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Justin and the Double Doors
So my first D&D experience was back in middle school. A friend of my who no one really liked but had cool stuff had gotten his hands on one of the forbidden D&D books and on one of those late summer days when doing things outside had gotten old we gathered in his basement, next to the pool table, (told you he had nice stuff) to give it a shot. I had done some war gaming before but this was my first experience with role playing. It was all of our first experience really. We really didn’t know what this whole thing was about but we had rule books and modules and we were determined to figure it out.
After a bit of reading I dutifully sat down to roll up my character. Now here is something you should know about me. Dice don’t like me. This is not an exaggeration they actively plot against me. It is not that roll bad all the time just when it really matter. So after a series of disastrous stats rolls the GM looked at the guide book and said with a sigh. Well I guess you could be a rogue provided you pick a race of Halfling to bump up your dex. And thus my first character was born. He was pathetic and his name was Justin. That’s right my complete inability to name characters was present even at that young age.
Now I don’t know if you have ever gamed with tactical gamers, people obsessed with the numbers and working every angle. But it can get bloody annoying particularly if your character is the one with “special needs” and can’t really take advantage of all the min maxing. You can’t really min max noting. So as our party sat outside a set of double door strategizing for an hour (real time not game time) about how to proceed, I, trough the character of Justin, decided he had had enough of this talk. Justin was no coward, I decided, and I had my Halfling rogue boldly march up and throw open the double doors.
The armies of goblin archers on the other side of the door were singularly unimpressed with Justin’s boldness and proceeded to voice their unimpressed status through arrow voiles. All things being equal it was a pretty good strategy for the party in general. The archers were so distracted by riddling Justin with holes that the rest of the party was able to get the drop on them.
After the adventure the GM gave me two options. I could roll up a new character or I could resurrect my invalid Halfling. In a decision that would affect my gaming fate for a long time to come, I chose to resurrect Justin. To this day I can’t tell you why I choose that path. Stubbornness perhaps, perhaps it was because I really did not like the GM and I wanted to spite him, perhaps I saw a bit of myself in this Halfling that got the short end of the stick, I don’t know. All I know was that in that moment, even though I hated the weakness of the character, I decided I was not going to let Justin die.
So a second adventure and a second set of double door faced Justin. I had learned from my past mistakes and I had Justin listened at the door and open it cautiously. I was positive that there was no one on the other side of these doors. Unfortunately the doors in question were trapped and poisoned. Justin wasn’t killed this time but he was taken out of the action as the poison slowly ate away at his body. Just barely getting back to town for an antidote before the poison did him in. Mean while his compatriots came back from the dungeon with arm loads of plunder. All Justin got was a shoulder that aches whenever it rains.
Third adventure and a third set of double doors. Listen at the door check, look for traps check, cautiously open the door check, get ambush by a vampire in mist form who used his mind control ability to turn Justin against his teammates, check. Granted this was not much of an issue for Justin’s teammates Justin was pretty gimpy after all. But for me this really sucked. Getting offed by a monster is one thing. Getting you head handed to you in a precise and tactical way by your so call allies is no fun.
It was at this point I decided two things. Justin hated the undead and Justin was terrified of double doors. From that point on I played the character accordingly. He never again passed through a set of double door. There was no enticement that would get him to break this vow. He would climb though windows squeeze through drainage pipes and generally endure any hardship to avoid double door. If there was no other method of entrance, Justin was not going in.
And with that Justin became fun to play. He would lose every fight. He was a piss poor thief. But he had personality. Justin is how I learned it was a character’s weakness and quirks not it’s strength and powers that made it interesting. It was the trials they faced both self imposed and external that make a hero. It was through a Justin and D&D that I learned about stories.
I had Justin as a character for 6 years of game play. Yes I played other character, characters of might and valor, but I always gravitated back to my poor inept Halfling. And then the real world interceded on our journey together. People were heading off to college and we all knew that gaming would not be the same.
So on our last adventure Justin faced one last set of double door. The lich king had kidnapped a local princess for a spell to kill the world. We had split up to search for the location of the ritual. Justin could hear the ritual and armies of undead on the other side of these double doors. These double doors were definitely not safe.
The smart thing to do would be to go and retrieve the party, to organize for a final assault on the lich king. But this was our game session and I knew the character of Justin hated the undead. So Justin looked at the double door and said “So it comes down to you and me. Somehow I think we both knew this was how it was going to end…” For a minute I had Justin address the double doors. The one true enemy he had in his life of struggles, his one true and eternal nemesis.
After the speech was done I rolled to have Justin kick open the door. I rolled a 2. I told you dice hate me. The GM had me reroll. This time the dice relented and I rolled a 20. The door shattered and Justin charged the undead army on the other side.
That was the end of Justin. He was a horrible fighter after all. He was a horrible everything really. But he had his victory. He won in the end. He was a hero.
I don’t know if Gygax ever knew how profoundly he affected all of us. If he ever realized the tools he had given us to imagine and learn. But we own him a debt of gratitude. The world would have been a very different place without him. And I would never have met a fascinating little Halfling who hated the undead and was terrified of double doors.
Posted by Drowemos