Ever since I was young, I always wanted to get into Dungeons & Dragons. However, there were two obstacles that prevented me from really getting into the tabletop genre at that time. First of all, it was an expensive hobby to get into and, to be fair, it still is if you want to purchase all the physical accoutrements of the hobby if you aspire to be a Dungeon Master(DM). But the second issue was that I didn’t know anyone who played D&D. As I’m older, and the internet is more widespread, this has allowed me to make new friends so that, at long last, I can delve into the world of Dungeons & Dragons for the first time.
I am pretty excited to give this a go and bring my still-burgeoning skills as a writer to the tabletop game. With my experiences playing video games that were inspired by D&D, or that followed a similar structure, I felt like I had some inkling as to what to expect. However, it was an intimidating experience when studying the character creation system. To put it simply, there is a lot that goes into creating your character for the gaming session. Especially when constrained to a certain point by pre-written factors for the various races, classes, professions, etc. Each one has its own rules and prerequisites that coalesce and form the character that you are creating.
Creating a character can be especially difficult when you have no idea about what kind of world you are going into. As someone who likes to create a character or story that is based on the world I play in, like I would do in any RPG video game or even writing fanfiction for an established series like Harry Potter, I found this to be a major obstacle.
After quickly skimming through the races and classes, I had decided that I would create a half-elf ranger for my first venture into D&D. Assuming that it would take place in one of the established worlds, I started crafting a backstory for my character, without even naming him. Just a general idea of what his story might be in order to flesh out his personality.
But as I started to flesh out my newly-created character by giving him a name and coming up with other details in anticipation of our first game session, where we would all take the time to create our characters for the game, the DM finally told us about the world we would be playing in. Here was the first hiccup I encountered before we even started playing: the world we were playing on would not be an established one set in the D&D universe.
Now, this wasn’t as big of a hurdle as I thought. As the DM said this, I quickly thought to myself that I could change up a few small details in my character’s backstory to adapt to this new setting. That is, until the DM then proceeded to inform us that our characters would not be native to this world. Instead, they would have died in another universe, any universe we wanted, only to be brought back to life on this world to go on a mission to save it. Not only brought back to life and transported to this new world, but we could also bring one object with us from our past life.
Oh, crap!
Once the DM said that, I started to mentally curse to myself. The backstory I had created would require that my character be a native to whatever world he had been on. Now, though, he is supposed to have died and be brought back to life on another planet in a different universe? Suddenly all of his goals, ambitions, and motivations had been subverted and, for a short while, I feared that I would have to scrap all the work I had put into my character and come up with something new on the fly.
Since we could choose any universe, I jokingly said that my character would be James T. Kirk and that my one object would be a phaser. I figured, even though this was a medieval setting, it would be easy street since there really isn’t anything you can do against a phaser-wielding starship captain who has been thrown into a medieval setting. Obviously, I was feeling pretty good about myself until the DM uttered two words: Prime Directive. Smarmy little jerk threw the Prime Directive in my face and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do this, even if I had been completely serious about it!
So as I was opining and ranting at this obvious oversight on my part, jokingly at the DM, until I quickly stopped talking. I suddenly had an epiphany for the character I had created and that, while this turn of events would, in most circumstances, completely destroy my story, it didn’t have to be the case. At least, not if there was a way for my character to pick up where his story had ended.
Of course, that would all depend on the DM on whether my character would be able to have a chance of pulling it off. This wrinkle to my character’s story was now a new obstacle and further motivation to achieve his goals and ambitions.
And so, Erembour Ashwalker was born, almost wiped from existence before being brought to life, only to survive and still have a chance to do what he was meant to do in the world of D&D. What would that be? I’ll tell you in the follow-up to this post where I’ll provide you with more details of my D&D character and my plans for a new series of posts following my D&D adventures.
In the meantime, let me know in the comments or on social media, about your first experience playing D&D.
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