As a wife, there are a few times when I get to shock my husband. Sometimes
the shocking thing is amazing (Hey honey, I’m
pregnant!- not now, just that was something amazing I shocked him with a
few years ago- BREATHE CHARLIE), sometimes it is gross (most of these
happened during my pregnancy), sometimes he thinks it is “Just plain
wrong, Jaimie, you were obviously raised in a
barn!” (this was because I actually LIKE Johnny cake, AKA sweet cornbread).
But never, is shocking my husband more rewarding than when he’s running a campaign.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t go into a game thinking, “How will I mess with Charlie tonight?”
- Okay, sometimes I do, but not often, and he almost always deserves it. (More on
that in another post.)
Usually,
I’m just hanging out with our friends and we all just end up doing the
exact opposite of what Charlie has planned out for us. If
any
of you have read my husband’s blog, you’ll know that he is a very good
and experienced DM, and that our usual gang of adventurers is somewhat…
well… in the South, they call it eccentric. Now
-being
that people in our gang have been known to do things like spider climb
up a wall and onto the ceiling in order to drop down on top of a
beholder, build themselves a giant tube encasing their body from floor
to ceiling (wall of stone) leaving a slit just
big enough for their familiar to get in and out to deliver spells, and
sell party members that have botched more than 3 times to the enemy for
money to repair the stuff that was broken in the last battle, Charlie
has had ample experience to plan for his plan
to backfire.
Seriously, the man has a backup plan, for the backup of his backup plan. He’s got notebooks filled with s*&^ he can throw
at us in any given situation… that is until we decide to do nothing.
A couple months ago, we started a new campaign. Charlie
started us all out in a village and let us know that there were
several options we could choose for adventuring, some local big-wig was
looking for a troop of adventurers, the local temple was having issues,
and there was a big scary old stone fortress just waiting to be
plundered by people dumb enough to venture inside.
We all knew that Charlie had
planned this, but for those of us at the table, at least this night, we
wanted to be “regular people.”
Instead of going out and adventuring, we all looked into joining the local guilds and got jobs at the same inn. A female
character and I got jobs as barmaids/waitresses. Someone got a job as a cook, and two of our party got a job as “entertainment” for the inn. And
that’s what we did for four hours.
Don’t get me wrong, we had fun. I laughed more that night than I had in a few sessions.
The “bards” kept botching one roll and getting a natural 20 the next so their form of “entertainment” was unique. We
got to haggle with the butcher
and the vegetable shop owner over prices in order to pocket the extra
coin, which led to inferior meat and the “cook” making something
absolutely delicious (good rolling) that ended up killing a few patrons
and giving most of the rest a case of the trots. (Nothing
like “killin’ xp when you weren’t event trying to kill someone.)
But, I know games like this tend to throw Charlie. At first, he can’t tell if we just think his situations are lame or if
we are just in one of our random moods. He
keeps giving us opportunities to do something exciting, and we keep
turning them away to go do the stuff we think is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY at
the time.
THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL THAT WE’RE GOING TO PAY 4 GOLD FOR THIS MEAT, WE HAVE RAT TRAPS SOMEWHERE…
Every once in a while we’ll accidentally get his hopes up. I’ll announce to the table, “The tips in this joint are lousy,
I’ve got a 19 charisma, and I should be rockin’ it. Oh, WAIT WAIT WAIT, I have an idea.” This is when Charlie
leans forward wondering if I’m going to take the get rich quick scheme someone in the guild told me about earlier. “I’m undoing the top two buttons on my blouse and flirting- not in
a ‘come and get me way’, mind you, but in a ‘if you tip better I’ll spend more time smiling at you’ way.” Then I’ll sit back in my chair noticing the other waitress doing the same thing,
and wondering if I should tell her that because she’s only 3 feet tall everyone can see down her blouse, and am amused.
Nights like this go very well for the players. Nothing much is accomplished, but we’ve had fun.
Yes, we know eventually Charlie
will find a way to get us out of the inn and on our way, we just hope he
doesn’t burn the place down because it is actually kind of nice and if
our cook doesn’t poison people anymore we’d
like to use it as a base. But
that would probably be bad because the bards are robbing everyone
blind… but that’s okay because even if they can’t “perform” they’re
pretty good at conning
people out of their money. We just hope they don’t sell us to the shady guy in the corner for some quick coin. And
while we’re all thinking this, Charlie lets us go. That’s one of the things I like about playing for him. Every
once in a while, a night at D&D isn’t filled with death and destruction, rescuing the damsel and saving the world. Every once in a while our characters get to be real people, and that
makes them more special to us.