In-game trying to find a way to describe to somebody a weapon or other item with bonuses, or a character level, was always weird. There were not many ways around it. You just meta-described out of game and that was that. At least it's what I did.
As far as character levels it seemed easier to describe a magic-users. And I don't mean using the dumb names for levels like prestidigitator and charlatan or whatever. I would just have the mages guild use designations for members such as "Ah yes, Peldifferous is a "mage of the 7th circle" or something like that. Spell ability is a good in-world judging gimmick for MU's. For example the Mages Guild in my main city of Tanmoor restricts even the lowest tiers of membership to 4th level or higher (there can be some exceptions for third level, such as a glowing recommendation from a high-level member). Easy enough to test them by having them show proof of appropriate spell ability. I remember having to do this in a Skyrim quest and it was pretty cool.
Of course, some old school classes, such as druids and monks, had some non-spell ability level requirements there probably had to be martial tests for at later levels.
For most other classes; fighters, thief/rogue or whatever, you had to abstract it a bit. How they perform their craft out in the field or what not. Reputation.
Mr. Satan is an example of how imperfect the system can be.
But for weapons and items that give pluses I no longer sweat it. I've recently started just letting characters understand what the numbers mean. An amulet of Extra AC that is +1 is almost useless. But a +5 one is certainly something you want to count on in a big battle. A shield with such even more. A plus 1 sword is about the same as an exceptionally crafted one, but a +3 is decent magic. It makes a difference.
A character only needs experiment a little to understand its magical quality. "Hey, I think this dagger is +2."
Any other abilites the item may have is another matter. However its done, identify spell or what not, I don't really like to spend a lot of time on more minor items. If they have some kind of meaning beyond a little help in battle, I spend more time on it. But "hey, it seems like it is maybe a +3 axe" and getting on with the game is usually good enough for my players. And a little metagaming sneaking in never hurt anybody. YMMV.
Not that I am in a salacious state of mind or anything, but after posting about male players and their D&D their character sex lives, I was thinking of some other situations in games related to females and their female characters in my games. I mean, their characters are fully capable of seeking romance, and sometimes they do.
IMO though, there is a big difference between male and female players, and that may reflect real life to some degree. For the guys make believe relationships aren't goal number one. It about their whatever getting their "jimmy" "copped." For female players I found that since my earliest days, it's about relationships and often marriage.
It was usually around 95% of the time with NPC's. Sure, the were very often sort of stand out, heroic NPC's that they met, or were around for whatever reason. But I remember in a campaign around 10 years ago one of my players characters, a female fighter who grew up with lots of brothers in a military family, had met a somewhat non-descript soldier NPC in the course of the campaign and dated him briefly before heading in the Underdark for The Night Below. During the course of that, the characters found a deck of many things. A couple of them got wishes, including this female character. What happened next was baffling, humorous, and controversial among the other players (who did not learn about it till way later); she used her wish to have the NPC she fancied propose marriage when she saw him again. Awesome. Some might call this daft; some might call it great role-playing. I'm the DM so I can have no opinion. I do not judge.
It can come from some unexpected places. A few short years ago when I first moved into town I met "B and L," who wanted to do some D&D and were looking for a DM and group to get together. B had some 1st edition experience from the military, and L had zero DnD experience. Well, within a year or two they had become my besties. This younger couple pretty much adopted me. In large part because I was in a new town where I didn't know anybody, it was a godsend.
That Xmas Day they invited me over for booze, food and boardgames. I otherwise would have been home alone on the XBOX, or in a casino. BTW after spending a holiday alone on video games or in a casino I like to have a good cry. Kind of a tradition.
But anyway, we got this little face to face group going. "L" ran a half orc fighter, Emen.
One of very few female half orc images that don't just look like a full orc.
L had no RPG experience, was not a heavy role-player as far as her character, but one thing stood out fairly quick about her. She fancied an NPC and went after her.
OK, here it gets complicated. So I was using The Lichway. It was an eventual destination. But in this go around I had Dark Odo and her gang, a staple of the module, and had them in the city where they met the other characters at a party held by the PC party's rich patron. Just to relieve the fact that all these unconnected groups "just were" in The Lichway, I thought I would expand upon them. Give more gravitas and make it have some sense. So Most of the inhabitants listed in Lichway were at this party. Odo's gang, the four thieves encountered there, etc. They would all hear about Lichway, and most would go there prior to the party doing it. So there was some method to the madness therein. Just a new approach to the dungeon denizens.
One of Odo's gang in the material was Runis. A female chaotic evil fighter. I changed her up a bit. I toned down the alignment to neutral. I had her obsessed with using a variety of weapons (I think because in the Lichway she had a bunch of weapons). And I also had her be a Sandlander from the module, one of this race that once ruled the area but now exist in small villages in smaller numbers. Runis was convinced by Dark Odo that as one of the last pure blood Sandlanders she could help her become a ruler in the area.
Anway, as she was a beach-grown person, I gave her light colored hair and a build like a pro volleyball player. The material also described Sandlanders as "Dour," so I included that in the image search. Here is what I found:
"Dour?" Check.
Emen moved in on her, and the dice responded favorably. I found this fascinating. Not only was L not a deep role-player by any means, but I saw no indication that L herself liked the ladies in any fashion. Though it's true, I've only known her like three years now. But this, to me, was a stand out moment of role-play. That she cared enough for her character to get into a relationship with another shows that she at least cared about the "story." Anway, when the campaign ended Runis and Emen (after some tension in the Lichaway as they were in opposing groups) were living together in the big city.
I really don't know how much of this happens in other groups. I have mostly run for private groups and don't interact with the outside gaming world much. But in the 90's when I was almost exclusively running for groups made up of people I already knew well, the potential for sex among the characters was probably easier to digest.
Though through Roll20 I am coming across more people, strangers, than ever before, and as described in my last post things got a little hot and sexy with a male character and a female NPC. And all my players, male and female, got a kick out of some of the humor that came from that. A situation I can't wait to see more of in coming days. Most of the other characters either distrust or outright hate this NPC. Will he succumb to player-on-player meta-peer pressure? The Discord is chock full of derision for him getting with her.
But outside of all that, and to put a cap on this, I will say that the most important thing to me is that I run an adult game for adults. I want there to be adult trappings along with all the high fantasy. So, when these adult things happen in my games, I'm always glad and consider it a good sign.
Not counting that bard player mentioned last post who made me feel like a pimp for PC's.
In my experience over the decades, all the way back to my teens, one thing seems a constant. Most male players running a male character (or even a female character run by a male in some cases) find it important for their character to get sex. Sure, they can be a Conan type and just throw some coins and gems at a strumpet and go to town. But it seems like kind of a big deal. Sometimes as important to the player as them getting laid personally. I don't know if it has anything to do with lots of D&D dudes traditionally being "incel," though a decent number of D&D wonks of my generation have had marriages and children and all that (personally I'm a long-avowed hedonist; I have two older brothers who had kids and that didn't always look like fun to me).
An example here, one I experienced for almost 10 years. The host of my last group in my hometown up to around 4 years ago, ran a bard in a long campaign of mine where I used the great Night Below module, and beyond. These characters were played long enough to hit higher level, which is rare for me. So here is this bard character, with a name that should be emblazoned in my mind but I just cannot remember (my brain is pretty good at healing from trauma. Or maybe its just early onset dementia) the name. Anyway "horny bard" was constantly on the make. The player put a lot of his focus on the character getting nookie. And what can you do? If a character is flashy and has a good charisma, you have to let the chances be there. Well, I guess you don't. But I run a game that I like to consider heavy on the emergent (love that word), and where possibilities are open. So I let the dice with modifiers be my guide.
But whatever it is, I didn't always like it. I had to be "OK, look dude, we don't need to go into more than the basic description of what is happening. I'm not the actual NPC girl, you dig?" It was all in good fun, with a nice dash of "whatevs," but honestly as time wore on in this campaign, I felt like a pimp for this player character.
But that really isn't often the case. Besides the aforementioned Conan style whoring, if you run a game where you allow role-play to pan out a bit, relationships happen. Maybe between a PC and an NPC, and maybe a bit more rarely (in my game anyway) a couple of characters hook up. It can go to extremes. Such as any girlfriend I have playing in my games from my late teens to my early 20's. If one of my NPC's hooked up with one of a GF's characters, well, that is a bit more in the way of intimate possibilities. I mean, a bit of role-play happening at night when the game is over and everybody is gone is something I experienced a bit of, and I'm sure I'm not alone there. And when I was around 20 something there was about as an extreme example as you are going to get.
I had two gaming friends who had started college at UCLA. So we had a game at their large dorm apartment. Them, me, and another friend of mine. And my GF at the time I think. We all knew each other from the year or so before at Santa Monica College and all of us had played together many times. All except this other girl present I didn't know. She was a super cutey, and she wanted to play. A couple hours into the game, it was clear she was flirting hard with my non-UCLA buddy "K," and he was responding to it. This girl was staying with the two UCLA guys. She was a student there, but something happened where she got tossed out of her place, and they were letting her stay a few days. They made it clear why they were doing that to me a day or two later when I asked about their behavior. They wanted a shot at her. Keep in mind these were some pretty nerdly dudes. Like Revenge of the Nerds level, more or less. But even at that age I found it kind of shitty that they were letting a gal stay there in hopes of hitting it. It was a different time.
Honestly, they didn't look much different than this.
Anway, the flirting was going on in character, and it evolved into the real deal. K and the hottie adjourned upstairs to the spare room before the game was even over. I was loving it, but my other pals weren't feeling it. Though I was over the moon. Me and my pal K had a song from the great film Twins we sang to the other when we were making time with a gal:
Jealousy is a powerful emotion. An old man on a barstool (where I got all my best young advice) once told me "Jealousy is like being seasick. You think you are dying and everybody else is laughing."
One of the guys went upstairs and weirdly put a lit candle in front of the door. Maybe a Catholic curse? But it soon escalated to the door getting kicked in and the loving was broken up. It was for sure a ridiculous situation, but I guess it shows an extreme case of what I am talking about. It coming into real life. But boy oh boy, how often has something like this happened. For me, at the time, I was all like "I must be the greatest DM of all time." But of course, if that was true, I'd have been the one upstairs bringing sexy back.
FYI I was only friends with the UCLA nerds another year or so, while King K is a bestie to this very day.
But OK, why am I posting about this? Well, in this last Wed night session, some sexy got brought back. Uh, in game, not in real life. Now that I have retired from face to face to do Roll20, the odds of hookups are a bit light.
The fight with goblins was over from the previous game, and all that was left was to pick up the pieces and head back to town. The player of the Shadow Elf ranger was hit with Covid, so he was out. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, he was kind of a murderous mind about killing Relanis and Demul, a couple of ladies who had more or less "Stanned" (stalked) the party since game one. Though all the characters were suspicious (Especially Callie, the cookie making village girl, who seemed to be in large part the focus of the "Odd Couple's" attentions). But even though they had recruited the characters to explore some nearby caves with them, Mr. Shadow Elf ranger seemed to be close to drawing his blade to slay them, especially the albino dwarf Demul, who had the ability to raise dead with a flute and seemed obsessed with doing it whenever possible (Shadow Elf has a hatred for undead, and thus a hatred for her).
You would think this was right up a Shadow Elf's alley.
But he had to miss the game, so the Odd Couple were not in much danger really. But when returning to town I had Relanis be afraid that Shadow Elf was lurking around waiting to kill them. So she used her most powerful weapon to gain a guard for the night. She asked Zip the young fighter (who grew up with Callie in a small village) to walk her to her room. How could he resist? And how could he resist her slow seduction in the boarding house room when she had him take off his shirt so she could use a washcloth to get some goblin blood and mud off him? Though disfigured and partially crippled from a childhood fire and wearing a mask, she was quite lovely and rocked a 17 charisma (and a bard who cast inspiration on him in the caves). In a previous game she had bought him dinner, and they got to know each other. He was the only character who didn't distrust her. Blind, stinking, simple, ding dong, doo dah naivety. And she was a several years older, university educated woman from the big city.
Having half your face burned off makes you no less sexy.
Here's M, the Callie players, recap of this last session:
"The group finally leaves the goblin caves, Ton’Rial parts ways and the rest go back to town without him. Halfway back Relanis begs Zip to walk her home, just him… The three others watch as Zip walks with her back to the place they’re staying, goes upstairs and they watch as the lights come on and go out and still no Zip… They go back to camp leaving Zip to spend the night. Callie mentions she’ll be back in the morning unless Zip comes back to camp. The group (minus Zip) goes back to the caravan and has a long rest. Welcome to lvl 3
The next day is a holiday. The Great Autumn Hunt, Callie doesn’t care, she gets up and marches into town to fetch Zip. She has a conversation with Demul briefly before being let into the building. Callie retrieves Zip and goes back to the Caravan. Once we are back, we begin to work, once work is done, we are offered an opportunity to help Howard the Wine Merchant. (Probably not his real name, but has forgotten it.) He wants us to go on an escort mission. We will go with him to a deserted town to pick up some wine he wants. "
Anyway, it was hilarious. Zip was upstairs losing his virginity, while all the others hid in hedges across the street wondering if he was being murdered or something. It was like something from a Porky's movie.
Callie stews. Her best friend is with what could be a horrible foe of theirs, but she is powerless about what her bestie was up there doing. The next morning, she threw her chainmail shirt over her bodice and marched to the boarding house and fetches her grinning and dehydrated childhood friend away from the witchy woman.
This was amazingly the first session I've run in many years where there was no combat. Sure, we played about a half hour less than usual, but shit. It just flew by for me. This is as good as role-play gets without becoming community theater. Poor "T," her older, no nonsense female dwarf fighter has no skin in the doings of these young fools but had to crouch in the bushes with the others while Zip was getting his groove on.
As his virginity was taken, I gave Zip a nice bardic inspiration to use within 48 hours, while he walked around with a goofy smile and his legs shaking. With the Tonrial Shadow Elf probably back next game, odds are Relanis will be looking for another night safe in the arms of the strong and handsome Zip. Or maybe the halfling druid Tealeaf?
Mmm...naw.
This strange and character development heavy game was really great IMO. And I loved doing my part in making a good and decent PC happy. And I didn't even have to feel like a pimp doing it. YMMV.
When it comes to random rolls for stats, it doesn’t matter how generous you are as a DM, somebody may always end up with an 8 or lower in something. Two such stats and you got a real stinker on your hands.
Grognardia James is doing a play-by-post Dwimmermount campaign through the OD&D discussion boards, and of course he is using the oldest, most basic of D&D. That means, among other things, rolling 3d6 for each stat. No substitutions or eliminations. For any of us who were kids getting into D&D in the 70’s, we know that pain. You really had to make your rolls before envisioning what kind of class you would want. Who wants a fighter with a 7 Str or a wizard with a 9 Int? A lot of stumblebums and numbnuts are being created there. My own guy came up with an 8 Wis and 6 Con! Yeesh. Don’t wanna complain too hard, because one dude got a couple of 5’s. Ow. I was one of the lucky ones to get a decent number in one stat; a 15 in my Intelligence. So of course I came up with an MU (see below to get a gander at my stats, and the history I came up with to explain his shortcomings).
I’m not much of an old school “adventurers are just average/below average tomb robbers” kind of guy. Growing up on comics and heroic literature, I preferred haughty champions for myself and my players from an early age. I think we threw out the 3D6-can’t choose the stat type roll-up pretty quick. I went for the best 3 of 4, put on the stat you want methods. I usually allowed an elimination roll of anything under 9. For a long time I allowed a stat or two to be moved around to be able to allow a ranger or paladin or whatever for somebody, and that was cool. I mean, my games are important enough to me that I wanted my players to have the type of character they were envisioning before the rolls were made. This didn’t create supermen, and 18’s were still pretty rare. It just allowed a half-way heroic group of characters, the type who went adventuring, and had a chance to survive it.
Oh, and the other couple of generous things I do is allow max hit points at first level, and also to not let characters die (for the most part) in their first game. I don’t really know how much of an affect this has had on the mortality rate, but it’s probably telling that characters rarely die in my games unless they do something very stupid or very suicidal. I think more characters have died because of other characters and not because of my challenges.
Back to James’ game, it’s pretty funny that all these stat-deficient characters are getting into a life of adventure. Maybe it really is a mental thing in that world. All these buff, healthy farmer lads tilling the fields and enjoying a peaceful life, and these weak, sub-par types marching by on their way to Dwimmermount, a place more than likely to kill you pretty quick. I mean, what did you expect? You’ve only got two hit points! It’s like the Special Olympics – to the death!
FYI – this is the first player character I have created to play in almost 20 years. I mostly GM.
Thurston, or “Thirsty” to his friends is a 25 year old human and looks like Steve Buscemi. Thirsty grew up in Adamas, where his father and mother own a middle-class tavern called “The Drunken Dragon.” Thirsty grew up there and knows his way around tavern work (including stable). He also knows his way around booze. Like most of the men in his family he is a “working drunk,” but in Thurston’s case he had way too much access to hedonistic materials at too young an age. Although he will imbibe almost anything through mouth, lung, or ear, alcohol is his fave as it is the easiest to get, and quickly satisfies his raging oral fixation.
With a liver and his wits quickly getting shot at a young age, Thurston will be lucky to make it into his mid-30’s unless he changes his happily hedonistic lifestyle. As he is not the first in line to inherit the tavern (has older brother who actually works hard), Thurston decided he wanted to learn the magic arts and enrolled in Wizard School a couple of years ago. Needless to say, he was the party animal on campus. One night recently, sauced with friends at the tavern, Thirsty heard some adventurers talking about an exploration of the famous Dwimmermount area he had heard about for years, and inquired about lending his spells to the expedition.
Thirsty stands out due to the 4 wineskins he tends to have hanging off him under his light cloak. But he doesn’t get smashed “on the job.” In dungeon he just sips whiskey during the day to keep the shakes away. The wine is for sharing to celebrate milestones (clearing that room of giant spiders, finding a new level to explore, etc.). It is all good booze so he double-costed it. Back safely in town or village, all bets are off as far as being professional, and Thurston’s party cry can be heard echoing out of the inn or tavern “It’s slobberin’ time!”
So Cal native, grew up at the beach surfing and playing sports. Got into comics around age 7. Started playing Dungeons and Dragons in my early teens, and have gamed on and off over the decades, usually as DM/GM. I play the highland bagpipes, drums, and occasionally work at California Ren Faires with my hippy world music friends.
