I play in a couple D&D games; one weekly and one bi-weekly.
In one of my games, I’ve been playing a dwarf paladin destined to be a paladin of Moradin from the awesome Faiths of the Forgotten Realms book. And everything was progressing along nicely.
At level 2, I’ve been roleplaying little events in the game that are pointing towards his intended path. Intended, that is, until we visited a small town overrun with squid creatures from the Far Realm. Kade (Orcsplitter, in the finest Dwarven tradition) managed to get himself a parasitic squid parasite living in his head and spinal column. In a moment, he was turned from the hammer and anvil.
Later, when the party wizards and a handful of scraggily bandits managed to free everyone, Kade traded in his hammer for a battle axe. Filled with rage, he is now in the process of walking down and dismantling every infested squid-slave he can get his paws on. To the shock and dismay of some of my party members, of course.
The axe, the rage, the uncompromising judgement – they are all part of a plan that suddenly occurred to me while I was wandering around happily being a parasitic host and worshipping some old farming god. I was no longer going to be a paladin of Moradin. Instead, my experience has turned me toward a path of Vengeance. No longer would I be the hammer of justice for my god. I would be the clenched fist that wields it.
Now the real story begins. because as he is adventuring in these early levels, he is forming as a character. I’m getting a better sense of who he is and what he wants to accomplish. I’m getting to know what he likes and what he hates. And I’ve discovered that prior to level 3, “I haven’t taken my oath yet!” is a great way to shut down any criticism about Kade’s methods.
Sure, D&D is a game about rolling dice and collecting treasure. But where it truly shines, and will always shine, is as a group storytelling exercise. In my mind, the best way to do this is to live the world as your character.
Think about how your character might respond to things that are happening to them and around them. THAT is your real back story. Your background is just the bones. The meat, blood, skin, and organs grow out of those early levels.
Work stuff:
I recently heard back from the editors of a story I subbed back in October, and it turns out they liked it enough that they want to add it to their anthology. Great news! It’s always exciting to get that kind of information in your inbox. It helps that these editors are great people and very talented, and they live in my neck of the woods (internationally speaking).
I also heard back from a second place I had subbed to, and they let me know they would not be taking the story I sent them. I still have hope for this one. This is the second market it’s been turned down from, so we are still in single digits. I’m still optimistic, in other words.
I haven’t released a new adventure in a couple weeks, but I have a handful of them sitting at the moment waiting for a couple final pieces. I’m working on a process to get my maps coloured, because that would be more cool. Good work takes time (and money).
I’ll post an image from my latest WiP, a near perfect reconstruction of a Halloween adventure I ran for my 2-year Rime group. Perfect, as in it is almost exactly how I ran it back then. You’ll have to decide for yourself if it’s any good 😉
J.W. Schnarr 