Sunday, August 14, 2011

The Governor's Ball

My roommates play games. I'm used to this by now. I play pickup basketball and intramural 3 on 3. They play Halo, Black Ops, and Madden 2012. Nothing wrong with that at all. Different strokes for different folks.

Giggity.

They have however gotten involved in a new game that has enveloped them every other week now. That has taken over their creative energies in a group setting. This is a game that is a spin-off of Dungeons & Dragons. A much cooler version mind you.

May I state a disclaimer at the beginning of this post that I was a third-party witness to this game, and had a very naive perspective in regards to how this contest functioned. Right off the bat both myself, and Mollybakes were bewildered as to how the entire game functioned, or what were the rules and regulations.

"So what is this game?" Mollybakes asked.

"It's a generic RPG." said the GM

"This game is a way to act out your imagination with a bunch of guys, and keep your clothes on." said Kadeem.

"This game has no limits. No boundaries. I can do whatever I want in my head in this game." said Ruger.

"It's incredibly geeky, which is why you can't be here." said Malcom Ignatious Machiavelli as he gave her the stare of death from across the room. Heck, the man intimidated me with his harsh gaze that I almost had to change into a new pair of fantasy underwear.

From that point Mollybakes was escorted from the basement, or removed from the dog days of summer out in the Caribbean. The fact that I am a closet Trekkie made it possible for me to sit on the couch and be a spectator to this fantasy charade. The two robots from Mystery Science Theater 3000 were seated next to me for sarcastic subliminal comments.

Forgive me for failing to introduce their characters at this point. Each of them created a specific fantasy identity to which they then figuratively morphed into. There was Kadeem, Malcom Ignatious Machiavelli, Doubting Thomas, Ruger, Shades, and the GM, short for Game Master. Don't ask me where all these names came from. All I knew was that Kadeem was a Hatian servant who kept quoting Chappelle's Show.

"I'm a witch doctor." Kadeem says to me. "I rip the blood out of people. And I'm the weird guy."

The scene was that they were a group of Pirating outlaws in the middle of the 1700's out pillaging away in the Caribbean. It's a world within a world. A fantasy land foundation formed in one's basement. It's a mock-Inception. With cards, poker chips, and a 35-sided die to rule the decisions that are made.

"Our main goal in this game is to fight skeletons, evil spirits, and be piratically awesome." Ruger explained to me. "That and we defeat bad guys, take loot, and get alot of booty."

Hmm...If I recall you just removed the only real live booty from our basement. But hey, to each his own.

The strategic head games had me going early on when the GM wondered what I was doing as a spectator on the side.

"Are you blogging?" he asked. "Is that one of those iPad things you're doing it on?"

For a split second I thought that this guy was a noob, but then again, he's the GM, and I'm the noob in this crowd. Silently he chuckled to himself. Well played GM. Well played.

From this point on, the GM began to tell a story. A story that he made up. A story that he scrapped together from his memory, an online synthesized storyline and from Johnny Depp movie scenes.

"This is sort of like a mix between a rhetoric and an improv scene." the GM said, "Lord bless Ryan Stiles."

The scene blossomed from the start as they landed and met a tailor who helped make the clothing and weaponry that they would be donning at the Governor's ball the next evening. Hence the title for this blog. Amidst all of the thickening plot's they were speaking in proper English accents and challenging one another to duels. That and pronouncing some of the most random facts that I had no idea of the relevancy to.

"Since we've been traveling I think my bananas have went bad." Shades said to me in a Rastafarian tone. Your bananas? Is that an inside joke? Do you mean real bananas? Or are you throwing out a line from Chappelle's show as well? I'm so confused.

After roughly an hour or so of bantering, the real story came into play when they were ambushed by hiding guards of the Governor in his mansion, about to be manslaughtered before a host of waltzing guests. That's when things got interesting.

Cue ballads by Flogging Molly and Rammstein as the background music for the fight scene. Keep in mind the fight scene was a charade of rolling dice left and right to determine the actions that each character makes in combat. That sounds pussy I know, but I just witnessed Malcom Ignatious Machiavelli beat down three guards with his secret swords by rolling over six three straight times. Yeah, he is one BAMF. True story.

"You'll find this out about RPG's is they love to brag about things ghat never actually happened." Ruger commented to me. "Like the time that Shades shot down a stalagtite and killed 3 people. Never happened."

"Hey that was legit and awesome!" the Cool Runnings accent defended.

A few minutes later, I threw out a WTF inquiry.

"Wait what happens when you die." I interjected amid the battle scene.

"Well your spirit leaves your body and returns back to our Heavenly Father." Kadeem wittily responded.

A round of laughs was followed by the GM praising him for conducting humorous missionary work in the middle of a heated conflict and awarded him a bennie. Apparently a "bennie" is like a freebie second chance at correcting a misroll. For example, if I roll a four and needed a five, I could quirk out a sarcastically humorous comment about religion and would have been awarded another bennie to give it another shot. That's how real life works isn't it?

It took the Pirates an hour and a half to play out a scene that in reality played out in under 30 seconds, but hey I was entertained for those 90 minutes, surrounded by English accents, exploding magic funnels and Dave Chappelle quotes. I'm pretty sure pirates in the 1700's were die hard Chappelle's Show junkies, right?

Around 11:30 I started losing track of what was actually going on before me. Maybe it was the mix of my depressant Tegretol kicking into effect combined with a smorgasbord of phrases such as blind potion, D12, clubbed to death, smoking snuff, magic blood potion, nasty gashes, and screw you kid, that made me somewhat lost in translation meanwhile the pirate story continued on. May I remind you that this is just chapter two of what I would classify as the Neverending Story. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted on the adventures that this gang continues to pioneer through. All of the bad guys that they kill, the loot that they take, and all of the booty that they uh...uh...umm...

Heck, what do I know, they're getting more booty than I am even if it is imaginary. Props to you pirates!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
D


Location: My basement in the Caribbean

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