Back in March I was excited about finally being a player in a D&D game, new people, etc. We even had what is traditionally called Session Zero; it’s when everybody makes up their new characters and we hammer out a coherent story. I got to make my monk with poor charisma. Contrary to popular misinformation, low charisma in D&D doesn’t mean one is ugly, it means the character has a crappy personality when it comes to persuading or interacting with others. I planned to play it up as social naivety given a martial artist monk in the Kung Fu tradition being raised in a monastery for most of his life, ergo, he’s social retarded.
Well within an hour of our first playing session, the DM crapped out. I was pissed alongside several others. There were two alternatives, disband and hope for another Pathfider subgroup to happen amongst the 5E groups (none of which has gotten together neither I’ve discovered)…or, I would have to step up, DM a second campaign. Yeah, I’m an idiot as expected because my desire to play in any capacity trumped my desire for naps on Sunday afternoons.
There was an upside, combining the recent puppet movies I’ve helped with, D&D and some creativity inspired by the 18-year-old Dungeon CD extra adventure “Gorgoldand’s Gauntlet.” See above, duh! My friend Kathy provided the voice, puppeteering and punched up the script I wrote. I did the camera work along with the crude artwork behind my dragon puppet Fuinseog; pronounced FWEN-shoy-uh, it’s Irish Gaelic for ash which is about right for fire-breathing dragons). We did this in six takes and Kathy punched it up with Final Cut Pro in 10 minutes.