Lazarus! Come forth!!! (again)
I'm coming back soon. Got some old and new stuff to share with my journal, and I have some time in the evenings again as my other on-line demands wind down. So expect some more regular updates here every other week or so.
I've decided to share some of my more amusing moments in playing role-playing games, in part so I can look back on them here and laugh, and in part to share how important the art of storytelling is to us humans. I think I've touched on this before, but what the heck, I like rehashing some horses until they bleed, run dry, and turn to dust.
First, by role-playing games I'll be usually talking about DnD. Yes, that tired old nerdy game system that had such a formative impact on a couple of generations of nerds now. Why is that? Storytelling. The same reason that movies are currently the biggest grossing form of medium, which took over from TV, which took over from radio, which took over from books, which took over from sitting around a fire and listening to a grandfather at home or an old person at an inn that served alcohol or any other instance when humans gathered together to be taken on a journey by someone's words. (Whew, what a run-on sentence THAT was)
Anyways . . . . . my point is this. People play RPGs to take part in an evolving story. Not to just hear about what's happening, but to actually partake in it while it's happening. This is a high that not everyone gets to experience in life. Where were YOU when your favorite sports team won a championship? How much greater would that experience have been if you were actually ON THE TEAM?!?! That's what RPGs do for us, they allow you to take part in the story. I enjoyed RPGs as both a player and a DM. I'll get into the differences of both sides of THAT particular coin some other time, but keep in mind that setting the stage can often times be just as much if not MORE fun than acting out the play. Setting the stage will take at LEAST twice as much time and effort though (and more like 4 times more if you want to be any good as a DM), and I'm pretty lazy, so that part was hard for me.
I'm going to do the opposite of saving the best for last though, I'm going to share something that was better than I ever did. This is a little thing from http://www.candlekeep.com/ called 'So Saith Ed'. They have a message board there where Ed Greenwood (the creator of the Forgotten Realms world, and possibly the best DM the planet has ever seen) answers questions. The following is a passage added from one of his players (named The Hooded One, don't ask why, I think it's just to keep her real identity secret like a superhero or something), and it tells a story of a run-in with a chaotic good unicorn goddess of magic named Lurue. I WISH I could have come up with something this well thought out when I was DMing for my gaming crew. They would have LOVED it.
Thy Hooded One can add this much: we Knights met Lurue once, in the High Forest, on the banks of the Unicorn Run. She was dancing on her hind legs on empty air, about forty feet off the ground, in full silvery moonlight -- and we all grovelled. She LOOKED into our eyes, each of us -- and Ed had written out long, detailed notes for each of us for the dream-visions we received then. When we awakened, we were all reinvigorated, healed of all hurts, had maximum charges in all of our magic items, and so on. The one virgin among us (no, I'm not going to name her, but it wasn't my character, all you guessers) had been touched by Lurue's horn, and her eyes were two flames of silver fire. Also, her hair had gone silver and moved constantly by itself, as if waves of wind were passing through it. She gained feather fall and water walk innate abilities on the spot, and ironguard as long as the silver fire was in her. It remained with her as we travelled, until we had to fight a certain archdevil in Myth Drannor.
In that encounter, we were overwhelmed by devils and were going down, just being buried in numbers. The archdevil saw the silver fire and went straight for the particular Knight, and after they'd started to fight and the character was being badly mauled, the player (thank whatever gods there be) REMEMBERED Ed's notes of her dream-vision, and what she had to do. She fled onto the altar beside the devil (that was also a gate into the Nine Hells), and when the archdevil attacked her there, she embraced it and let it slay her.
And her silver fire went BLAM and took out altar, gate, archdevil, and all the other devils within a MILE, leaving all of us Knights lying dazed, unscathed, and alive . . . except she who'd sacrificed herself. She was gone forever.
And at that moment, far away in Shadowdale, Storm Silverhand was helping a farm wife give birth to her first child, a girl-and it came out stillborn. Storm raised the tiny body to make absolutely sure before she wrapped it and turned to comfort the mother . . . and its eyes opened, and they were silver and knowing, and the mind of our lost Knight was in the now-living child and wondering how by Lurue to tell Storm who she was.
Hmm. I'm crying again, just remembering it.
Another of Ed's beautiful little moments, that will make me treasure our Realmsplay forever.
Ladies and gentlesirs, I give you: the Realms!
The Hooded One
I've decided to share some of my more amusing moments in playing role-playing games, in part so I can look back on them here and laugh, and in part to share how important the art of storytelling is to us humans. I think I've touched on this before, but what the heck, I like rehashing some horses until they bleed, run dry, and turn to dust.
First, by role-playing games I'll be usually talking about DnD. Yes, that tired old nerdy game system that had such a formative impact on a couple of generations of nerds now. Why is that? Storytelling. The same reason that movies are currently the biggest grossing form of medium, which took over from TV, which took over from radio, which took over from books, which took over from sitting around a fire and listening to a grandfather at home or an old person at an inn that served alcohol or any other instance when humans gathered together to be taken on a journey by someone's words. (Whew, what a run-on sentence THAT was)
Anyways . . . . . my point is this. People play RPGs to take part in an evolving story. Not to just hear about what's happening, but to actually partake in it while it's happening. This is a high that not everyone gets to experience in life. Where were YOU when your favorite sports team won a championship? How much greater would that experience have been if you were actually ON THE TEAM?!?! That's what RPGs do for us, they allow you to take part in the story. I enjoyed RPGs as both a player and a DM. I'll get into the differences of both sides of THAT particular coin some other time, but keep in mind that setting the stage can often times be just as much if not MORE fun than acting out the play. Setting the stage will take at LEAST twice as much time and effort though (and more like 4 times more if you want to be any good as a DM), and I'm pretty lazy, so that part was hard for me.
I'm going to do the opposite of saving the best for last though, I'm going to share something that was better than I ever did. This is a little thing from http://www.candlekeep.com/ called 'So Saith Ed'. They have a message board there where Ed Greenwood (the creator of the Forgotten Realms world, and possibly the best DM the planet has ever seen) answers questions. The following is a passage added from one of his players (named The Hooded One, don't ask why, I think it's just to keep her real identity secret like a superhero or something), and it tells a story of a run-in with a chaotic good unicorn goddess of magic named Lurue. I WISH I could have come up with something this well thought out when I was DMing for my gaming crew. They would have LOVED it.
Thy Hooded One can add this much: we Knights met Lurue once, in the High Forest, on the banks of the Unicorn Run. She was dancing on her hind legs on empty air, about forty feet off the ground, in full silvery moonlight -- and we all grovelled. She LOOKED into our eyes, each of us -- and Ed had written out long, detailed notes for each of us for the dream-visions we received then. When we awakened, we were all reinvigorated, healed of all hurts, had maximum charges in all of our magic items, and so on. The one virgin among us (no, I'm not going to name her, but it wasn't my character, all you guessers) had been touched by Lurue's horn, and her eyes were two flames of silver fire. Also, her hair had gone silver and moved constantly by itself, as if waves of wind were passing through it. She gained feather fall and water walk innate abilities on the spot, and ironguard as long as the silver fire was in her. It remained with her as we travelled, until we had to fight a certain archdevil in Myth Drannor.
In that encounter, we were overwhelmed by devils and were going down, just being buried in numbers. The archdevil saw the silver fire and went straight for the particular Knight, and after they'd started to fight and the character was being badly mauled, the player (thank whatever gods there be) REMEMBERED Ed's notes of her dream-vision, and what she had to do. She fled onto the altar beside the devil (that was also a gate into the Nine Hells), and when the archdevil attacked her there, she embraced it and let it slay her.
And her silver fire went BLAM and took out altar, gate, archdevil, and all the other devils within a MILE, leaving all of us Knights lying dazed, unscathed, and alive . . . except she who'd sacrificed herself. She was gone forever.
And at that moment, far away in Shadowdale, Storm Silverhand was helping a farm wife give birth to her first child, a girl-and it came out stillborn. Storm raised the tiny body to make absolutely sure before she wrapped it and turned to comfort the mother . . . and its eyes opened, and they were silver and knowing, and the mind of our lost Knight was in the now-living child and wondering how by Lurue to tell Storm who she was.
Hmm. I'm crying again, just remembering it.
Another of Ed's beautiful little moments, that will make me treasure our Realmsplay forever.
Ladies and gentlesirs, I give you: the Realms!
The Hooded One
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