It’s the final countdown! (Bah-nana Na. Bana nah nah nah!) Then last part of this multi-chapter epic that is me, answering an entire month’s worth of Dungeons and Dragons questions in just the span of a few hours and a few thousand words. The journey draws to a close, we cannot falter now, friends!
QUESTION THE TWENTY-FIRST: My favourite dragon colour/type
I bet someone has written some commentary about the colour-coding of dragons and how it’s dumb or racist or something. I agree with half of that. But, it’s probably a necessary evil of having to make rules for things. I just wish it wasn’t so obvious and well known. I digress. I am not a fan of the kinds you encounter in most fiction. Reds, Whites, Blacks, Golds, and Silvers seem to get a lot of the focus. I like Bronze and Coppers, well enough. I to this day cannot remember what Brass dragons are supposed to do or be like. But my favourites are the gemstone dragons. Maybe it’s in part because I’m in school for geology, maybe it’s because they’re less over done. I think it has something to do with pictures like this which is just begging for a caption of George Takei’s “Oh Myyyyy!”
QUESTION THE TWENTY-SECOND: My Favourite Monster Overall
Oh. Uh, this is embarrassing. I kinda jumped the gun in Pt 2 and answered this already. Um… so, I still like the gelatinous cube. A lot. I also like Dragon Turtles.
QUESTION THE TWENTY-THIRD: My Least Favourite Monster OF ALL TIME!
I’ve read the blogs and the lists, and I’ve seen the contenders for “Worst DnD Monsters”. You know what? Flumpth got a bad deal. He’s working with what he’s got, which ain’t much, so cut him some slack. There was a monster that looked great on paper but when I piloted him he was no more effective than a flumpth. Unfortunately I cannot remember what it was, but he’s out there and he knows what he did!
QUESTION THE TWENTY-FOURTH: Favourite Energy Type
…what? Okay, these questions are really struggling to hit 30. I can’t even.
QUESTION THE TWENTY-FIFTH: My Favourite Magic Item
Right now I have two, both from my currently running 5E game. One is my own design, the other is from the published adventure. The first is a wagon that the players have zero control over. I love it because it has simplified so many issues of previous games. I have some rather unreliable players who may or may not show up any given week, but I have reliable ones to whom I feel it would be unfair to put off a game. And so, inspired by videogame RPGs, I created the NPC wagon. The NPC wagon holds a stock of NPCs designed by myself to fill roles. They all have personalities and are builds I wanted to try in the system. If the party is less than full (up to 5 characters) the players can pull as many NPCs out of the wagon as they like, up to the cap. This also explains where absent player’s characters go. The wagon can go over any terrain, squeeze through any hole, and weighs very little so it can be carried by a flying mount. It follows at a reasonable distance so as not to alert enemies in dungeons and is virtually indestructible. It also can be used to stow massive quantities of coins that would not make sense for a player to carry on their person. It has made those minor logistical headaches so much easier to deal with that it will be a staple of my adventures henchforth.
The other is the sentient sword, Hazirawn, for which I have created a personality and written a backstory, since one of my players was actually able to steal the weapon away from the lawful good wizard who wants to destroy it and, while the thief isn’t quite evil himself, his lifestyle as an assassin who kills powerful foes like dragons has more than sated the blade’s thirst. I like the item mostly because of the party dynamics which is has created, as the thief is the only person in the group, including the sword itself, who is unaware that everyone in the group is completely aware that he stole the sword and has been using it on the sly. –Edit– Just wanted to throw in that I allowed the weapon to resize itself with attunement so it is currently a short sword rather than a greatsword, which explains why anyone would be able to conceal the weapon.
QUESTION THE TWENTY-SIXTH: My favourite non-magic item
Uh… I can’t think of anything clever or interesting for this. How about describing exotic saddles and barding to explain how someone is able to stay mounted on weird and random creatures?
QUESTION THE TWENTY-SEVENTH: A Charcater I want to Play in the Future
I mentioned my warlock. He’d still be my first pick. But just yesterday I thought of a wild-sorcerer who is flavoured to be a mathematician who only takes spells with geometry-based areas of effect. Whenever his wild magic triggers he could yell something about messing up his calculations. That sounds pretty fun. I’d probably make him gnomish or the most foppish of high elves.
QUESTION THE TWENTY-EIGHTH: A Character I will NEVER Play Again
The only character I will absolutely not play is not a DnD character but was for a Deadlands game. Thaddeus Black was just my usual archetype of a youth with a troubled past who fell in with dark powers he barely understood, who charmed and lied his way through life. Exactly my warlock character, basically. But from the very first session, he displayed a unique lack of morality. He revelled in this dark world of horrible and terrible things, and he and I loved it. I ruined lives, destroyed towns, fell in love, fornicated in the entrails of a man I had killed moments before, lost my soul, fought a god to bring my love back from the dead, climbed the tower of heaven and won back my soul, played my newly-resouled self and his evil doppleganger in the same session, and, finally, when the love of my life was ripped out of it for good, I died too and as I went I damned the entire world that took her from me and it burned around our corpses. I could not have planned to play his arc better than it went. I could not attempt to do it again. And any game I play Thaddeus in in the future will pale in comparison, and so he is retired.
QUESTION THE PENULTIMATE: What is the number I always seem to roll on a d20?
My cousin rolls 2’s with frightening consistency on any dice or dice roller he uses. Scarily enough, this works in Cthulhu as well, where a 002 is a VERY good roll, and even 020 is usually pretty good. Me, I seem to see a lot of 8’s and 13’s. It seems like I’m always 2 off of average, and almost never in my favour. Unless I’m rolling toughness saves for boss encounters in MnM, in which case I have literally rolled as many 1’s as I have run boss encounters in MnM.
QUESTION THE OH THANK GOD IT’S THE END I CAN’T WRITE ANY MORE PLEASE JUST LET ME DIE: The Best DM I’ve EVER Had?
I am sure those of you who are familiar with the persona I play on these forums will expect that I will list myself. I was tempted, but that would be disingenuous to the brilliant DM’s I’ve had the joy and honour to play with. I know of a few, like the guys who ran the Gamma World tables at the local Con who, when one table used a device that could teleport their foes to any other location and the players asked if it could be the other concurrently running table, ran with it and cheerfully doubled up to massacre the second table’s players amidst scores of laughter. Or my good friend who GMed a WoD Hunter game that we played by posting on a forum, who wrote the most hauntingly beautiful, horrifying, and captivating empowerment scenes for the various hunters that I still think of them today and wish I could reread them. But my favourite GM is my best friend. He is, by nature, a contradiction. He is both the quiet, socially awkward kid, and the outgoing class clown. He constantly doubts his understanding of what’s going on, but offers the most poignant insights and ideas when he’s a player in my games. On the rare occasions where he runs a game instead of me, his stories are simple and without the convoluted possibilities and numerous hints, hooks, and false leads I love building into my tangled yarns, but he runs them with such simple and singular enthusiasm that it is infectious. Most of all, he possesses a skill I lack, which is to make (nearly) every combat fun and interesting, with crazy environmental concerns, random outcomes, and unrelenting danger. I should see if he wants to run another session sometime.
End of Challenge
