Finding a fun, consistent Dungeons & Dragons game can at times be next to impossible. Life usually finds a way to screw you out of something you love, like when my campaign of 4 years ended abruptly leaving me crushed and disappointed. You always take the game for granted when you’re playing that long but when it goes away, you get an itch that just can’t be scratched without playing more. Well that’s how I felt when I walked into my local gaming store looking at the bulletin board. There were a few that were looking for certain things that weren’t what I wanted in a game, and more that didn’t work with my schedule. But one caught my eye;
Looking for 5 players for an epic high magic game, open world long term campaign System: 5e Open to all Saturday’s 5-12 weekly
Underneath little papers hung with a number. Ripping the slip off, I gave the number a call right there in the store. The DM answered the phone, let’s call him Jeff, he gave me the rundown of what the game was about, gave some house rules, and asked me a few general questions about myself. Pretty basic first contact so I took it at face value agreeing to meet him the following Saturday.
Game day rolled around and I made my way towards Jeff’s house. He lived out in the middle of nowhere, down a long winding driveway into a forest. He was so far away from other houses that I was a little nervous pulling up.
The house seemed more like a log cabin than something lived in year round but hey to each their own. I parked around the 5 other cars outside and headed to the door. I knocked hearing chatter die inside. The door opened revealing who I learned was Jeff, after a quick greeting I walked inside. The inside was every gamers dream, a huge sprawling table in the centre of the room was surrounded by 6 wooden chairs. Papers, piles of dice, miniatures, and dungeon pieces were scattered across the table, and a long bar with any drink you could want had pizza laid upon it.
I walked over joining the rest at the table to make introductions and begin discussing what characters we would play. So we set our party; Jasmine would be playing a half elf warlock, Gerry a dwarven life cleric, Stu a half orc barbarian, Tam a human fighter, and finally I’d be playing Ashmire a circle of sheppard human druid.
Jeff stood at the end of the table, the dm screen in front of him. He went over the rules and expectations for the game while we filled in our character sheets. It was pretty standard with very few house rules, which was perfectly fine with me. He told us to prepare for very tough combat when it came but he loved RP and relied heavily on it. He even made the, “If You Die In The Game, You Die For Real” horror quote which garnered laughs from the table. I felt it was going to be a fun campaign.
When we finally got to playing, we had a very enjoyable time going around introducing our characters and talking with NPCs to get going with the story. All-in-all it was a very enjoyable session and really made me excited to come back each week.
The next few sessions flew by. The way Jeff narrated our journey was as good as a professional Game Master. We progressed through avoiding most combats, opting for more of a diplomatic approach and we were never pressured into a GM railroad to fight, which is fantastic in my opinion. Only thing that irked me about Jeff’s GM style is that he always made that, “If You Die In The Game, You Die For Real” joke whenever it looked like combat. It was easy to look past with how fun I was having, so it was all good.
It wasn’t until the end of the 5th session when we had to prepare for our first combat. I guess stealing from a hag coven wasn’t the brightest idea for a 4th level party. After the eldest hags monologue on how we will pay for what we have done with our lives, Jeff ended the session. It was a nice cliff hanger and gave us a week to think about what we were going to do.
As next Saturday came around we sat at the table ready to begin destroying our dastardly foes. Jeff stood up, looked us all in the eyes and said;
“The time to see how you all fair against these dastardly hags. Make sure you play smart because they will not be holding back, and remember if you die in the game”
“you die for real!” We all screamed back.
So we began.
The fight started well, we rolled high in initiative so we really gave the three monsters a pounding. On their turn they gave it back twice as hard though. We alternated throwing blows and spells back and forth eating away at our health.
About an hour into our session, having defeated 2 of the 3 hags, we had 2 players down and everyone on the field was looking rough. Through some stupid combat strategy on our part, Gerry and Stu were knocked out, on their last death save, at the feet of the remaining hag. We had no way to save them as the hag let out a flurry of fire hitting all of us in the small room, killing our two downed comrades.
As Jeff beautifully narrated their final moments he circled the table for dramatic effect. He stopped behind Gerry and we were completely oblivious of what had happened until the loud ‘pop’ and Gerry slumped over onto the table, and stilled. The metallic smell of blood and gunpowder assaulted my nostrils and I looked up towards Jeff holding a gun. We all screamed and backed up as he raised the barrel again aiming at Stu as he squeezed the trigger splatter blood and brain matter onto the wall. A few moments went by as we frantically shuffled around trying to figure out what was going on.
Jeff’s voice called out over our screaming, “folks, you need to sit down right now. If you leave this room then I will take it as forfeiting the combat, and your character will die”.
He waved the gun around and we all sat down pretty quickly, shocked at what had just happened. Looking over I could see Gerry’s eyes, seeing nothing, lifeless.
“I told you all what happens if you die in the game, I gave you numerous warnings that this would happen,” Jeff told us, “So, we will be finishing this combat and hopefully you all will survive”.
We did finish, luckily the last hag was only a few hits away from being no more. Jeff sat us down and ended the session giving us a little debrief which didn’t do much to calm our nerves from the madman in front of us.
“I know this isn’t a conventional game and you probably want to run to the police and tell them about your now dead friends. I should tell you, I have ran numerous games here and let’s just say there is reasons why I haven’t been arrested,” Jeff told us, “I’m hoping to see you all here next week at the same time and we can continue this, but I honestly understand if you don’t have what it takes”.
With that we all sort of grumbled goodbyes and left.
That was a week ago tomorrow, and since I haven’t been talked to by the police I think no one else went to them either. I’ve thought long and hard about this and I’ve decided to continue, nothing combats the monotony of life then the prospect of death.