I’m not kidding you guys. ._. I should be taking this D&D thing a bit less serious probably, but with my social life being near-dead and after getting tests done that claim I’m ‘gifted’ I figured I should really get into this.
It’s no joke, I scored a 138 on an official IQ test with almost the same score in both types of intelligence so, despite my own belief, I’m teh smarts. According to another personality test I should be able to remember things real easily from just seeing them. Ok, so I know how to make chainmail from just reading an article online without doing it, but it’s still hard to believe.
Enough shadowed bragging, let’s talk about my quest to become a true scholar in the art of… sitting at a table and pretending to be legendary heroes on magic quests. Yeah, not going to pretend that’s cool, don’t worry.
I finished my character sheet today. Actually I finished it last Thursday apart from this one tiny thing I had to think up. I’m going to be an Elf Ranger! Brilliant choice there… Out of sheer defiance I’m going to be a Male Halfling Druid next time. At least that’s creative.
Elves get to pick two first names for themselves which, like always, took me ages to think up. Thank god Aiden helped me. ._. Ty for that! He found my ‘adult’ name and my fictional brother’s name so that’s pretty damn effective. I decided on the childname and last name myself. It’s filled with delightful cliches! I dunno what kinda parent would name their kid Snowflake Gemflower but my fictional ones sure did. Adult name will be Arame, after the brothers name which is Orome.
Sounds uncreative but it is totally legit within the elf culture! I did my homework. My lightly embarassing homework.
So with all the things sorted out, along with the usual necessities (dice, bag o’ dice, pencil, eraser, paper and such) I learned some things.
- Get the handbook. There’s only so much time you can spend scrolling through a pdf before going criminally insane. I admit I have a dislike for the .pdf format in general, but it’s been annoying the others I’ll be gaming with too.
- Get the handbook! Save yourself from RSI and bad eyesight.
- Get th- just kidding. Deciding on your skills and feats ‘in character’ makes the choices a lot easier.
- Some extra reading in other books won’t do any harm, but sticking to the basics is definitely easier when you’re only just starting.
- Discussing things with the Dungeon Master makes everything more fun as you’re more involved with the whole process.
- Never use a pen on your character sheet, not even just for your name.
- Dice make great towers.
- Once you have a Player’s Handbook, post-its are your friends.
- Reading the battle section might help, as needing the DM to explain it right when a dragon attacks you is… unfortunate.
I’m sure there’ll be more along the way. First D&D session is this saturday, expect another post on it sunday!
