If you’ve read the other entries, you know by now that I’m a pain in the ass role player in the sense that I try to do something unusual, even if it’s to the detriment of the group. Some of the people I’ve enjoyed playing with most did the same thing, like Jarod’s bird character who could only speak in three words, and was never able to communicate effectively, especially when it was vital to the party’s survival.
After a long run of playing around with less dedicated systems, our group finally graduated to a long-term Pathfinder campaign. The setting was a nation that had no standing army: to alleviate this, they opened an adventurer’s academy to create a nation full of licensed adventurers who could be mustered as an army in emergencies (and could also take care of those obnoxious kobolds that keep popping up to cause trouble). Our party was formed on Finals Week by the dean: like the other parties, we would be assigned a simple quest, have our performance evaluated, and receive our grade and hopefully our diplomas.
In other words, our party was a college group project.
The campaign began in the classroom, with our party already formed. Ours was the last party to be given their assignment by a reluctant dean. My character was not present.
The dean said to the group, “Listen, I’m afraid there are some complications with your quest. First, there is one more member of your group — a “Bonny Braids” Wulfgard. She’s down at the city jail for drunken brawling at the Shady Lady, wherein a Magic Monkey spell was cast, and two dozen magic monkeys wrecked the entire block. She and the other sixty people involved are being held for questioning, but her father is on the city guard, so she can get out on bail to complete her final.
“Second, you’ll have to pass a preliminary exam by getting rid of the magic monkeys, which have been corralled into a barn up the road from the Shady Lady.”
Grumbling, the group goes down to the city jail to meet the token slacker of the group project. It turns out Bonny is a seventeen-year-old girl, a drunken carouser, a born sorority chick and a six-foot-two viking bitch.
She is also, as it turns out, the party healer. Cue universal groan from the party as she stumbles out of her cell with a, “Sup, bitches. Let’s do this.”
On top of everything else, Bonny turns out to be the one who cast the Magic Monkey spell, and getting out of jail was her opportunity to dispose of the wand that cast it. I don’t know how long those other sixty guys were interrogated before they finally gave up.
Bonny’s misadventures never let up. She was a constant source of extra difficulties for the party, mainly because I was chatting with the DM in private, coming up with new ways her personal life could spice up the campaign at some point. I had assumed the other players — experienced RP’ers by this point — were doing the same, but it turned out I was the only one, and they were a little annoyed by it. Live and learn, I guess.
Everyone got in on the dragon prank though. One member of the party was Aros, the dragonborn warlock. He dreamed of a day when he could bring back the dragon riders of his ancestry, and when one of our quest items turned out to be a dragon egg, he was ecstatic. That egg never left his side, and he was constantly petting it and talking to it, hoping it would eventually hatch and bond with him.
Aros and Bonny had a habit of pranking one-another as well. Bonny usually started each session passed out drunk on the couch while everyone else discussed the adventure of the day (and fill her in later when she woke up). She also had a weakling childhood friend named Devon, whom she was also crushy about, but would never admit it, who was forced upon our party as a regular NPC by plot (in)convenience, and trying to get Bonny and him to sleep together was a common source of laughs among the party members. At one such briefing, Devon delivered a collection of magic rings to the party, courtesy of the king — one for each of us, each with different properties. Some of them were cool, like the silver ring of invisibility, or the gold ring of spontaneous combustion (later used to spectacular effect). Some were not so cool, like the banana peel ring of noxious stench that Bonny was stuck with, because she was asleep and couldn’t call dibs.
She woke up sniffing, her nose wrinkled. “Somebody eating bananas?”
“It’s the new ring Devon gave you.”
Bonny looked at the ring in confusion. “Did he make it himself? The hell did he give me a ring for?”
“You’re engaged.”
“…I’m WHAT?”
“To Devon. Congratulations!”
“I don’t remember getting engaged to the little worm!”
“I bet. You were REALLY drunk.”
Eventually he came clean before she had a heart attack.
Fast forward several weeks. The party is rewarded for their bravery at the end of the latest sub-quest with three weeks of jousting tournaments. The night before the party left for home, Bonny stole the dragon egg from Aros’s backpack, slipping it into hers, and replacing it with the smashed fragments of an ostrich egg.
Neither Aros, nor the guy playing him, knew what had happened. Bonny eventually told the rest of the party when they were back home and Aros was away. Immediately the shape-shifting druid Fara wanted in on the gag. Sure enough, Aros came bursting out of his room later that day, his face excited and alarmed.
“Guys, the dragon hatched.”
Everyone starts acting panicked. “Oh god, don’t tell me there’s a giant lizard running around, breathing fire in our house. We already had to kill the hydra in the basement!”
While we pretend to search for the baby dragon, Fara morphs into just that, and starts tearing up the house, hissing at and running away from Aros, who is desperately trying to befriend it. Fara Dragon then cuddles up to the thief, the one person Aros hates in the world more than anyone. Meanwhile the heroes (and the players) are struggling to keep from laughing their asses off. Eventually the prank turns deadly when Aros tries to hit the thief with lightning just as Bonny tries to get between them, and is nearly killed in one shot (in an ironic twist of karma).
Once she recovers, she offers him the egg and says, “Maybe you’ll have better luck with the next one.”
Everyone ROARS with laughter, in-game and out. Aros is so angry he spends the next several weeks walking a half mile ahead of the party when they travel between quests.
