HOME | DD

Description

My second Dungeon World character, Shank the lizard thief and master of poisons. Living in a country oppressed by a fearsome emperor and corrupt samurai, he and his family turned to thievery to make a living. By chance, he came across a boat-owning party and took the opportunity to sail away, acquire treasure, and return to get his family out. Outside of his home country where he wouldn't be recognized, he made every effort to make good relations with the right people and come up with cunning plans. Unfortunately, the rest of the party turned out to be idiots and constantly derailed his carefully-laid schemes, preferring instead to charge ahead blindly and stir up trouble everywhere they went.

Everything came to a head when a small army confronted the party for their crimes, to which they were all eager to fight back, except for Shank. Breaking a time-stopping hourglass, he snatched the biggest troublemaker and delivered him to the head of the army, aiming to cut a deal for turning him in (with the permission of the players, by the way). However, all the properties of the hourglass hadn't been identified yet... it turned out that it didn't stop time for a little while, but permanently.

After nearly a year of studying and searching for some way to escape, to no avail, he decided to slay the army's monsters, walk across the frozen ocean, and march into the emperor's castle to kill him while defenseless. But it turned out that the emperor was some kind of demi-god, immune to the time stop... Negotiating carefully, the emperor agreed that Shank could take as much as he could handle from the treasury, take his family to another country, and never return, in exchange for breaking the time stop. So, in a completely unforeseen turn of events, Shank and his family got a happy ending, living new, wealthy lives in a new country.

......Until by sheer chance, the rest of the party ended up in the same town he settled down in!?!? Shank was none too happy to see his former allies again, especially when they could blow his cover. He hurriedly helped them acquire a new ship and get the heck out before they could cause any more trouble.

Shank is still the favorite RPG character I've played. Even though I heavily prefer good, righteous characters, it was surprisingly fun to play a scoundrel - but a smart one, that doesn't make enemies and works toward the party's benefit. The entire time-stop plot took me by surprise, and although I felt bad for turning the game into a single-player one for a while, the other players all said it was the coolest thing they'd seen in an RPG, and it played out so smoothly that it almost seemed scripted. I do regret one decision, which was hiding a treasure find from the rest of the characters, in order to "get on their good side" later by paying for anything they wanted later on - I should have communicated out-of-game what I was doing in-character, so that it didn't come off as a "rogue steals from the party" thing. But I was happy to retire him once he got what he wanted and his story was over.

For more of Shank, see www.deviantart.com/teh-tj/art/… and www.deviantart.com/teh-tj/art/…

Description

My second Dungeon World character, Shank the lizard thief and master of poisons. Living in a country oppressed by a fearsome emperor and corrupt samurai, he and his family turned to thievery to make a living. By chance, he came across a boat-owning party and took the opportunity to sail away, acquire treasure, and return to get his family out. Outside of his home country where he wouldn't be recognized, he made every effort to make good relations with the right people and come up with cunning plans. Unfortunately, the rest of the party turned out to be idiots and constantly derailed his carefully-laid schemes, preferring instead to charge ahead blindly and stir up trouble everywhere they went.

Everything came to a head when a small army confronted the party for their crimes, to which they were all eager to fight back, except for Shank. Breaking a time-stopping hourglass, he snatched the biggest troublemaker and delivered him to the head of the army, aiming to cut a deal for turning him in (with the permission of the players, by the way). However, all the properties of the hourglass hadn't been identified yet... it turned out that it didn't stop time for a little while, but permanently.

After nearly a year of studying and searching for some way to escape, to no avail, he decided to slay the army's monsters, walk across the frozen ocean, and march into the emperor's castle to kill him while defenseless. But it turned out that the emperor was some kind of demi-god, immune to the time stop... Negotiating carefully, the emperor agreed that Shank could take as much as he could handle from the treasury, take his family to another country, and never return, in exchange for breaking the time stop. So, in a completely unforeseen turn of events, Shank and his family got a happy ending, living new, wealthy lives in a new country.

......Until by sheer chance, the rest of the party ended up in the same town he settled down in!?!? Shank was none too happy to see his former allies again, especially when they could blow his cover. He hurriedly helped them acquire a new ship and get the heck out before they could cause any more trouble.

Shank is still the favorite RPG character I've played. Even though I heavily prefer good, righteous characters, it was surprisingly fun to play a scoundrel - but a smart one, that doesn't make enemies and works toward the party's benefit. The entire time-stop plot took me by surprise, and although I felt bad for turning the game into a single-player one for a while, the other players all said it was the coolest thing they'd seen in an RPG, and it played out so smoothly that it almost seemed scripted. I do regret one decision, which was hiding a treasure find from the rest of the characters, in order to "get on their good side" later by paying for anything they wanted later on - I should have communicated out-of-game what I was doing in-character, so that it didn't come off as a "rogue steals from the party" thing. But I was happy to retire him once he got what he wanted and his story was over.

For more of Shank, see www.deviantart.com/teh-tj/art/… and www.deviantart.com/teh-tj/art/…