So, wow. Long time. My bad. Life got away from us with DM and me buying our house. Lots of stuff happened that wasn't all good, but it's all fixed now. For the first time since October, Ravi and I finally got the play again this weekend, and I thought "you know, I've ignored GR20 for FAR too long." Imagine my surprise logging on and finding OMG! We're still getting viewers! Like as many or more than when we were updating regularly. So at the very least, to say "Thank you" to all the people finding us through Pinterest and google searches, Indeah is back and ready for action! And hopefully Ravi will be too. :) I'll make you guys something nice too.
This weekend was a weekend for gaming. DM ran two games, Friday night the one with our friends M and B, and Saturday with Ravi. And Friday night, DM did something that I imagine all DMs secretly want to do. He pushed all the right buttons, said all the right things, and in-game, while in-character, pushed B's paladin right over the edge. What we witnessed that night was the messiest in-character breakdown I have ever and will ever seen.
On the second day of this campaign, we were given the task of finding the mayor of a small town and delivering a package to him. When we arrived at the village, the mayor, along with several others, had been taken by werewolves into the Forest of Madness. Sounds lovely, right? Quite the tourist spot. So our three-man party of B's paladin, M's inquisitor and my warmage delved into the woods. A few days later, we found a few of the werewolves, beat the heck out of them and M did his thing with the remaining one (there's a reason his class is called Inquisitor). We learned that the mayor had been handed over to someone else to get him OUT of the woods. Greeeat. Insert trying to find our way OUT for several sessions, clambering over an out-of-commission aqueduct and nearly getting killed by a giant enemy crab. (Fun fact, it wasn't the crab that nearly killed us. It was the lack of ranks in Acrobatics to stop B and M from falling to their deaths after we killed the crab.)
Friday night, we finally made it past the aqueduct. Into more forest we went, finding an abandoned outpost. We took out a medusa who had made herself a nice statuary there and found one lone, beaten werewolf. A quick fight later and he was subdued. B went around the corner to let M do what he does again. B's a paladin, he's upheld to the law and good, and the cost of doing or aiding chaos or evil is high for him. But what you don't know doesn't hurt you, right? So M would get our information, and B would look the other way while he did it. "So," M asks, "Where's the mayor?"
"I don't know!" cries the werewolf. "Someone took him."
You could almost hear the "snap". B removes himself from his hiding spot, grabs the werewolf and starts shaking him while yelling "WHAT is SO DAMNED IMPORTANT about this mayor?! Is he made of CANDY?!" Anger is understandable, it's been days and lots of near-deaths, and we're no closer than we were when we started. B, the character who upholds all that is lawful and good, shanks the wolf. Instant death on a defenseless enemy. Definitely evil. But that's not enough for B. B wants to know what the hell we're doing all this for now. He wants to know what's in the box we're meant to deliver. He declares himself as mayor and demands to open the box. At this point, DM and I are laughing so hard at B's reaction, I'm in tears, and DM is holding his sides. Every time we get a chance to breath, B interjects with "WHAT'S IN THE BOX, DM?!" and we collapse into more laughter. Finally, finally, DM and I compose ourselves enough for DM to describe the box. Inside is a letter. The letter...contains orders to evacuate the village we left more than a week of gametime ago.
I think every DM, no matter how kind, longs to push all the right buttons to make one of their players snap in-game. DM not only did this, but with a class who suffers greatest for breaking his alignment. I can only hope that this is the beginning of a very amusing downhill slide.
Happy rolling!
