After a week of unbridled anticipation, today was finally Dungeons and Dragons day.
Since the beginning of the semester, we were promised a three-hour class period of just playing the fantasy tabletop role-playing game in my Gaming in American Culture class.
Finally the day has arrived, and it was glorious.
Though it did begin with a bit of a time crunch.
I gathered with my friend Mimi in the Honors Center before class, as she is far more of an expert than I. Was looking to get her opinion on which pre-made character I should play for our campaign.
Instead we wound up making a brand new character in the hour. An experience I’m fairly new at, which combined wonderfully with computer troubles.
But we persevered, and on the other end came up with my amazing boy: Thokk.
Thokk is a half-orc war cleric. He wears scale armor, carries a warhammer and a light crossbow, is generally uncharismatic and speaks four languages: Common, Orc and… Two I totally decided on.
He is chaotic good with an acolyte background and serves as a member of the Eye of Justice, a religious sect following a deity named Torm who were considered heretics.
So he’s adventuring to stop evil as his divine righteousness demands, but he ain’t above causing some havoc to get the job done.
Also he’s a very good boy and I love him. Might even drop him into my novel.
However, today he was played by the denizen of death and mayhem:
Yeah, I used Mimikyu as my character’s stand-in miniature.
He stood alongside the other six members of my party quite well:
There was Teflonto, a wood elf ranger; Celia, a wood elf monk; Jeff, a half-orc fighter; Phil, a gnome bard; Rein, a half-elf cleric; and Silver, a human paladin.
Our Dungeon Master was the Professor, wielding an unending spring of knowledge, a set of golden dice and a lot of monsters.
Thus the adventure began.
We started in a tavern, where Jeff nearly got beheaded trying to steal from the bartender and Phil spat Mario-style fireballs from a potent whiskey.
The quest kicked off when a sheep arrived. But he was not a sheep, he was a wizard transformed by a dastardly ex-assistant with a grudge.
Mr. Evil Wizard’s mercenaries arrived in search of the former mentor-turned-livestock, and our first battle began.
An eight-foot bear in a robe mauled Jeff as the animal-loving Teflonto was horrified by Thokk nailing a wolf to a barrel using a crossbow bolt.
That is, until he learned the animals were humanoids turned beast.
After a handy beating, the mercenary leader gave in and conferred his great sword to Silver. He escaped with a lie that the remaining wolf was his unfortunate wife.
A night’s rest later, the party made their way to the hollowed-tree tower where Mr. Evil Wizard hid.
Celia was able to use a mass sneaking fog to get the party past a gang of dice game-playing wolves, then get inside by climbing the bark and hanging a rope out.
Suspicious at the sudden fog filling his tower, Mr. Evil Wizard used his transmogrifying wand to turn his bed into a bed dragon that absolutely exists.
While hiding in the fog, Phil cast blindness on the wizard before running out, climbing the dragon, stealing the wand, climbing down and THEN escaping out the rope-strung window.
You should have seen the DM’s face when he kept failing rolls to prevent all of that.
After getting back to the ground, Silver attempted to use the wand to turn our sheep companion back into a man. Yet, even Thokk’s guidance spell could not help his luck as the poor NPC turned into a Cronenberg monster before exploding.
That drew the attention of Mr. Evil Wizard, who approached riding his bed dragon with an army of wolves and a bear.
The final battle for our lives began:
We were fucked.
But… We were fucked with 10 minutes left. Because three hours goes by fast when you have to account for seven players.
Rein and Thokk conjured magic, ethereal weapons to strike Mr. Evil Wizard as the rest of the party threw darts and shot crossbows.
Teflonto was mauled by a pack of wolves. Silver attempted to persuade the wolves to play a dice game with him, but to no avail. The wolves kept at it and Silver just watched.
Luckily, the almighty power of Deus Ex Machina was applied by the DM — who wanted the bell to end our one-shot campaign.
The wolves and bear turned against their master with the promise of being turned back to humanoid form. As Celia, Phil (now changed into a sheep) and Rein suffered splinters from the dragon’s breath, Teflonto stood up and shot an arrow into Mr. Evil Wizard’s face.
Once he and his dragon fell, we gained access to a convenient number of transmogrifying spells. Everyone was turned back to normal.
The end.
It may have been “cheap” that we were helped out of a bottomless hole by the DM because of time constraints, but it was justified by the journey.
All of our luck from the initial tavern fight and stealth mission came crashing down in the most spectacular of ways, and we undoubtedly would have all died without the handicap.
So in my personal headcanon, I like to imagine our party fell in the search for treasure and conquering evil.
However… In reality, none of our party fell.
Which means that Thokk lives to one day return, perhaps enlightened by his experience fighting the tyrannical Mr. Evil Wizard man.
All-and-all, I would say it was a very successful class.
Definitely worth a semester’s worth of anticipation, and definitely more than encouraging for me to go back and play more D&D in the future.
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