H.G. Wells

I like old documents. Letters, flyers, even receipts. I guess it's natural, being a gamer, that I would like old character sheets. They are the same sort of thing, a direct source, a record of the past. Much how a retired transit employee could look at a bus schedule from the 60's and read it like a book, gamers who are familiar with the system will recognize and infer far more than the sheet would at first reveal. Similarly it is also utterly meaningless to an outsider.

H.G. Wells: AD&D 2nd Edition Human Figher:


I figure H.G. Wells here is as good a place as any to start. Me and my buddy Mike were 14? 15? Something like that. We had never really played RPG's together, we played Magic all the time, but we wanted to play D&D but were devoid of a group that particular morning. We decided that had no business stopping us, and I arbitrarily took the roll of player and Mike DM. I think we played for seven hours before we called it. I think I killed a bear with a bow.

A few things stand out. The stats reflect the origin as a one player game. Believing that I would have no help from other players I just picked my stats, perfect physical attributes, neutral mental ones, and... um... 3 charisma? for balance. Seemed fair. We had no idea that we would keep playing for years. Mike had creative ways of making people feel included, despite my obviously hacked stats. Someone played a Manelephant. A level one Manelephant anything is quite something. You can also see that Mike was very conservative with treasure. Considering the destruction that resulted from that ring of fire resistance, never mind a Fighter with those stats, he had to be.

I don't remember even noticing how thin the loot was.

We never set foot in a dungeon.

I played him from level one on.

Wells also has a statistically average number of hit points. 50 from that absurd constitution, and another 60 from 10 random rolls on a D10.

I don't remember the context of the title overlord.

I'm not sure where he picked up a permanent +1 to CON.

He has fifty pounds of opium in his inventory.

And, lest the point be missed, you can seriously pull some shit with a ring of fire resistance, outside, chaotic neutral.

I was not new to the game but I had only played with my man Justin at this point, and we played very differently. Usually controlling 2 characters or more, never much regarding them as people with desires. They were pieces in an abstract war-game. A war-game where the goal was to crawl a dungeon, subdue a dragon, collect exp, gear, etc. Mike ran a narrative game, and Wells personality mattered and effected the course of things. It was call and response gaming. Necessarily cooperative, rather than necessarily oppositional. I would fall into storyteller games in the future, but were it not for that empty Vermont Saturday morning and the game that ensued, I may have never appreciated them. Which, when I consider the multitude of friends I still enjoy thanks to Vampire, would have been personally catastrophic.