First Published: 2023 November 6
Oh gosh, it’s been a long time since the last time I blogged about dnd. I had a fun campaign with that druid, though it fizzled out for reasons.1
Since then, I’ve started playing pathfinder with another set of friends, and I just had the session zero for another dnd campaign that’s about to start. I’ve realized that I really enjoy playing a simple character in DnD, probably because my own life is less than simple. Barbarian is a class that tends to take a direct path to the solution of each of its goals, which is something that I really like.
This character is a plasmoid2 zealot barbarian3 For my background, I took something that was called like raised by giants, which has the fun effect of making my first attack each turn do even more damage. It’s going to be a fun character to role play and roll play4, and I’m excited to hang out with these friends more.
One consequence of session zero just happening today, though, is that I lost the evening, which is when I tend to do a majority of my writing. I was told that the event would end by half past eight at the latest, but then we started chatting and playing other games. I certainly don’t regret the time I spent with them, for all that it will absolutely make getting to my writing goal today a little more difficult.
I don’t have much more to add about this, so I may as well start brainstorming some information about my character. I randomly rolled myself into Neutral Evil, which I think means that I’m intrinsically selfish but have a normal attachment to the laws. I think that works well with the background I gave my character, who I’m realizing probably deserves a name. Let’s go with Goob.
Goob landed in the wild mountains outside of (insert setting’s mountains)5 when it was a small creature.6 As I grew, surrounded by the giants, they adopted me as one of their own.
I always knew that I was different than the other children. For one, they never seemed to relax quite as much as I did, always holding onto their weird bones. For another, they were all much larger than me. Still, I grew up loved and supported, as much as my parents were capable of expressing what that meant.
In time, I grew older and chose a path for myself. Something about the stark beauty of the mountains called to me, and I found myself meditating on the beauty that I saw. One day, some goblins7 came up to our mountain and disturbed the peace. I felt a divine presence guiding my blows as I grew more enraged, throwing the goblins off of the cliff.
When the fight was over, I found that I had gone into what my people called a battle trance. It did not seem safe for me to stay among them any more, for what if I did something I would later regret while under the throes of a trance? I went down the mountain to learn to control the urges that called me towards violence.
While in the (insert name of whatever political entity the campaign starts in)8, I began to make a name for myself as a sword for sale. Well, to be more accurate, as a battleaxe for hire. I joined with9 my party because (insert whatever plot reason here). My dream is to control my rage well enough that I am once again safe to live with the other giants.10
Daily Reflection:
Did I write 1700 words for NaNoWriMo? I did! I don’t love the way that the story is going still, but I’m hopeful that it’ll start to turn around. If not, eh, I will finish it anyways because I want to practice some skills that writing it will help me practice. Maybe if I start each session with what I hope to learn, I’ll do a better job of writing.
Did I write a chapter of Jeb? I’m about a fifth to a sixth of the way through. I’m planning to finish the chapter after posting this blog, since writing the blog felt easier when I got home.
Did I blog? Wow! Another day with another blog post.11
Did I stretch? Whoops! Need to stretch still.
Am I doing better at prayer than a rushed and thoughtless rosary? My rosary wasn’t rushed last night, but it wasn’t particularly good. I did the Angelus at around noon, but it was somewhat thoughtless.12
Am I doing a good job writing letters to friends? I did end up addressing another letter to a friend last night, and I posted the letter that I wrote on Saturday this morning. That’s technically progress, so I’m counting it.
people got busy and then moved away, to be exact↩︎
which is a race I’d never heard of in 5e. Wildly, it also is not a humanoid, which I suppose makes sense like explicitly, but is a fun thing because of how many low level spells explicitly only target humanoids↩︎
a subclass I’d never heard of. Tl;dr, it gives me extra damage on the first attack of each turn.↩︎
get it?↩︎
I legitimately have no idea, it’s some homebrew campaign, so this whole story is of course only as canon as the DM wants it to be. I think it’s good to consider what my character’s motivations are, on a slightly more visceral (fundamental? low?) level than the DMG often recommends↩︎
Using it here, because I’m going to say that plasmid has no gender/sex. Given that I’m explicitly an amorphous blob that can change shapes if I want to, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable to think that I wouldn’t have any explicit sexual characteristics.↩︎
n.b. I’m happy to switch this for whatever other cannon (or canon I suppose) fodder mook we’re going to be killing by the million in the campaign↩︎
wow this is a fun game of madlibs↩︎
or am about to join with? Not totally sure what the party is getting together over↩︎
hmm not a great character motivation, but I suppose it’s as good as I’ll get.↩︎
I keep forgetting to type ’blog, but I also don’t know if the two words are identical to me. Might be worth thinking about at some point↩︎
it’s kind of cool that I now know the prayer well enough for it to ever feel thoughtless, not going to lie↩︎