strict following. The overwhelming amount of information available to try to assimilate was very difficult, and still is, but you don’t really need to read everything available. You just pick and choose, and it is a problem you look a little more to see if you can find the answer, otherwise you make your best guess and keep the story going.

There are so many different paths to take, and each of them has different quirks. There are rule books, different strategies, and different takes on each theme that you can choose to follow up on. There is also an amount of “making it up as you go along”. As long as no one else complains, you are good to go.

I even had my hand into trying to craft part of the story as we went along. That was also an interesting peek at “the other side” of the game, where your antagonism towards your fellow characters as the agent controlling the things that want to kill the players has to be tempered by the fact you want to keep the story going to some degree, and that death is merely an annoyance, not a real finality.

The person who is taking over from me to do the next round of storytelling is asking us to roll up new characters for his adventures. The other two people also wanted a chance to play different style characters, since their builds are nearly identical. These will be a sort of “secondary” set of adventurers that might interact with our current batch of characters or not. The “West Coast” Avengers, if you will. Now that we’ve established the setting and put things in motion towards the plot, we’re adding extra characters to keep things fresh.

At best, it could work to revitalize the play sessions. With more characters, there is more variety, and different ways to tackle different problems. At worst, it could be like adding Cousin Oliver, or Ted McGinley.

I was thinking of different characters to try. I spent hours, literally HOURS, thinking of different adventurers. I’d consult things on the Internet, I’d use character creators, I’d email the guy that is going to take over the next part of the adventure. I had one template, then another, then ANOTHER. The process of making new characters is also compounded by having multiple people also picking characters at the same time. Even if I had a flash of brilliance, there are rolls the other players staked out at their meetings when discussing the other characters. I could always have a “me too” sort of character, but I’d rather have something completely different than anyone else.

I think I’ve got something going. I’ve got two characters “in reserve” at the moment. One is a rapid crossbow firing marine wanna-be inspired by R. Lee Ermey’s character in Full Metal Jacket. I’d have to practice my cursing to role play that character well. Another is a lycanthropic monk that aspires to be a high flying wrestler, who is basically Fray Tormenta. This guy might be more difficult to fit into the party because he keeps ending up a “good” sort of character, and the people I play with end up doing evil things during the course of the game most of the time.

Anything I do seems to keep it interesting, as I have to be creative and find out how to explain all the quirks for the characters I make. I’m also on the lookout for ideas about my next planned adventure. Now that I’m a CO-DM, I’ve got to come up with a new story every month or so. It’s going to be an interesting challenge to keep up with the story and keep it going.