Have you ever met a god? Well, today in you're in luck! Let's me a wielder of Caileal - a self-made god, Carlos! Hi Carlos 👋
How long have you been playing D&D and how did you get into it / get started?
I've been playing D&D since around 2016-17 when I was a player in our great DM of Doom's first campaign 'Chosen of the Ancients'. Since the first whacky session of that original campaign I was hooked. However, like many people from heavily religious backgrounds, I didn't always have such a positive view of D&D. Growing up, the only real exposure to D&D I had was hearing about it as some kind of evil satanic cult, where a group of Satanists would come together to literally practice witchcraft, summon demonic beings, and torture each other. Looking back this obviously seems absurd (maybe except for the torture part - sometimes this DM of Doom guy puts us through some serious mental torture). But luckily, as I got older, I came to realise that this perception was outrageously false and that D&D was instead just a bunch of peeps hanging out with some role-play! Since I started, I haven't really stopped playing or watching D&D. My favourite D&D shows to watch are anything by Koibu (give him a google), whose style of DM'ing is something I want to emulate myself... when I eventually start to DM in the close but distant future.
Tell us about your favourite PC you’ve played and what made it so great.
My favourite PC who holds a special place in my heart has to be my first ever PC "Caileal Raemear". He was a sorcerer with the ego of a God since level 1. I liked playing him so much because his outrageously arrogant personality forced me to constantly make high-risk high-reward decisions and through insane luck Caileal just consistently come out on top again and again. This of course only fed further into his (somewhat) delusional fantasy of being "the greatest sorcerer in the world" which again led to more dangerous (but extremely fun) decision making. Eventually, I suppose Caileal was proven right since he not only became the greatest sorcerer, but also a literal God in Robin's world (he is Finry Flattop's God). But, unsurprisingly, this was still not enough for him. He was of course destined to become the 'God of all Gods'. Whether or not he did is up for debate (he totally did and Robin is just pretending when he says he isn't. Don't believe his lies!), but nevertheless, he was a pleasure to play.
If you DM, what’s your best tip for future DM’s out there? (Or equivalent for a player)
I don't DM (yet) but as a player, to me, what I find most fun about D&D is immersion. And so I think creating a world and campaign that allows for good immersion is key. What helps a ton with immersion is having your world be internally consistent. So, if you establish a precedent for some interactions or rules, I think remaining consistent with that throughout the campaign is super important. Another thing that goes with this is that I hate the feeling of having no agency. The worst feeling is to feel like you're on train tracks and no matter what I do the outcome will be the same. Now, this isn't to say that you shouldn't ever put your players on train tracks, the point is that the player should never feel like they're on train tracks. A good DM will say "you're running through the street, do you turn left or right? Okay left, good, you pass by X tavern where you find Y people, what do you do?" And the player will be unaware that if they turned right they would have ended up at that same tavern with the same people. Just don't make it obvious to the player when they are on tracks!
Bonus related tip: Don't fudge rolls either! It's cringe and takes all the stakes out of any interaction since I would feel like I'm either destined to succeed or fail and makes me question any future rolls you do.
What’s one epic moment you can recall from one of your games?
One epic moment that I will always remember would be from one of the first sessions of 'Chosen of the Ancients' where I was playing Caileal. We were still super low level and finding our feet in the world of Trankarsia. On this session, our party ended up as guests in a royal dinner with the Queen. Unbeknownst to us, and not of particular interest to Caileal, the court-wizard was evil and had put the Queen under a spell to control her. Throughout the dinner Caileal took a particularly bad liking to the court-wizard and was obviously much more qualified than this wizard who was 2-3x higher than my level. Through some hijinks we ended up in a duel with the position of court-wizard at stake. The winner takes the seat of the court-wizard and loser dies. First round: I win initiative. I cast scorching ray. ALL THREE RAYS CRIT. The court wizard takes 12d6 damage! I roll EXTREMELY well dealing well over 50 points of damage! The court wizard is a glass cannon and rolled terrible HP. He is burned to a crisp in one round. Dead before he could even blink. After that the campaign was turned on its head and I was now the court-wizard and hand to the Queen. What I love so much about this moment was that it was the first of many high-risk high-reward situations Caileal kept getting himself into and completely changed the direction of the campaign.
Join Carlos and the Raging Rolls for Call of the Seven Rings on Thursdays from 8:30pm Sydney time at twitch.tv/ragingrolls or catch up on YouTube. Find Dan on Discord as YEE.