Anything Can Be a D&D Campaign

***ANYTHING CAN BE A D&D CAMPAIGN***

Yes, you read that title right. Anything, and I do mean anything, can become a D&D campaign no matter how ordinary or extraordinary the inspiration is. D&D campaigns are just stories you tell to a group of friends. Novels, on the other hand, are D&D campaigns that you play by yourself. Whether you’re playing with yourself or you’re doing it in a big group, there’s a story deep within you. Deep within the cock, cock, cockles of your heart. If you’ve got a mind for fantasy, you’ve got a D&D campaign.

Let’s take something ordinary for our first example. Let’s say you’re going to the supermarket for some groceries. Nothing special, just some eggs, milk, cheese, bread, lunch meat, god knows what else. You can take this ordinary creative fuel and make it extraordinary in a heartbeat. Perhaps the supermarket is being robbed by a gang of orcish thugs. Perhaps the lunch meat you purchased came from a slain dragon. Perhaps the eggs have snake fetuses inside. All you have to do is take one element of this simple story and twist it into a fantasy setting with some hot action for the characters. Congratulations, you’ve got a D&D story! A trip to the supermarket will now be a glorious adventure.

Now let’s up the ante a little bit with a computer game of Solitaire. Still an ordinary situation, but now it’s in the confines of an extraordinary piece of machinery. Can we make a D&D campaign out of a game of solitaire? Abso-fucking-lutely! The goal of the game is to get every card from the aces to the kings situated in four cells. What if those kings, queens, jacks, and jokers were real people? What if they were being locked in real cells by the joker and held hostage? What will the joker do with his newfound hostages? Ransom them? Beat them? Torture them? Fuck them? Is there any chance at all of saving the royal hostages? Would the two of diamonds or three of clubs even want to save them? Would a four of spades be able to use a shovel as a weapon, like the spade suggests? So many possibilities. The world is yours to unlock and unravel!

And once again, we’ll up the ante with something a little more glorious than a trip to the supermarket or a game of solitaire. Let’s say you want to make a D&D campaign out of your old Final Fight SNES cartridge. You certainly can do that! For those not old enough to remember, Final Fight is a videogame where you take a beefy brawler of your choice and beat the living hell out of the Mad Gear Gang until they give back their pretty young hostage. The creative fuel from such a game is endless. Mike Haggar, a muscular professional wrestler in the game, could be a dragon-born barbarian that breaths fire and chops shit down with battleaxes. Guy, a skinny little ninja, could be an elf with magical abilities to make up for his lack of physical strength. Cody Travers? He could wear gauntlets as he punches through armies of half-orcs on his way to save his girlfriend Jessica Haggar. The possibilities are literally endless!

Of course, the creative alterations you make to any source of creative fuel don’t have to be purely cosmetic, nor should they be. Badass non-human characters are nice, but without a concrete story, they’ve got no reason for doing the things they do and they’ve got no reason to develop beyond their archetypes. So how do you take a game of Vegas Stakes for the SNES and develop it into a, pardon the pun, high stakes situation? For those who don’t know, Vegas Stakes is basically a gambling game where the object is to win…(lifts my pinky to my face) one million dollars! There could be many wrinkles you could add to a seemingly shallow storyline. What if you cheated to win that money and now have to face the wrath of beefy bouncers? What if you spent your winnings on prostitutes and got one of them pregnant? What if you lost all of your money and have to do some unsavory things to get it back? And of course, there’d be dragons flying around everyone and half-orcs losing their shit every which way. It just wouldn’t be a D&D campaign without those things happening every six seconds.

Do I have your attention now? You don’t have to look very hard to find a multi-layered story in the most ordinary or extraordinary things. When you build your story, make sure the characters are the ones driving it. We like character-driven stories, because without the characters, there’s nothing to develop and without anything to develop and cultivate, your story is boring as shit. There are authors out there who still get this wrong. It’s forgivable during the first draft stages, but once your book is out there on the market, you’re fresh out of excuses. Find your story. Build your characters. Make those two things interact with each other. Find friends who are willing to play your new D&D campaign. But if you don’t have friends, write the novel yourself. The world is yours. What you do with it is up to you. I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain!

Holy shit! I just found another source of creative fuel, this time from my sign off phrase, which is stolen from a Three Days Grace song. Climbing mountains even when you’re dying? Why are you climbing the mountain? What’s on the top of it that’s so special? What obstacles will test your mettle? Are there dragons, barbarians, and wizards who want that special prize as much as you do? Do I still have your attention, motherfuckers?

***BEAUTIFUL MONSTER***

Speaking of three-dimensional stories, this new edition of Beautiful Monster is drawing to a close with just three more chapters and an epilogue to write. So close, yet so far away! I can do this! All I have to do is guide Windham, Llewellyn, and Tarja on a mission to pick off poisoned mercenaries and soldiers one by one. Seems easy since they’re all choking on blight fumes, right? Well, not exactly. There are still three people on the battlefield who arrived late and therefore didn’t breathe in an ass-load of toxic smoke. Any guesses as to who these three are? I’m waiting!

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What do you call an ordinary Shrek character?

A: Medi-ogre.

***POST-SCRIPT***

What’s this? I have another piece of creative fuel to work with? A Shrek-based D&D campaign? Hell yeah!

Nunchucks

***NUNCHUCKS***

Yes, you read that right, ladies and gentlemen. I’m dedicating an entire blog entry to…nunchucks. Two wooden or metal tubes attached by a chain or a rope. You can twirl them around, you can spin them overhead, or more importantly, you can whack people with them and cause blunt force trauma. It could be that I’m living under a rock these days, so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong when I say this. Nunchucks are an underrated weapon in fantasy and sci-fi canons. I can count on one hand how many examples of nunchuck usage I can think of: Panthro form The Thundercats, Billy and Jimmy Lee from the Double Dragon franchise, the karateka from the first Final Fantasy game, on rare occasions in Dungeons & Dragons Version 3.5, Guy from Final Fight III, and…holy shit, that’s it!

As evidenced by my WWE fandom of Daniel Bryan, I’m a huge supporter of the underdog and the little guy. Nunchucks are like the Daniel Bryan of fantasy novel weapons. That needs to change and hopefully I can do it with some of my stories from Poison Tongue Tales 2: Warrior Spirit. And while we’re on the topic of WSS short stories, I might as well get this out of the way now. The next contest entry will be called “This Is Violence” and it’ll feature an elf ninja named Natron who uses nunchucks. It’ll be meta fiction since most of the story takes place in a computer game played by a teenaged boy, but those nunchucks will come into play in a big fucking hurry, trust me. Here’s the synopsis for my story:

CHARACTERS:

1.      Natron, Computer Gamer

2.      Shivo Black, Demonic Final Boss

PROMPT: Ivory Tower

PROMPT CONFORMITY: The Tower of Hell is jokingly called The Ivory Tower by those who have easily beaten this RPG.

SYNOPSIS: A teenaged boy with the online alias Natron is on the final stage of a dark fantasy computer RPG called “This Is Violence”. In order to beat this final level, he has to climb the Tower of Hell and defeat a demonic warrior named Shivo Black. It takes Natron a long time to defeat this hellish monster, but when he finally does, he receives an end message that completely shatters his world and leaves him in tears.

FUN FACT: This Is Violence has nothing to do with the first act of a dark fantasy novel I wrote years ago called Fireball Nightmare. That old story featured an army of Gary-Stu warriors, this version of This Is Violence will have relatable characters. The title for both stories was stolen from a Soulfly song of the same name.

So why did I just now decide to give Natron’s RPG character nunchucks? Surely, a sword will have sufficed just perfectly. Everybody and their uncle uses swords these days and they seem to do a good enough job of hacking off limbs and exploding hearts. But that’s the thing: everybody uses swords. Everybody! Cloud Strife used swords, Conan used a sword, Cecil Harvey used a sword, so many goddamn swords! Where are the nunchucks? Even in a game like Diablo II where there’s a huge variety of weapons and a martial arts-based character class, there are no fucking nunchucks!

While it is true that it’s nearly impossible to decapitate someone with a nunchuck attack, bludgeoning weapons shouldn’t be cast aside so easily. Nobody scoffs at war hammers and maces, so why should they scoff at nunchucks? They’re blunt, they’re deadly, and they crush bones when used by the right kind of warrior. You know what I’d like to see? A heavily armored paladin with a pair of bamboo nunchucks. A bloodthirsty barbarian with a pair of steel nunchucks. Even a feeble gnome wizard could use a pair…of nunchucks. What did you think I meant? Huh?

It’s not that hard to take down an enemy of considerable fortitude with a pair of nunchucks provided you know how to use them. You could break arms and legs with one fierce whack. You could break hands and feet and disable a lot of their attacks. Even the weakest strike could concuss an enemy worse than an NFL player. Or it could make their head explode like that creature from Pink Floyd’s music video for “What Shall We Do Now?” There’s no reason for a warrior not to use nunchucks. They’re quick, they’re light, and they hurt like shit. So why the underrated status?

You don’t even have to use them in a combative situation. When I was rehabbing my shoulder in physical therapy a year ago, they had me twirl a pair of nunchucks to get blood circulation in my labrum. While it’s true that I ended up hitting myself a lot with these things, it was an intricate part of the healing process and my arm hasn’t popped out since those sessions.

Whether you’re a monk named Chip or a nun named Chuck, these weapons are for you. They take practice, sure, but what weapon doesn’t? Personally, I’d rather accidentally whack myself in the nuts with nunchucks than accidentally chop my arm off with a katana. Wouldn’t you just love to see Jason Voorhees or Freddy Kruger with a pair of these bad boys? They’d be exploding limbs left and right and it’d be just as creepy!

So come on, fantasy authors, let’s see some nunchuck action! Don’t be like the main character in They Call Me Bruce and use them as chopsticks to get out of an arrest for possessing weapons. Chow mein doesn’t taste nearly as good when it has blood on them. Or maybe it does…if you’re sick enough to be into that sort of thing. But wait, doesn’t that just prove my point that Jason Voorhees should use nunchucks too? Hehehehehe! I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you next time!

***WONDER WOMAN***

Remember a few blog entries ago how I said I was going to review movies more often as part of my creative contribution to society? Well, I haven’t done jack shit in that department as of today. But tomorrow, that will change. I’m going to the movie theater with Reina to see Wonder Woman and I’m already anticipating an Extra Credit grade due to the strong feminist tropes, which we need in world run by a misogynist orange blob named Donald Dump. I hope Wonder Woman lives up to the hype! Or in the case of an Extra Credit grade, exceeds it!

***THIS IS ME***

While the movie reviewing process begins tomorrow night, the book reviewing process is still going strong as evidenced by my thoughts on “Basket Case” by Carl Hiaasen, which, surprise, surprise, received a passing grade. The next randomly chosen book will be one that Marie Krepps recommended to me as a favor to her author friends. It’s called “This Is Me” by C.E. Wilson and from what I can tell it’s a cyborg romance novel. I like a good lovely-dovey ooey-gooey romance story every now and then. I’m not always about bloodbaths and beyond. I hope it’s a good one!

***AUTHOR ADVICE FOR THE DAY***

If you’re an author and you’re describing an intense foot chase between a serial killer and his prey, don’t say the victim “ran like a Baywatch character”. I don’t have any cases where an author did this, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened at least once in this lifetime.

Fighting Game Neighborhoods

***FIGHTING GAME NEIGHBORHOODS***

I’m sure most of my reading audience is old enough to remember videogames from the Nintendo and Super Nintendo gaming consoles. What I don’t know is if any of you have played beat ‘em up fighting games like Double Dragon or Final Fight. If you haven’t, then you probably won’t understand just what the hell I’m talking about. In which case, feel free to skip past this portion of my journal and go straight to the creative project updates and the quote of the day.

For those of you who did play those kinds of videogames as a child, congratulations, your childhood was fucking awesome. There’s no violence quite like senseless violence as you move your ass-kicking character from one side of the screen to the other. No talking, no nonsense, just straight up ass-beatings and maybe some kya noises. What this journal deals with in particular is how most of those games take place in poor, dilapidated neighborhoods.

You know the kinds of neighborhoods I’m talking about. The buildings are so broken down that they look like they’re about to collapse. Cars parked on the side of the road live up to their moniker of Fixed or Repaired Daily. The roads and sidewalks have so many potholes that it’s amazing your character doesn’t trip over them constantly. There’s trash everywhere, and I mean everywhere. In the second stage of the first Final Fight game, the subway train’s windows are bashed in and there’s graffiti all over the walls.

If you’ve ever lived in a small town or inner city district before, then you’ve probably made the connection between your own life and a fighting videogame. You would often pretend to be Billy Lee or Cody Travers as you punch and kick at invisible enemies. You couldn’t do that to real people walking by or else that would be considered assault and battery. There are places in Port Orchard and Chehalis, WA that look like they could be backdrops for a fighting game based on their depressing appearances alone. I haven’t met anybody in Port Orchard who was worthy of a Mike Haggar piledriver. Chehalis? Oh, that was quite the different story.

But why is this trope so relevant to fighting games? Why do they always take place in shitty neighborhoods? You never see fighting games that take place in friendly or rich neighborhoods. Even Belger’s penthouse from the first Final Fight game looked like shit. But what if there was an installment of Double Dragon that took place in a gated community? Would it have the same feel? Would it make less sense? Are people in rich neighborhoods suddenly better than people in poor ones?

And that’s how you can tell if class warfare exists. You won’t see Guy slinging a katana at some Wall Street motherfuckers. If Mike Hagger ever got elected president, you wouldn’t see him clotheslining Andore out of his boots at the white house. You won’t see Shadow Master drinking a glass of Chablis while eating caviar with Liberace playing in the background. The poor neighborhood trope in fighting games is stereotypical of how Americans see their economic inferiors. Then again, nobody played those games because of they were models for progressive values. They played them for the same reason I’d love to play them again someday: because kicking ass is a lot of goddamn fun!

***WEEKLY SHORT STORY CONTESTS AND COMPANY***

Speaking of kicking ass and taking names, this week’s story will be called “Kink Floyd” and will conform to the Captive prompt. It goes like this:

 CHARACTERS:

Tarja Hunter, Cop

Daniel “Kink Floyd” Alexander, Bondage Enthusiast

Johnny Filter, Straightedge Gangster

PROMPT CONFORMITY: Tarja is the captive of Daniel and Johnny.

SYNOPSIS: In order to gain leverage over the Paulson City Police Department, Johnny kidnaps Tarja (their best detective) and takes her to Daniel’s studio. “Kink Floyd” as he’s nicknamed poses her in humiliating sexual bondage positions while Johnny takes pictures on his iPhone. Distributing these pictures could do serious damage to the Police Department’s reputation, which is why Johnny wants to use the photos to blackmail them into allowing him and his gang to do whatever they want. But even in kinky bondage, Tarja won’t give up without a fight to the death.

FUN FACT: If Tarja ever arrests her two captives, not only will they be charged with assaulting an officer and attempted conspiracy, but they’ll also be charged with murder. The victim? Pink Floyd’s music.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

If Stinger Crushwar’s head looks like it’s a little too far on his left shoulder, I apologize. That was a goof on my part and hopefully there will be fewer of them in the future. No sense in crying over spilled milk, though, because the next one to appear on the list is Mathias Jorgenson, the elf sorcerer from “Forever Autumn”. I already drew a picture of Autumn the parrot wizard, so Mathias was naturally next on the list. “Forever Autumn” was described by my audience as “cute” and “cartoon-like”, so hopefully I’ll capture those essences when I draw Mathias.

***POISON TONGUE TALES***

Only my Deviant Art members will understand why this section of the journal is significant since they’re the only ones who see my editing work. The next three stories that will undergo literary surgery are the three M’s of Poison Tongue Tales: “Mastodon”, “Minnie-Moo”, and “Molly-Dolly”. All three of these stories deal with animals and they all start with the letter M, which spells out MMM!! Tarja Hunter’s going to be saying that a lot when I eventually write “Kink Floyd” for the WSS contest. Hehe!

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What do you call a mean Canadian?

A: Eh-Hole.