One of the most fascinating things about Dungeons and Dragons, the story-telling adventure game with sword battles controlled by dice rolls, is the characters. They are a creation by committee. You take a blank character sheet, roll six basic numbers by complex rules on dice, and then decide who that character is; paladin, rogue, magician, archer, swordsman, etc… what that character is; human, elf, dwarf, hobbit… I mean halfling, orc, gnome, or Minotaur… and then do the complicated math that those choices entail. But then you have to do the real work and give that character life in the form of hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, personality quirks, and goals. They have to become collaborative characters for a play that won’t actually be written until the players perform it.
These, you may recall if you are nutty enough to read Mickian regular features, are my children’s player characters.
Ditty Bytcha who prefers to be called Fate is my number one son’s original character. He is a fighter wearing magic armor who loves to make things as an artificer (one who builds devices with magic). He eventually wants to cut his own arms off and replace them with mechanical ones. He is also quick to leap into the fray and is fairly deadly with his chosen weapons. He once made a crossbow that had explosive power enough to blast apart a ship and kill everyone on board, including the people he was trying to save. He is also a good leader and is always ready with a joke that can even make the Dungeon Master laugh.
And number two son’s character, Gandy Rumspot, is a food-loving halfling that also likes making ships. No kidding, he likes being a shipwright and designing sailing vessels… and flying airships powered by captured air and fire elementals. He likes riding pteradactyl-back and firing crossbows at the evil enemies from the air. And he is good at making fun of other characters, even to the point of making some of them angry to the point of tantrums… especially his sister’s character.
And, of course, my daughter the Princess’s character, Mira Mirkestasia is a telekinetic Kalashtar who floats everywhere instead of walking. She possesses an intelligent throwing knife that not only comes back to her hand after every throw, but seriously wants to kill Gandy for his sister-jokes. She protects the whole group from those like the evil Dr. Zorgo who threaten to take over your mind and put your brain inside a stone golem.
And, of course, three people is probably not enough to actually survive in magic-rich and dragon-filled Eberron. So additional characters are required to go on and actually survive dungeon-crawling adventures. These are known as NPC’s, Non-Player Characters. I will tell you more about them in another post, but here are the two most important ones;
Druaelia is a female wizard whose familiar is the owl Temper. She was there for the very first level-one adventure killing rats and gnolls who were particularly weak and stupid. She started as a magic user looking to be the fireball expert. But her fire magic kept going astray (rolling a 2 or a 1 on a 20-sided dice is catastrophic failure and not a good thing to roll when fire is involved). And she eventually learned she was much better with ice and snow magic. She is naturally immune to cold and can wear bikinis in winter, a useful thing when more than half of your team is made up of adolescent boys.
Elytharra, more commonly referred to as El, is the cleric and healer of the group. She is much more modest and devout, being a worshipper of the blue dragon Aureon, god of wisdom and magical knowledge. She is the one charged with learning how to heal boo-boos (and re-attach heads and raise the dead) because hunting for treasure in dragon caves is a dangerous business and dice rolls can make really bad things happen. She was also part of the very first adventure, and the rats almost ate her.
So the main reason we have enjoyed D&D adventures so much is the fact that the characters are so surprisingly real. We learn to care deeply what happens to them, and want them to prosper in the face of evil, no matter what comes. And the real secret behind them is… in truth they are really us.
Catch a Falling Star 
I Have No Idea
Yesterday I posted a weird picture that I haven’t used before and made myself cry gushers of tears again for the boy the picture is a portrait of. I suppose it is a catharsis I didn’t really need. I woke up today with a blistering headache to keep my perpetual backache company. Could that have been caused by the crying and the blues that ensued? Probably.
So, I have no idea for today. My brain hurts and my heart is burned out.
I checked Facebook where I had posted this quote from Malala ;
I wasn’t really prepared for controversy. I should’ve been. It is obvious from the guns versus books graphics that it would stir emotions in my liberal author and teacher friends, as well as my conservative cracker anti-Muslim friends.
My aunt, a former career teacher, responded first. She wrote, “Like the thought.” She was a great third grade teacher in Iowa for many years. She loved all kids then and still does today. I want to be like that in retirement too.
But the next response was from a former high school friend who voted for Trump and hates all the people the Republican Party orders him to hate.
“Sounds great like most sound bites. Much harder to explain and implement.” My friend, Ali Hassenbutter (not his real name, but this will make him angry as well as protect his actual identity), likes to take jabs at me for being a liberal, and the subtext here is that, even though I was a teacher for many years, I don’t know what I’m talking about when it comes to education. So, I answered him with some heartfelt teacher-ism.
“I had Egyptian and Lebanese and Arab students in my classes at Garland ISD. They are people just like us. You help them learn English. They make American friends. Americans learn that most Muslims are not terrorists. What’s so complicated about that? Unless you start slamming doors in their faces and treating them as less valuable than you are.” I admit to maybe being a bit snarky in that last line, but sometimes he gets my goat. (I know I should just let him have it. I have never liked my goat that much anyway. It smells bad.)
A fellow ESL teacher from Garland chimed in even though she doesn’t know Ali. “And these students added spice in our classroom… Just like they do in the USA.” She knows all the students I was referencing.
Then one of my other Belmond classmates who knows and probably detests us both as heathens added his words of wisdom, “The real concept here is that we are in fact ALL HUMAN.” See there? The Bible banger gets it. And I really appreciate when he steps in and tries to make peace. He’s somewhat nutty at times, but his new-found religion allows him to believe like I do that we should choose love over hate as our default response, even to terrorism.
But Ali comes back with; “It takes both approaches to this problem. But then there is Berkley as a shining example of education gone off the rail.” He’s at least trying to sound like he is listening to our comments, but then he pulls this old red hot chestnut out of the fireplace. He offers it like the opinion of the crazy, racist uncle at Thanksgiving Dinner.
“Yes, because it was the teachers’ fault at Berkley. That poor young racist agitator from Breitbart was supposed to have a peaceful forum for spewing his hateful mouth garbage at young liberal college students, and the college administrators who granted him that right didn’t bend over backwards far enough to prevent a violent reaction.” I know, sarcasm is the resort of the defeated. I should be championing love over hate and freedom of speech over my personal revulsion to Milo.
My teacher friend had this to add; “I understand the “right” instigated that incident.”
“Yes, but they wore masks to hide their identity. That makes them automatically liberals, doesn’t it? If I am able to follow Fox News Logic, anyway.” Sez I.
And so, there we stand, at the very beginning of a month-long Facebook love/hate debate. And I will lose. You can argue with brick walls and score more debate points than you can arguing anything political with Ali. And the frustrating thing is, he’s an ordinary decent human being and stand-up guy too. Not just a dismiss-able deplorable because he voted for Trump.
I have no ideas today. I have a headache. If I can’t defend Malala’s heroic logic, then I can’t even argue my way out of a bowl of chicken soup. Doomed to drown in chicken broth. At least I will die healthy at the bottom of that mixed metaphor. That should be worth a laugh.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, compassion, education, feeling sorry for myself, foolishness, humor, Liberal ideas, politics, strange and wonderful ideas about life
Tagged as arguments about education, Facebook friends, Malala