I didn't take any offense to this for two reasons... firstly, the person doing the saying, and secondly, because I also love my dumb characters. I couldn't do dumb all the time, it would do my head in. But I do enjoy my two "dumbest" characters.
So for this week's DnD Character Colouring Book, we're exploring the Dumb Side.
For the record, yes, one of these characters has a lower Intelligence score than any of my other characters and low Wisdom on top of that. The other has Int as his dump stat, sure, but his Wisdom is pretty decent. This is about how they're played, rather than what their stats are. At the end of the day, dumb is a roleplay option.
Firstly there's Vrak. Vrak is a fighter/rogue/ranger goblin who likes to lick things. He licks things he doesn't understand, in an effort to understand them. He licks things that may or may not be food. He licks things he absolutely should not lick. Vrak is a licker. It's what he does.
Vrak also put his armour together from whatever he could steal, scavenge or otherwise acquire, so none of it matches. And when tasked with an adventure that would take him onto the high seas, his only stipulation was that he wanted a "boat hat". Later he turned said "boat hat" into a magical boat hat that he can make produce a frog up to three times a day. This, obviously, involved him licking the inside of the hat, amongst other things.
And as far as I can tell at this point, Vrak's main aim in life is to Be Useful. So he's the character who will not necessarily attack the enemy, but instead go and assist one of his new friends. His ranger spells aren't the premier choices (Goodberry and Speak with Animals), but they suit him.
Then there's Khurg.
I've mentioned Khurg before. Khurg is my dumbest boy, my baby orc and I could not love him more.
He's also fiercely loyal to people who are kind to him, or most of anybody under 4 feet tall. He never remembers anybody's name and usually comes up with some visually descriptive name for them. Unless they're under 4 feet tall, then they're all called some variation of Squishy. Loud Squishy, Pink Squishy, Mr Squishy.
I do let him have the odd moment of brilliance, usually only when nobody else at the table is doing anything and the correct answer is blatantly obvious. Or I've played the module before and everyone else is going off in the wrong direction.
Speaking of DnD... Adventurers League dropped their new "rules" for Season 10. And once again, they are totally unable to get out of their own way. In fact they may very well have been laying in bed, thought their butt was hanging out, got up to check if it was, discovered it wasn't and got back into bed.
I'll be honest, I kinda get it. I get why you would think that putting certain restrictions in place would somehow be a good idea. But at the same time, it's yet again giving us something that NOBODY ASKED FOR. Nobody was screaming for this to be the way the rules worked this season, I don't believe, nobody was asking for restrictions on the types of characters we can make. And I can't even remember them doing the sensible thing and putting out some kind of survey, asking the community what they wanted. I know they've done surveys, but they're always very badly written and don't actually ask any questions that they'll be able to really do anything with. And I've written a few surveys in my time. You ask questions you actually want to know the answers to. Things that are going to be important later. You don't ask sideways questions with generic, unspecific answers that are going to give you some kind of information, but nothing that is going to be useful going forward. And if you're just putting out the same survey over and over so you can compare results, that only works if the questions are still relevant and they were any good in the first place.
In fact it's not just the AL surveys, it's all the ones they put out, Wizards of the Coast, call me... let's talk surveys, yeah? While we're at it, let's talk the whole way you convey AL information too.
Not that I'm actually playing any "game store" AL games at present. The Wednesday game is still AL legal, but only because it's just fucking easier to run it that way. The Friday game has never been AL. And I haven't played outside of those two groups since March. I also haven't played anything other than the intro adventure for season 9, and probably won't be playing any of the season 10 adventures... mostly because I'm more interested in playing the hardcover book that season 10 is associated with... and while I wasn't really interested in the season 9 hardcover in relation to AL, that's now our Friday night game.
Anyway.
Wednesday's game was decent. The best moment though, was after the official end of the game, when another character asked my character if he knew anything about a specific thing that's been happening to his character for a little while now... and I just replied that I didn't, but that it was only happening under this one specific circumstance... and the 5-10 seconds on silence on the voice chat as the penny finally dropped for the player was 100% gold.
Friday's game was actually pretty good. It'll probably go down on that list in my head of the best moments where my character just talked their way to what they wanted. Our DM did a very clever thing, she had the bad guys separate us and talk to us individually (I don't know if that's what's supposed to happen in the book or not, but in either case, it was a great idea). And she started with the character who's not great with the talking. Which was 100% the right idea, but also slightly physical painful to me.
Then it was the character who really didn't know much of anything because he hasn't been with us that long. And all the while my drow bard is sitting on the floor of a locked room, practicing with her violin (which I've decided she does pizzicato, but laying on her lap, rather than like a guitar)... and putting the puzzle pieces together in her head.
And so, by the time she was called in to see the boss, she was more than ready to go. I thought of it like the raptors in Jurassic Park... first, you test the fences, see where there are weak spots, see the places you absolutely should not go. And you give away information that has absolutely no value to you... and if it has the added benefit of completely screwing over one of the many horrid denizens of Hell you've encountered, that's all a bonus.
You flatter when appropriate. You never lie though. You might embroider things a little at certain points... embellish when necessary. But never lie. And don't stop talking. Never stop. Because you can tap dance on a sheet of thin ice provided you never stop and you don't stay in one place too long.
When you've been tap dancing long enough, you take a chance. As far as I was concerned, there was a 50/50 chance of what was going on... and I was pretty sure (given how stories generally work... which is also something that a bard would understand) what was going on... and so, you just throw it out there. See if the fish are biting under the ice. Turns out, I was completely right.
And when you go from the NPC potentially wanting to kill you through to him being perhaps a little flirty, or at the very least, we were moved from the holding rooms into the guest wing.
It was definitely one of those moments where I start out in the driver's seat and at a certain point my character just taps me on the shoulder and says "I got this", and takes over. Those are the moments I fucking live for. Honestly, I don't remember half of the things I said, I just know it was all pure Nightingale.
The most fun.
In things that aren't my friends and I telling each other stories...
I used the oven a fuckton this week. I made tuna mornay on Sunday, then finally baked some fish that I'd had in the freezer since the start of May on Tuesday, did more fish for lunch on both Wednesday and Friday.
And then Friday evening I baked a cake for Fluffy's birthday, which was also this week. As well as the regular Friday bread. I did not manage my time quite as well as I might otherwise done, but even though we were about 15 minutes late leaving my place, everything was cooked and pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.
Sadly I forgot to take photos of any of it before we demolished it. Ah well.
I also had a chiro appointment yesterday... which other than being my monthly trip into the city at present, was pretty much business as usual.
Today was... uneventful. As weekends mostly are these days.
We did the supermarket thing. I bought generic beef soup ingredients, we'll see what the fuck I cobble together tomorrow. Also, slightly sad that we're coming to the end of soup season and I'll have to actually make food on a regular basis again, which sucks. I'll have to come up with a plan of some description.
Then we came back here... and did the usual, unpacking, YubTubs... and nothing. Eventually we went and did a wander around the Village shops, just so we could stretch our legs. But that was officially it.
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