01/13/2025 - A Year of D&D Learnings, Part 1: Following the Example of Flowers
In this place of darkness, may I follow the example of flowers, and find you.
At the top of a lonely hill, in front of a dilapidated windmill, Sheridan Gillespie dies. Sheridan, who ventured into the mists to search for his lost husband Tegan, gets his story cut brutality short by the long claws of a hag monster shooting through his heart while he’s making death saves, automatically making two failed throws for three. Jean, my partymate, a Shadar-Kai Monk, holds me in his arms and swears vengeance! …Though the party’s goals for combat go quickly from wrecking house to de-escalating. A game of Dungeons & Dragons won’t always promise the cleanest narrative closure——improvisational gameplay is difficult to control, after all——but Sheridan’s story is severed from its “proper” ending forever. There is no chance for him to return with his beloved to the forest of Blackbough.
Sheridan was my character, a Yuan-Ti, Circle of the Blight Druid I played as a romantic, with dreams of starting a family. When Sheridan fell, it was wild to see my partymates on Discord cover their mouths on call——”Wait, wait, no fucking way”——while still in the middle of initiative. Permadeath is wild to behold, especially if it’s you. Though instead of feeling terrible about it, I felt like I’d unlocked some milestone experience of playing the game of D&D. The cost of a game well-played, or a life well-lived, is the possibility that the roll of the dice decides just when you get smoked.
This happened in January last year. In many ways, this event of make-believe-snuff colored how I approached D&D, and TTRPG’s in a broader sense, for the rest of 2024.
Cariño brutal
We’re in the middle of Curse of Strahd, regarded by most in the D&D community as one of the most well-written and most challenging adventure modules that Wizards of the Coast has put out. It revolves around main antagonist Count Strahd Von Zarovich, a vampire lord who rules over the sunless lands of Barovia, known to actually interact with the party throughout the story. You develop a weird relationship with the final boss, which I find interesting! The feel of the setting is gothic——a far cry from the Tolkien-esque, Ren Fair-esque fantasy we normally expect from D&D——and inspires dread and terror, rather than heroism. The adventure is known for offing players right from the first session (in a place aptly called the Death House). Curse of Strahd is also no stranger to total party kills. We just had to play it.
So what kind of party rolls up to a demiplane where the sun doesn’t shine? My Druid Sheridan; Seira, a Draconic Sorcerer with a vampire-like condition (played by CL); Solica, a knight with a very good British accent (played by CH); Jean, a Monk with a plague doctor mask (played by N); Carvallho, another Druid with a knack for the mycelial (played by JL) and our DM J, who runs our games with the help of The Forge. O, AKA Idris, a Cleric with a very good cowboy accent, would comes in much later, after Sheridan.
I say our party composition mostly as a formality; in my opinion, party balance is a myth. You can roll up with the perfect DPR-Tank-Healer arrangement, and if the story calls for a Fire Emblem fatality, it’ll happen. Especially if the DM is crafty.
My DM James is highly detailed when describing the appearance our characters’ immediate setting, but withholds information on matters relating to danger. J will describe the guts and gristle of a giant owl’s corpse, its soul forcefully wrenched from its home plane to a dark forest where the trees loom high and grey; he will not however impart the shape of the claw marks, unless a player thinks to ask. Separating these types of information in two, and doling them out in opposite quantities, creates interesting narrative tension, and incentivizes a party play-style of caution, fear, and even grief. Perfect for a horror setting.
Certain behaviors can be hammered into your players with… multiple near death experiences. I won’t go into too much detail, if you’re avoiding Curse of Strahd spoilers, but man. No wonder the module’s legendary; close calls abound. And my party, we really get into it, and play our characters with a mindset of paranoia. Investigation check for traps! Are we being watched? I’ll speak telepathically just in case. Don’t rush in like that. What would I do if you… you get the idea.
We spent so many sessions “acting” more than pursuing narrative leads, which I think is a sign of a playgroup where everybody’s super comfy with each other. I also think that a lot of the richest roleplaying springs from moments of brief stasis, like setting up camp for the night after a long trek, or burying a friend in a nearby forest clearing. These moments of relative reprieve, which punctuate an otherwise grueling journey, give our characters time to process grief, or plan for the next move, or just make jokes and do bits. That’s how you do pacing in a TTRPG, baby!
One time, CL put together a script for a nightmare, where all our characters appeared in their character’s dream as unlike themselves. Like there were sound effects and everything! And our respective copies of the script were selectively censored so only our own parts were readable! Crazy!
Doomed by the narrative
It’s fascinating to me what sequence of steps people take when they put a character together. Barring race and class, which are perfunctory, what comes first? Name? Age? Manner of speech? I knew I wanted to make a Yuan-Ti Druid, but what else would I need to make a person?
Having given J permission in session zero to psychologically break me, I purposely made a character with a lot to lose (the secret ingredients are love and masochism). So of course I had to give my poor OC a beautiful husband with a good heart, and they had a home together, and in my head, on cool mornings my OC would be wrapped up like Selena Gomez in that one pic. The google doc I sent J had things like pet names (e.g. “my little rabbit”). I even kept a diary, with entries that had no mechanical benefit on the game, but simply textured the experience. (“Ancient and modern magic teach us that plants demonstrate photonastic movement–they naturally move towards light. In this place of darkness, may I follow the example of flowers, and find you.”) I even made a playlist. Obsessed!!! But you knew that already.
I’m also fascinated by the process of making a character in accordance to the tone of the setting——whether to match the energy, or go against it. I remember in our session zero, I think it was J who made mention of how one might play an optimistic, hope-driven character in an otherwise hopeless, death-filled environment. Do they remain steadfast? Or do they break? I knew making someone grim and edgy from the get-go wasn’t the move——it’s too easy, and it’s bad for socializing with the rest of the party. Better I think to have a character that at least courts hope on occasion, even when it doesn’t make sense.
But what about alignment? So long is the history of Dungeons & Dragons that with 5th edition, the community now treats the alignment chart as a vestige of a different time. Ideals, Bonds and Flaws are the modern player prompts, and as a DM I’ve personally seen them help create surprisingly layered PC’s. In my case, I really focused on the Bond part. To make a character with a connection to another person, even before the game begins, helps them feel “endemic” to the setting and not just *thrown into the world*. If it were up to you, would you put heat on Ideals, Bonds, or Flaws? Would you allow all three to comprise the primary traits of your character? Or is a moral alignment chart still helpful for your process?
Dread return
Whenever I tell people who haven’t played D&D about Sheridan, the question that follows is usually something like “So, if your character dies… do you just not play anymore? Do they kick you out?” Thankfully no, that’d be crazy. The player can opt to create a new character, and coordinate with the DM regarding how best to fold them into the ongoing story.
I’m currently playing a Goliath Necromancer whose personality I designed to be sort of diametrically opposed to Sheridan’s. Wisława (nickname “V”) is a 5’0”, arrogant, rancorous alcoholic I’ve been trying to play as a heel, getting into scrapes while bonding with the party via a common enemy. She, too, courts hope on occasion. It's been a fulfilling experience, but being able to cast Fireball also certainly helps.
I put out a book last year, and yet engaging in D&D has been the most creatively fulfilling thing I’ve done in 2024, no joke. Right now, we’re in a crucial juncture of our campaign, slowly putting together a plan of attack against the man in the castle. I for one can’t wait for the next game, and how fucked we’re all gonna be when we walk into a room full of revenants. D&D!!!
Ending this blog with a little song I wrote for the campaign, about another death. But that’s another story for another time. Stay tuned for Part 2, where I talk about the game I’m running as a DM: the Wild West campaign.