The Dwarf with Bad Aim

When I was an edgy little shithead during my pre-teen and teenage years, I laughed my ass off at Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles jokes. The cheese grater was the best book they’ve ever read. The fastest thing to go on land was their speedboats. The best way to torture them is to rearrange the furniture. Get it? Because they’re blind? Oh-ho-ho-ho! Blindness is so funny, isn’t it? You know who probably wouldn’t think those jokes are funny? The level one dwarf fighter I played as during a D&D campaign in the 90’s. I don’t remember a whole lot about that campaign, so the details might be a little fuzzy. Hell, I don’t even remember the dwarf’s name. Let’s call him Clark. Not very fantasy-like, but fuck it, I’m calling him Clark anyways because I like the name Clark.

So why is it that a level one dwarf fighter named Clark wouldn’t have a sense of humor about blindness jokes? It’s not like he’s blind himself. He could surely set his empathy aside for a few chuckles, right? Well, not exactly. He could see just fine, but you wouldn’t know that from how often he missed his enemies during combat situations. He had this hulking battleaxe that could rip any monster to shreds. The original Axe Body Spray could have been Clark slashing a poor son of a bitch goblin in half…emphases on could have been.

The campaign was DMed by my brother James and played by me and his friends Nathan and Chris. I don’t remember their characters or their names. I don’t remember what the name of the campaign was (it was pre-written by Wizards of the Coast). All I remember about the campaign is that it used to be really popular among D&D nerds in the 90’s. The players had to transport a prisoner to the gallows only to find out that an elf thief was a mole in the group all along. Now the end goal is to send them both to the guillotine. There would be our fair share of obstacles along the way, all of which required Clark and his comrades to swing their weapons and actually hit something for a change. Nathan and Chris’s characters hit their targets with a sniper’s precision. Clark? Not so much.

The first battle during this prisoner transport was already underway with some bandits wanting to steal our riches. Clark had the opportunity to swing his axe and shed some blood all over the forest’s most beautiful features. He swung his axe…and missed. He swung again…and missed. He swung yet again…and missed. Nathan and Chris’s characters picked up Clark’s slack and left the bandits’ corpses stacked a mile high. And then we encountered some gnomes with a broken down war machine. The gnomes naturally blamed us for their misfortune and attacked right away. Clark swung his axe…and missed. He swung again…and missed. I put the twenty-sided die in my mouth and spit it out hoping it would improve the result. Not only did Clark miss again, but I got chewed out for being weird and getting saliva on the dice.

There were many battles to be fought whether it was with knights, mages, or the prisoners themselves. The story was the same: Clark swung his axe and missed horribly. There was even a time when I rolled a nat-one and had to skip an extra turn to pick up my weapon again. Nathan and Chris’s characters did the heavy lifting for me and laid waste to our enemies. Yada, yada, yada, the prisoners were executed and everything was happy in fantasy land. By the time the campaign ended, I had tears in my eyes due to how poorly Clark performed in battle. Every swing he took, he missed like a bitch. He let his team down, though his teammates didn’t show any hint of anger at him. But Clark knew he deserved their scorn if they had any. He was just extra weight freeloading experience points from their labor. As the tears poured from my eyes, I bemoaned the fact that I wouldn’t get any experience points. But James gave me some anyways, though I didn’t do anything significant to deserve them.

Because this was the 90’s and wisdom wasn’t my strong suit at the time, I didn’t see an opportunity for a compelling story when it came to Clark’s misfortune. All I saw was a series of misses. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a game of Final Fantasy IV or Chrono Trigger, because that’s how your characters die. But Clark lived through it all. He leeched off of his friends and never once paid them back. If there was a story to be had there, my younger self couldn’t see it and no, that’s not a blindness joke.

So…now that everything happened and Clark is a broken man, where does he go from here? As a wiser storyteller than I was in the 90’s, I see many angles this can take. Obviously, Clark is overwhelmed with guilt. But how does he handle it? Does he train harder and get better? Does he use his pay from the campaign to sign up for fighting classes? Does he push himself beyond what he’s capable of and jeopardize his health? 

Or does he let the guilt take a stronger hold of him and instead of using it as inspiration, he uses it as an excuse to quit. Maybe Clark retires from adventuring altogether. Maybe he spends his money on alcohol to silence his guilty conscience. Maybe he meets a woman who finds him attractive, but he pushes her away because he “can’t satisfy her”. Ever hear the phrase “those who can’t do, teach?” What if Clark feels so guilty that he thinks he would suck as a teacher as well as a real-world fighter?

What you have to remember as a D&D player is that this is a story above all else. It’s more than just swinging axes, casting spells, and slaying dragons. Everything is an opportunity for a story. And when your characters go through those stories with newfound experience, they, you guessed it, gain experience points. And then those characters develop into three-dimensional people. They feel real despite the fact that they’re in a fantasy setting. They feel human despite being a dwarf, elf, or orc. They have thoughts, opinions, dreams, ambitions, and goals. Sometimes those goals are self-destructive, sometimes they reach beyond the cosmos. The more you develop your story and your characters, the more invested you and your audience will become. If you only care about your misses and failures, that’s all your audience will care about as well.

Everything has a story behind it whether you see it or not, even the ordinary aspects of life. That bookshelf you’ve got in your room? It has seen a lot during its time. It was crafted by creative hands. It’s had many owners who used it for purposes other than storing books. It’s collected dust and formed cracks in the wood and paint. There will be a day when your bookshelf breaks down completely and has to spend its final days in a landfill somewhere. Or the wood from the shelves could be refashioned into something else like a nightstand or even firewood for a camping trip. If an ordinary bookshelf can have this much of a story behind it, so can Clark. But Clark is not an inanimate object. He’s a person with thoughts and feelings. How he deals with his thoughts and feelings is what will determine how three-dimensional he really is. Okay, Clark, so you missed all of your shots and let your teammates down. What will you do next? That’s a story very much worth telling.

But maybe Clark can’t do a whole lot anymore because he really is going blind. Maybe it’s time for him to put down the axe before he hurts someone he didn’t intend to. Maybe he has to spend his time in a home for disabled dwarves. But then Clark has to deal with ableism and people who whine about how their tax money is being spent. If the aggression against him gets so bad, he might have to pick up his axe again to defend himself. But he’ll have help from that woman who found him attractive. She’ll guide his every step and he’ll get progressively better at swinging his axe and murdering ableist assholes. And then…he’ll believe in himself again. His self-esteem will grant him the willingness to marry that woman and start a family with her. And just like that…you have a compelling, three-dimensional story about Clark a.k.a. The Dwarf with Bad Aim!