Our current campaign has now been running for five years in real time. The homebrew world we are playing in is a relatively down to earth world, with medium level of fantasy. Only the races the closest to human are found in it, with lizardfolks, orcs and giant about the most exotic races around.
The region the campaign is centered on is a human kingdom of horseherders, dominant in the area. Just four years before the start of the campaign, it ended a ten year long war with another human kingdom on the west (by a military victory), and a powerful orc federation on the east (when the new kings on each side reestablished diplomatic links, becoming friends in the process). The end of the war war also marked by a rebelion in several of the major cities in the kingdom, crushed by force at about the same time the two wars were ending. One of this city, Kerens, was offered by the king to his nephew an hair, a merchant duke now very busy making his city rich by clever commercial ventures. The newly acquired wealth of the city attracks pirates from the other side of the Vire (a river the width of a small sea) and this city is now fertile ground for mercenaries and budding heroes of all sorts.
The party was created opportunisticly to answer the duke’s call to clear a mysterious tomb, discovered when digging the foundation of an new area of the rapidly expanding city. The party is composed of :
– Judas, a human male, assassin turned warlock, possesed by a patron of a alignement opposite to his own, resulting in a frequent and intense internal dialogue
– Sindri, a human female, wizard with a heavy specialization in cold and ice related spell, who at the time of this story was already starting to radiate cold when she got emotional
– Godrum the Tall, a half dwarf half human from a faraway land, cleric of the goddess of water. More on him later as he will be the one rolling the infamous check
– Kogan, an orc fighter, generaly rejected by the local populations due to the recent war against his kind. His good disposition, honorable conduit, and love of food and music sometimes change their minds
– Brolbogast Winterrun, aka Brolo, a halfling rogue and bard. He is a bit kleptomaniac (he joined the party late in the campaign when they rescued him from a prison), a prankster and the life of any party. He became besties with the orc, Kogan’s druming complementing Brolo’s violin just about every evening whenever in town.
In an early stage of the campaign, a foreign religion got the authorization to open a small temple in Kerens, only for its few priest to be brutally murdered. Traces of powerful water magic was found on site, and the temple of Kara, the goddess of water, was placed in lockdown. Godrum was the only cleric of Kara out of time at the time of the massacre, and was tasked with finding the murderers. This investigation, solved in a solo adventure, advanced Godrum career but traumatized him quite heavily, partly due the brutal execution of the culprits, partly because his two mentors were among them and he felt a debilitating guilt in being responsible for their execution. He got terrible nightmares and woke up every night screaming. His recovery from this took a full arc of the campaign, with one of his friends from the temple acting as a therapist and accompagnying the party in a long term diplomatic mission to that effect. This friend, a cheeky and charming bookworm called Askia, a NPC, eventually became his romatic partner.
At the time of this story, three year ago and about two years in the campaign, they had let themselves be surprised by the turn of winter in a high altitude dwarven city. The whole party, having helped defend the city against an attack of “dragons” (call dragon in our game world, but closer to amped up pseudo-dragon in DnD terms), were hailed as heroes by the dwarves and had been offered comfortable quarters to wait for the return of warmer days and safers ways down the mountain. Godrum and Askia had been offered each their room, but were usually spending their nights together.
At some point during the winter, the group had gone investigate the disparition of the dwarf king’s brother, a scout that had now spent way too long alone in the wild tunnels under the mountains, even by his own standard. They found the body of the prince, who had been killed near a goblin outpost. Long story short, in our world goblins population grow exponentially until the overpopulation pushes them to attack nearby settlements. Despite causing massive destruction due to their numbers, they are then usually slaughtered by their more powerful target, and their now depleted population takes time to regrow, until about ten years later they are again ready to raid their neighbours. But this time, it took only two years for them to attack again. That was what the dwarves’ superhero scout was investigating when he was killed. The party retrieved his body, then continues investigating the goblin mistery. They discovered that the goblin were artificialy enhanced, and their life cycle accelerated, by a semi-goddess straight out of the mythical past of our world. The details are irrelevant for this story, and this arc is still not resolved three years later, but suffice to say that the party devastated the goblin town, in a quasi genocide that shook the party’s sense of good and bad, and are still fueling heated discussion among both the characters and the players to this day.
More to our point, while looting the now emptied goblin town, Brolo, our kleptomaniac halfling rogue, specifies that he pick a bunch of cut rubies, but does not mention them to the rest of the party. We all raise an eyebrow, but we all know and trust each other enough that we just wait and see what he will do with them. Sure enough, as soon as he is back in the dwarven city, Brolo commissions a series of mythril rings with a ruby cut in the shape of a torch (I may have ommited to mention that the group call themselves the Thrown Torch, in reference to their very first adventure in which they accidentaly caused a massive fire in an old greasy kitchen by throwing a torch in it).
Rather than giving it to his friends in person, he decides to sneak in their room while they sleep and place it on their bedtable, just for shits and giggles. He is super sneaky, and manages to silently place almost all their rings successfuly. The next ones are Godrum and Askia. He goes to Godrum’s room first, but by then I already heard Godrum’s player roll a dice, and scribble something on a piece of paper. He shows it to me: “there was a 50% chances. I am not in my room.” Sure enough, Brolo opens the door to an empty bedroom. Askia next.
Now, given where this is going I think I should precise that we are all middle age men, married or in relationship, and most of us with kids. In case my writing skills fail to convey it, I want to precise that what follow was only a bit of friendly trolling, and not intended not perceived by anyone as creepy in anyway. In fact, the wife of Kogan’s player was in the next room chating with a friend of hers, and the two of them couldn’t stop laughing at our antics. This episode partially contributed to her starting playing DnD. She is now a player in an other campaign, Dm’ed by her husband and with Judas’ player and me as the two other players. Now back to our contest in ridiculeness.
Brolo gets to Askia’s door.
I ask: “are you guys asleep?” Godrum’s player roll again. 50% chance again. “No”.
He describes to Brolo that he hears the sounds of Godrum and Askia having sex. They seem in full swing, and not discreet at all.
Brolo then says “I cast invisibility and I’ll wait”. Everyone: “why cast invisibility is you wait?”. Brolo: “I will wait in the room”. Now everyone is suprised and laughing at the insanity of the situation. I am slightly uncomfortable, but I trust him to have something in mind that will be hilarious so i go along.
Brolo: “the moment I see an opportunity I place Askia’s ring directly in Godrum’s hand, so Askia will think he is offering it to her in an intimate and romantic moment.” He explains that Brolo is an idiot with no understanding of love and intimacy, and that he genuinely thinks he is doing Godrum a service by doing this.
Knowing that invisibility lasts an hour, I ask Godrum how long Brolo will have to wait, and I get the answer I was fearing: “Until we get tired”.
Me : “You S O B, you’re not seriously gonna get me to ask you that roll”
Him, with a big smile: “oh yes”. The whole group erupts in laughter at the face I make. I can also hear the girls in the other room laughing and teasing us.
Kogan’s wife : “I didn’t know this game could me like that”
Me: “It’s not supposed to be!”
Godrum: “Well, what do we do now?”
Me: “Ok, damnit! Make a constitution check, and just so you know, they will be a payback”
Godrum: “Well, technically you’re Askia so shouldn’t you roll one too?”
Two constitution chack later, it turns out that the opportunity for Brolo comes almost to the end of his spell; since Godrum tires first, he gets more passive and Brolo gets a chance to try an slide Askia’s ring in Godrum’s hand (his ring was just placed on the bed table already). Unfortunately for him, that’s when fate punishes him for placing me in this situation, in the form of a well deserved natural 1 on a slight of hand check.
Godrum therefore feels an invisible halfling’s hand place the ring in his hand, and reacts by trying a grab on Brolo while alerting Askia. She immediately rushes to block the door, draped in her sheets, while a naked Godrum tries to find Brolo. The prankster just managed to hide under the bed before the invisibility wore off. A furious Askia summons a minor water elemental and orders it to find the intruder; it immediately find him and start pulling him from under the bed. Godrum already started to cool off, and tries to conviced his girlfriend that it is not that bad, and Brolo is just a prankster with bad taste jokes.
In the end, Brolo is literally kicked out the room, and Godrum follows when he tries to appease the still furious Askia. She will reconcile the next day with Godrum, but only several weeks later with Brolo.
Since then, life happened, and while the player still joins us for drinks and parties, I needed to have Brolo dealing with his own business as a distant npc for the past two years in real life. There are indications that his player may soon join us again around the table, though not in a regular fashion, so I am not sure it will be with the main character.
In a tabletop roleplaying “career” that is now approaching thirty seven years, this was the only time I ever encountered that type of constitution check. It was cool just that once, because it was not serious enough, but I am happy there were ever another one of those.
The amazing a-hole who force me to ask for the only two constitution checks of that kind in my entire RGP career has now retired Godrum from adventuring. The half dwarf, now fully healed in a stable relationship with Askia, is the Head Priest of a temple, with Askia as his couselor. The player is now playing a ranger in a new arc of the same campaign, now a level 15 game with only two of the itinial setup. He is also playing in another low level campaign in the same world, and occasionaly DMs for the same campaign as well or for some one shots so I can play too.
More exciting still, we are preparing a kids game for my son and his daughter, 8 and 6 years old respectively. Creating characters this week, hopefully playing very, very soon. Being able to share our hobby with our kids is the best thing ever! But I promise the tone will be very different (a slightly simplified dnd version of fairies and super heroes, it seems 🙂
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