This week I was delighted to return to the Black
Country Roleplaying Society. I had to stop going for a while due to childcare
issues, but currently neither Kirsty nor I are going to work in the usual sense
so it’s not the issue it very often can be. The lockdown situation has caused a
lot of restrictions on a great many aspects of life, but ironically in this
case it’s freed me up a little.
 |
This is what my character
will look like eventually...
or something like it. |
So, it was a pleasure to be welcomed back, and I joined a
Dungeons and Dragons game with the Odyssey of the Dragonlords setting. While
the published player’s guide is quite insistent that it’s not based in Ancient
Greece, that’s clearly where it’s drawn some of its inspiration. I created a
female human ranger called Halia with the intention of making her into an Amazon
later down the line; this happens at level three. At character creation, I like
to roll up random personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws from the Player’s
Handbook, and also the background information from Xanathar’s Guide to
Everything – this creates some instant background for the character which is
surprisingly easy to tie into a motivation for becoming an adventurer. In this
case, Halia was raised in a conclave, but at some point, was wrongly accused by
an adventurer of a smuggling and assault, and did a year’s time before escaping
with the assistance of another adventurer. This means she is wanted in one of
the key cities of the game. Also, since I put charisma as her dump stat
(currently at 9) I decided that during her incarceration she was badly burned
on the side of her face and now has burn scars that she hides with her hair
when she isn’t fighting. She’s also quiet, withdrawn and overeats (I rolled up
a surprisingly high weight for her) so there’s some personal issues there,
which I’m hoping will be addressed and maybe even resolved during the campaign.
As for the adventure itself, it took a while to get going, but we ended up
hunting a giant boar which had the potential to wipe any one of the party
members if it managed to connect an attack. Unfortunately, it suffers from a
problem that 5
th edition very often runs in to – action economy. As
it’s only one giant boss monster against five characters, chances are we’ll
drop it before it has a chance to do any significant damage, which we did at very
little harm to us since when it managed to connect an attack, our Dungeon
Master rolled spectacularly low on his damage roll. But we levelled up to
second level, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.
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| These provided more of a threat than the boss... |
I ran into the same problem when I ran Pathfinder: Rise of
the Runelords over the weekend. We’re in the fifth chapter out of six, and the
dungeons in the adventure should be terrifying my players, but as they’re
almost all hysterically overpowered, very little is presenting a challenge for
them anymore. Yesterday, they fought what was supposed to be the hardest boss
in the dungeon, but because of a combination fire snakes and some disgusting
fighter feats, they dropped the boss in two turns and wrapped up the entire
combat in three. I speak no exaggeration when I say the party have done more
damage to themselves than I ever have!
In video games, I had a go with Injustice 2 on the PS4. It’s
a fighting game featuring some DC Superheroes, a couple of Netherrealm’s
characters, and whatever other major properties they license. I played the
original game on the Xbox 360 and I really liked it; this version has more
mechanics and strategies added – not necessarily a good thing for me because
I’m awful at it – but I did note one of the most crucial improvements I’ve ever
seen in a fighting game: The tutorial and training modes offer the option to
view a training video to give a much better idea of what those moves and combos
are supposed to look like, and give a better idea of the required timing! They
require very fast presses though – I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get there.
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