Gaming inspiration is where you find it. Last year after a lovely, almost spiritual weekend in the deep Mendocino woodlands I posted about the moments where my mind went to games that take place in natural places.
Now to do it again. After a long year at work in my healthcare related job (mostly hybrid so work from home, hold the applause) and not taking much time off from it, early this month I drove the several hours to Mendocino. Not to the woods, but not far from it. Some of my oldest friends and some of their Bay Area music friends, couple dozen in all, rented an old 1800's farmhouse (in great condition) right near the stunning sea cliffs and coves of Casper, California; pretty much Mendocino.
I made it an extra-long weekend. Leaving on a Thursday even though we had the house until Monday morn. I spent Thursday night in a small hippy town called Willits ("Gateway to the Redwoods"), in a quiet hotel where both that afternoon and the next morning had the sauna all to myself.
With the area being cold and misty, the town itself surrounded by woods, it was a great way to relax and prepare for an extended party in a house chock full of musicians.
I'm so grateful to still be a part of a scene where once a year or so I get invited to these terrific and exclusive weekends. At least once a year. And for this one I got to the property first and got to check out the house.
nice Night of the Living Dead vibe
There is something very cool about being their first and watching folk roll in and greeting them, beers and other drinks getting handed around (we had to wait a while for the cleaning ladies to get the place ready for us).
But before long the party was in full swing. Rooms assigned (I got my own little love room), friends hugged, and more drinks. Great conversations and catch ups, big laughs, and eventually full-on music sessions.
To many little weekend misadventures to be included here, but on Sunday early afternoon I did a little solo walk to the seacliffs. And of course with some alone time and such great views, some gaming ideas came to mind.
What a great location for characters to explore sea caves. I'm even thinking of having the characters in my upcoming western themed Call of Cthulhu campaign, located in the Pacific Northwest, visit this area. Deep Ones no doubt need to be included!
But yeah, another great vacation weekend out in nature and filled with friends and music. Something like this seems to becoming a yearly think. I don't want to make time fly by, but cannot wait to find out where we will do it next!
People find their fantasy world gaming inspiration in lots of places. Obvious choices (fantasy movies and books) of course.
Some can be odd. Some years ago I remember some inhabitant of the Dragonfoot forums in a discussion about a warehouse hallway fight in the Daredevil TV show excitedly going on about how that scene was "so D&D." Yeah, most dungeons have hallways. But I could not see how a superhero punching thugs in a hallway was a big D&D inspiration. But what the heck. I remember as a teen visiting my oldest brother, a sort of biker tough guy type, in his big house in the mountains and on a lark running a D&D session for him and his wife. They had zero expeirence. It did not last more than a couple hours. Big bro had a fighter in the city who was not long in the tavern before starting fights. He ended up killing a summoned city guardsman and ended up in jail. It was all good laughs. Later we were listening to the Desperado album by The Eagles, and he was like "hey, this is like a game!"
Sure, the album told a story. A western themed one for sure. But the only resemblance to D&D was his character getting in trouble with the law in the session.
But I should not judge. For many years I got a lot of Inspiration from a Grateful Dead album.
In the 90's I was mostly into hip hop and rap. But I went out with a girl from Ren Faire a few months. Heidi was only around 20, but she loved The Grateful Dead, a band that was not on my radar. But on long trips she would jam out to them, and I sort of got into it. I remember going with her and a gal pal of hers to a concert in Oakland, CA. The highlight was them saying we would all take shrooms, but after I took a dose they decided they did not want to so we could drive there. I was flying while they goofed on me.
My favorite song they did was from Terrapin Station.
A great concept story album about a kind of mystical train station full of characters, it would eventually tickle my fancy for gaming inspiration. It's not just about characters interacting, but it's equally (or more so) about the teller of the story. The "DM" if you will.
Here's my breakdown in game terms:
The Lady with a Fan. She has a challenge for you, good sir...
Let my inspiration flow in token rhyme, suggesting rhythm, That will not forsake you, till my tale is told and done. While the firelight's aglow, strange shadows from the flames will grow, Till things we've never seen will seem familiar.
Characters in front of a fire, or a fireplace. Clearly, they have travelled, and are in unfamiliar surroundings. Kind of adventurous, right?
Shadows of a sailor, forming winds both foul and fair all swarm. Down in Carlisle, he loved a lady many years ago. Here beside him stands a man, a soldier from the looks of him, Who came through many fights, but lost at love.
Tells you a bit about the characters backgrounds. In old school style, its brief. They will be more defined by their experiences than their past. The sailor once loved a woman. It's important, because its mentioned. The soldier also has had his romantic entanglements, but clearly, they did not work out well. One sympathizes.
While the story teller speaks, a door within the fire creaks; Suddenly flies open, and a girl is standing there. Eyes alight, with glowing hair, all that fancy paints as fair, She takes her fan and throws it, in the lion's den.
GM introduces an NPC. Or is it a monster? A spirit? Or just a magic user. I mean, she comes out of the fire. She's hot, and she wants to give herself to a man. She is among men, and her tossing the fan to them is an invitation.
Which of you to gain me, tell, will risk uncertain pains of hell? I will not forgive you if you will not take the chance. The sailor gave at least a try, the soldier being much too wise, Strategy was his strength, and not disaster.
The soldier is wary of women. Of love? He is a badass, but has been hurt on an emotional level. He is not into the test. The sailor, maybe remembering that love of the past, wants to gain it again. Whatever the test is, he passes it. I like to think its a D&D style puzzle.
The sailor, coming out again, the lady fairly leapt at him. That's how it stands today. You decide if he was wise. The story teller makes no choice. Soon you will not hear his voice. His job is to shed light, and not to master.
Sailor gets the enthusiastic lady. Happy ending? You make the call. The story teller makes no choice. he's running the game, man. He must be impartial. Is the game coming to an end though?
Since the end is never told, we pay the teller off in gold, In hopes he will return, but he cannot be bought or sold.
This story has no end. It's D&D. it goes on an on. Even if the campaign ends, unless somebody dies you never get to the end of their tale. And this DM cannot be bribed with Beer or Doritos.
Inspiration, move me brightly. Light the song with sense and color;
Hold away despair, more than this I will not ask. Faced with mysteries dark and vast, statements just seem vain at last. Some rise, some fall, some climb, to get to Terrapin.
Counting stars by candlelight, all are dim but one is bright; The spiral light of Venus, rising first and shining best, On, from the northwest corner, of a brand new crescent moon, While crickets and cicadas sing, a rare and different tune, Terrapin Station.
And there's some good metaphysical stuff for yah.
Like I said, inspiration comes from different places. Don't judge, and maybe one day I will tell you about how a Michael Jackson song greatly influenced a few games of mine in the 90's.
A little over 3 years ago I moved to the Northwest, where there is a lot of outdoorsy activities you can indulge in, much of it among mountains, trees, rivers, and lakes. Sadly, I don't take as much advantage of it as I should. But I have gone on occasional hikes, bike rides, and even fishing right across the street (I live right next to a beautiful river).
But this last week I found myself on a four-day weekend in the deepest woodlands of Mendocino, where giant trees block out the sun and bears will straight up scratch your vehicle up if you leave food in it.
Every year a lot of my friends in Northern California attend the weeklong music camp called Lark in the Morning. It's been around forever. After decades of going there and taking workshops, some of my best friends are actually now teachers there. Me? Well, a long weekend in the wilderness is enough for this city boy. And that's what I did. One of the gals in the scene (the same person who turned me on to Digital Talisman on Steam the other year) decided to do a long weekend in one of the camps since Lark was once again cancelled over Covid. So she hand-picked 50 people to attend, and I was one of the lucky campers even though I was NOT a Lark person.
It was wonderful, because some of my oldest and best friends were there, most of them part of the inner circle fraternity within our long time Ren Faire music troupe along with me. But new friends were there for the making as well.
So, after a few hours on the road you get to Mendocino, a sleepy coastal town that always seems to have cool air and wispy fog. Most of my drive was in 100-degree weather, but in Mendo it plunged to the mid 60's. Wow. So into the camp, an area that can accommodate over 100 people, so it was roomy.
Man, the trees. Big looming trees. They blocked out much of the sun. The 4-person tent cabin (that I had to myself) was eternally dark inside. Even at high noon you needed a flashlight to see in it.
Showed up in the parking area, and some of my besties were tailgating. Hugs all around. Feeling the love. There were world musicians all over the place. There was a small dining hall with a fireplace, and a big kitchen, and besides the showers and bathrooms it was about as luxurious as it gets. Lots of great music and walking down memory lane with my best and closest friends.
In the woods you might just get the chance to cavort with a half elf bard. Bards dig the Run DMC look...
As a DnD person I of course immediately started getting inspired by the mountain forest. Just to get to the very secluded camp, you spent about 40 minutes going up a narrow dirt road with a big plunge on one side, going as slow as you need to. Then you go down into deep wilderness.
A lot deeper than it looks. I imagined if my SUV went over the edge, I'd get bounced around like a Pinball machine ball in the way down.
The campground was great, with lots of space. And you park right next to the big honking, sun blocking trees...
With a fairly small number of folks, I got my own tent cabin, designed to sleep 4 happy campers.
Behold "The Love Dart Lounge"
At one point I heard a thump of something bouncing off the tent, and discovered my first ever Banana Slug.
But music was what the weekend was about, and the bardic inspirations did not disappoint...
So eating, drinking, smoking, and making merry (i.e. hitting on the hippy chicks) was the order of the day (and night).
And the coffee was flowing 24/7 for when you needed a break from beer and wine.
That mug I DONT need...
But again and again, my mind would flash to D&D stuff. What would it be like to travel through a forested mountain wilderness like this? Without the comforts of clearings with tables, a dining hall and kitchen, and showers?
And really, one of my favorite "encounter in the wilds" image always comes to my mind in such situations.
When I'm in the forest, or just driving over the Sierras, I always think of that giant among the trees. It's a spectacular image.
Really, the nice long weekend was about music and friends, but it doesn't hurt your D&D Heart(tm) to get some of the wilderness inspiration for your games when you are in it.
Since its earliest days, the GM's job was to portray the world along with adjudicating the action. He was in control of the world's NPC's and intelligent creatures. It does not matter how old school neck-bearded wargamey, how Braunstieny, the GM was being in the earliest games. He was acting to a degree. OK, many then, and even now, more describe what an NPC might say over doing a full personal portrayal. But for those of us who kind of inhabit the role of almost all NPC's, you cannot help but it being a little like acting.
Weeell, I sort of fall in between. In a hurry, or using a very minor NPC walk-on, walk-off role, I might just blow through the info he gives. "He comes in and says the high priest will meet you at 1AM at the Whirligar idol in the Park of Statures. He bids you well and leaves." But in extreme cases where an NPC mostly becomes part of the group, I like to have a way of speaking for him. Run him like a character.
This is NOT community theater (though it could be). Its portraying somebody. I'm acting. You run a character with a personality, and you are acting.
I'm no actor. I don't try to be. I dabbled in high school (an important part in West Side Story - here's a hint "got a rocket in your pocket, keep cooly cool boy!). Took some improv in college. Did partly improvised stage shows at Ren Faire for decades and sometimes still do. But no, for gaming I try not to make it about that, and it helps to let new players know there is no pressure for such. For the most part I put a little elbow grease into interesting characters. Old men voices, demon voices, etc. Softer speech pattern for female NPC's. I can do a great Scottish or Irish accent if I have a couple adult beverages (or more) in me. In all honesty I probably could have been a success in Voice acting if I had started early and took lesson. With the success of Critical Role, I can only wish I had. Rolling into a booth in a jogging suit. Knock out some lines then go be a guest at ComicCon. Oh well.😢
OK, so no actor here. But since I first started D&D I got heavy into sound effects. A spear piercing an abdomen. A sword getting stuck in a head. A character falling 100 feet and going splat. It is often greeted with great hilarity, even by the guy losing his character. What has been my secret? What got me started? Well, not Adam West Batman. It was reading Mad Magazine as a kid. Specifically, the works of the immortal Don Martin. I still have the issue with his sound effects spread.
By my second year of DM'ing I probably used each and every one of these (besides the more modern things like the DeWalt "bzzownt" or the hand saw. But these particular sounds are violence gold. I mean, if a character gets hit with a bottle in a tavern brawl neglecting to use the "doont" is a crime against god. I think in one of my rare con games, where the characters were slipping and sliding on floor-poop in a goblin latrine, I used "glitch " and "ga-shpluct" maybe a dozen times. And man, that "sizafitz" is perfect for multiple magic missiles. And yes, I have uttered that sound the one time a dwarf character put a cigar into an elf characters eye. And of course, a GM should look for inspiration anywhere he can. One of my personal faves is the sound of a bad guy dying on the old Johnny Quest show "iiieeeee!!!!"
These are true crowd pleasers. If they don't get a laugh, I don't know what will. And as my second favorite cartoon rabbit once said...
We are living in trying times. We need laughs baked into our escapism. Cheer your players up by dipping generously into these "die laughing" gems.
I’m no stranger to shamelessly ripping off ideas from other mediums to use in game scenarios (I use the somewhat harsh term “ripping-off” because I didn’t always reveal where I got my ideas from to my players).
One example is when I was at the height of my Champions campaigns around 1990. One of my regular players, Gaz, liked to do a little “powder” on a Friday night at his pad in Santa Monica. Gaz was not a drug dude by any means, nor particularly skeevy (just a plain ol’ geek). He just had some friend who gave him blow now and again, and he liked to hang out on a Friday, no party or gathering or anything, and watch MTV and do a few lines. Cocaine was never my thing, but Gaz would invite me over for a few beers, and since I was a ten minute walk away I would cruise over to watch videos and sink a few, and wish I had something else going on in my Friday nights. During that period I was working full time at both the Southern and Northern Renaissance Faires , each lasting more than two months’ worth of weekends, the Northern Faire involving weekend drives each way all the way to Mendocino County that took almost 8 hours (nowadays the I-5 highway has a 70 mph speed limit and the drive would be around 6 hours, but back then, as Sammy Hagar lamented, the limit was 55 anywhere in California). So especially right after Faire season it would take a bit of time for me to get back in the swing of normal socializing outside of the recreated Elizabethan country village. So a relaxing night at Gaz’s drinking beers then staggering back home was a decent, causal Friday to me (Saturday nights I still tried to do things un-geeky, like trying to date non-Faire chicks and hang out with non-Faire people. Going out to local bars and such).
So anyway, with us having so much fun with my Champions settings with my regular group, Gaz suggested we do some solo stuff on the Fridays seeing as we were getting looped anyway. Nowadays I’d rather take a kick in the nads than try to do solo gaming with somebody, but at the time it didn’t seem like a bad idea. So he created a character, Jessie Steel, who was a non-costumed hero, sort of a genetic super soldier who worked as a hero for hire. So what I did, in between many trips to the bathroom (the blow Gaz got from his friends was heavily cut with baby laxative, it seemed), I ran couple of hour sessions for him. And his character was perfect for what I had in mind. What I did was basically put his Jessie characters through little detective adventures based entirely on old episodes of The Rockford Files. It was my favorite show as a kid, and I had many of the best episodes memorized. Rockford, looking for some rich guys missing wife, gets knocked unconscious, framed for murder, and chased by the Mafia, so I just did it all to Jessie Steel, but pumped up with a bit more harrowing combat and martial arts (Gaz was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so most detecting elements he solved had to be handed to him on a silver platter by NPC’s). Gaz was not a real Rockford fan, and I don’t think I told him about my inspirations for those little Friday night games that winter/spring until the mid-90’s or so. He didn’t seem to mind.
Although I came up with tons of original stuff for my games for the most part, there were pleny of examples of homage in my games. There is one example that is my favorite “rip-off.” That’s the Daredevil comic book shown above. It was written by Sci Fi guy Harlan Ellison when current scripter Denny O’Neil was sick in hospital and asked his pal Harlan to fill in for a few issues. These were great comics.
“The Deadliest Night of My Life” had Daredevil following a suspicious little girl who was running around the city streets alone late at night, and she led him to a large mansion in a walled off estate. Turns out the father of one of DD’s old foes who died built the place, and automated it to draw DD in and kill him with any number of traps. Snake pits, shark tanks, electrocution chambers, flame thrower hallways, etc. It was all pretty cool. Daredevil ends up in a room with a big TV, and the deceased enemy “monologues” to him and says why he is doing all this. DD manages to escape at the last second when he figures out the whole place is set to blow as soon as the guy on tape stops talking. Excellent issue.
So I adapted it for a D&D game I was running for my group in the later 90’s. In my game, the mansion owner was a high level mage whose family had been brutally murdered by thieves while he was away. Now hating all thieves, he lured in the characters who were set on looting the place (I was doing a Thieves Guild campaign) and put them through the Daredevil stuff, but all run by magic instead of automation. I think a character died that game, and the rest got out before it blew to hell.
The players loved that game. None of my players were big comic book fans, at least of Daredevil, so I got away with my “homage” scott free. My D&D games tended to be sort of weird (yes, “weird fantasy”) and offbeat, so it seemed like a scenario I would come up with. Some time later I told at least a couple of players in casual conversation about that game, and one of them even asked to borrow that comic (she said something about the game being better than the comic, which while I don’t personally think was true, felt pretty good).
So taking ideas like these, while not my stock in trade or anything, usually turned out quite well. I mean, most old school D&D’ers go to many sources for their inspiration, or outright adaptations. The game itself started as sort of a mash-up of mythology, Tolkien, Leiber, and Vance fantasy, and ancient history. So why the hell not?
I kind of get the feeling I’m not alone in this either. So many great ideas out there to steal!
The last few weekends I have been camping out and working at a California Renaissance Faire, where friends and I do several music shows a day at one of the stages. I’ve done this on and off for a couple of decades, and it is still big fun. Running around in baggy peasant clothing all day, and getting cleaned up and into street cloths for nights of partying out in the woods and under the stars in this amazing village that gets recreated. It’s sort of my mini-burning man. One of the ale stands opens up around 8PM Sat night, and I often hit the bar scene, sucking down 3 dollar Bass Ales fresh from the tap, which is what I like to do when there is no particular party going on that I want to be at, or some girl I am trying to hook up with.
Last Saturday night I staggered back to camp with a few folk right after midnight, and we were sitting around the fairly quiet camping area having a beer and shooting the shit. Suddenly up comes an old friend of mine, shining his flashlight into his pewter Ale mug. Inside was a monstrosity exactly like shown in the picture above. A wolf spider, apparently, with its little baby monsters clinging lovingly to its back. It was around the size of your thumb.
Needless to say, I freaked. I normally like spiders, but this thing is especially brutal looking, and the babies were icing on the cake of fear. I’ve lived in California my whole life, and although not an avid camper I have had countless such weekends in the woods. As others around us freaked when they looked in the disgusto-mug, I thought about how I was going to go to sleep that night thinking about these bad mamajammas toting there tots around beneath my covers, or dangling on the tent ceiling 4 feet above me. In fetal position, that’s how.
So naturally one day I am going to have to have a giant version of this thing show up in a D&D game. But what would set it apart from other giant spiders? The ability to use the babies on its back as missiles, that’s how. Every round the mama could lunch one or two of these things, baseball sized spiders that could latch on to you and inject some nasty poison. Or hell, why could they not explode in a mist of deadly gas? Perhaps act as a firebomb on contact? I dunno, it’s D&D man. But in the game, those babies gotta do something besides look for a free ride from mama.
In my earliest memory of a costume, I was probably around 7 or 8. My parents had only been in the country around 10 years, and dad was still working as a house painter. So my first costume was…a house painter. Easy enough, my dad is not a tall guy and by 8 I was already closing in on his height. I imagine I would have preferred to have been Gigantor or Kimba the White Lion or something like that, but even a crappy mask and a bit of fabric was beyond the reach of my fairly broke immigrant parents at the time. But one thing I loved: back then in the early 70’s you got lots of candy. Every house was giving it out. It was a good time to grow up by the 80’s, because by then it seemed like only one or two houses on a block were giving out treats.
By the time the folks had money, I was a teen and responsible for my own costumes. For a lot of my mid to late teens I worked up some half-assed outfits based on this or that D&D character, especially my first character, a ranger name Arcturus Grimm. I even remember running a couple of games on Halloweens, ones where we all made ourselves up like our characters. At around 17, my girlfriend at the time did herself up as her drow MU, with black skin and white hair and all. She was tall and thin with somewhat Mediterranean features , and it just looked great. After gaming a couple of hours, we all went to Westwood Village near UCLA to hang out and go to a screening of The Road Warrior. I ran into some girls from work ( a Walden Books in Santa Monica) at that theater, and they were blown away by my black-skinned, ivory-haired sweetie.
But by 18 I was no longer really interested in D&D dress-up. I had gone with friends to a convention dressed like the Clockwork Orange Droogies, and we were so popular there I liked to wear that outfit whenever I could. It always tripped people out (by the early 90’s droog costumes had been done to death). I went with some other friends in recent years, around 2002, to a Loscon in Los Angeles, and not only where three of us Droogs, but the girl with us got a red jump suit and worked it as the gang rape victim from the home invasion in Clockwork Orange (but in this incarnation she liked it). Clever idea, but it seemed to freak people out more than trip them out.
Back in my early 20’s I started working at a couple of Renaissance Faires during the year, and all that weekend dress-up kind of satisfied my desire to be in costume. For the longest time, a couple of decades in fact, I rarely went in costume to parties. When I did, it was usually as easy a costume to put together as possible. But in recent years I have gotten an interest in doing decent costumes, especially at Fools Guild parties. FG is an organization of Hollywood people, ex- Ren Faire folk, costumers, and general nutsos in Southern California. Every year they elect a King or Queen out of their ranks, and this regent organizes several parties a year for The Guild. My old friend and current player Terry is heavily involved in decorating these shindigs (I’m sure she is on the fast track for Queen status one year soon), usually held at rented venues in Glendale or Pasadena. As you can guess, there are some damn great costumes at these parties. Last year for Halloween I went to a FG party as a Satanic Bagpiper. Basically just my kilt with a black shirt, red tie, and red devil horns. Easy enough. And for their big April Fools party this year I did a pretty decent Hunter Thompson. At 6’2” and a bit under 300 lbs, I for sure don’t have Dr. Thompson’s body type, but people still knew who I was (although one drunk dude thought I was Jackie Gleason from some old go-go film from the 70’s called “Skidoo”).
For this weekend’s parties, I’m going as a Tap Out Ultimate Fighter (Tap Out boxing trunks and t-shirt, hand wraps and Everlast gloves, a black knit cap with a crucifix on it, fake arm tattoo sleeve, etc), and my date is going to be a ring card hoochie girl for me. As I already have some boxing gear and the Tap Out shirt, I really don’t need to buy anything, except maybe black grease to blacken an eye. Easy peasy.
I actually originally wanted to be Braveheart, but I could not find a wig that I was satisfied with. You see, this party is going to have a heroes and villains theme, and I thought I could be both. Am I Scottish hero William Wallace, or am I evil, sugar-tit loving alcoholic racist and sexist pig Mel Gibson dressed up like Braveheart? Great concept, but the damn wigs killed it. My date for Saturday is an actress who’s agent is throwing a client party at the Hard Rock in Hollywood Sunday night, so if I mind my P’s and Q’s maybe I’ll get to go to that to, and maybe bite the bullet and be Braveheart there if I feel like a different costume in order.
So, what you gonna be for Halloween, and if not you what are the kiddies going as this year? What are the hot costumes for adults and kiddies? Chilean Miners? California candidate Jerry Brown? Prez Obama? The blue dog people from Avatar?
OK, last week the group actually got back to my Night Below campaign. It had been 4 months and change since the last session of it (we just could not get everybody together and had to do alternates), so it was kind of a big deal. I would have posted this sooner, but besides a little bit of mindless kerfuffling the last couple days I spent the weekend at the Northern Ren Faire as the area sweltered under 112 degree heat. Can you imagine? It was like some kind of post-apocalyptic steam punk Elizabethan England. The platemail dudes seemed to be taking the worst of it, and believe it or not there was a pudgy guy in head to toe black ninja gear walking around (hmmm…wonder if he plays D&D, I said wryly). How he didn’t just burst into flames I’ll never know.
Anyway, before the weekend we played the main AD&D campaign, and I finally sprung the Deck of Many Things on the group. That’s right, an artifact I described as “…the ultimate and impenetrable object of true balance; reward and punishment.
I had printed out some decent graphics of the cards from some old Dragon Magazine pdf, and they turned out pretty nifty. Nothing to write home about, but much better than just using a deck of playing cards.
I know the deck can be a big game changer, and even affect the campaign in a major way. But I thought "why the heck not shake things up a bit?" I feel I was just as brave/foolish by introducing the deck as anyone who would pick from it.
All six players picked (I was kind of thinking nobody would), with Paul, the player of dirty girl Lily, declaring she would pull three! Blew my mind. Lily got all good things, including a fighter who appeared to join up with her, and the Moon. She rolled the max of 4 wishes!
The other female character, Terry’s fighter Helena, chose and also got the Moon - and also rolled for 4 wishes! At this point I was numb; my mind reeling with the possibilities that could pretty much end this campaign (which is getting close to the City of the Glass Pool in book 2).
Another character got a keep and an 18 charisma (Vaidno the bard, so handy for him). The Gnome Illusionist Ormac, run by the returning player Ben 1.0 (little Ben, who took several months off because of his job) nabbed a couple of intelligence points in his pick.
The high elf lawful good party MU Lumarin, run by big Ben, got the Idiot and lost 3 Int points! Yikes! Chose again, and had to radically change alignment (I deemed that to be C/E). Poor Ben. I take back everything I said about him. Mostly.
Oh, but the wishes the wishes. Here was where I feared having to “wing it”. You never know what my players are capable of. But no, nothing was done to affect the main campaign. They could not wish the evil city away, but with 8 wishes total I thought they could call upon earthquakes and floods in the main cavern, or maybe wish for a hoard of vermin to attack it or whatever. But no, it was almost all used for personal stuff. Helena made all of hers in secret (mostly ones to improve her own life, in fairly humble ways.
Lily offered a wish to Krysantha the drow if that character would promise to leave her alone in her thieving and other less savory practices (Krys had been giving her a hard time in some games for selfish thievery and bad attitude). Krysantha used the wish to combine two +2 scimitar swords into one +4 sword (on Krysantha’s own draw she got “the Key”, rolled on the sword table, and got a nice “+ 5 defender” sword which made it three swords total, so she turned the former ones into two. Nice, eh?).
Then MU/Thief girl Lily, much as Helena had done, used the rest of her wishes on a couple of personal things that the party doesn't know what they were (and I won't blab here). Oh, she also used one wish to turn Lumarin back into a lawful good dude (albeit one with only a 13 intelligence).
Phew. This ended up being most of the session, and was big time fun and exciting. Really a high energy night with very little combat. Great role playing by my gang. I was maybe a little easy going with the wishes, but seeing as they weren't being used to nerf my campaign, I was feeling a little generous, even letting a couple of stats get mildly raised.
I had wanted to spring the deck on the group for awhile, and finding those printable cards really got my juices flowing. Still reeling about how lucky the party was in these picks, and thanking God really because I didn't want to end this campaign if some smart strategic wishes were made against my challenges. But in the end, personal greed was sated with most of the wishes.
Just FYI, here was my approach. I had the 22 card deck, and a max of 12 cards could be drawn before it went away (if not for other reasons). I let the magic-users in the group (Lumarin and Lily the MU/TH) and also Vaidno (with his bardic lore ability) know all about the deck because it was a famous artifact. I even went so far as to let them look at the DM Guide entry, which did not seem to take away from the fun and mystery of it. After all the picks, 3 picks still remain. And some bad cards just dying to be picked after all those lucky hits.
This night was maybe one of my top 10 DMing experiences! So much fun to wing it on the draws, and to negotiate Lily and Helena’s dreams with them. I have to admit, it could have turned out quite the opposite. This magic item could bring a campaign to a halt. Especially if they have 8 wishes…Jeez. Dodged some real bullets there.
I'm a man of many wishes I hope my premonition misses But what I really feel my eyes won't let me hide ‘Cause they always start to cry ‘Cause this time could mean goodbye - Lately by Stevie Wonder
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.
