This morning I'm doing a very good imitation of a zombie: lurching about, favoring limbs, and uttering groans. The reason for this is, as mentioned a few days ago, my debut in live-action role-playing.
My friends, with whom I've done sit-down roleplaying for some time, convinced me to come out to this weekend's game - the last one this particular group is doing this year. This would give me a taste of it, and give me all winter to decide if/how I wanted to play again in their campaign next summer.
The friends are a couple; she plays an exiled noble opposed to her homeland's violent military expansion. He plays one of the knights sworn to protect her and carry out her orders. Most of the remaining characters were also knights, and so it was logical that I chose one. Besides, being a fighter meant that I didn't have to learn too much arcane magic or necessarily worry about the actual dialogue portion of the game much (the working language of the game is French; I don't speak French, though many participants are bilingual and happily accommodate me).
My character was mostly a fighter; since I don't own actual armor, I invested in some defensive manuevers and hit points, while picking a shield and bastard sword (that is, a longish broadsword that can be used with one or both hands). These were made of well-padded plywood and PVC piping respectively. I also could cast spells that briefly paralyzed a target or enchanted a weapon so that it could hit magical enemies.
So out we went Friday, setting up camp at the end of a trail. The property is several hundred meters on a side, hilly woodlands, with trails and camping spots hacked out of the trees. There were ten of us in all - the noble, eight knights - many with some magical abilities - and an archer with a very weak bow (for safety purposes). We camped at their usual spot, at the end of one trail. Around 150 other player-characters, plus maybe thirty non-player characters, set up elsewhere.
I'm 32 years old, and probably one of the oldest people there. My beard causes me to be mistaken for a dwarf at least once ("Sorry, this is the way I always look"), and it helps me shoot intimidating glares at teenagers looking for trouble. For all they know, I've been doing this since I was their age and am a master swordsman. Ha! I took a year's fencing lessons when I was 21, am somewhat out of shape, and am, after all, 32.
The over-arching story was hard to follow, but can be summed up now as: evil mummy returns to take over the world, but gets taken down at the end by his own descendents while the players beat the stuffing out of his outnumbered non-player character supporters.
But with so many people around, all with their own motivations and missions, things got violent. Last game, I was told, my friend's group got into three fights. We'd passed that by midnight Friday.
At 3 AM Saturday, we leapt out of our tents - in my case, wearing absolutely nothing but shorts - to repel a raid by seven dark elves. The seven dark elves, fully awake and in black robes, defeated the five semi-awake, mostly undressed knights that faced them - though we did take four of them down with us. When they left, our leader was angry and led us after them. We failed to find them, but got into three other fights in utter darkness. Some teenager brained me in the right eye with a padded club, badly distorting my glasses. We went to bed at 5 AM.
Up at 9, choking down breakfast before taking on some guard jobs at a village of shacks in the midst of the property. More fighting, as minotaurs, slavers, thugs, and elementals all attack. The elementals kill me, so my friends haul my carcass off to another camp for resurrection. This takes almost thirty minutes of real-time; I relax in a chair. Two minutes later after I start breathing again, monsters attack the camp and we have another fight.
We fight wave after wave of undead in the afternoon; I verbally abuse one group that arrives as I'm in the process of heading for the outhouse; one of the NPCs playing the undead doubles over laughing. Another gives me a resigned look when we face off together - she stands maybe five feet tall, and has a shortsword - I'm six feet, with a weapon twice as long.
Another battle happens later as a couple of us and a wizard escort our leader on a quest. We get jumped by a monster - a teenager wearing padding, a papier mache head, and a padded costume with foot-long claws. I paralyze the monster, and tell my friends that we should run. My buddy whacks the monster, ending the paralysis. It takes out our leader before I paralyze it again. My buddy whacks it a second time, ending the paralysis. I shout at my buddy to stop doing that, but I can't paralyze the monster anymore. Karma comes into play; the monster beats down my buddy.
Eventually, it's me and the monster, duelling it out with pauses when my leader gets up, tries to grab the treasure we seek, and falls down the hill. She does this four times, forcing the monster and I to break off combat to ensure she's actually okay.
During the fight, the monster whacks my shield, "breaking" it, so I toss it aside and use my sword two-handed. Oddly enough, this is more a problem for the monster than it is for me, because I have to change my fighting style from awkward block/weak swing to quick footwork and strong attacks. I handily defeat the monster in short order, and don't use the shield again all weekend.
Saturday night, we know the dark elves are coming, and we have a plan. Four characters from another team will help us ambush them on the trail to our camp, while our leader hides.
Problem 1: the dark elves wait until 3 AM to arrive.
Problem 2: our four supposed allies sit out the fight.
Problem 3: instead of the seven dark elves we faced the previous time, we face twenty, plus a monster, simultaneously. That's versus eight of us - our leader's hiding, and one of our knights is sleeping too hard to leave his tent.
We do better than the N-Squared Law would have me expect: we take down three of the baddies, losing six. I'm killed again. The two escapees manage to rescue two of the injured, while the remaining three are "tortured" and I lie on the ground with my head on a log, comfortably dead. It starts to rain, and the dark elves leave around 4:30.
Up again at 9:30 Sunday, fighting more undead before the big climax. Everybody's supposed to pick between one of two NPC champions to take down the big baddie. Our leader refuses to commit either way, and gets involved in an endless debate with several of her knights. I sigh and stand watch.
The big battle is an anti-climax. 160 player characters versus 30 NPCs doesn't last long, even if the NPCs are powerful enemies. The fight only just gets started when people from the ranch down the road arrive on horseback. They've got to pass right through the road we're all on to get home. We back up to give them room, but everybody's chattering away despite some efforts to quiet them. Since it'll spook the horses, I finally use my "bad dog" voice and shout "Silence! ", and two hundred people obey me . That's better than I fare with my dogs. The horses pass by, we wait, and then fight. Good triumphs.
We pack up in rain, and haul stuff to the car during thunder. We line up to report our earnings and lives lost amidst a torrential downpour - which I enjoy since it helps clean me off.
I got home at 9 last night, woke up at 5 for work, and staggered ineptly as only my left arm was feeling normal. I have blisters all over, several bruises and scratches, and I'm exhausted - but I'm at work.
Will I go again? I'll give it a second chance. If it's less violent, with more actual role-playing, I may stick with it. Otherwise, I can get all the same injuries working on my home and have more to show for it when I relax for a restful sleep without visits from dark elves...
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Quoted
Cool story! Too bad some of us wern't there to lend a hand! Now if you could just get a group of 4 to accompany you, you could up the force strength a bit, kick ass and take names.
Thursday, May 23rd 2024, 5:21pm
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