The One That Got Away: A Normal Story About This One Dungeons and Dragons Character I Made (Patreon)

The One That Got Away: A Normal Story About This One Dungeons and Dragons Character I Made

Skip this if you're looking for my usual content.  There will be more of that soon enough.  I won't be advertising this on twitter or deviantart or any of the usual places.  I just feel like talking about stuff, and you're something of a captive audience, lol, and I figure that as long as I keep making content that you like, y'all won't mind if I ramble about non ABDL stuff every once in a blue moon.

Don't ask me, why, but I'm in a mood, and I think most of you know by now that besides writing these specific stories, I love the art of storytelling in general.

It's why I like Dungeons and Dragons, because at its core, it's a story game.  There are rules and mechanics and strategies, but those are just used as metrics for how likely it is for your character to be able to affect the story in a manner of their liking.  It's still a story game.

I'm currently running a DnD game (more on that in hopefully a couple of months at most...), but I'm usually the forever DM:  Pers tells great stories, so of course he'd be a natural to sit behind a DM screen and tell stories to us.  And I like it.  But there's something different about being a DM than there is being a player in DnD.

It's two different games, really.  The players are all playing a Role Playing game where they play pretend and get into their character's headspace.  The Dungeon Master is playing a Real Time Strategy game where he is trying to give the players enough information so that they feel like they're part of a story and the world, withholding enough so they feel like they're part of the story and not just being passive audience members, giving them challenges hard enough so that they can feel accomplished, but not so hard as to feel frustrated or inept.  

So I love it, but it's a different activity altogether from being a player.  Apples and oranges.

So here's a bit about my favorite DnD character that I ever got to portray but never got to finish because the game fell apart.  

Ahem.

His name was Bilford Boggins.  He was a silly halfling farmhand living on his family's land and not even fully moved out of his grandma's house.  When I was portraying him, I pitched my voice up slightly higher and did the best/worst Irish and/or Samwise impression that I could do.

He was a simple farmhand all his life, and would have remained so if not for the intervention of fate.  A terrible Hag had come to their land and demanded tribute; Bilford's little sister.  He volunteered to go in her place and was accepted, being lead away from the only life he knew to be experimented in the witch thing's terrible hut.  The only thing certain is he'd never leave that place alive.

No one knows exactly what happened in that hut, not even Bilford.  Maybe there was something deep deep in the Boggins family bloodline that the Hag's rituals and experiments woke up.  Maybe the monster's magic accidentally put something IN him that she couldn't control.

But in a surge of power, Bilford escaped that awful place, leaving cinders behind, and was forever changed as a dragon blooded sorcerer.

From there, Bilford returned home for a time, but quickly set out to a life of adventure and heroism.  It's just what was done in his mind, and he felt it irresponsible to hide away in the relative safety of his family farm while decent folk suffered elsewhere.

That was my third favorite character trait of his: He was all about being "decent".  He had a strong moral compass and dealt in the currency of respect and compassion.  In his mind, there were decent folk, folk who needed help (also decent), and the bullies that tried to take advantage of them or belittled them (decidedly not decent).

Bilford couldn't abide by bullying, and often spoke out of turn or shot more than his mouth off when he saw "the little guy" getting picked on.

My second favorite trait of his was that he had absolutely no idea about magic or how it worked.  

None.  

He WAS magic, but didn't have any idea how it worked on any level whatsoever, even while casting it on the daily.  He just DID it, and that's all he needed to know as far as he was concerned.

When asked how he was able to split a spell that could be cast on one person and make it aim for two or cast two different spells back to back very quickly (something sorcerers in particular are good at) he'd spout of something about making magical shadow puppets so that a spell was fooled into going two directions at once, or lighting a match under the first spell so it ran out of him super quickly giving him time to cast the second.

It was all intuitive to him and explaining how it worked was like a five year old explaining how breathing works.  He didn't know. He just...did it.  Why don't you know? It's kind of obvious, isn't it?

And he'd mislabel types of magic all the time, and not use the rulebook's "correct" terms.  So instead of Evocation, and Abjuration, and Illusion, he'd call them things like "Explodey Magic", "Shieldy Magic", and "Tricksy Magic".  

Admittedly, sometimes being in Bilford's headspace was an awful lot like being in my own Little headspace.

But my all time favorite part about playing Bilford was his catchphrase and what it meant to him.

Every time he met someone new, he'd introduce himself and say "Well, hello there! I'm Bilford Boggins and I'm going to be a hero someday!"  

The reason why he always included "someday" though, was because he had convinced himself that he wasn't worthy of that title.  Adventurer? Sure. He was going on adventure right now.  Hero?  No.  He hadn't accomplished enough to call himself that grand and honorable title.

Within the dynamic of the adventuring party, Bilford was a very powerful sorcerer and on equal footing with his amazing peers.  He was hard to hit, packed a punch, and with a few carefully placed spells he could turn the tide of battle for him and his amazing friends.  

Yet in his mind, in his heart of hearts, he was an impostor.  He'd lucked into a gift and was using it the best way he knew how, but it still wasn't HIS.   He didn't earn it.  He didn't deserve it. He didn't belong.  As much as he looked up to his friends and saw the good in all of them and their talents, he never saw much good in himself.  Decentness, yes.  But good? Usefulness? Heroism? No. Not so much.  

My goal for dear Bilford, that sweet sweet summer child with the power of a canon but thought he held a pop gun, was to gradually be pushed to the brink and form bonds with his party members, and to rise to the occasion.  To stand up to the Big Bad Evil Guy after he finished his villainous villainous monologue and give his own to counter it right before the final battle started.

"You might have yer armies of evil, sir, but I've got me friends and they have me.  And you might be the Great Dark One or whatever ye call yerself with yer fancy titles and what have ye, but they're the Mad Bard, the Chosen One of the Forest, the Font of Endless Rage, and Greatest Swashbuckler Yet Living.  And me?"

(Deep Breath)

"WELL, HELLO THERE!  I'M BILFORD BOGGINS, AND I'M GOING TO BE A HERO! RIGHT! NOW!"

(Start the big dramatic fight against a demon or a lich or dark wizard or something.)

All of this from a concept I dreamt of that started with: "What if instead of Smaug it was the Dragon from Shrek and Bilbo rolled a Nat 20 on a seduction attempt.  What would happen to his descendants?

Sigh...

But that moment never happened.  For reasons I'll not get into here, the game broke up after over half a year, and that opportunity never presented itself in that timeframe.  We never even got to meet a proper villain (and if there was a secret one, they never revealed themselves)  It was mostly just random encounters and "preparing" for something that never happened.

Sigh...

So just another story that never got to be told all the way through.  Such a shame.

Whelp.  That's my story. That's my pitch.

I recently just started to play a game where I'm something of a Know-it-All Misanthrope Wizard, and I'm loving it.  I'd recreate Bilford, but it's a magical college setting and my cranky nerdy human felt like a better fit than a near innocent halfling that barely understood himself in that particular world.

Maybe someday I'll find another setting and campaign for that character and a game that can take me.  Till then, he lives in my head where I keep my nostalgia.

If you play Table Top RPG's or LARP, what are the favorite characters you've invented and why?