{"id":21801,"date":"2013-12-09T23:13:22","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T04:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=21801"},"modified":"2013-12-09T23:13:22","modified_gmt":"2013-12-10T04:13:22","slug":"uncle-rutskarn-says-its-time-to-get-hyped-for-aunty-paladin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=21801","title":{"rendered":"Uncle Rutskarn Says: It’s Time to Get Hyped for Aunty Paladin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aunty’s Back With a Vengeance<\/span><\/h1>\n

Hey everyone, it’s Rutskarn, and I think we can agree I don’t spend nearly enough time sleep-deprived and humiliated in front of an international audience. This is a problem some of my cooler friends share, and the reason we’ve decided to hold the third annual Aunty Paladin RPG and Kid-Helping Extravaganza<\/a>–the best reason to use the internet since Ebay ran out of Ernest Borgnine memorabilia. The stream launches at 8:00 AM PST, December 16th, and will be going until…well, that’s up to you.<\/p>\n

There’ll be another post later on talking about some of the games we’ll play, but there are some orders of business to take care of right now. First I’ll explain what Aunty Paladin is, just in case this is your first rodeo. If you were around the past two years, you can skip that part. Secondly, I’ll announce the contest that all of you should be entering into right now<\/em>. Thirdly, I’ll give everyone a chance to jointly and democratically screw me over in the manner of your choosing. Finally, I’ll tell you how to make me love you with undying, tender, optionally-platonic passion. And on that sobering note, let’s begin.<\/p>\n

What is Aunty Paladin?<\/strong> Can I Eat It?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Aunty Paladin is a group of awesome* tabletop gamers who dedicate a week of their lives to bringing constant entertainment to your computer screens and cash money to sick children. Starting Monday morning, we will be playing one tabletop game after the other, nonstop, on-camera, with an eye towards creativity and crowd-pleasing. We play whenever we’re awake, sleep as little as possible, and eat whatever our support crew manages to cook up with the contents of an undergraduate kitchen. As for you guys, you keep us playing as long as possible by donating money to sick kids.<\/a> As a rule, the games get more exotic the longer we play, and by the time we reach Friday morning we’re dipping into the most perilous reaches of homebrew, indie design, and whatever horrifying bullshit Nick finds in his forums. We also have a few surprises planned for if we make it all the way to the ultimate goal of Midnight Saturday…but we’ll save those for during the week.<\/p>\n

If you’re a fan of tabletop games, you owe it to yourself to check out the stream. If you’ve never played or seen tabletop games in action, you really<\/em> owe it to yourself to check out the stream. We make this look easy because it is, and we make it look fun because it really <\/em>is.<\/p>\n

*Give or take a few Rutskarns.<\/p>\n

What Was That About a Contest?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Harboring the extremely specific fantasy of designing an adventure for me to GM on camera? Then today could be your lucky day!<\/p>\n

All you need to do is dream up a brief pitch for a roleplaying adventure*, write it up in three hundred words or fewer, and send it over to auntypaladin@gmail.com. If we like yours better than the others, I’ll run it live on camera at a time where you can tune in! The only hard rule is that you shouldn’t specify a rules system for us to use, because while we have hard copies of <\/em>nearly everything, we reserve the right to pick the one that’s the gentlest pain in the ass.<\/p>\n

*You can honestly win this one even if you’ve never run or played a tabletop game before. Just come up with the pitch for a nice, dramatic short story involving a small group of main characters and it’ll probably be perfectly serviceable.<\/p>\n

You Said There Would Be Screwings Over. Don’t Toy With My Heart, Rutskarn.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/strong>I’ll make this quick: you know Tomb of Horrors<\/a>? Dungeon full of nasty traps and unwinnable fights? The<\/em> most infamous adventures in tabletop history? You may recall that I ran it last year. You may recall that startlingly, a few characters survived. <\/em>That they “won” the module.<\/p>\n

Well, there are no clean getaways, and this year another GM is running that dastardly follow-up adventure Return to the Tomb of Horrors<\/a>. The survivors of the original party will be coming back…and I’ll be joining them. That’s right: this year I’m on the other side of the genderswap gas and poisonous buzzsaws.<\/p>\n

I’ve been toying with a few character concepts, but I worry that if I’m the one who picks one, I’ll accidentally choose the most dignified and effective option. That’s why I’ve decided to pass the choice off to you guys.<\/p>\n

Choose one of the characters below, then post your selection in the comments. Whichever gets the most votes will be the character I play during the daily “Return to the Tomb of Horrors” feature of the marathon.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

A<\/strong>.) Kadzbar the Neurotic Dwarf<\/strong><\/p>\n

(The administrator of the infamous “Mud Hole” colony, Kadzbar has been responsible for plenty of horrors and exactly one tomb. Something about living in an underground fortress of his own survey and design has made him an expert at spotting murderous deathtraps.)<\/strong><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

B.) James “Jingling Jim” Sonderby<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Inarguably a halfling and technically a thief, James is the prophet of a very specific and personal religion. He believes that he is the chosen messiah of a nebulously defined deity, that he possesses something called “The Third Eye,” and that he is unkillable. This mission will be the ideal venue for empirically evaluating all three claims.)<\/p>\n

C.) Vadzlo the Specialist<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>(Vadzlo has made a long career out of not dying in dungeons. He obeys a few simple ground rules:never swing a weapon at something that’s busy killing someone else, either keep the party behind you or far as possible in front of you…and if you haven’t worked with a group before, try not to learn their names. Metanote: I’ve played him before as a vaguely Eastern European version of Vinny the Demoman from <\/em>Atlantis: The Lost Empire<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

D.) Cahmel<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>(Cahmel’s brand of adventuring takes getting used to, employing a tactical blend of cowardice, superstition, exhibitionism, and outside-the-box thinking. His personal philosophy is, “Anything that can be won fairly isn’t worth having.”)<\/p>\n

Okay, Might As Well Get That Last One Over With<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I can’t say how grateful I am when people spread the word about Aunty Paladin. Our rules dictate that we need donations to keep playing, but that’s not what really motivates us. It’s the knowledge gamers from all around the world are watching us, sharing the jubilation of each good roll and the agony of each character death, helping with the formation of each cockamamie heist and the execution of every inadvisable battle plan. So there’s one thing you can do that would make us all eternally grateful, and that’s let people know about this. <\/em>If you’ve got a gaming group, if you’re part of a gaming forum, if you’ve got an amenable FLGS<\/a>–spread the word to them. We all appreciate it, and it’s ultimately the kids that benefit.<\/p>\n

And of course, we want you to watch it. And heckle us via the chat. And throw bad suggestions at us during critical moments. And run extemporaneous games in the chatbox (this has happened more than once). And draw disturbing fanart of one-off characters. And write even more disturbing shipping fanfic about the cast members (this has also happened more than once).<\/p>\n

Questions? Votes? Let’s hear ’em.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aunty’s Back With a Vengeance Hey everyone, it’s Rutskarn, and I think we can agree I don’t spend nearly enough time sleep-deprived and humiliated in front of an international audience. This is a problem some of my cooler friends share, and the reason we’ve decided to hold the third annual Aunty Paladin RPG and Kid-Helping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tabletop-games"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}