Bringing the Silly in D&D
I’ve been trying to find a post on Steve Darlington’s LiveJournal for the past ten minutes (this is one of the reasons why I don’t blog on LiveJournal; there’s no way to search someone’s archive). Some time ago, maybe a year, maybe three, he was posting about a D&D campaign he was in. He wrote something along the lines of the inherent silliness of the setting, and how he couldn’t help imagining cavalry charges straight up castle walls whenever he read the spiderwalk potion description.
In the meantime, I found a more recent post where he relates his reactions to D&D 4th Edition, which is just as relevant. Oh, sorry: The reason I’ve been ransacking Steve’s LJ is because I’ve been listening to the podcasted Actual Play recordings of Tycho and Gabe of Penny Arcade and Scott Kurtz of PvP playing Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition with Wizards of the Coast’s GMs. The recordings are pretty damn fun. All three of the players are witty, creative guys – which, as they’re behind two of the most popular webcomics out there, is no real surprise – and they attack the concepts of the session and the results of their rolls with gusto. Probably the most hilarious moments come from Mike Krahulik, who has never played a tabletop RPG before, and his character Jim Darkmagic, to whom he always refers in the third person – “Jim thinks you guys are pretty fuckin’ lucky to have Jim”, “Jim casts Jim’s Magic Missile”, “Jim goes to the bathroom and deals 5 damage.” It seems like an example of the kind of silly that Steve was advocating.
