Ding's Dump

James was the party face, he had diplomacy up really high and even though he was a teifling he was often quickly accepted due to his eloquence and good nature. He was basically a paladin without the deity aspect. While he was good natured the guy wasn’t cheerful, his background was that his brother had assassinated the lord he was working for and they thought he was at fault and wanted to stage a coup. I can’t remember if he knew it was his brother that killed the lord, but he did take it pretty hard.

Instead of a bird of prey, I made her a much smaller insectivorous bird called a Willy-Wagtail. They’re about the same size as a wren or swallow, with a long tail that spreads out into a fan and are mostly black except for the white belly and their little white eyebrows. I’d done a picture of her for the game and posted it up here ages ago.

Ikki’s probably my favourite as she was created with endless naiveite about the world around her having lived her short life in a secluded village, but the inquisitive nature and extreme friendliness to make her want to actively engage with everyone and everything. No question was a dumb question, and while she was generally polite she had a mouthful of sass and a loyal heart. I was actually worried when creating her that she’d come off as annoying. This was dispelled within the first session of the game.

I’d later find myself running a game later down the line, one comprised of mostly newbies to D&D and who were a little uncomfortable with the roleplaying aspect. I had originally given them a guide in the form of a dragonborn caravan leader. It took me about 20 mins for them to listen to the NPC to start the main quest. While I was aware that they’d need some time to get use to roleplaying, I also needed an NPC that could really engage them, someone they were comfortable speaking to. I quickly remembered Ikki and how well she worked with the party and the NPC’s in my Dm’s game, so I tried and experiment. It paid off, the players got attached to her and she ended up being my forerunning messenger.

If I had to figure out why she worked, it might boil down to a few things.

First, she was cute. Super cute. I used a cute animal that’s slightly out of the ordinary and gave her a higher pitched voice. I didn’t make her too childlike though, she swore, she stole and her battel cry quickly became “I’ll fight you!”

Second, she was friendly. She was naive enough that her first impressions of a person were to always give them the benefit of the doubt. She really believed that a stranger was just a friend you hadn’t met.

Goliath

When I played more PC multiplayer games I often ended up playing the cleric or some sort of healer, usually because I’m pretty good at keeping up with the micromanaging needed and out of aversion for people who were…not as good at that. I knew the role was just as important as everyone else, but I still wanted to hit things for massive damage.

When 4th ed rolled around and gave everyone the ability to heal themselves, this gave me the chance to play something I’ve long thought about: A heavy hitting brute. At the time the party was minus a rouge and I asked if they needed a skill monkey instead but they were happy enough to roll with a surprisingly punchy party.

Now I wanted this character to be imposing. I wanted this person to walk into the room and have npc’s go “Oh Sheeet” when they entered the room. I looked for the tallest race on the scale and I was so happy to learn that goliaths existed. I quickly created my first giant woman and I was so happy. Not only could she hit for massive damage, she had ability’s that helped her take those hits too, a great combination of strength and constitution. She was also athletic as heck, could move around the battlefield like the wind, and counted as a large size creature for moving, throwing, and wielding things. It was great.

I was even more ecstatic when they brought them back in 5e, though with a few tweaks and changes. The auto re-roll ability for athletics was gone, replaced with “no altitude sickness”, and that was fair enough as the ability was a bit overpowered. I love playing goliaths as imposing and rowdy yet ultimately gentle giants.

 Aarakocra

It’s a mouthful, but I love these birbs. I found out about them when the elemental evil supplement came out, the same one that had goliaths for 5e. I hadn’t heard of them before, but was later pointed out they’d been in the game for ages, just not as a playable race.

I could see why, flight’s usually a gift for players that reach double digits and had a bad reputation of being exploited. Still, I wanted to know what it was like, and when the opportunity came I talked with the Dm running the campaign about it with this in mind, and I’m super grateful to have been given the chance to play them. There’s a variant of the Aarakocra rules that makes it so their arms and wings are joined, so you can’t use tools or weapons when fighting. I now prefer to use this variant as it forces you to think about the environment and makes you to be more tactical and grounded.

I haven’t played one as the nomadic monk keepers of the sky that book details. The games that I’ve used them have been homebrew, which gave me the freedom to play them more cheerful and light hearted, that I didn’t have to stick to birds of prey and instead play a tiny insectivorous ball of spunk and sweetness.

Dad saw this and he ended up calling my cousin, asking if he was still using the books that was lent years ago. My cousin wasn’t using them, so he gave them back. One night he came back home from the city with a couple of campaign books and a few copies of AD&D adventure books. The only thing he was missing was a DM Guide, which he ended up printing off the internet (It was the early 2000’s in Australia and we didn’t live in the city, I always felt the further out from the city you get you go back a decade in time).

Dad ran a campaign for us, something involving a desert, it wasn’t one of the more popular ones and I doubt I’d remember the name. We were each given 2 characters to play with and the campaign started at level 8. Mum Played a Cleric and a Paladin. My brother got wizard and rouge. I wanted to play rouge but because I was the more mature one I had to compromise. So I ended up with a Ranger and a multi-class fighter/rouge halfling. Yeah, the multi-class ended up being the butt monkey of the party.

What do I mean by butt monkey? Well if there was a dangerous situation and there looked to be a puzzle out of the way, the halfling was tasked to get it. Strange floating disk? Throw the halfling on it. Small nook out of the way 10 feet up? Throw the halfling at it. Need to bait a creature? Halfling.

We had a lot of fun with it, Dad had to compromise a few times though. I remember fairly early on my butt monkey died. 13/14 year old me was doing pretty good holding it together for her first character death, and probably would have been happy enough to roll up another clone (A full fighter this time) had my brother not howled with laughter and pointed at me, mocking me for having died. Dad ended up making sarcophagi of resurrection in the dungeon, which we would later use as checkpoints. My brother still threw a tantrum when his character died.

We completed that campaign, and I wanted to play more, but Dad and Mum got burnout. I found the books but had a hard time reading and comprehending the layout of the campaign books. In the end I had to be satisfied with playing D&D on the PC and reading books. There were friends in my school who had 3rd ed books who played after school but since they were all boys I doubt my parents would have let me go.

Eventually when the decade gap began to close in the 2010’s I’d get the opportunity to play other pen and paper (nWoD) with people over the internet through the magic of Roll20. Honestly, if Roll20 hadn’t come around I’d still be stuck playing only PC/Console games. The recent rise in popularity of podcasts and twitch games being watched has also brought more people out of the woodwork that want to play. It’s a good year for D&D.