Playing Against Stereotype - My Mombarian

You read right, Mombarian. Recently I started playing a D&D 5e game at work, which honestly has been amazing. Our DM is frankly really great at taking our characters, their past, and anything we want to do not just in stride but integrating it into the story.

Now that my gushing over the DM and the game itself is over, lets get to the meat of this sandwich. For this game I decided to play a class I normally don't - the barbarian. A class I normally avoid because I am not a swing and smash player. I prefer to be able to think problems out and have my characters be able to break down things and solve them in fun ways. But as I was creating a character for this game at work, and rolled really well for my stats, I ask myself why do we play Barbarians as dumb?

Some of this is going to be rolled up and embroiled in societal and cultural influences you might or might not be aware of. Things like the historical depiction of non-white and non-european cultures as savage, barbaric, or other. Which...wow... that's like a warehouse full of cans of worms we could open. I'm going to be honest I could probably do a series of posts on how those types of biases and visuals have embedded themselves into our gaming worlds and actually is the basis of alot of the problems I've tried to tackled making the table and games I run more welcoming to everyone. But honestly as not being from the communities directly exploited and twisted I don't feel its my place to lament in long form about those. But maybe I'll have some guest writers on at some point to tackle it. Cause yeah...its a big thing in this industry.

But glossing over that fact, now that I have pointed out the elephant, with the reminder to maybe be aware and correct that in your character creations and games. I decided to take my well rolled stats and create a Barbarian character against the typical - a kind, thoughtful, intelligent member of a nomadic culture that respects their ancestors (Ancestral Guardian) who happens to have RAGE POWERS cause D&D.

So was born Nakon Dayfist Kolakova, a daughter gone on a journey because of visions of impending doom sent to her by her ancestors. Tragic events in her past (because every character ever does, that is a subject for another time) have shaped her into a caring giant who quickly flies into a rage to defend those she decides she likes. Nakon has quickly become the reasonable voice in the group while...concerning kind of works out story wise with the other characters at the table.

While its a bit strange playing a Barbarian that still as the INT and WIS scores to not want to cut the guys hand off to get the ring but instead knocks him out for the rogue to just slip it off instead. Its been a really nice change of pace. I think often times we get stuck in this rut after playing the game for awhile, both with the type of classes we prefer and how we see those classes. The bard wants to screw anything sentient, the wizard is a know it all wimp, the rogue is a kleptomaniac, paladins are goodie goodies, etc.

By diverting from this, and breaking this, a breath of fresh air has been added to playing Nakon. Heck I was given a breath of fresh air in regards to playing D&D in general. I have always felt a bit like my hands have been tied in regards to characters I play, most of this is subconscious but some of it is probably that I am almost never a player. So is the curse of the friend that offers to play the DM if no one else wants to. But I have had so much fun with this character!

We recently kind of had a one shot because we were down two players before a big baddie. I say kind of because it happened in that a goddess of healing maybe froze time, maybe shifted us to the astral plain leaving our two compatriots none the wiser to our leaving. She then informed us that the goddess of magic, who had gone crazy recently and was causing you know massive death stuffs, was away from her manor and we had to sneak in. Why you ask? Well to steal back the hammer that she stole from the god of blacksmithing that she had been using to destroy magic items, including those that went with her goddess of magic jazz, and it needed to be restored to keep her from continuing to do so. You might be asking besides the barbarian what where the classes in this mission of STEALTH, SPEED, and DISCRETION? A fighter in full armor and a ranger sans his animal companion because of evil things the goddess of magic had done to our group previously. Honestly I might just do a bit of some Mombarian stories for the blog if there is interest, this campaign has been really crazy so far.

The goddess of healing gave us a pretty clear rundown, get in and out of her manor in the feywilds. She also gave us strict instructions - don't kill anything, don't accept anything, don't give anything, DON'T STEAL ANYTHING... well outside of the hammer which was technically stealing back and returning to its rightful owner so that didn't count, and above all do it quickly. With the character I had built it played nicely with the things the fighter and the ranger could do. Both were DEXy bois so that was okay, I was not. The fighter at least had dark vision so no need for lights, the human ranger did not. I was tall and buff AF they were.... decent. To be fair though that is a hard thing to beat a Goliath at.

Without falling down the rabbit hole of more story time the point I'm trying to make is this - Nakon is THE most fun I have EVER had with a character. Hands down, in any system no matter the addition. This includes my very first character in highschool (RIP my little ranger elf), my longest running character (mute oracles 4 life), or any of the other mirads of characters I've played. Honestly Nakon's favoritism status might even have them rising above any NPC/villains I've created on the other side of the screen.

The scholarly and scientific part of my brain wants to say that this is because of certain psychology triggers associated with the feelings we tend to tag with the experience of newness coupled with an immensely enjoyable experience with my coworkers releasing reinforcing chemicals. But that long streaming sentence can pretty much be attributed to the fact that when we think outside of the box, when we truly explore what we can do or what we are capable of even if it is through a fictional tabletop character we are more fully engaged then any other play session. We aren't robotic. There is no input of round 1 as wizard therefore magic missile, round 2 as wizard therefore magic missile, round 3 as wizard therefore magic missile. (I'm not bitter nooooooope~) You are engaged, creative and attentive because you don't have any of those rules and constraints we associate with a class.

So - BE FREE MY DARLINGS! It really is the most fun you will ever have.

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.