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polychromatic) wrote2020-12-19 08:37 pm
polychromatic) wrote2020-12-19 08:37 pm
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The circumstances around COVID-19 has sapped me (along with much of the world) of a lot of energy and ambition. There are many things I've been wanting to write about in this journal that I haven't been able to bring myself to sit down and try to pull together into a more manageable state.
So - once again - I turn to the highs and lows of D&D.
Today we (hopefully!) concluded Praxana's major backstory arc. I joked that Veit Copperlark was her very own "Princess Peach" - unfortunately plucked out of their grasp right back into mortal peril every time they thought they'd pulled him out of danger. While I generally play Praxana as quite brash and confident in most situations, the absolute terror of possibly losing her dad again after decades of him being MIA absolutely paralyzed me. I couldn't bear for him to die because I knew that she wouldn't be able to handle it. Praxana knew how absolutely devastating that would be, how much it affected her world-view. At one point she had pulled another party member - Zanner - aside, admonishing him for his reckless actions in battles that endangered both himself and others. She didn't want him dying for her family's problems, especially knowing that he had his own quest to find his missing wife. "I've been a bard long enough to know stories like ours more often than not end in tragedies," she told him, "But I'm banking on things being different from us. I want us to have happy endings."
In today's battle, the wits and efforts of my friends in-and-out-of-game absolutely saved my fake dad's life. A brilliant move by John's character - a frog-like wizard - got Veit out of the villain's grasp and the party absolutely decimated the bone devil that was after him. An unlucky (or poorly planned on my part!) sequence of event resulted in Veit suffering so much damage that he had two failed death saving throws and when he rolled an absolutely abysmal "4" on his third death saving throw, I was panicking. Luckily, having placed Praxana close to Veit and by the good graces of our DM, I was able to give Veit my "inspiration" for the game to re-roll, and with a "19" he had managed not to die.
I actually shed a few small tears and had to hide my face because I was so relieved about an imaginary character in our make-believe game.
In any case, this was about as much of a "good end" as we could have had, jumping feet first into a hellscape and escaping with none of our party dead with a hundred or so prisoners released. Sure, some decisions we've made are likely to come and bite us in the ass later, but for now Praxana and her family are alive, no one had to make any major sacrifices, and now she has a possible spell-induced proposal from a dwarven prince????
Ah, D&D!
So - once again - I turn to the highs and lows of D&D.
Today we (hopefully!) concluded Praxana's major backstory arc. I joked that Veit Copperlark was her very own "Princess Peach" - unfortunately plucked out of their grasp right back into mortal peril every time they thought they'd pulled him out of danger. While I generally play Praxana as quite brash and confident in most situations, the absolute terror of possibly losing her dad again after decades of him being MIA absolutely paralyzed me. I couldn't bear for him to die because I knew that she wouldn't be able to handle it. Praxana knew how absolutely devastating that would be, how much it affected her world-view. At one point she had pulled another party member - Zanner - aside, admonishing him for his reckless actions in battles that endangered both himself and others. She didn't want him dying for her family's problems, especially knowing that he had his own quest to find his missing wife. "I've been a bard long enough to know stories like ours more often than not end in tragedies," she told him, "But I'm banking on things being different from us. I want us to have happy endings."
In today's battle, the wits and efforts of my friends in-and-out-of-game absolutely saved my fake dad's life. A brilliant move by John's character - a frog-like wizard - got Veit out of the villain's grasp and the party absolutely decimated the bone devil that was after him. An unlucky (or poorly planned on my part!) sequence of event resulted in Veit suffering so much damage that he had two failed death saving throws and when he rolled an absolutely abysmal "4" on his third death saving throw, I was panicking. Luckily, having placed Praxana close to Veit and by the good graces of our DM, I was able to give Veit my "inspiration" for the game to re-roll, and with a "19" he had managed not to die.
I actually shed a few small tears and had to hide my face because I was so relieved about an imaginary character in our make-believe game.
In any case, this was about as much of a "good end" as we could have had, jumping feet first into a hellscape and escaping with none of our party dead with a hundred or so prisoners released. Sure, some decisions we've made are likely to come and bite us in the ass later, but for now Praxana and her family are alive, no one had to make any major sacrifices, and now she has a possible spell-induced proposal from a dwarven prince????
Ah, D&D!