Wanna See All My D&D Characters?

Throne of Salt blogged about all the D&D characters that they've played over the years, and Mad Queen's Court posted one as well. I figure that means it's a free for all and I wanted to stroll down memory lane too. 

High School

My older brother's friend got ahold of the three core 3.5 D&D books somewhere. He was the Dungeon Master by default since the books were his. 

• I Forget (3.5 Dwarf Cleric). I have almost no memory of this character except I thought I was clever for purchasing a small mirror with my starting gold to look around corners.
• I Forget Also (3.5 Gnome Bard). After one session I decided I didn't like my Dwarf Cleric, so I made a new character, a Gnome Bard. I don't remember anything else about this one either. But my brother's friend decided he didn't like Dungeon Mastering and nobody else wanted to do it, so I took up the mantle—thus beginning years and years of being the DM all the time. 
• Arthur Honeyhill (3.5 Halfling Beguiler/Ranger). Later in high school I played this character in a Forgotten Realms campaign run by a different friend who had played D&D back home at his old school. Finally I had the chance to play with someone else as Dungeon Master. Arthur used a hand crossbow and since he was a Beguiler (a class found in the Player's Handbook II) he used a lot of illusion and enchantment spells. Really fun character. We played this campaign for like two years I think. He took a few levels of Ranger to take Favoured Enemy as a roleplaying decision after a certain NPC betrayed us. I forget the details. Eventually he died during a session I missed, which I was pretty upset about. In my absence, my friends decided that "what my character would do" was to pull my hand crossbow on the pirate captain in his own quarters, so I got immediately shot by about ten pirates, killing me instantly. Whatever...
• I Forget This Name Too (3.5 Human Warlock). After Arthur Honeyhill died I replaced him with this guy whose name I forget. Warlocks in 3.5 operated very differently from the ones in 5e with which more people are familiar. This character spoke in a terrible Russian accent and had a drinking problem, which my friends and I all thought was hilarious. My favourite invocation involved one of my eyeballs crawling out on spider legs and scouting up ahead for me. We were fighting a cockatrice once and an unlucky roll on the Critical Hit table for the cockatrice ended with one of my eyes being torn out. So from then on I pretended to be blind and kept my spider-eye-ball out on the run all the time. Very fun. 

Then my brother and all his friends graduated high school, leaving me behind, since I was the youngest of the gang. I eventually convinced some other friends to play D&D with me but I always had to DM. This was also around when 4e came out, which I played quite a bit but was never happy with. 

University

I moved one city over, met some new people, and started playing with a regular group which still meets today. We all had started with 3.5 and loved it, but hated 4e. So we decided to play Pathfinder. 

• Mehmed (Pathfinder Halfling Ranger). This was for a desert-themed Arabian-type campaign. I had a goat as my animal companion and I think I still fought with a crossbow, just like Arthur Honeyhill. This campaign was a lot of fun. 
• Cookie (Pathfinder Dwarf Cavalier). After our desert campaign ended, one of the players took up the mantle of DM while our regular DM was travelling for a few months. I played this funny dwarf cavalier, and I think I had an axebeak as my first mount (giant carnivorous bird). But she died so I ensnared a giant gecko named Flan to be my mount instead. I might be remembering this wrong and it was the other way around. 
• Bernard Beekeeper (Pathfinder Human Cleric of Kord). I think Cookie died and then I made this character. Or again, it might be the other way around and Bernard died and then I made Cookie. I don't remember. Bernard fought with a polearm and had some feat which gave him multiple Attacks of Opportunity per round, meaning that he could cast spells on his turn and have enemies approach through his Reach and get attacked. This was the first time I think I ever made a decision for my character with the goal of optimizing combat. All other characters had almost all their decisions made for roleplaying reasons, or because I thought it was funny (sometimes both). I liked this character—I played him as kind of a college bro with a heart of gold. He loved nude oil wrestling with other men (very erotic) and yelling his catchphrase: "That's hard-Kord!"
• Jean-Philippe Ambrosie (Pathfinder Human Rogue). By the time our regular DM returned from travelling I was itching to DM again since I hadn't done it since high school, a few years ago at this point. So I DM'd for about a year in another campaign. Then our regular DM took over again and we played another desert campaign, but this time set in one large city. All our characters were members of a scrappy youth gang, out to get rich or die trying. Very fun set-up and a very fun campaign which ran for three years. Even though JP was Human, he was only 15 and very small, so I still got to scratch my halfling itch. I also used a sap and had some feats geared towards non-lethal damage, meaning I often knocked opponents out instead of killing them. We often took prisoners and extracted information from them in one of our many hideouts (basement of a brothel, upstairs of a tavern, an orphanage, a couple different warehouses we bought). 
• Tina Appleblossom (Pathfinder Human Ranger). Jean-Philippe's soul got trapped in the shadow realm or something like that, so for a few months I played an orphan leader Tina Appleblossom. She was sassy, had boots with the fur, and fought with a longbow. She was fun. Then we rescued JP's soul and he got brought back into the fold. He also got bit by a were-rat and turned into a little rat boy. I think he got cured but now I forget. I could check my notes but I'm lazy. 

I used this model of Frodo as my piece for Arthur Honeyhill, Mehmed, and Jean-Philippe. I bought him in high school from Games Workshop along with a few other Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game minis. I painted him all by myself when I was like 14 and he's looking pretty good, over a decade later. 

Grad School

I moved across the country to attend graduate school and had to leave my regular group. The first year of my program was super busy and I didn't play any RPGs at all. I DM'd a Dungeon World campaign for my classmates over the summer (did not enjoy the system) and then a dungeon-crawling Knave campaign for a smaller group of classmates throughout the second year of the program. This was around the time I was getting into the OSR. 

• Fisk the Fish Wizard (5e Elf Wizard). During my second year I played three or four sessions in the 5e campaign of a classmate, where I played my first ever wizard. Highlight for me was Levitating a giant snake made of fire overtop a lake and dunking him in the cool water. 

Gaming in the Time of COVID

I graduate from school and moved back home this spring, amidst all the fallout from COVID-19. Obviously I had to stop playing in person. My one friend from school across the country started DM-ing a 5e campaign online. This is also when I found the OSR Discord and started looking to play in some OSR-style games myself. 

• Zozdan (5e Minotaur Barbarian). This is for my friend's 5e Ravnica campaign, which is just a few sessions in. Pretty fun so far. I love playing in city environments. Zozdan is a former slave, and loves to embroider things. 
• Multiple 0-level Peasants (Lair of the Lamb GLOG). Someone advertised a Lair of the Lamb run on the OSR Discord and we've played a couple sessions of it so far. Really fun. I've had two peasants die so far, and one remains. 

Thoughts

And that's where I'm at. I'm sure there are more characters I'm forgetting from a one-shot here or there, and possibly one or two more from high school times. But aside from those, I'm surprised that I've only played twelve characters. Only six of them have really been played for more than a couple sessions. I guess I GM way more than I play. I did put a solid 50 sessions into Jean-Philippe, so that counts for a lot. If I had been in a different group we might have played half a dozen smaller campaigns in those same three years. 

I really like playing Halflings and I really like playing Rangers. Although, I am dying to play in a GLOG game where I get to be a wizard. I haven't had that opportunity yet, and it seems like so much fun. 

You should also write up a blog post about all your characters.