Doors. Doors are my bane. I swear to god it's always the doors.
Busy weekend with a dodgeball tournament and a D&D session. My body is letting me know what it thinks about that today. Our team came in 5th in the tournament, which is fine cause it's for fun/charity anyway (though some teams take it a little more seriously) though I'm a little sad I wasn't really playing all that well. I think a few of the players' extremely fast throws + small gym + memories of whiplash cowed me a little.
My favourite part of tournaments. Quick Draw: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylKS84hQzKg
I've officially joined the Starsworn campaign as a regular player. I ended up making an Earthborn Trickery Domain cleric with a disadvantage on stealth. Figure that one out.
Mesk was kind enough to set up a 1-shot, especially since I ended up joining a little late (the full campaign is likely close to starting and Mesk probably would have already if schedules lined up a bit better). I feel a little bad too because I was unable to join until about 5:30pm because my dog wasn't feeling super good, but he still needed a walk, meaning I took him out later than I intended. Then I had to change and wash up a bit after because there was water and mud everywhere and half the park ended up on my shirt (and arms and feet and pants and...somehow...on my forehead). As a result, the 1-shot ran for 10 hours and we finished at like...4 in the morning. Poor Mesk.
To his credit though, he did a good job stamina-wise DMing that long. And he CONTINUED to challenge my decision making and creativity the whole time. By 4am though I was really stretching to recall details and think of useful dialogue for extra information. That was my fault though so...
This 1-shot was hilariously ridiculous. It started off with the most nat 20s I've ever seen so close together (unless you count the time Nick crit me 3 times in a fight and Jayde nearly died...and one was on the reroll I FORCED him to do). Anyway, we were way stealthier that we had any reason being and managed to sneak all the way into the ruins and a Starborn camp. Thank god Mesk was feeding me subtle (and not so subtle hints) through the NPC Darian as I think he saved me from a lot of catastrophic actions. Either way, I disguised myself and ended up playing the most dramatic chess game I've ever seen (which included a nat 20 and a 1 from me).
After the chess game of destiny I spent like...20-30 minutes over-thinking what I was going to do about a giant undead golem before I walked into the thing Mesk was probably screaming at me to just walk into and I managed to convince a super giddy Fireborn to roast the undead for me. That said, Darian dealt a pretty devastating blow to the golem and launched it halfway across the map taking two or three buildings with it.
After, I got to explore an underground facility, which had its own points of hilarity. The gimmick with a barrier/shield went right over my head as apparently, according to Mesk, all I needed to do was back into it. This is where the over-thinking issue comes up for me. I do this in video games too (especially puzzle games) where I'll think it's more complicated than it actually is (ex. just...closing a door re. Riven). So again, I think I wasted...A LOT of time, especially when the pressure was on to try and get into the centre. I could have shaved off an hour at least if I had been a little more observant...or thought to investigate it more (for once, throwing a rock at it led me astray).
Long story short, a lot of exploration happened, I climbed onto and knocked over a dresser onto a bug and squashed it, started stealing from statues, opened ALL the doors, avoided a golem drinking Mountain Dew, slammed the door in a bug's face and then touched things I probably shouldn't have touched. Then we squashed two bugs, talked the gentleman in the centre out of trying to kill us and then got him a new body. After some dramatics and a fight where I couldn't get up the stupid stairs and failed all but 1 of the blink actions (which was useless anyway because we just got telepooted up to the top on that turn), we ran outside to catch Mr. Chess Master Bonestaff and turned him into tomato sauce (to Mesk's dismay as he apparently had a bunch of chess-related moves and lines to use).
Aside from my occasional stupidity, the session seemed to go fairly smooth. I liked the premise and the setting, and Mesk found interesting ways to tie my character into the story. The music choices were really good, but the battle music was the best, as I'm a sucker for that kind of thing. It managed to distract from the fact that I was being nibbled on by bugs, rolling around in a sea of broken glass and smashing my face into cliffs.
One thing I'm really going to have to watch out for in the regular campaign is my tendency to comment and joke about what's going on in-game. I know some of the other players (especially when there's more than just one or two) find the chatter really distracting and feel it clutters up the chat. I'll have to 'hold my tongue' a little more. In addition, off-hand comments got me into trouble a couple of times (see: Dresser Incident). I figure if I say something, I have to own it, even if it has unfortunate consequences. I also forgot about a few mechanics (I forgot about the bonus to the dex mod at one time, thought one spell was 8 hours when it was 1 hour, got confused with concentration spells and then screwed up and didn't use Hold Creature when I should have). Roll20 didn't help a few times either when I got confused about who rolled what a couple times. I think I'm going to make a spreadsheet since the word doc is just not cutting it (less scrolling and more windows). I also want to review movement actions, as my character is likely going to rely on being able to move around a lot.
Lots of things to review (including spells), but I'm glad to have had this session to get used to these specific mechanics. I was also super smart and picked a spellcaster to get myself into 5e. I haven't really played a spellcaster before, so apparently I like to make things difficult for myself.
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