Thursday, January 12, 2023

Character Creation: Darkest Dice

I started out making a character for Sorcerously Advanced, and my brain kept going zap, so maybe today's not the day for that game. But I do want to make a character, so fortunately, I have some easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy sorts of games for exactly this kind of situation. To wit:

The Game: Darkest Dice
The Publisher: Goodman Games
Degree of Familiarity: I mean, I played D&D 1st Ed
Books Required: "Book," lol. Just the one

Most gamers of a certain age remember Dark Dungeons, the infamous Chick tract that you could find lying around near places where evangelicals slither. The best way to experience it is like this. White Wolf did a parody version to advertise the release of Demon: The Fallen way back when, too, called Demonic Deviltry

Anyway, Darkest Dice is...I'm not sure what it is. It's an RPG, I guess, kinda-sorta, presented in the Chick-tract format. It's basically Red Box D&D, inasmuch as it's just a collection of stats for fighting monsters, but like...who cares? What purpose does this fulfill today? There are many more interesting one-page games. There are many more interesting D&D clones. Is it a joke, rather than a playable game? Then why charge money for it? (Only $3, but still.)

Even if my brain weren't misfiring, which it most certainly is, I wouldn't have answers, so let's make a character for this "game" and go play Lemmings for a while. 

First we roll for stats. Roll 4d6, drop the lowest. I wind up with:

Str 10
Dex 13
Con 13
Cha 9
Wis 14

Looks like a cleric to me. Oh, wait, no, they get spells based on their Cha modifier. Thief? Yeah, seems workable. Just for fun, let's look at wizard. Ah, actually wizard seems fine, too. Let's do that. 

Hit points is 1d4 + 1 (my Con mod), so...4. Side note, this game has you make a number of Death Saves equal to your level, which means you get more likely to not die as you level up. This makes sense logically, but is kinda shit narratively, as they stakes should get higher as you get more powerful.

Armor Class is 10 + Con modifier, or 11, since I can't wear armor. I can use a dagger or a staff; I think a dagger makes more sense. 

I get Read Magic and then three more spells (2 + my Wis modifier). I roll spells randomly, which...erm, OK. I get Sleep, Detect Magic, and Shield. Not exactly a battle-mage, here.

And that's it, really. Let's say my wizard's name is Ebelle. Ebelle has a big 70s porn-stache, but a very weak chin. He wears wizard robes and looks utterly ridiculous in them. He hasn't learned any actual offensive magic because the sight of blood makes him queasy (so what's the dagger for? eating, mostly). 

That's it. 

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