S&S: One Hot Minute

      I’m writing to you from a day in the past (um, Monday) which happens to have followed an epic weekend of gaming that I just could not avoid writing about.
      It was a Skulls & Shackles campaign weekend, but after last weeks disastrously frustrating (as FUCK) Worldwound session, Mark wanted to see if we could get the three players who had been present for the Xanthiir Vang episode back together for the rematch on Friday night. What’s that, you say? Two gaming sessions in one weekend? Hell yes!
      Double-headers are both the bane and ecstasy of my existence lately. Bane, because it really cuts into the rest of our ‘weekend grown-up responsibilities’ time and because historically, *I* was the running both nights. But ecstasy, because GAMING! Two DAYS! In a row! Wheee!
      This time, Abbie, Paul, Mark, and I got together around five o’clock in the evening (after naps for several of us, haha) and ordered some rather delicious wings from Nick’s 114 Cafe.
      Then we sort of hemmed and hawed and waited to see if Mike would call back, ate our dinners, talked, hung-out, shot the shit, et cetera. Basically, just had a good time for a couple hours.
      Eventually, we did game. We had Rhiallis, Sadie, Ezekiel, and the NPCs teleport back to Xanthiir Vang’s fortress (well, it really isn’t *his* but… whatevs) and begin to work their way back to the big bad.
      We didn’t make it. But we did have some fun battling and just hanging out together.
      Then came Saturday.
      And the new campaign’s second session began.
      And it was so epic.
      And so scary.
      And so fucking awesome.
      It was the kind of day that reminds me why I love gaming. Why I love my friends. Why I love the stories we get to weave together and why I love that I am a nerd and that as a nerd, I get to geek out about stuff like this!
      It restored my faith in the innate awesom-o-city of gaming (which was not broken or even fractured after the horribly annoyingly frustrating set-back of the previous session – but maybe a teensy bit dented).
      One great thing about low level games that we frequently forget in our race to “level up” and get more powerful and whatnot is that low level games are HARD and SCARY. Low level characters (presently level two, in fact) are fragile and breakable.
      Wonderfully so.
      I currently have about 12,000 words written about Lorenzo Lafontainbleu and his trek from Oppara to Port Peril. I really love this little weird faux-Frenchman and his Chaotic Neutralness.
      I love his friendship with Red.
      I love that he’s rapidly becoming a big, huge, Slutty-Slut McSlutterson.
      …and I love that he was within ONE hit point of real death on Saturday. Yes, a 12 CON let’s him go to -12 before true death (before that, per Pathfinder rules, he is merely unconscious and dying after hitting 0). He did in fact get to NEGATIVE ELEVEN before finally, his friends were able to get a potion down his throat.
      They’re mostly evil and the fact that they tried to save him at all is probably due to the fact that Red, Abbie’s Half-Orc brawler, is his best, dearest, and only friend.
      I’ll have a story to post about it later, I’m sure, because I am now writing RPs for *two* campaigns (and yes, I’ll definitely be posting Lorenzo’s tales here too because that’s how I roll) but the gist of that near-death-experience was that he got swallowed whole by some horse-sized bog frogs.
      …a frog.
      …nearly consumed my PC.
      Tee-hee..
      He also dropped below zero HP later on in the session, I believe that was when a trio of dog-sized crabs attempted to eat the party alive.
      He could very easily have died as part of a boarding party early in the session, for he is a fragile “rogue” type and the enemy was pretty tough (plus, the NPCs are mostly evil and frankly, like to hurt us).
      He could have easily died during the mutiny that Giselle (Mikey P.’s Antipaladin) sort of started ahead of schedule, also.
      Or to the ghouls we met on the island.
      Or, if he had been stripped of his weapons and ambushed by members of the crew in the bilge room instead of Maeve (Mark’s fighter).
      It was tense, edge-of-your-seat action.
      I would have been SO bummed to lose him. Like I said, I’ve written over ten thousand words about him already.
      But… there are back-up characters waiting in the wings, and though his death would suck – it would also be AWESOME!
      I can’t wait for next session.
      But first, we have Worldwound coming up this weekend and we’ll get to confront Xanthiir Vang again. Wheeee!

Signed, Josie
Note: Image is “Skull” by (George Crux) and “Black Cuffs” by (Andrzej Pobiedzinski) from SXC.hu; edited by me

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