RPG A Day 2020: Day 16--Dramatic

 RPG A Day 2020: Day 16—Dramatic

It will be a really short one today with dramatic. Most of my games have never been dramatic—or at least not overly so. My latest DM had a lot of flair, but there still seemed to be humor throughout.

One bit of drama that I do remember came from one somewhat recent Roll 20 group wherein I played as a Dwarven Ale Bootlegger/Merchant named Darville Frostbeard—fighter class, but I played up his background more than anything. We were playing through that 5E Tiamat campaign. I had gotten into a semi-regular habit of doing brief set “cut-scenes” with one of my fellow players—an actual real-life girl BTW. I made them funny as I could and I think the other players and the DM really got into our “dramatic” performances.

But, then real-life online drama started to set in as the DM was really favoring the girl. I didn’t care because I’m older and kind of go along to get along anyway in my disposition, but it was clear/blatant. The girl for her part was a newbie, and fell into sort of a rules lawyer type. I say the rules are there for a reason and we should try to play at least in the spirit of them, but I remember her getting too into it. Meanwhile, the other players started losing the plot. Say what you will, but those intrigue games never seem to go anywhere. No matter how intelligent the characters might be, the player behind the mask is the one controlling their actions and I’ve found we’re not all that deductive in our reasoning. Often when the “big reveal” happens we have to check our notes—if we bothered taking them—to even figure out who the bad guy is.

Anyway, the campaign was totally meandering along  with tension at the virtual table. If I remember it lasted about three sessions more before everyone dropped save for me, the DM, and the girl. The DM still wanted to run the Tiamat campaign as we had not even gotten through the first module. The girl was down for it, but for me a total reboot after having played from the beginning just wasn’t in the cards. I took my bows and headed on to running Roll 20 games of my own.