History of Gaming pt 3 - RPGs

I began role-playing back in high school. This is probably the oldest form of “geek” gaming: PnP RPG, Pen and Paper Role-Playing Game.

A couple friends would get together during lunch, study hall, or after school and play D&D (Dungeons and Dragons). I like Elves so 99% of the time I play as an Elf. I’m broadening my experiences and playing something other than an Elf right now: a Half-Elf (baby steps).

The most notable time was when we went to a State Park and were playing on a table in one of the picnic areas. About an hour in a Park Ranger comes up and tells us they had reports that a group of teenagers were plotting to kill people. He got a chuckle out of it when he saw that we were playing D&D and just asked us to be quieter so others around us didn’t hear.

After high school I didn’t play much. Single games here are there but DM’s are hard to come by and I don’t DM much. I ran a couple Star Wars and Serenity games while I was in the military but people would lose interest or schedules wouldn’t line up so it was hard to get regular games in.

I forget if it was last winter or spring but a friend that I play Warhammer with said he was going to be running a game with a friend of his and to introduce his son to role-playing. He was looking for “serious players” so I said I was interested and could commit to weekly games. If I remember right in the beginning we were trying to decide between using D&D 3.5 (much loved but flawed) or 4^th edition (new and debatably not serious enough of a system). Then he found out about a system called Pathfinder. Pathfinder was created by guys who used to work on D&D and takes all the rules of D&D 3.5 but fixes most of the problems.

My standard class is the ranger but I wanted to try something different. It was decided that, while there would be a good amount of dungeons, we wanted actual role-playing to feature. A lot of gaming groups just like to go in and roll dice to beat monsters, the acting out of the character interactions takes a backseat. We are playing a “no evil” campaign so all the characters have to be good or neutral. So I decided to play a Sorcerer who wanted to be a spy so his magic focuses on disguise and charming others. This is an almost unheard of move by most “role-players” as a sorcerer has very limited spells. This would make me almost useless in combat as I have no offensive spells. The tradeoff is that I have very high charisma and spells to make people either not see me, or like me a lot, which helps out a lot in towns and getting information for our missions. I decided on the Shadow Bloodline as its higher level abilities are very powerful for someone who wants to be a spy. My character is true neutral; he does whatever seems to be best at the moment. I was originally planning to go for either the Shadow Dancer or Master Spy prestige classes so I knew I would need a couple levels of Rogue to get the necessary skills. I decided my race would be Half-elf as they get to chose 2 favored classes to get bonuses in, this would allow me to multiclass easier.

My character’s background is that he is from a noble, but evil, family of the main city in the world who desire to control rulers through spying and deceit. Somewhere in their past the family made a dark pact with beings from the Shadow Plane in order to be granted magical powers. I am the current scion of those powers but my predecessor died before teaching me how to use them. So the family has sent me off on my own to learn to control them. That way if I fail or something goes wrong I can’t be traced back to them as no one outside the family knows they are evil. So I set off to learn how to spy on and control whatever groups and cities I come across. Originally the group was my Half-elf Sorcerer, a Human Cavalier, a Dwarven Warrior, A Human Alchemist, and an Elven Cleric. The cleric is the DM’s character cause we needed a healer. Another player was going to be joining us and playing a healer so this was just going to be temporary. We set up the cavalier as the party leader as that’s what his character would have done, but I started out working to gain control of the decisions and just let him think he was the one actually making them. When we started out I was doing this without the actual players knowing about it but through talking about the game during breaks and from things my character did when theirs weren’t around they soon figured it out. A couple other players joined but most were newer to role-playing and weren’t serious enough or didn’t mix well with the group so we got rid of them. Only the Barbarian is still in the group and we still didn’t have a healer so the DM decided to run his Cleric as a permanent part. We also decided that the alchemist as a class wasn’t working with the group so the player changed to a Wizard.

The Cavalier player had to stop playing due to his work schedule and having a baby so my character actually stepped up as the party leader. This is amusing for me for several reasons. I no longer have to try to control the group from behind the scenes. I just pretend to run it democratically so everyone thinks they get a say in what we do. I think I am also the only non good aligned character. I’m very shady and have been stealing things from people we come across in the game, etc. Now I’m in control of the party inventory…I steal from it all the time. The players know cause I tell the DM but their character’s don’t. I let them have pretty much what they want from it and give them a cut of the money we make to they don’t realize but I take more stuff and money than their characters do all the time.

We are playing through the Rise of the Runelords campaign. Its mostly fun but it does try to kill off characters, one of the guys we ended up getting rid of went through 3 characters. Only the dwarf hasn’t actually died, but he’s come very close a few times. We’ve played through the first couple chapters and so far we are the Heroes of Sandpoint and Magnimar. Through my characters manipulation I pretty much control Sandpoint (what’s left of it) and have set myself up as a noble and friend of the Mayor of Magnimar. We have stopped the murder rituals to bring back the runelords and have now moved on to re-taking a fortress from ogres.

During the beginning of the campaign in Sandpoint the general store owner’s daughter began to try and seduce me. I played along with it to not cause a fuss (though her dad wanted to kill me). She was using me to get attention and social status and I was using her as cover and to get in good with the town. Our tryst continued whenever I showed up in town between solving its problems and she began telling everyone we were going to be married. She started following along when we went to Magnimar so I had to decide to dump her, kill her, or what I ended up doing, marry her. The DM turned her into a Rogue (since I have 3 levels of Sorcerer and 4 levels of Rogue) and I took the Leadership feat at lvl 7 so she is now my follower and a member of the party.

Since the party didn’t have a rogue I took the levels as one since I was planning on it anyway. I just did it earlier that I was planning to gain the combat abilities, trap finding, and skills. I will probably go back to taking sorcerer levels now because the 9^th level sorcerer ability is amazing (just 6 more levels to go) Leveling as a utility sorcerer seems very slow at first. You really are almost useless in combat for the first couple of levels so most of your time is spent trying to keep away from getting hit. Once you can get a couple more feats its ok. I have a light crossbow that I use so I took Point-Blank shot and Precise Shot. Getting to add the rogue’s backstab/sneak attack is nice so I spend a lot of my time maneuvering to get flanking. Having my follower will make that easier cause the DM is going to have me control her in combat so I don’t have to try and get the others in the party to figure out what I’m doing.

Not sure if I'm going to multi-class again into a prestige after all. I kinda like just the Sorcerer/Rogue combo.

The party is currently:

Alyssa, elven Cleric, played by the DM, Lacy

Dolgrim Floorsmasher, a dwarven Fighter/Armor-master, played by the DM’s 10 year old son, Tristan (very good at gaming for a young’n)

Kronk, a human Barbarian/Druid, played by Xander (one of the best role-players I’ve ever met)

Trevor the Phoenix, the human Wizard, played by Mike (DM’s friend and our resident Rule Lawyer*)

Alexandria, Trevor’s young apprentice (follower controlled by Mike)

Lord Jon’lin Sandor, my Half-elf Sorcerer/Rogue

Solsta Sandor, a human Rogue (follower controlled by me)

*When I started playing I was very much a Rule Lawyer (and honestly still am a bit) but once I started to DM I realized how annoying and hard to deal with it is. Now whenever I start as a player with a new DM I give them my pledge to do my best not to.