I Was Defiled By Robert Schwalb
So if you are wondering if I fell off the face of the earth or something, worry not. I spent the last week traveling to and from Indianapolis and my first ever Gen Con. I thought PAX East was amazing and yet Gen Con exceeded even that. One of the big reasons I had such a great time at Gen Con is the Dark Sun game I played in on Friday, run by Chris Sims.
Chris is an amazing Dungeon Master. I hope one day I can be as good as him, particularly when it comes to confidence at the table. He's also an awesome story teller and I felt more connected to his game than any other game I've been in.
Beyond Chris, I had the chance to play with two people I knew from Twitter, Jared von Hindman and NewbieDM. In addition to them, Robert Schwalb played with us. Rob was on my list of people to meet at Gen Con so it was a great honor and privilege to play at a table with him, even when he insisted having his character, Taewyn, constantly defile us, which meant we kept taking damage whenever he used certain powers.
Of course, he wouldn't have been able to do that if I didn't keep healing him with my shaman, Malamac, a good shaman and one who was particularly close to 3 other party members. Yet, he was doing so much damage, I justified it in that a living party was better than a dead one.
However, at the end of the adventure, I got my revenge. We defeated the big bad guy before he could finish his evil ritual. At this point, Taewyn thought it best to take over the ritual in case it would make him powerful instead. Since he had just killed, as in negative bloodied hit points, Malamac's close friend, I had to avenge the death. As a result, I attacked Taewyn, rolled a crit, and killed him.
So that is the story of how I was defiled by Robert Schwalb and how I killed his character. It was an awesome game and one I'll remember for a long time. Now to design some t-shirts for my group.
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I guess for a one-shot at a con something like that is somewhat acceptable, but if this were a real round, I would just be p... annoyed by such a character. Especially if the end of the story was something like you just described.
The battles I face (and give to my players) in my own rounds are rather tough and the last thing we'd need is a character in the group screwing us over. And while a character like that might work for a one-shot game I would probably still find it pretty annoying.
Now, I don't mind the hurting of my own people. My storm sorceress does that often enough herself: "Get away from there, I'll blast them all." Our defender says "No." And then I simply do it (after asking the defender if he's really sure of it). But taking over an evil ritual?
It's true, the one shot nature meant that we had more freedom to explore the darker sides of Dark Sun than a campaign would have. But, to be honest, if he hadn't taken over the evil ritual, it wouldn't have been as much fun and we would have lost that entire side of our characters. I'm all for working together as a group, but sometimes I find it fun to get really into character and make some less than optimal decisions. This scenario gave me the perfect opportunity to do that and I'm incredibly glad for it.
Oh, richt, Dark Sun! That makes me wonder anyway:
I will so stay away from Dark Sun. After I play D&D 4 for it's heroic themes, and Dark Sun is like the Mad Max setting of Fantasy. Everything is crappy and bad and evil (well. I exaggerate a bit here) and I can't see that working with 4e at all. Sure, Dark Sun looks great for Heroic Tier, but the more you step it up, the more I have to ask myself: How the hell is that supposed to work later on? When the heroes reach Epic Destiny, they are able to fix whole worlds, but the whole point of Dark Sun is, that it's broken. So how do we deal with that? (my best suggestion: Not at all)
Apart from that I am all for some tension in the group. In two of my groups (I happen to be in the lucky condition of having several D&D 4 groups) we do have evil characters working together with the others. It's all a matter of motivation. And we do have tension and discussions every now and then, but in the end we (still) are a team. We'll have to see if this keeps working.
I'm a bit of a scorched soul in this regard: I did play Vampire: The Masquerade in the fast (15 years ago? Is it that long already?) and I know what intrigues between characters can do to the players. So I might be a bit too sensitive there.
First off, good for you for getting revenge on those dang defilers =p... 2ndly, to TPK, I think that restoring or rescuing one corrupt or normally uninhabitable area on the Dark Sun map may be good enough for some epic heroes... I don't think everyone is going to run out and destroy the Dragon... especially if in a round-about way the Dragon is protecting Athas from something even worse... or maybe instead of rescuing a city-state the characters end up establishing themselves as the rulers... and then realize they can't just set all the slaves free and ignore the presence of the Dragon or the other sorcerer kings...
I am very much looking forward to Dark Sun again... there is nothing preventing people from playing a dark version of regular D&D, but because so many people do end up only playing the heroes of a swords and sorcerery campaign, Dark Sun and it's different take on the way the game can play is a breath of fresh air (okay, stiffling hot arid air that smells faintly of death and decay) but either way it may inject something different into your games if you are looking for something new for your group or looking for an excuse to start a new game... even if you don't expect to make it past 3rd level alive...
Josh
Ah, good times :D
For the record, I would never betray my companions in a game that wasn't a one-shot. Sims whispered to me before the game started that I was morally ambiguous, which, in my lexicon, means nasty. Plus, I wasn't part of the inner circle that made up my fellow players. I was really a sad defiler.
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