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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8958461" data-attributes="member: 82106">OK, but what is 'the full story?' I mean, PLAYING OUT the thing, I didn't know where it was going to go. In fact, I just happened to roll up a ranger (hard to do even in 1e AD&D sometimes) and it had good stats, and I came up with a fun name, so I was kind of pumped. After the rest of the party got slaughtered then I figured "OK, I have a thing now, my enemy is those demon worshipers!" 1e rangers are supposed to get a bonus against 'giant class humanoids', but I told the DM, "nope, his bonus is against Demogorgon cultists!" That was about it. I mean, the character, at this point, was kinda cool. He could have had a fairly short story arc where he got himself ganked because he was too stubborn to give up. Actually, a subtext was that every other party he adventured with always ended up getting slaughtered or screwed over somehow because he'd always end up making it all about getting more of those darned demon worshipers. I mean, it wouldn't have been too shabby a story if the paladin had just ganked me! lol. I mean, once I got to about 5th level paladins and such were like "no thanks, there's something wrong with THAT guy!" So, there could have potentially been many endings.Now, this does bring up the topic of how D&D (1e AD&D in this case) is not a GREAT vehicle for this type of story. Obviously one point being a stray arrow can just derail the whole fun story arc. The other though being, for this type of story, the whole "one for all and all for one" party thing, which Cargorn was NOT into, other PCs lives were totally disposable in the name of THE mission! He'd gladly save your bacon, but not if it pulled him away from his real work. The whole mandated alignments thing is not that helpful either. Luckily by the mid-80s we'd long got past all that stuff. Cargorn was NOT a good guy, his followers were a heorn, an undead bear, and an evil leprechaun! His preferred magic items were magical bark armor made from the hide of treants, a vampiric ring of regeneration, and a vampiric longsword! So that part was pretty good, but the whole 'must be good?' BWAAAHHAHAHAHAHAHA! I'm good, I kill demons! Oh, say, if I stake you out over there some will come... Plus a lot of the 'machinery' of D&D really wasn't that useful to his story. Like we'd have been better off with a combat system like BW maybe, or FATE where you have a good chance to do your thematic thing. But it worked, it just took having a GM that I was super good with, and other players that were super good, and etc. But, Cargorn could have died, or 'ended his story' in a dozen ways. Mike just let it run and eventually the interests of a bunch of high level PCs came together and we went a huntin in the Abyss. Fun place, nowadays Cargorn thinks its the natural world. I hear some demon hunters are coming for him! hahahahaha.</blockquote>

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