Whenever I do a non-story post (except for the map posts which are the best) I feel like I’m cheating. Then I remember that I only have one reader so it’s fine.
I read a lot of D&D blogs because I am very cool and have a rich full life. Many of these blogs talk about problems during games and many of those problems, in my opinion, stem from people taking the game too seriously. However I would say I prefer too serious to not serious enough.
Roleplaying is by its nature kind of silly, but unbearable silliness is a quick turn off for me in a game. Passing no judgements of course, but I don’t like being in a game where someone says they want to play an Elvis Presley impersonator that fell through wormhole and is now in D&D and has magic blue suede shoes. Let’s take our silliness a little seriously can we?
I like wrestling, which is very silly, and everyone knows that I like it so sometimes they try to inject it into our games when I’m a player. They’ll introduce a magic lucha mask or a +1 Folding Chair into the game. I hate it. Quit getting your chocolate on your peanut butter.
I admit that sometimes I am the culprit of too much silliness. Especially when I first started playing Shadowrun. I’m going to blame other people for that though. The other people in the game were all DEEPLY versed in Shadowrun lore and knew everything about everything. I knew nothing. So I often had no clue what was going on. Plus they characters were often involved in super-secret shit that only they and the GM got to know about so even when I knew what was going on I didn’t know what was going on. So my character mostly did stuff that made no sense. But it was a cry for help.
I’ve been accused, rightfully so, of not being good at bringing along new players – but they were just as bad. Come on guys in 1994, give me a break, tell me something about the campaign and how it works. I play with a dude now who’s really skilled at nurturing new players, I find it fascinating and grotesque both.
One time the Coen Brothers made a movie called A Serious Man. It’s the kind of movie where after it ends you go “whoa, I’m going to have to think about that for a while” but instead you immediately forget that you ever saw it. The internet can probably tell me what the opening scene of that movie was about but I’ll never remember to look it up.
I take this blog way too seriously, but not too too seriously. Such as, it annoys me that there’s a blog that has 20,000 followers that literally does nothing but post how many followers it has but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Not much sleep anyway.
Stumbling on that blog was a fun reminder that if you do something genuine it’s tough to get attention because if you’re serious about something you have to be really good at it. If you do something stupid people can get on board to matter what.
It reminds me of the early days of the internet (I’m old) when a friend I played Warhammer 40k with all the time used to often complain that there was a website that just showed live video of meat rotting. He couldn’t understand why anyone would go to that website – that he went to all the time to see how many people went to it. You see kids in those days websites had little counters on the bottom that showed how many people visited it. It was a primitive time.
I hope in the future when they talk about the internet as we use it they actually do think it was a series of tubes delivering packages. I think historians get most things 33% right at best.
Once I stopped playing tabletop wargames I fell out of touch with that dude because we didn’t have much else in common. That bothers me occasionally, but such is life. If you’re reading this dude, which seems insanely unlikely, how’s it going?
Vagabond’s Staff
This sturdy ironwood walking stick is free of any markings or adornments.
In the hands of a wielder with a home of any kind the Vagabond’s Staff functions as a masterwork club. When used by someone without a fixed residence or landholdings it becomes a +3 Impact Leveraging Greatclub that grants the wielder a +1 luck bonus to skill checks and saving throws. This enhanced form can be planted into the ground and transformed into a guardian as per the Liveoak spell. Once this ability has been used it cannot be used again until a new owner has traveled at least 100 miles with the staff in their possession.
Wanderer’s Boots
These rugged and solid wyvernskin boots are unremarkable and plain despite their exotic material. They are incredibly light and comfortable, with thin soles reinforced by strips of tough hide that provide an unexpected amount of support and protection to the foot.
Wearing these boots grants a +4 bonus on the Constitution checks made to continue running and to avoid nonlethal damage from a forced march. These boots also protect the wearer’s feet as if they had hardness 10. This hardness applies only against effects that directly affect the target’s feet, such as caltrops, spike growth, spike stones, or stepping into lava.
Rocket Cat 