The Man of Many Hats

Today's post is late because I was off doing what I do best.

Wearing silly hats.

Seriously, though, I love silly hats.

I've done a bit of shopping around in tabletop games, and I usually fall back on my two tried-and-true favorites. Pathfinder, which is the logical evolution of the system I learned to play on. And Shadowrun, where troll terminators jump out of windows with a pair of uzis to avoid a rampaging fire spirit that just wants to tell him how upset he is that he'd give up his humanity for a secondary bionic heart. They both have their merits.

But I am not opposed to branching out. Especially not when it means I can hang up my GM cap and exchange it for a silly feathery and totally-bardic hat. I've played a few games in D&D 5th edition, and thought it was alright. Nothing to write home about, but that's a whole different hat for an entirely different day. No, this particular hat is all about how awesome bards are.

 

And silly hats, which are never limited to bards. Every character concept is made approximately 72% more awesome with the addition of a silly hat. Yes, even that one, smartass.

This bard, though, had her work cut out for her. Because this adventure wasn't just taking place in any random fantasy location. It was happening in Innistrad. For the uninformed, it's a plane in Magic: The Gathering with a heavy dose of gothic horror and plenty of good versus evil shenanigans. A place where happiness goes to die. Fortunately, I wasn't having any of that.

See, I don't mind a bit of grimdark. I enjoyed Dark Souls. I even bought a PS4 in part because Bloodborne was on it and it seemed neat. But when I get right down to it, my Shadowrun games are full Pink Mohawk with maybe a smidgen of Black Trenchcoat. Having the player characters turn life up to 11 is part of the fun. And that was exactly what I was planning to do.

I started the session as any true bard would. I showed up late.

 

The first encounter I'm there for begins. There's a devil riding a hellhound. There's only one thing to do. I attempt to feed the hellhound a pile of jerky from my pack. All dogs love jerky. It devours the meat, and then turns on the devil that the other PCs murdered while I was feeding the dog. As it devours its former master, the group collectively facepalms.

 

In a single moment, I had become that guy. In a setting with clearly established lines of good and evil, where demons ruin everything and terrorize the normal folk, I ignored all of it. And it was glorious.

(It turns out they tried to put Toof down when I ran to the bathroom, but he was smart enough to get away. Good boy.)

The adventure proceeds, and things continue in a similar vein. Horrible monsters come out of the woodwork to devour us, and the bard not only manages to see the good in every situation and put that obnoxiously high Cha score to use, but enjoy life on the brink of death because it'll make for a great story later.

And really, isn't that what really matters--game or otherwise?

 

That's half the reason I love silly hats. They make for great stories. The other half, of course, is because they're frickin' awesome.