Ralif Redhammer
Legend
There’s a longer post on my Origins experience brewing, but I wanted to start with my thoughts on the D&D Open this year.
To start with, I loved the short sneak peaks of the next season. It totally has me psyched for some adventures in Chult.
Last year I absolutely hated the D&D Open – a combination of a bad DM and poor group chemistry made for a miserable experience. But I was willing to give it another shot this year.
And the experience was so much better. I lucked out and had a great group and a great DM. Even while facing tough puzzles and tougher battles, we laughed uproariously and role-played our characters. It’s no small feat to have such fun at a table where everyone in the party died (with my poor brother’s gnome dying twice in the stomach of the same giant frog).
But character death was not the end. My character came back, now with the undead template. I’ve got mixed feelings on this. For my character, a death-seeking, doom-haunted old barbarian, it adds a greater depth and is just plain cool. It’s like I get to play a T’lan Imass from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series! But it’s the kind of twist that doesn’t work for every character, something I would only do with the consent of the player. I imagine that for more than a few PCs, that killed off the character just as much as a permanent death.
There was a ton of swag given away – tote bags, dice bags, stickers, and patches with the Green Devil Face from Tomb of Horrors. Heck, they even gave away copies of the new character sheet packs.
As for next year’s D&D Open, we shall see. Now that I’ve had a good experience at one, I’m not sure I need to do another super-deadly, puzzle-laden tournament challenge.
The room was super-cold, though. Made one almost long for the heat of Chult’s jungles.
To start with, I loved the short sneak peaks of the next season. It totally has me psyched for some adventures in Chult.
Last year I absolutely hated the D&D Open – a combination of a bad DM and poor group chemistry made for a miserable experience. But I was willing to give it another shot this year.
And the experience was so much better. I lucked out and had a great group and a great DM. Even while facing tough puzzles and tougher battles, we laughed uproariously and role-played our characters. It’s no small feat to have such fun at a table where everyone in the party died (with my poor brother’s gnome dying twice in the stomach of the same giant frog).
But character death was not the end. My character came back, now with the undead template. I’ve got mixed feelings on this. For my character, a death-seeking, doom-haunted old barbarian, it adds a greater depth and is just plain cool. It’s like I get to play a T’lan Imass from the Malazan Book of the Fallen series! But it’s the kind of twist that doesn’t work for every character, something I would only do with the consent of the player. I imagine that for more than a few PCs, that killed off the character just as much as a permanent death.
There was a ton of swag given away – tote bags, dice bags, stickers, and patches with the Green Devil Face from Tomb of Horrors. Heck, they even gave away copies of the new character sheet packs.
As for next year’s D&D Open, we shall see. Now that I’ve had a good experience at one, I’m not sure I need to do another super-deadly, puzzle-laden tournament challenge.
The room was super-cold, though. Made one almost long for the heat of Chult’s jungles.
