Alright.
In the prior rambling post I was
making I mentioned having an experience with The Magical Realm (a nice little
term for when the DM sends you on a vacation to the land of his fetishes and neuroses)
that involved the rising days of Third Edition. So in this rambling post. I’ll
go into details about it.
As some backstory, when Third
Edition came out, I was in college. And at my college, there was an excellent
game store, my first, and thus far only, Friendly Local Game Shop. Well, third
edition was coming out and some of the folk around the shop were like 'lets
have a game of this new edition,' but the question came down to who would run
it.
Now, I have a fully realized
campaign setting. I had one at that time dating back to 2e, which had already
enjoyed numerous campaigns, players and the like, but (as I will state in
another post), I really, really, really wanted to not be the DM for a change,
so I said nothing.
So a daring young literature
student who I shall give the false name of Karl steps up. Karl tells us he is
going to run a somewhat odd setting, because he finds the typical setting 'too
limiting' and 'too trite.' My hackles immediately raise into a defensive
position, but being relatively young, and with my friends wanting this game, I
go along with it. He even uses the magic word to me and says it will 'be like
planescape.' That assuaged my trepidation, and like an Arkham researcher,
emboldened by this, I pushed on.
Karl also states that he doesn't
like alignment. The 'too limiting' canard rises up. None of us really see a
problem with this. We just basically conclude our characters will behave
semi-reasonably and in accordance with whatever philosophy we give them.
I end up with a rough and tumble
pole-arm wielding gang member. Another guy is a wizard. Someone else's a monk,
and so on.
Our first encounter is a monster
attacking a marketplace. We dispatch it, and find out we're riding the railroad
because the monster was a trap for us, fight it and be sent to the flying
prison for disrupting the peace, don't fight it and be sent to the flying
prison for failing to assist the city. So, stripped of our equipment, we're
sent off to prison.
And it’s not just a prison, it’s a
prison where we're apparently forced to fight random terrible monsters who
appear from the mist. Now, all of us have a problem with this because well,
we're basically naked and our DM decided that the monsters 'have as many hp as
I think they need.' Again, we really wanted this game. More fools, we.
One of our players, the wizard sees
a starving man and decides to split his bread with him. He gets the stink eye
from Karl for ‘playing a good alignment.’ We just kind of shrug it off.
This goes on for three sessions.
Prison routine. Fight monsters. Prison routine. I find out that our sentence is
only like 2 more months, so I just suggest we hunker down. I mean heck, we did
break the law after all. Karl responds to this by telling us that our sentences
have been increased exponentially due to a recent intensification in attacks.
It’s a tyranny, and one being assaulted by mist monsters (who apparently only
attack flying fortress-prison things) so, it makes sense we guess, and we go
along with it. But now we start plotting an escape.
Can we make bedsheets down to the
earth? No, too high and..no bedsheets? What about laundry? The clothes cease to
exist when they're taken off. Oh...ohkay... We ask if there’s a way we can
secure some weapons. We get told that we ‘really don’t like the idea of
personal property.’ We all disagree with him on that, but get told that the
weapon’s ‘only exist when we’re being attacked’ or when a guard holds them. We
conclude this is magical bullshit.
One of my fellow players starts
thinking that Karl is trying his version of the Stanford Prison experiment on
us. As the fourth session of boring prison and overpowered mist monster
punching begins, I start to agree with him.
Session Five rolls around and up
appears an Illithid. He offers us freedom, in exchange for us owing him service
into perpetuity. He apparently was just able to get onto the prison fortress
thing. We’re more ok with that because, he’s a freaking mind flayer, they do
stuff like that. Some of the players latch onto this, as being a way to do
something different. My character however decides that the crap the illithid
will want us to get up to is going to be super dodgy. And despite Karl siccing
the thing on my now fourth level fighter, managed to beat the illithid to death
with a broken bottle thanks to 20s on the die and nobody understanding how
grappling works (it was about a month after 3e came out.) When I attempt to
take the broken bottle back, it disappears into mist because we’re not allowed
personal property. Ah ha, we reason, that’s how the stupid nonsensical disappearance
field works. We decide that we’ll try to capture some resources but not
actually ‘claim’ them.
One of us exclaims, ‘Ah of course,
communism, a criminal’s greatest friend.” Karl gets incensed, and tells us that
won’t work either. The player replies with a sigh and shake of his head,
“Communism, it just doesn’t work.” Karl gets angry again and tells us to stop
obsessing with equipment and that he’ll ‘give us what we need when we need it.’
Session six, we miraculously
discover that the warden has a device that allows for teleportation, but it’s
in his office, and requires some magic shenanigans to make it work. Well, we
have a wizard, but he's kept under strict observation. So we concoct a plan,
for some of us to sneak in there at night and steal the device and get it to
the wizard during the next attack. Misadventure occurs, as it will, and the end
result is my guy heading into the warden's office while others make a
distraction.
Well, there's the warden's office.
Furnished nicely, booze, meat, and the warden himself, snoozing. I look around,
see the device, tell the DM I want to pick it up and leave. What follows is a
brief recollection of the exchange...
Spook: Ok, I don't want to stay
here any longer then I have to. I'm going to pick it up, and sneak out.
Karl: You want to eat the food and
drink the wine.
Spook: No I don't. This is a
freaking mission to get us out of this place. His guards will be back any
moment.
Karl: I'm not a fan of gamist
thought processes. When I see a person doing something his character wouldn't
do, I make them make will saves. Make a will save.
Spook: Can’t I just stash it in my
pants for later or something?
Karl: No, you’re overcome and
worried it might disappear. Roll.
Spook: Really? *rolls* Blegh, 11.
Karl: You can't resist drinking the
wine and eating the food, you haven't had anything this good in the weeks since
you got incarcerated.
Spook: Alright, whatever, I leave
with the device and...
Karl: You want to kill the warden.
Spook: What?
Karl: He is your oppressor.
Spook: My 'oppressor?' We did a
crime, we're doing the time. He's just doing his job like everybody else up
here. We fought those mist ogre things last week with him.
Karl: He's the symbol of systemic
oppression. You are the put down upon person who has been dehumanized by the
machine, and he is the personification of that. You wish to kill him.
Spook: Bull.
Karl: Make a will save.
Spook: *rolls* nineteen, so..26.
Karl: What? How is your will save a
+7?
Spook: Iron Will Feat and I didn't
dump wisdom. I leave. We've got a freaking job to do here.
Karl: I guess I'll let you get away
with it, but you still want to destroy him.
Spook: No I don't. Let's get on with
this.
We escaped, and then got wiped out
by some sort of terrible sea monster a session after that. The DM informed us
haughtily that we just weren't 'advanced' enough for his vision. We bid him a
happy farewell, and I once again donned the Amulet of Inescapable DMing for the
my first time in 3e.
Now, there was no sex there, no
desire, but it’s kind of evident that Karl wanted us to dare to enter his
magical realm.
His realm though was one based
around some strange desire for us to play the part of the put upon individuals
fighting the system, and other stuff.
It was just as awkward, just as
irksome, and just as weird as something more boudoir related.
In a way it’s basically the DM not
understanding why the players don’t enjoy exploring some theme, or element as
much as he does.
It’s a tone deafness thing.
Maybe somewhere out there, there’s
a group that likes Karl’s nonsense, but I kind of doubt it.
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