In gathering sources · 2:32am Oct 5th, 2020
So I thought it'd be fun to tell you about some of the research that went into the next "Life and Times" chapter. Partly to keep you up to date on what's happening and partly because I think it's funny. Allow me to elaborate. Without getting into too much detail or spoilers, I needed to learn a little about Dungeons and Dragons, specifically character creation, stat allocation, accepting a quest, etc, etc. Basically all the steps that goes into the very beginning of a campaign. So I asked my best friend who enjoys D&D very much to give me some pointers, since I don't really know anything about it. It's not really my cup of tea, no offense to anyone who likes D&D, but my first experience was with a campaign so boring I felt like I needed to stick bamboo splints under my nails to keep me from slipping into a coma. It was the kind of campaign that was so railroaded I felt like I couldn't even walk on the ground or scratch my bum without having to roll for it. And every time I thought I was being clever in solving a problem my DM said, "Nope, doesn't work," because he wanted us to strictly stay on this one path with no deviation, least he had to put in some bloody effort to allow the story to expand. So while my bestie tried again with a different DM and found a great deal of fun a success, I wasn't willing to look past my first impression and moved on to pastures new.
So I asked her for advice on how I should write the very basics of the very beginning of D&D and she told me to look up the first three episodes of Critical Roll. Naturally I'm like, "Aight, I can spare 30 minutes or so of my time to watch D&D videos." I look up "Critical Roll episode 1" on Youtube. It was three hours long. Three. Hours. Long. and the next two episodes were also three. hours. long. I love films, but three hours is a LONG time for me to be watching a film, one of the reasons I haven't been able to will myself to watch The Irishman. I said, "Oh, no! Not this time D&D!" to my computer screen. "I'm not gonna sit here and be bored out of my skull for three hours to watch one of your videos, let alone nine! Bollocks to ya!" And I went back to watching HBO MAX.
So I'll just let my bestie whack me with a ruler and a red inked pen during the rewrite when she reads and finds I didn't do something right or I bent a rule or two from the manual or something. I'd much rather have her lord over me for a day then spend nine hours of my life watching a training video for a job I don't care for and only asked about through curiosity alone.
Again, no offense to anybody who genuinely enjoys D&D, I know that it's very fun for some and has a rather large and healthy community, but it's just not for me.
Thank you all for reading, see you next time 
Silver Wit
