A Matter of Perspective

            This morning I was doing a touch of research on a magic item in my Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and I found myself reading an article (more of a rant, really) about what the writer believed to be some of the strangest items that have appeared in the in the D&D multiverse over the years. I found the premise of the article intriguing, but as I read it I found myself to be quite disappointed – because, apart from the basic descriptions of some magic items, everything the person said, from what makes a good D&D game to how magic items come into being, was wrong.

            Okay, not wrong; let’s be fair here. This was an opinion piece, and therefore couldn’t be wrong. However, the writer was suffering from the delusion that how they play and think about D&D is the one and only way to play and think about it – and, as a result, greatly misrepresented the entire game.

            They started off by explaining that every magical item must be made by someone, and therefore a lot of the more ridiculous magic items have no right to exist – because who would bother investing the large amount of time and resources needed in creating – for example – a ring that makes the person wearing it disagree with whatever anyone else says to them. Now, the beginning of the argument is sound. It does take considerable time and resources to make a magical object, however there are two very important considerations left out: the first is that a great many cursed items were created to guard treasures and strongholds from thieves, and the second is that people can make mistakes while crafting a magical item and end up with something entirely different from what they intended. These two points explain the existence of any magical item imaginable.

            It’s also worth mentioning that the writer stumbled upon the latter of these two points part way through the list – with a magic item that specifically states in its description that it was a mistake – but they failed to amend the premise at the beginning, making me wonder if they didn’t think of it, couldn’t be bothered, or didn’t make the connection that other magical items could be mistakes as well.

            A few numbers in came another comment – about an item that gives players a bonus for agricultural abilities for a year. The writer went on at length about how any game where such a thing would be useful would mean there’s something wrong with the game. A later comment about an item that allows anything to be turned into something edible is that someone who is worried about that is missing the greater point of D&D.

            From this, I gathered that the writer believes D&D is about one thing: delving into dungeons, defeating monsters, and leveling up. And, you know what? That’s true of one type of D&D game – called a dungeon crawl. It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s dangerous, and it’s essentially the same as playing a hack-and-slash video game. However, D&D offers far more than that. It can be a survival game, where a lack of food might actually become a serious problem. It can be a game focused on the story, where the dungeons are hardly important at all. It could be focused on the roleplaying aspect, which could even lead to never even going into a dungeon at all – indeed, even spending a year tending a farm.

            In fact, the game actually has a large number of rules laid out for “downtime”, which is when players aren’t out adventuring. Because, let’s face it – there are only so many adventures to be had, and even the most seasoned adventurers need a break some time. There can be weeks, months, even years between adventures – and there’s a lot of fun to be had in those times as well.

            The final statement that told me a lot about the writer was that an item known as the Wand of Wonder was included on this list. This is a magic item that causes a random effect when used, from powerful offensive magic to a harmless cloud of butterflies. The writer believes this is a useless item, because of its unpredictability – would you carry a gun into battle that sometimes shoots bubbles and sometimes shoots bullets? Which tells me everything I need to know about this person. They believe that D&D is a combat game, and all that matters is making your character as powerful as possible. Which is perfectly acceptable for some games, but it isn’t representative of all D&D games.

            Why would you take such an item into battle as your weapon? Because this is a game, and that wand can do some amazing things. What’s more, it provides a wonderful storytelling opportunity because you don’t know what’s going to happen until you use it – and I grantee that the big bad villain getting peppered with butterflies will be a moment everyone at the table remembers and laughs about for a long time!

            So, if you find yourself so inclined to write an article about the odd magic items in D&D, try to do your research and find the items that truly are wacky (they exist!) rather than rather ordinary ones that have no point for your preferred style of play.

            In fact, if you find yourself inclined to write about anything, particularly if you’re presenting something in a less-than-positive light, take the time to find out why things are being done the way they are. You may discover that your frustration comes from your particular outlook on the subject, and that if you take the time to understand someone else’s experiences you may come to understand why things are the way they are. This may not make you any happier about it, but at least your article will come across as enlightened.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

The Chronicles of Elyria

            This week I happened upon something that I found so exciting that it’s captured all my attention and it is scooping up all of my free time. Naturally, that means you get to hear about it now. It’s called... The Chronicles of Elyria.

            The Chronicles of Elyria is a new Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game that won’t even come out until next yet – and here I am, waiting for it as I haven’t waited since the days of waiting for the new Harry Potter books to come out. And I’m not the only one! There’s a huge community waiting out there, some of whom have been desperately waiting for this game since 2016 or earlier. That’s how awesome this game is!

            So, let me tell you a bit about the Chronicles of Elyria. To start off with, I suppose I should tell you how I found it. It was through an online add I saw for the game. Normally I ignore adds, but this one caught my attention – informing me that this was a game where creatures could be hunted to extinction. This was such an intriguing notion that I clicked – and was dragged down the rabbit hole.

            Now, for those of you who don’t know about MMORPGs, basically they are video games with large worlds where you can interact and play with other people. However, aside from that, they’re an awful lot like any other video game – there are real people around, but you don’t have to interact with them. Everything you need is still provided by the Non-Player Characters, and you have a set of quests that you do – and if you get stuck, you just have to look up a guide to figure out how to get unstuck.

            With CoE, everything is different. For starters, you don’t get sent on quests by NPCs waiting around to send you on a mission – when you create you character, an A.I. generates a storyline unique to your character that will appear randomly in the game, with larger events only occurring if you do something in the game that triggers them – such as stealing for the first time, or travelling to a specific town. Rather than chasing around after stories, your story follows you.

            And that’s not all! The kingdoms and towns in the game are primarily run by the players – that’s right, you can climb through the ranks and become a king, bringing whole new levels to the game – shifting from being and adventuring game to a resource management game if you so choose. This, coupled with the resources in the world being finite (they’re usually unlimited), including species being able to go extinct, makes for an incredibly in-depth survival game.

            But, wait, there’s more. Apart from all the wondrous gameplay elements that are too numerous to mention, one incredible aspect of the game is that your character actually ages and dies. That’s right – not only are the resources finite, but so is your time. A character lives for roughly one real-world year, then dies – but their soul lives on. You can then create another character, who inherits skills through the soul, and who might even be part of your own family (yes, you can have families and kids).

            And, the final and most interesting element is that, to maintain the continuity of the game – keeping everyone aging at the same rate and whatnot – when you log out of the game, the A.I. takes over your character and it keeps playing! You leave instructions, and your character continues on in your absence – perhaps saving you tons of time training skills, or performing other tasks.

            There is so much more to tell about this game, but those – at least for me – are the key highlights. The community waiting for the launch is also wonderful, friendly, and welcoming – at least, the one I joined up with is. I was welcomed so warmly when I joined that even I – antisocial though I am – am actually interacting with them. I’ve even contributed to the Lore they are creating – which, it is worth noting, the awesome game developers are incorporating into the game.

            So, if any of that interests you, go check out the Chronicles of Elyria! If you poke around and decide to join the community, I strongly encourage you to consider the Duchy known as the Conclave of Aritaur located in the Kingdom of Vornair on the NA-East server. If I see you mentioning that I sent you, I may even be able to get you welcomed into the county I joined.

            And if you know me in person, I strongly encourage you to send me a message if you plan to sign up on the Chronicles of Elyria website; I can give you my friend code, which will not only earn me points, but it will tell the game we’re friends so it can try to place us relatively close together in the game world – otherwise we might have literal hours to walk if we want to play together. If we can even find each other.

            That’s it. Now, go! Become madly obsessed with Elyria that you might share in my torment as we await its release date!

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Building D&D Backgrounds

            I recently went through the process of helping someone completely new to Dungeons & Dragons create a character, and it got me thinking about writing up some guidelines for the part that’s not explicitly described in the books: giving the character a background and personality. There are loose guidelines and suggestions for this, but there’s only so much guiding that can be given to what is very much a personal creative process. Naturally, with no hard and fast method for doing this, certain stereotypes frequently find their ways into characters. So, here are a few guidelines (not rules) I’ve come up with – both from my own experiences and from observing others – about what types of characters to avoid making.

1.      Don’t make your character a dark and mysterious brooding hero.

This is a very popular character archetype that a lot of people want to play – I know I’ve made characters like this before, but there’s a big problem with them. D&D is an interactive, teamwork-based game. This type of character tends to remain silent and untrusting of others and, as a result, ends up lurking around, following the group of adventurers, and only engaging in the combat aspect of the game. When it comes to roleplaying, all they can do is sit in a corner and sulk, waiting for one of the other players to convince them to open up – which almost never happens, because the character is usually abrasive enough that others don’t want to interact with them. Now, if you want to just observe the game with minimal interaction, this type of character may be perfect for you – otherwise, I suggest making your character more interested in interacting with others.

2.      Don’t try to recreate your favourite hero from some other story.

It’s perfectly okay to steal various characteristics, but taking an entire character never works out. There are two main reasons for this: the first is that creating your character is limited by a set of rules, and, as a result, you will invariably end up disappointed when your character isn’t able to do everything the hero can. The second is that, however well you know this character, it is unlikely that you’ll be able to accurately represent them – leading to further disappointment. Borrow and steal, yes, but make the character your own.

3.      Make a character with energy levels you can play.

Playing a super high-energy character that is always chatting and bouncing off the wall is loads of fun – but how long can you keep it up for? You need to make a character that you can actually play the role of, otherwise they will morph into something else that you may not be happy with. Similarly, if you make a character who is incredibly witty, but no one laughs at your own jokes, well... perhaps that’s not a good character trait to have.

4.      Don’t make a character that’s too much like yourself.

Elements of yourself will always show up in your character – that’s how you relate to them. It may seem like a good idea to make a character that is basically you in a fantasy world, but this can cause all sorts of problems – the main one being that it becomes hard to not take things personally. D&D is a roleplaying game, and sometimes it can get pretty intense. If someone (either another character or an NPC) has a problem with your character, and the character is basically you, it’s pretty hard to not take that personally. Not to mention, how will you feel if your character dies? In D&D, that’s a very distinct possibility.

5.      Avoid making a reluctant hero.

Unless the specific D&D game forces your character into the role of the hero, you’ll end up just like the brooding hero. Reluctant heroes don’t want to go adventuring – and there is an assumption in D&D that adventuring is exactly what the players want to do. A reluctant hero is a lot of work – not just for you, but for the Dungeon Master, too. Make sure your character wants to be adventuring – or, at the very least, has a very compelling reason to adventure.

6.      Don’t make a character that is already a great hero.

Most D&D games start off with lower level heroes, which mean they can’t necessarily to all the great things you want them to do in their backstory. If you make a character who is famous dragon slayer, you could very well be bringing them into a story where a baby dragon could kill them. Make sure that what your character accomplishes in their backstory fits what they are capable of doing when the game starts – otherwise there will be a lot of uncomfortable questions about why you can’t perform these great deeds anymore.

            And that’s all I can think of for now. Again, these are guidelines, not rules – one of the great things about D&D is that you can play the role of whoever you like. However, following these guidelines will help you ensure that the role is one that you’ll actually enjoy playing.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

D&D Brings People Together

            When Colleen and I signed up to start playing Dungeons & Dragons at a local board game cafe almost two years ago, I honestly had no idea what to expect. We’d played D&D with friends and family before, and enjoyed it, but the games had never lasted long. It seemed likely that a pay-to-play game with a set schedule would have a good turn-out. It was also a bit experimental for me because I find socialization to be extremely taxing, so it was a test to see if I could handle it.

            We were very surprised when we got to the game and discovered that we already knew one of the other players – a member of a home-school group we’d run some chainmaille workshops with. As more players came in, I was impressed to see such a diverse age range. Here we had a group of people with the youngest being twelve and the oldest in their forties. All had different amounts of experience (both with life and D&D), but we all had interest in the same game.

            The fascinating thing is how well the group got along, right from the start. We were a random group of people who had signed up for this game, and from the moment we started playing it was like we’d known each other for years.

            I may have passed it off as chance, but when we signed up for the follow-up game, the same thing happened. Two of the players from the previous game had been replaced, but the newcomers were welcomed in and got along well with everyone.

            Then, last spring, we signed up for the third game being run by the same Dungeon Master, and it happened again. We had one of the other players from the first game and three brand new ones, and this group got along even better than the others. And when, over the eight or so months that the game ran, two of the players had to leave, the players that replaced them fit in well and also got along with the group.

            Now I’ve seen it happen again, this time from the perspective of the DM – the one running the game rater than playing in it. A group of random people were brought together, from teens to forties. A few knew each other, but they were mostly strangers – yet here they were, playing a game together and becoming fast friends.

            It’s been amazing to experience and observe. We’re generally expected to only get along with people in our own age-group, and it’s supposed to be hard to make new friends – yet, here I have evidence that this isn’t the case. All you need is a set time and place, and a good tabletop role-playing game.

            Dungeons & Dragons brings people together.

Check out my YouTube channel where I tell the stories of my D&D campaigns.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Swords & Wizardry

            Yesterday I had the delightful experience of playing Swords & Wizardry, which is essentially a revamped version of the very first version of Dungeons and Dragons (available for free from Frog God Games). Aside from being a lot of fun, it gave me a glimpse at what the game was like back in the day. Apparently, back then, Dungeons and Dragons was far more deadly for the characters.

            Before I get into some of what happened in the game, I think it’s important to note some major differences between Swords & Wizardry and modern D&D. The biggest difference is that the newer game is more about storytelling – you put a lot of work into your characters and their back story and the game, and there is a big focus on why the heroes are adventuring as they are. The older game is what we call a dungeon crawl – while there is still some story, the primary goal is to fight through dungeons and gather as much treasure as you can. The difference may not seem very big, but it leads into the second major difference: balance.

In modern D&D, when your characters end up in battle, it is almost guaranteed that you can win – because the game is designed to be balanced. S&W is not so kind. It functions under the more realistic assumption that, were you to go out adventuring, whatever you ran into was what you ran into – it doesn’t matter if you’re level one, you can still encounter something like an ancient dragon that you can’t even hit. This, combined with the third major difference, makes for a high mortality rate.

            In newer games, there are a number of abilities and skills to help your character detect traps, secret doors, and a variety of dangers. Not in the old games – no, you have to specifically say your character is looking at something for you to see it, which means it is way easier to walk into traps.

            So, essentially, in D&D you go into the game expecting to make a character that is not all that likely to die, whereas in S&W you go in expecting that your character will die, so you’re prepared to make a new one so you can rejoin. The way characters’ ability scores are rolled – in newer games, you usually roll four six-sided dice, add the top three together, and then assign that number to whichever ability you want it in. In the old game, you roll three six-sided dice and fill in the stats from top to bottom – making them completely random. As you can see highlighted in red on my character sheet below, that doesn’t always turn out very well.

            For frame of reference, the highest roll possible is 18. Anything below an 8 is really bad, and for something to be useful it needs to be 13 or higher. As you can see, this character’s only decent ability was charisma which, in this game, is almost completely useless. However, the one thing it is good for is having hirelings – extra people paid to follow your character around and do their bidding. And so begins the epic tale of Gorbon the Slovenly, the halfling thief – the character with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, and who, starting with only 3 hit points, we all thought would be the first to die (but we joked he’d be the only one to survive in the end).

            While the four other adventurers were spending their starting money on armor and weapons, Gorbon the Slovenly bought a push-cart, hired two men-at-arms and ten torch-bearers (the cheapest minions around, who can’t even fight – I later claimed many of them were hired from an orphanage). Gorbon paid all his hirelings a week in advance and promised them a share of whatever treasure they helped him carry back. He then climbed into his pushcart and sat back to relax as his minions carted him around.

            The adventurers were then sent to retrieve a book from a temple that had been taken over and desecrated by an evil cult. En-route, they stopped to investigate some desecrated shrines. The statues of gods within had been beheaded – only one head was still around. Gorbon promptly ordered one of his minions to put the head back on the statue. However, the moment the torch-bearer, lifted the statue’s head, he burst into flame and died.

            The amount of damage done by the magical trap – hidden on the bottom of the head an impossible to detect – was enough that it could have outright killed any of our characters except the ranger. It was an eye-opener for the players as to what kind of game this was.

            Gorbon the Slovenly, however, was unconcerned. He heaved himself out of his cart, wobbled over to his fallen minion, and looted the week’s advance pay. He then climbed back into his cart, ready to move on. One of the other players jokingly called the dead torch-bearer “Jimmy” and I resolved to name every one of my minions when they died (you can see the list on the righ-hand side of the character sheet).

            I think I’ve given a good idea of Gorbon’s character by now, so I’ll skim to some more interesting parts. In a secret tunnel, he lingered behind to steal four valuable tapestries that the “lawful” characters wouldn’t take because it would be sacrilegious. When some very powerful spiders attacked the group in a forest, six more torch-bearers died and a seventh (I named him Bilbo) fled into the forest, chased by one of the spiders. Gorbon stayed in his cart, shooting arrows, while keeping his men-at-arms at his sides in case anyone came too close. After the battle, he looted his money back from his dead minions and the adventurers moved on.

            At this point, I started doodling Gorbon being pulled in his cart, along with his dead minions, around the outside of my character sheet. Yes, there is a little corpse for each dead minion – they shall not be forgotten.

            They finally arrived at the temple, thanks to the sacrifice of Gorbon’s minions – of which there were now two torch-bearers and two men-at-arms. That quickly became one torch-bearer when to one Gorbon sent ahead into the temple was killed by another magical trap (on the ceiling we hadn’t thought to look at).

            From this point forward, Gorbon became more careful with his minions, as he needed them to pull his cart. The remaining three survived as everyone fought skeletons, wound their way through a secret passage and into tunnels. However, they came to a place that to proceed forward they had to climb over short walls – the cart had to be left behind. And as soon as they were in one of the parallel tunnels (both with the barricades), an enormous ogre attacked the party from behind.

            When the ogre crushed the group’s other (much better) Halfling thief into jam with one blow, Gorbon took his minions and ran – straight into the ogre’s lair. There he spotted treasure and paused long enough to order his men-at-arms to grab a chest of it, then circled back to his cart via the second of the parallel tunnels.

            By a stroke of luck (a critical hit, for which we had an awesome deck of cards to generate special results), our human fighter beheaded the ogre. Gorbon hid the chest on his cart and assured the others that he had been circling around to attack from behind, not merely fleeing.

            The adventurers found a great deal of treasure in the ogre’s lair, loaded it into the cart, but left it where it was and continued on foot (joined by the paladin that replaced the dead thief) down a side passage – much to Gorbon’s dismay, as he was counselling them to return to town to hire more minions with their treasure. They fought some skeletons, then came upon a wight – which cast a spell of fear that caused all but two of the adventurers to run away. One joined his fleeing companions, while the ranger (having been drained to level 1 by the wight which we couldn’t hurt without silvered weapons) stayed behind and sacrificed himself.

            The spell wore off when they were halfway into the woods. Gorbon convinced everyone to go back for the treasure, then go into town – they agreed on the condition that they run at the first sign of trouble. They collected the treasure and made it back to town without trouble, where they bought silvered weapons. Gorbon opened his secret chest to find three potions, one of which was poison and killed his last torch-bearer who was testing them to identify what they would do.

            Gorbon hired twenty more torch-bearers. All the other characters, being “lawful”, couldn’t bear the thought of hiring people and sending them to their deaths, so they set out again. By the time they reached the temple again, three torch-bearers had fled and another eleven had been killed by orcs and spiders.

            We then took a different route in the temple, that led us to a room that spawned four skeletons every two rounds that a “lawful” character was in it. Gorbon wisely told them to retreat, but the other adventurers decided that there couldn’t be that many skeletons. When the cleric died (leaving only two of the original adventurers alive), the remaining three decided to run to the exit on the far side of the room, the whittle down the remaining skeletons once they stopped spawning. Gorbon, still in the first hallway, had his minions pull him all the way back to the edge of the forest while he fired arrows at the two skeletons chasing them. There he was joined by the cleric’s replacement, who was a “neutral” character (he’d learned his lesson) that helped slay the skeletons.

            Back inside, the other skeletons were killed off, but not before one of the three was knocked unconscious. The new “neutral” character crossed the room to join them, but Gorbon the Slovenly stayed behind – his henchmen were all lawful, and he wasn’t going to go on without them (or his cart), and he certainly wasn’t going to let them spawn more skeletons. He did, however, go far enough into the room to loot the dead cleric.

            The remaining three adventurers carried on until they found a large glowing rune. The two “lawful” characters (one carrying their unconscious companion) stood back while the “neutral” character opened the secret door, breaking the rune and, in so doing, summoning an frog-demon which magically changed all but the fighter (the second last of the original adventurers) into its minions. The fighter dropped his unconscious companion and fled – but not fast enough. The frog-demon destroyed him, and walked deeper into the dungeon with its new minions in tow.

            And so it was that Gorbon the Slovenly, he with the worst stats anyone had ever seen, was the only one to survive the adventure. In the end, the game claimed the lives of five adventurers and twenty torch-bearers. A further three torch-bearers fled home, and one was lost in the woods, being chased by a giant spider.

            We still don’t know if poor Bilbo survived.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

DM for a Cure

            Coming up on May 13th, I get to be part of a wonderful event. A twelve. Hour. Dungeons and Dragons. Marathon. That’s right: twelve hours straight of Dungeons and Dragons – and not just for the sake of doing it (although that’s a good enough reason), but to raise money for the fight against cystic fibrosis. It is going to be glorious (and exhausting).

            How did I get involved? Well, the DM of my weekly D&D game at my local board game cafe has a daughter with cystic fibrosis. He mentioned he was planning this event, along with the cafe, and was working on organising the DMs to get it to happen. Knowing that I’m terrible at fundraising (what do you mean, I have to leave the house and talk to people?), I immediately volunteered to be a DM.

            As I learned more about the event, I also discovered there were going to be prizes. Well, I thought, just about anyone interested in D&D will have an appreciation of chainmaille. So I donated some dice bags, a couple dragons, and an armoured teddy-bear. Meanwhile, Colleen signed up as a player and will be raising as much money as she can (the players get more in-game benefits the more they raise). We’re committed to doing our part to fight cystic fibrosis.

            At first I was a bit concerned about how much interest there would be in the event – I mean, it’s a long day, lots of fundraising, and not everyone can make the time for such things even if they are interested. We had four Dungeon Masters, which meant we had room for 24 players – that’s a lot of seats to fill. Then registration opened on April 5th. I needn’t have worried. By the time Colleen and arrived at the cafe for our weekly D&D (6:30pm), over half the spots were already filled. By the third day of registration, every seat was filled. Three days.

            Now I’m just getting more excited as the day grows closer. Not only will this be a fun game to run, but I’m eager to see how much money our efforts raise. And now, you can look forward to it, too, because it will give me a great story to share with you.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

Fish in a Jar

            Today I shall share with you a story from my LARPing days. Earlier this year, I told you about how I sometimes make joking suggestions that people take too seriously. This is a story about that, too.

            Firstly, for those who don’t know, LARPing stands for Live Action Role Playing. The one I was involved with is called Amtgard – a fantasy themed game (surprise, surprise). If that still means nothing to you, once a week my friends and I went to a park in costumes and beat each other up with pool noodle swords. Kind of like Dungeons and Dragons live. It’s significantly more awesome than it sounds.

            So, as part of this game, sometimes quests are run – usually only during events with guests from other groups because more people is better for quests and they take a lot of energy to put together. During a quest, people are split into two groups PCs and NPCs. NPCs are the people running the quest – the monsters and characters that tell the story – while the PCs are the players who try to solve the puzzles and defeat the monsters.

            Now, for years, as core members of our group, my best friend and I were usually NPCs, if not the people writing the quest in the first place. This time, however, we were PCs – which, to us, was an opening to have a lot of fun.

            For a few months, we’d been planning a couple of new characters to play – a pair of eccentric gnomes. These characters had no interest in solving the quest. No, they just tended to be around, sometimes helping, sometimes throwing a wrench in the gears. We planned all kinds of antics, such as fishing in a pile of leaves or setting up a “machine” that enchanted weapons (which really had one of us inside casting the spells). The overall intent was to mess with people enough to make them think we were NPCs rather than PCs and have them wondering what our part was in the quest.

            Well, we got word in advance that this quest was taking place during a fair scenario – where there would be games to play and prizes to be won. How perfect was that? All we had to do was come up with some items that we could trade to people, or give them as prizes, with the hope that they’d be fooled into thinking they were some significant part of the quest.

            I have no memory of how the conversation led to it, but this is where – after the laugh I have that indicates my idea is to ridiculous to do – I made the suggestion I never thought would happen.

            Fish in jars.

            However, as usual, I underestimated my best friend’s willingness to run with my crazy ideas. The idea stuck. Why? Because it was perfect for the scenario. In a quest situation, why on earth would there be live fish if it wasn’t an important part of the quest? We would hand them out to people and they’d go insane trying to figure out what they were for. What more could we wish for?

            So, the project began. We went and scouted fish prices, then went to the grocery store and bought four jars of baby food. It was while my friend was eating his way through these jars that I giggled and said the next thing I shouldn’t have.

            I said, “You know, people might ask what the fish is for, and if they do, you should do this.” I proceeded to mime drinking the contents of one of the jars.

            I should have known. He looked me in the eye and declared that he would do it. He then said that he hated me, because he didn’t want to do it, but it was too perfect an opportunity to miss.

            And so, on the day of the event, we went out and bought our fish. We bought feeder fish because of a combination of them being cheap, and that they were intended to have short lives and we had no idea what would happen to them once they were given away. My guilty conscience – still protesting at the plan to swallow a live fish – hoped that they might end up living a better life than that of a bigger fish’s meal.

            We sorted out four fish into their four jars – leaving the lids loose when we could to keep oxygen in the water – and headed for the quest. The game started, and we set to work. One by one, we went up to random people (one of them even an NPC), asking riddles or offering trades – then presented them with live fish.

            They had no idea what to make of them. The expressions on their faces were priceless. Luckily, no one asked what they were for.

            We were having so much fun messing around that I honestly have no idea what was going on with the rest of the quest. At some point, monsters attacked, and the carefree gnomes hopped inside a protective circle and watched the battle. Then the quest was over.

            The best part, though, is that during the quest, one girl had traded her way into owning all four of the fish. She told us how delighted she was with them and that she planned to take them home to the states with her and keep them as pets. It was wonderful – if not for that, I would likely still feel guilty about those fish to this day.

            At the same time, I’m a little sad that no one asked what the fish were for.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her life coaching website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

My Life and Times of D&D

            When I first started playing Dungeons and Dragons, it was with edition 3.5 (okay, that’s not entirely true, technically my friend and I invented our own version before that, but I don’t think that counts). At the time, I didn't really understand the mechanics of the game since I was being taught on the fly, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it. Because of the sporadic nature of our playing, though, I never really took the time to learn that version of the game, as much as I enjoyed it.

            Years and years later, I started playing 4^th edition D&D with my wife and a couple of friends. I was the only experienced player (except for the friend running the game), so to make sure I could best help my allies learn, I read the Player’s Handbook cover-to-cover.

            I now had an understanding of the game far greater than I could imagine. We played and had a lot of fun, but it didn't last very long because the friend running the game got very sick.

            The next time I played, it was with my family. This time, my wife was the only experienced player, as I was the Dungeon Master running the game. At this point, I’d still only read the Player’s Handbook (I didn't want to invest in the other two main source books until I knew we were going to keep playing) and the adventure I was running was modified from a free one online.

            I did end up getting the other books – The Monster Manuel and the Dungeon Master’s Guide – and I also read those cover-to-cover. Now I understood the game extremely well and my imagination danced with the possibilities of what I could do. Ironically, my family have never played again after that, largely due to how busy everyone has become.

            I did, however, start playing much later with my wife and sister-in-law (and occasionally her boyfriend). Through running a game with my new knowledge, I started to master my Dungeon Master skills.

            Then, over the course of last year, 5^th edition D&D was released. Extremely out of character for me, I bought each of the three core books as they came out. When I read these, my jaw dropped. In essence, it was the same game, but these books contained so much more.

            The 4^th edition of the game has received a lot of criticism – so much so that it almost killed the brand. It was extremely rules-based, designed so that every player would be completely balanced with all the others; no one would be powerful than anyone else. The rules also focused almost entirely on the combat side of the game, which isn't good for a role playing game where the goal is group storytelling. Not really knowing any better, I hadn't seen a problem with it.

            But then, 5^th edition. It went way beyond the mechanics of the game. It went in-depth into character development, world building and even plot structure that I would advise any writer (especially of fantasy) to pick up the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide just to learn all they have to teach.

            More than that, simply reading the book made me desperately want to play the game. Normally when playing games I have particular classes I want to play (usually rogues or other stealthy roles), but this game made me want to play everything. It made me sad, because I knew that, as a Dungeon Master, I was unlikely to ever get to play as a character again.

            I did come up with a solution to that, though. My wife and I have started an experimental game where we’re running the game cooperatively and both playing characters. In addition, we’re using Minecraft to make our maps for playing on/in. So far, it’s working out quite well! In fact, we’re writing it all down, so I may end up sharing the interesting story with you in episodes as the adventure unfolds.

            In conclusion, Dungeons and Dragons is fun for friends and family, 5^th edition is amazing, and people learning to write should read those books. This blog was in no way endorsed by Wizards of the Coast. Thanks for reading.

Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.

If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.