Welcome back to the weekly D&D and Tabletop RPG thread! Here’s a place where we can talk about Dungeons & Dragons or any other tabletop RPGs that you nerds might be into. Tell us about the games you’re playing, speculate about future expansions, recruit your fellow Avocados into new groups, whatever you want.
I thought I’d try to something a little different for the discussion topic this week. A while back I had the thought (because I am that kind of geek), “What if instead of poker, the officers on the USS Enterprise-D had a regular D&D game going?” Of course, we all know that this would never really happen–the crew is all about LARPing on the holodeck, not old-fashioned pen-and-paper tabletop games. But if they did what sort of characters would each officer play?
Captain Picard would almost certainly be a human Paladin, with the Oath of Redemption–the kind of character that always tries appealing to reason before violence. Worf, on the other hand, would play a Battle Master Fighter, probably of the Half-Orc race because it mirrors his own upbringing so well. Riker would play a Half-Elf Bard of the College of Valor, and would use that sweet CHA bonus to seduce every NPC. The party Cleric would be played Dr. Crusher, of course. She’d be a human, too, and would probably choose the Life domain to maximize her healing. LaForge, as the dorkiest officer, would probably play an Elf Evoker Wizard–the most fantastical of these fantasy characters. I had a hard time coming up with a character for Counselor Troi. I’m tempted to say she’d play a Warlock with the Great Old One patron, because of the limited telepathy it provides, but then Troi might actually enjoy getting out of her comfort zone and playing a sneaky Assassin Rogue instead. And Data, of course, would be the DM, giving him the opportunity to play multiple characters each session (and he’d still wear the green visor).
Imagine the characters from your favorite TV show are getting together to play D&D (or some other RPG). What sort of PCs would those characters to choose to play? Note that this is different than asking how you would build this character in D&D, though there’s probably a lot of overlap.
Our AvocaD&D group took a break from Curse of Strahd and D&D this week. Instead, we played through an adventure in a game called Lamentations of the Flame Princess, GM’d by the one member of our group who’s not an Avocado regular. LotFP is a “weird fantasy” RPG that runs using a system similar to D&D but a bit more streamlined in some ways and a bit more complex in others.1
We’re playing a group of travelers, on pilgrimage to Canterbury in England c. 1600. Our party for this adventure consists of:
- Arthur J Raffles, the Specialist (Josephus Brown)
- Crud Bonemeal, the Fighter (forget_it_jake)
- Jane Strangewayes, the Magic-User (The Hayes Code)
- Emeric Belasco, the Cleric (Doctor Nick)
- Thagnar Rockbiter, the Dwarf (TheCleverGuy)
- Jace Lusiphur, the Elf (Wafflicious)
[spoiler title=”Spoilers for The God That Crawls”]
One way or another, the 6 of us were left behind from the main body of the pilgrimage in a small village. We knew we had about a week until another wagon came. The village we were in was very small, with not much in the way of amenities. It was dominated by a large stone church, so we went there hoping to find a place to sleep for the night. As we approached we saw two boys holding a third child down and stuffing slugs down his shirt, saying it was “God’s Love.” They stopped when they saw us coming and one of the boys ran to the church.
The church was very old, with large stone doors and ornate stained-glass windows. We walked in and were greeted by the local priest. Emeric, an Anglican clergyman, began chatting with the priest about the history of the church, while the other members of the party took in the surroundings. The priest told us the church was over 500 years old and had been built to withstand armies. We noticed that the stained-glass windows were blocked from the inside, and the main doors of the church all had large double locks on them. There strange paintings lining the walls of the church, and above the alter hung a crucifix depicting a very tortured-looking Jesus.
Emeric took one look at the crucifix and suddenly realized–this was POPERY! It was a Catholic church! Emeric started to make a bit of a scene, and tried to knock down the crucifix by hitting it with his mace and shouting “Death to papists!” Seeing this, the priest walked out of the church, telling someone to ring the bells on the way. We followed him out, only to see the all of the townsfolk coming out of their doors–and looking very unfriendly. We had an angry mob set against us. Thagnar, remembering that the church was built to withstand armies suggested we shelter inside and bar the doors. Unfortunately, the doors opened outwards and we didn’t have the key to actually lock them.
It wasn’t long before the villagers overpowered everyone. Thagnar, who was attempting to hold the doors shut, was knocked unconscious and the rest of the party was tied up. When we were all subdued, the priest told the townsfolk “the God That Crawls shall not go hungry this night!” We were taken behind the alter, where we were lowered into a 10-foot wide pit will a thick coating of slime at the bottom. From above, the villagers started singing hymns and striking a large gong, clearly calling something.
There were four hallways leading off of of the main chamber, leading north, south, east, and west, all coated in slime. We arbitrarily chose the western path, and it almost immediately forked north and south. The slime seemed a little less thick down the southern fork, so we went that way and almost immediately found a stairway leading down. We decided that going further down wasn’t the best idea, and instead backtracked to take the northern fork. Unfortunately, that path also ended in stairway leading down. On the wall of this chamber, though, someone had written “DEUSEU” in what looked suspiciously like blood.
Confronted with the choice of descending the stairs or going back towards the pit, we elected to take the stairs after all. On our way down, Jane Strangewayes mentioned that the word we saw on the wall could have been directions–“Down, East, Up, South, East, Up.” We all agreed it was possible, and it at least gave us something to follow instead of just casting around randomly. We reached the bottom of the stairs and indeed saw a hall that went east and west, so we turned east. The eastern corridor ended with a ladder leading up, which seemed to confirm Jane’s theory. Unfortunately the ladder was covered in hundreds of tiny bells. We debated for few minutes until Emeric just reached out and rang one of the bells. When nothing immediate happened, we figured we might as well climb up. Arthur, as the sneakiest member of the party went first, and tried to avoid ringing the bells, but it wasn’t possible Luckily, he reached the top of the ladder without incident and the rest of us followed.
At the ladder we could either go northwest or southeast. We continued followed Jane’s path and chose the southeast direction. We came to a large door with another message written on it–“EFFLUGIUM.” Thagnar opened the door, and found a small room with another ladder going up. We quickly sent Arthur up, and he opened a trapdoor that seemed to lead into a storage room in the rear of the church. It was dark and dusty, and clearly hadn’t been used in some time. We could hear the townsfolk still singing in the main part of the church and decided to wait until it was quiet before moving out. After a while, the singing stopped and it seemed like the church had emptied out. We found a door leading east into a secondary storage room, and we noticed a pile of books and crates stacked up in a corner so as to make a stair. Thagnar climbed up the boxes and found a trapdoor in the ceiling that led onto the roof the church. We were able to climb up and escape!
And that was the end of our adventure! We’d managed to stumble upon the correct path out of the maze almost immediately upon entering. There was 3 layers of dungeon to explore and get lost in but we never saw them. We also never even saw what the “God That Crawls” was. The GM later told us that there was a chance that we’d come upon it at every fork in the path, and the chance got higher the more noise we made–but the dice just kept rolling in our favor and the monster never saw us. We all still had a good time, though, and it was a nice change of pace from Strahd.
Next time, we’re going to run another one-shot adventure, DM’d by Doctor Nick![/spoiler]
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