So, a friend of mine has a D&D group every Sunday night here on campus.
Now, I think we can all agree that I am a nerd. I am obsessed with Sci-Fi (as opposed to SyFy the ridiculous renaming of the Sci-Fi Network, but that's another post and probably should be on Fat-Train) most of my non-scholastic reading is in the fantasy genre, I have spent numerous hours playing through every possible scenario in every Bioware game, and I am an expert on the entire universes of Marvel and DC, but in my life I have actually never played Dungeons and Dragons.
I know. It's actually rather surprising to me as well.
Ever since I've found Wil Wheaton's blog (oh yeah, I really love Star Trek too, and so it shouldn't be a surprise that I am a fan of the blog from the guy that played Wesley Crusher) I've had a little more interest in getting involved with this style of gaming. Wil does a great job in some of his posts talking about why games such as D&D are important and those posts certainly have me more intrigued with the idea of joining my friend's game.
However, I have standards.
By which I mean that I'm going to do it my way, and in as original way as I can manage. If I'm going to finally play D&D when I've gone through my whole nerd life without ever playing D&D, I'm going to do it right.
My friend told me the different character types I could use in the game, and it included minotaurs (a torso of a bull but a man waist down) and centaurs (torso of a man, but the body of a horse below the waist), so clearly, I decided that my character should be a Min-Centaur, having the torso of a bull (like a minotaur) but have the body of a horse below the waist (like a centaur).
He has yet to agree to let this type of character into the game, and therefore I have yet to play D&D, but that hasn't kept me from imagining some back story for my character.
He is a loner, having no idea who his parents are; he is rejected by both the minotaur society and the centaur society as a freak. Throughout his life he has made his own way, and been forced to learn to fight in order to protect himself from all of those who would see it as a huge mark of honor to kill this unique "monster."
Of course, he would also have a heart of gold and be fiercely protective of all those that he considers to be outside of the norm and discriminated against.
I hope that my friend reconsiders and allows my Min-Centaur into the game, because I think that there are many possibilities for this character to grow and add to the overall story of the game that my friends are playing. And if I'm going to finally break down and play D&D, it is with this type of storyline potential that I want to engage the game.
And as original an idea that the Min-Centaur seems to be, as my friend Justin points out in a recent blog post of his own, "There is a new kind of law since the advent of the internet that if you can think of something, it's already on the internet." And that turns out to be true about the Min-Centaur as well.
So, I will close with a pic I found of two of these magnificent creatures.
