Mailbag Monday 69

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Welcome back to Mailbag Monday!  On the first Monday of every month, I take the time from my busy blogging schedule to answer all of my reader’s most pressing questions! Sure, I might have begged, bribed and cajoled my readers into sending me these questions in the first place, but, that still totally counts as reader mail!

This month I answer the following questions:

• “Do you have any stories about playing D&D with the jocks?”
  -Chad
• “What are your thoughts on biological warfare in the workplace?”
  -Chris

So, without further ado, it is time to dig into the old Mailbag to see what kind of things have been on my readers’ minds in the last month!

“Do you have any stories about playing D&D with the jocks?”

-Chad

Oh man, DO *I*!  I’ve discussed this before, but a couple of years ago I started the exact same D&D campaign with 3 different groups of people. In each, the players all start mysteriously chained to the walls in a mysterious dungeon after a night of drinking.  I had a vague idea about two princes fighting for their father’s throne in a new city and one of them attempting to frame the players as part of his overly complicated plan, but otherwise I left the story pretty open ended.  I reacted to the player’s choices, just as they reacted to the outcomes that I gave them to organically create the story.

My brother and sister’s (and Brian!) group managed to free the castle dungeons of all their prisoners throwing the city into chaos and making new friends and foes in the process as they unraveled the plot to find out who framed them.

My film student friends said “fuck figuring out who is behind this, let’s just get the fuck out of the city!”  Which is exactly what they did…after a few sewer adventures on the way out.

My buddies from the weightroom however…they had different plans.  After breaking out of prison, they waylayed a hideously obese (and falling down drunk) guardsman to steal his clothes in order to impersonate a member of the city guard so that they could gain access to the city armory and get totally decked out with weapons, “just like the end of Commando.” First though, they decided to steal the dude’s completely shit covered underwear (they made me roll to see how soiled they were…it didn’t go well for his underwear).  Then, they spent the next hour of game time hiding outside an inn and using the underwear to “shitface” random drunk patrons as they exited: “ahahahahahah…oh man, awesome…let’s get another one!”

It was then declared by all involved (except maybe Danny’s girlfriend Carol) that D&D was the best game ever.

They also went on to cause their own prison riot, burn down half the city (along with an orphanage), and then take the king hostage in order to escape punishment for their numerous other crimes.  And, the last thing they did before leaving the king behind at the end of his secret escape tunnel in the mountains on the outskirts of the city?

“D00d, d00d, d00d, d00d!!! Let’s shitface him!  I still have the shitty underwear in my inventory!!!”

Which is to say, playing D&D with jocks went just about as amazingly as one could have hoped.

“What are your thoughts on biological warfare in the workplace?”

-Chris

First, as any of my new coworkers who happen upon this will be happy to find out, the workplace is really not an appropriate place for biological warfare.  First, not only is it explicitly forbidden by the Geneva protocol of 1925, but it also is just kind of gross. They always say “you don’t shit where you eat,” but it is also true you don’t shit where you work.  Unless, of course, you haven’t had a break all morning and just need a little alone time.

So, no matter how dire the situation, biological warfare will usually not be the answer.  Try to stick to other, safer, methods of workplace warfare like passive agressive notes and behind the back shit talking.  They are classics for a reason.

Though, I suppose, if the person you are declaring war on happens to be the janitor, like, because he snitched on you for playing flash games on the work computers (EVEN THOUGH THAT WAS TOTALLY OK), then, biological warfare might just be an acceptable retaliation.  After all, he’s the one that has to clean that shit up.

Finally, because I still have hundreds of old saved search terms to wade through, the rest of this space is devoted to quick replies to the more ridiculous web searches that lead people to this website:

Snappy Solutions to Silly Searches

Is it really Monday?

You don’t even need to finish this question Shena.  Frankly, I’m tired of hearing everyone and their mothers (hi Peck!) bitching about how if I finish a post at 4am on Monday night it doesn’t really count as “Monday.”  Well, not only is that needlessly pedantic (the slogan of my last D&D group), but also, it’s not even technically true.  Because, if I understand the international dateline, which I don’t entirely, as long as I finish my post by 6am central time, it will still be before midnight on Midway Island.  And, my blog being the international sensation that it is, there is no need to be central time-zone biased, think of our Pacific Islander brethren!

Islay scotch ingredients swamp water?

Sadly, scotch is made from lake water, not swamp water.  Though they do dry out the barley with fires made from swamp mud, so, you know, close enough.

Isley unruh lord of the ring?

For some reason this was searched 13 times last month.  Which, obv, I’m ok with that. <3