Nerd night 2: The Pathfinding.

Last night my friends and I gathered to create characters for our first pen-and-paper, tabletop roleplaying game in years.  We’ll be taking on Pathfinder’s Reign of Winter campaign in all its wintry, frozen glory.  We haven’t done anything like this for quite some time, but our recent success with and enjoyment of the card game version of Rise of the Runelords inspired us to give the old tabletop gaming night another try.

We have yet to begin the adventure itself and I’m already enjoying myself immensely.

Last night we gathered at my house to pass my mountain of Pathfinder books around and create our characters.  The character creation process is, in my opinion, one of the highlights of tabletop gaming.  You get your concept straight, pick your abilities, and make certain you have a nice, complimentary group.

I’ll be playing a Cleric for the first time.  After much deliberation I decided on a Halfling Cleric of Desna, the goddess of dreams, travel, and luck.  Or wait, maybe I shouldn’t go Halfling because they don’t get a racial bonus on Wisdom, which is a Cleric’s most valuable attribute.  But a wandering Halfling is a good fit thematically, and tabletop gaming isn’t always about playing characters with the best attribute bonuses!  All right, so I’ve set my heart on a wandering Halfling Cleric of Desna.  Or wait, maybe Desna isn’t the best choice.  Having travel and luck spells will be handy, but what about the god of community and hunting, Erastil?  I can help provide food for my group out in the wild and get access to spells that focus on community bonding, and while we won’t be in too many villages an adventuring party is a family in its own way!  Or wait, maybe I should choose Gozreh, the god/goddess of nature!  Nature spells out in the wild will be no wait I should go with Nethys, the god of magic because I’ll be able to augment my healing spells with some useful utility effects and no wait I should totally go with Shelyn the goddess of art and love to be the moral center of the group and no wait crap I need to go with Gorum, the god of war and change my race to Half-Orc and be a battleborn healer!  Okay, I think I got it.  No wait.

This went on in my head for two hours.  I still don’t know what kind of Cleric I’m going to be aside from the party’s healer.  The mystery is thrilling me.

I’ve missed this so much.