Hrnnngg, I really need to talk about why I love playing DnD with my friends and why I love their characters.
Rambling below the cut. It’s long.
SO,
My friends and I have been playing the same DnD campaign for about two and a half years now and I absolutely love their characters. It’s something I’ve said to them multiple times but I don’t think I’ve ever truly expressed just how much I love these funky little guys.
Obviously, when the campaign started, the characters weren’t that fleshed out and half our party was new to DnD, so my best friend (another player) and I had to teach them, but it didn’t take long.
Their characters were kind of generic at the start, I’ll admit, but through guidance from their resident author (me) and through roleplaying/slow progression, their characters grew to feel like real people who reacted to world in a very real way.
Let’s start with Isaac. Isaac is a human sorcerer played by a friend who was new to the game. Isaac was the only full spell caster in the party. Isaac started the campaign with no backstory to speak of and his personality was just the generic grumpy character. However, as time progressed and I talked with Isaac’s player more, we were able to create a real backstory for him, and it was one that helped to put his personally into a realistic context.
> Isaac was a slave, sold off to flesh traders by his birth parents. He killed his captors and escaped from them during a thunderstorm one night while aboard a ship. The storm awakened him to his sorcerer blood and allowed him to destroy the ship through the storm magic he carried (this also ties into the main plot of our campaign because the villain was the god of storms).
> The impact of Isaac being a slave carried into his adult life, aka, his personality during the campaign. One of Isaac’s main traits that was originally played for laughs was that fact that he was a mean, distrustful, drunk. He spent most of his money on alcohol and he was generally rude to everyone. It wasn’t until many sessions later (and some character progression) that Isaac finally told the party about his time as a slave and showed them the scars that covered his back. Suddenly, he wasn’t just a generic angry drunk, instead he was a man who was hurt and struggles to trust people. But he would begin to trust others and that would lead him to becoming kinder (although begrudgingly).
In order to get full context for Isaac, I need to talk about Zulton, the one person in the party who proved himself trustworthy enough to make the sorcerer open up and allow himself to heal. That character is Zulton.
Zulton is played by my best friend. Zulton is a Minotaur paladin. Zulton is best described as a big sweetheart who genuinely wants to help people. He was not a simple, generic character in the first session, his player came prepared with a backstory that would shock the other characters when it was revealed.
> Zulton was orphaned at a very young age and was taken in by a pair of adoptive parents who raised him in an unnamed village somewhere near a forest. Zulton grew up learning how to hunt animals and track prey. It would be during one of these hunting expeditions that he would meet a man that would change his life.
> Zulton became quick friends with the man and the two began hunting together. The man would gain Zulton’s trust and that would be the downfall. The man manipulated Zulton into thinking he was good when in reality, the man was a werewolf who wanted nothing more than to make the people of Zulton’s home into his prey. Everyone Zulton ever knew would be killed by the man, and he would be left as the only survivor.
> I mentioned that Zulton was a sweetheart and that he was a paladin, but what I failed to mention is that he is a Paladin who swore an oath of vengeance against the man who killed his family. Zulton is a kind person because he has seen the evil of the world and he wants to protect others from it, but underneath the hopeful mask he wears, he is a horribly broken man filled with a boiling hatred for the man who killed his family.
But Zulton only brought up his backstory once with the party and he did it to help Isaac. Zulton may be someone fueled by rage, but he is still a good person. He wants to help and he wants to make the world a better place because he knows just how much it can suck. It’s his persistent kindness and genuine love for others that helped him finally crack through Isaac’s hard exterior and make the sorcerer confide in Zulton.
The dynamic of the party is always interesting to me because the characters feels so real, and my friends and I have often agreed that the party has the same energy as a bunch of coworkers. But, when we talk about Isaac and Zulton specifically, we all agree that those two are genuine friends and that’s because of how they treat each other and respect one another.
Now let’s talk about Raymond. He is played by my brother. Raymond is a halfling fighter. Raymond is an agent of chaos. Raymond is a cryptid. Raymond may or may not be a trickster deity who just wants to have some fun.
Raymond has no real backstory to speak of, and that may sound like he’d be a boring character to some, but not to us. Raymond’s lack of a backstory is what makes him interesting, that, and the way my brother chooses to play him.
Raymond likes to have fun and collect woodland animals as pets. Raymond likes to play pranks. Raymond likes to be someone who tags along with the party whether they (Isaac) like it or not.
He is persistent. He is strong. He is crafty. And he is a walking mystery. Raymond likes to randomly talk about little bits of his past during party interactions but then refuse to elaborate, causing chaos amongst the party and making them wonder more and more what this little man is exactly.
Because he is played as a mysterious, almost cryptid like man who just likes doing things for the hell of it, Raymond very quickly became the comedic heart of the party. This love of being a prankster and general nuisance cause Isaac to take a disliking to Raymond resulting in a friendly rivalry that usually helped bring the party close together.
Finally, the character who was a later addition to the party: Veda. Veda is a satyr ranger. Veda is from the Feywild. Veda is a pothead. Veda is the woman out of place in this story.
> Veda’s backstory is simple. She was a nuisance in the feywild, partying too hard and causing to many problems. So, she was booted out until she could learn to behave. This led to Veda meeting Raymond and him claiming her as one of his many pets, refusing to acknowledge that she was not a goat but instead a person.
Veda was introduced to the party as a newcomer, someone who’d never seen the world before or who understood the conflict the party was involved with. She was the perfect way for me to give more exposition about the world while also fitting nicely into the party as the last missing piece to make the dynamic whole.
Veda was a kind person who didn’t understand why the party would sometimes jump to violence to solve a problem and this created conflict. She always wanted to talk things out and find alternative solutions, which were often supported by Zulton, the unofficial voice of the party.
But she would soon have to accept that the main antagonists were not of the negotiating sort. They wanted violence and death, so she had no choice but to follow the party’s lead and handle things with violence. This resolution of violence actually broke Veda’s original character of being a carefree, flirty fun loving girl. She became someone who had her original worldview, forged of privilege, shattered. She did not experience the tragedy of Isaac and Zulton, nor did she have the almost uncanny knowledge and desires of Raymond. She was a person who grew up with privilege and was then forced to face the world as it was.
This break in her character changed her as a person. She suddenly became more thoughtful, down to earth, reasonable and mature. But even though she lost her rose colored world, she didn’t let it hurt her basics. She was still kind. She was still good. The world beat her down but she still stood up and assessed the wounds of others before her own.
Part of the reason she was able to keep her hope and her kindness is because she had the help of Zulton and a recovering Isaac to hold her in reality and remind her why they fought with the people she had wanted to talk down.
Veda was a good person who wanted good things for others even if she often felt powerless to help.
The core of why I love these characters and why I struggle so much to explain it is because these silly guys, played by my friends, are genuinely well made characters. They aren’t perfect. They aren’t Mary Sues or cardboard cutouts. They are real, nuanced people who experience struggles, happiness, conflict with the world, conflict with each other, and conflict with themselves. They are people who have all experienced hurt and betrayal, but it was through opening up to each other and finding others like themselves that they were able to get better together. We often joke about their dynamic being that of coworkers, but genuinely, I believe they are a found family. They are unlikely friends who found each other through circumstances that would change their lives.
They are not perfect, but they are good people who were hurt and who believe no one else should have to experience avoidable misery. They want to be a force of good, despite everything that has hurt them and tried to push them down a darker path.
I love this party because they are little pieces of my friends. They are pieces of their beliefs, their personalities, their personal histories, their emotions, and of their own insecurities.
I love these characters, because they ARE my friends, and through our funny sessions of fighting evil and role play, I think we were all able to open up to and help each other, whether we realized it or not.
