Last night I was reading about a game of Dungeons and Dragons and one of the characters died of hunger. Now that wouldn't be such a surprise if the party had been out in the middle of the desert, but they weren't. Instead the players were camped out near a river with giant fish swimming in it and they were too chickenshit to get in there and get those fish. The guy writing about it even went so far as to say that unless they found an inn soon they'd all be dead of hunger.
I sat there staring at my computer screen trying to figure out a way to respond to that statement that wasn't me screaming, "You fucking mouth-breathers! You're sitting on the edge of a river with gigantic, fuck-off, fish swimming in it. Grab a tree and tie a rope to it. Make a hook out of a caltrop and cut the dead guy up to use as bait! Don't fucking look for a damned inn and starve to death for no reason!" It shouldn't have elicited such a response from me. I should have just laughed at their foolishness.
Ho, ho! Look at those fools. They've got everything they need and they're still complaining!
Ho, ho! Look at those fools. They've got everything they need and they're still complaining!
Look, I grew up fishing and watching my neighbors gut deer in their front lawn and I realize that can make my internal voice a bit skewed against their ignorance, but I can't be the only one who threw his hands up in disgust at that bullshit. Honest to god, kids, kill the fucking deer, catfish, and dog but don't starve to death.
What a bullshit and needless way to die.
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| Let it go? Fuck no! We're eating the shit out of this bitch! |
Bullshit? Sure. Needless? Look, if you don't have the guts to go fishing (or at least pack rations) WHILE PRETENDING TO BE BADASS IN AN RPG I think every moment of belly-rumbling starvation is entirely necessary!
ReplyDeleteYou know what, I stand corrected. They do deserve to die.
DeleteMaybe they couldn't find the relevent skill to make a roll with :)
ReplyDeleteThat's funny. :D
DeleteNot having read the account, part of me wanted to come to their potential defense. "What if being a bunch of city-bred nobles was their thing? What if they really were supposed to be incompetent at these sorts of things, and utterly dependent upon civilization..." But you did say it was a D&D game, so... that seems unlikely.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure, as the DM, I'd be offering INT rolls to these guys, and eventually WIS rolls, for common sense to kick in...
As a DM I would have let them stave and then used their character sheets to start my bar-b-que. Then I would have fried a catfish on the grill and eaten in front of them.
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