Cow pun-ching during CD&D on Twitch

I have been really busy at work since I came back from my latest furlough, which was the first week of August. I never even took the time to blog about WorldCon, where I was on 3 panels! Then I volunteered with NASFiC! I'll try to write those up soon, but meanwhile, this is time-sensitive (scroll on to see why), so it gets priority.

I've played two more Community D&D sessions on Arvan Eleron's Twitch channel since my July 21 post. Yes, these games take time and energy, but they are also very refreshing breaks from the daily grind.

Here's Day 11, which happened a few weeks ago (I started with this group on "Day 9"). This is all about our party fighting a group of orcs that had raided a farm, and trying to rescue the farmer. We performed some cool maneuvers! It's off Twitch by now but posted to YouTube:

"Day 12" this past Wednesday, Aug. 26, was probably the most fun combination of humor, character development and combat yet. I had an absolute blast! But a big part of the excitement was how very engaged the Twitch-stream watchers were with what was happening. That's why this is time-sensitive: If you're at all interested, I highly recommend watching on Twitch, where you can easily see the comments in chat, rather than waiting for it to show up on YouTube. Remember, you don't have to register with Twitch to watch, only if you want to comment during a session.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/722613435

What happened was, after we had saved the farmer last time, he begged us to go save his favorite cow, Petunia. Our characters are mid-level but none of us are experienced cattle wranglers, so this turned into a comic misadventure. We players started some weird and funny conversations about 45 minutes into the session, and Isil had his usual problems with his horse, but the cow pun-ching really started to moooooove at an hour in, when Arvan Eleron started ramping up the wordplay, and many people played along, adding their own. Chat was on fire for a while! I was laughing a lot.

Eventually, around 1:14:45, we got the cow headed homeward, and the tonnage of chat punnage started dwindling a little. Then my character, Grace of the Refreshing Breeze, a Tabaxi (felinoid) bard, unveiled a song I had written last month about Isil, the warlock who keeps trying to read while he's riding. There wasn't any opportunity for this humorous ditty during our combat-heavy Day 11 session, so I had to wait for the right time.

Here's the clip:

https://clips.twitch.tv/TallMoralTubersUnSane

And here are the lyrics:

Silly Isil on a horse, his nose is in a book;

Drakes and dangers line the course, but he won't even look.

Up and down and all around, he's riding for a fall;

Reading every chance he gets, no time to read them all.

Why does Isil read so much?

Learns a lot, but out of touch!

Isil's useful in a fight, once his attention wakes,

but he's easy to surprise, eyes up for goodness' sake.

Save your scrolls for camp and town; be ready for some strife;

Join us Isil, if you please, and learn by living life!

My fellow players really appreciated the song, and chat liked it too. Then the puns resumed as things progressed.

Finally, at the end of the episode, there was an adrenaline rush of combat! I was really afraid for a while that we were in for a Total Party Kill!

Here's "Day 12" on YouTube, if you really don't want to deal with Twitch. The comments are tiny and on the right.

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For the record, I also played on Arvan's D&D with Viewers night on Saturday, Aug. 30, but it was basically puzzle-exploring and some fighting, with some people I hadn't played with before, and no character development. If you're interested, it's here, not yet on YouTube:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/725637629

UPDATE 9/1: I did finally write up my CoNZealand (WorldCon 2020) experience, but rather than a new post that would have had to explain a lot of backstory, I added that as an update to my previous "I'm on panels at CoNZealand (WorldCon)" post! The update is almost as long as the original post, so if you're interested in fan activities, I think it's worth checking out.

More D&D on Twitch

As I mentioned before, I've become a fairly active member of ArvanEleron's community on Twitch. About a month ago, one of the moderators, ShadowedMage, invited me to join the game he runs on Arvan's Twitch channel, Community D&D, and I was happy to accept.

He's running the Dragon of IceSpire Peak, a module, with his own variations thrown in. There are three other players, whose personas are Isil, an Aasimar Warlock; Malak, a Wood Elf Hunter Ranger; and Shakunas, a Drow Elf Assassin Rogue, all aligned Neutral or Chaotic Good. There used to be a fourth player in the campaign, but sadly, he died in real life, of complications of diabetes.

The character I created is Grace of the Refreshing Breeze (please roll the R's if possible), a Tabaxi Bard, CG. I've played in two sessions and am looking forward to more. The sessions are held every two Wednesdays. The next one will be Wednesday, July 29, starting a little after 9 p.m. Eastern. 

They appear first on Twitch, where viewers who are logged in can comment as the game goes on. The interactivity of the chat room, in particular Arvan's friendly and witty community, is what I really enjoy about this venue. Join us, won't you?

But if you want to check it out on a more familiar medium, just watching, without interaction, the episodes eventually migrate to YouTube. Here are the first two sessions where I appear:

UPDATE: The next CD&D session has been postponed, probably to Wednesday, Aug. 5.

NOTE: On Day 10, between 1:18:20 and 1:31:50, my bard, Grace, had an interesting discussion with Isil the Warlock and Malak the Ranger about their different types of magic.