#a very cool question and a fun excuse to revisit two of the wildest experiences i've ever had playing dnd

[starshipsandsuperheroes]

1) i accidentally unfollowed you while trying to send this ask, thanks tumblr ui 2) regarding top dnd moments: have you had any moments where you suddenly realize something big about your own character? or like, a moment that sticks out as when you realized that the character had really come into their own and was something more than just you playing the role?

1.) that’s hysterical omg

2.) Yeah I actually do, weirdly enough?  (Also ty for indulging me on this alsdkjfasd ily)  I’ve actually got one who this happens to all the time - she really kinda lives like, independently of my immediate intent, and I feel like I’m constantly surprised by her.

For those that don’t know her, the character I’ve played the second longest is a rogue assassin named Amelia.  Her original name was Amelia Shepard, she started out neutral evil, and the only thing she really cared for was whatever it was gonna take to keep herself alive (yeah i went edgelord rogue it’s fine she’s working on it).  Currently, she goes by Amelia Foster (Foster being our party’s “family” name, which is of import in the world of the campaign), she’s a true neutral character, and while she still prioritizes her own life, she’s been known to take a few more risks for the party.

I remember sitting in Denny’s with my party a few months into playing her and the DM looking at me and saying the words “I don’t think Amelia is capable of love.”  At the time, I agreed with them, and as far as I could think ahead, that was gonna remain true.  She definitely got away from me though, and without me noticing, started taking steps closer and closer to true neutral.

There are two moments that stand out in particular on that path - the Tetanus Orb Incident, and the Karl Marx Incident.  It’s some of the most connected to a character I’ve ever felt while playing D&D, and I’ll detail them below a cut for anyone curious about what those were (to save dashboard space).

(also side note: it’s weird as shit in a very fun way to talk about my own pcs, because i feel like i usually end up doing so in a way where i frequently deflect to the rest of my party, so the last few days have been really interesting in reflecting on like, my own personal experiences dsjfalsdkfjas)

Curious about any of this?  Come ask me about it!

The Tetanus Orb Incident came at the end of a rather weird session.  We were playing in a room we’d never played in before, the majority of the party had been asked to leave the room for like a half hour and go sit out in the freezing cold hallway while the DM and one party member had a talk (in character about things we Couldn’t Know), and then we had come in and to make a very long story short gotten chased by a Rakshasa through a church while ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man played for literally two and a half hours straight in the background.  For the most part, it was a really good time, it was just a lot of weird energy that ended up combining to, I think, set the tone in a very specific way.

We also had these things our boss had given us that, as far as we could tell, were little chalky orbs that could cause rapid onset tetanus.  Amelia was the most bound to our boss, and also deals primarily in poisons, so she ended up carrying them.  Generally the use seemed to be to put them in water and then cause rapid onset tetanus in everyone who drank of it.

There’s a scene that would pretty regularly play out.  Our boss was a terrible person, and hated us all, but for various reasons had it out in particular for Amelia.  We’d get back from a job, get a debrief, and the party would get into an argument with her.  She’d snipe at them, they’d snipe at her, this would go on and she would get more and more agitated, Amelia would say one thing in contribution, she’d set Amelia on fire (long story), the group would get her to let Amelia go, she’d drop it, and we’d go our separate ways until she singled people out to torment individually.  Sometimes she’d set other folks on fire to change things up, but it was a pretty cut and dry encounter we came to expect.  That scene started to play out when we got back from the Rakshasa chase - Elle (our boss) was already agitated from the incident at the church, so it didn’t take her too long to get worked up.

This time, though, she didn’t outright target Amelia.  It was sammygiddings’s Satomi that she turned on.  The room was shaped differently than we would normally have to play, and the physicality of the scene had increased a bit - people were standing, and our DM as Elle was walking between people.  They approached me in character and demanded one of the tetanus orbs.  It was technically hers, so I mimed fake obliging.  And then Elle told Satomi to open her mouth and moved to have her swallow it.

I was in motion literally before I realized what was happening.  By the time I focused again, I was standing too, my hand on my DM’s wrist, knocking it away from sammygiddings’s face.  At first I was embarrassed, because I hadn’t meant to get so into it that I actually, physically grabbed them to stop it, but the scene continued to play out without a word or anyone seeming weirded out.  Elle ripped her hand away, tossed me back the orb, called me names, and all the other fun stuff we were used to from that scenario played out accordingly (hope she’s rotting in hell, even though I know she’s not).

It wasn’t until later that I realized that Amelia had moved, not me, and for the first time ever had put her own neck on the line for someone else.

The Karl Marx Incident was the final domino in the line that started after the Tetanus Orb Incident and ended in... well, character development very few saw coming.  To make another very long story as short as possible, the campaign is an exercise in anti-capitalist theming, which is fucking delightful but also can get very dark, and one of the ways it got very dark was the sudden need to move around five million people out of one of the parts of the 50 million-person city when one of the powerful corporations tried to take over their part of the city via martial law.

Originally, the people in the area wanted to stay there and fight the corporation off, reclaiming the third level of the city as their own.  We went to find them to either see how we could help or talk them into something better.

It probably would have been a good idea to let wizardcowpoke’s Junie do all the talking , in hindsight.  The situation was far more of a setup for her to shine, and she was far more prepared for any sort of charisma skill check (especially at the time) as compared to my Bastard.  I found myself talking before I realized quite what I was doing, though - talking to the people to convince them their ideas of reclaiming the space were bullshit.  

The primary group affected were a union of what the city calls “divers” - the city tends to build on top of itself, and the divers were the ones that maintained the structural ruins that now acted as supports for the current “upper” city.  The group working to take over their level?  The corporation whose primary strength comes its monopoly on the train out to the desert.  Amelia, before I even realized what she was doing, began to rally the assembled group.  They were skilled, she reminded them, and they were survivors.  Fuck UMIC.  You’re stronger as a union than they could ever hope to be.  Go out to the desert, to the mountains.  Commandeer the train, start a new commune, and when you have the strength and resources to do so, build your own fucking railroad.  Take their greatest strength from them, but be patient about it.  You’ll wound them much deeper that way then trying to just kill every base level employee you come across.  With wizardcowpoke’s help, as well as the rest of the party, we managed to convince them to try it the long way.

We ran into other problems from this, including a false hydra later down the line.  But at the time?  The session finished, and the DM took my character sheet for a moment, erased something, wrote something new on it, and passed it back over to me.  My alignment had changed and I hadn’t realized it.

#ty for the question!!! #a very cool question and a fun excuse to revisit two of the wildest experiences i've ever had playing dnd #i've had several super impactful in-character moments where i felt really into it #but only a few where the character like truly developed without me noticing and these were them tbh #wizardsoup #ask