Day 182 - Create a Dungeons & Dragons Character

Date: July 7th, 2010

I may have mentioned this recently, but I'm a recovering WoW player.  Now, there's nothing particularly wrong with playing World of Warcraft.  Its an incredibly interesting and complex game.  The problem with it, for me at least, is that none of the parts that are simple and short are fun.  All the things I enjoyed involved hours upon hours of committed play time to achieve.  I loved being able to raid.  I loved having a high level character with high level gear and a proper build.  That was the challenge for me.  Because of that, and because of the blatant social climbing involved in getting oneself into said endeavors, I didn't exactly go making a lot of friends online.  So I missed out on the social aspects of the game.  

Pictured: The Social Dynamic

Nevertheless, I found myself wondering what it would've been like to enjoy crafting a personality for my character instead of a gear chart and talent tree.  I wondered if my toon, as they're called, would've really wanted to learn cooking, ride an elekk or wield maces instead of daggers.  Moreover, though the best armor may have been purple, maybe his color was orange.  See, some people use WoW to do online roleplaying and others use it to play a strategy game.  I went for strategy and never stopped to think about what kind of man my character would be.

A few months ago, in the midst of this project, school, and family commitments, I quit WoW for good.  I just didn't find myself enjoying it anymore.  That is to say, I didn't find myself having the time to do the things I found fun in the game.  I do rather miss raiding and certain other group activities, truth be told.  Which is why, when Justin approached me about some of our friends wanting to restart Dungeons & Dragons, I was utterly and completely overwhelmed by my inner nerd.  With some dorktastic apprehension, but more on that in a couple days.

I decided (with their invite, of course) to join in all their reindeer games by making a character.  I talked through some of the mechanics with Ryan and Justin so I could make sure I didn't create some horrible abomination to D&D by not knowing what I was doing.  But the part the fascinated me was the alignment chart.  See, the fundamental personality of a player's character isn't in the weapons they carry or the gear they won - its on the chart.

Chuck Norris is both lawful good and chaotic evil.

The chart measures a person's desire to follow the rule of law and their inherent morality (or lack thereof).  If you're lawful good, you're like freaking Superman.  What is chaotic evil, then?  Son of Sam, the Joker, guys like that.  Being that in real life I'm a serious goody-two-shoes (ie: lawful good), I decided I wanted to play around with my inner badass.  I made my character chaotic neutral.  In other words, she doesn't follow the law unless she feels like it and good/evil is more of a logical choice than a moral one.

I found it particularly interesting to muse on what my character would do in certain situations.  With the actual D&D game still a couple days in the future, I had some time to ruminate on how my character should behave at any given time.  What I found is that the jokes about D&D make sense if they're by people without a nerdy bone in their body.  I had to contemplate encounters with monsters, medieval shopkeepers and magic potions.  I know, right?  I wanna give myself a wet willy and stuff myself into a garbage can.

In reality though, D&D is an excuse for grownups to hearken back to the imaginative games of their youth.  While I can acknowledge that some people won't be particularly interested in games like this, I foudn myself really enjoying the exercise.  Remember how I liked to fantasize about being a secret agent/astronaut/lawyer?  Well, its just flexing the same muscle a different way.  By the time I was ready to call it a night, I was super excited for the actual game so I could debut my character's personality.  I may or may not have forgotten to give my character spells, armor, feats and other essentials.  How bad can it be?  I bet a druid can go a whole round naked, with no skills, no weapons and no magic.  I see no possible way that could end badly.