As of last Thursday, I have now played one hundred sessions of the DnD game I started with my best friends during lockdown. For over two hundred and fifty hours, I have experienced life as a child bard named Bing Whistles.
Before I discovered roleplaying games, I had never had a recurring part. School plays don't have sequels and I wrote few sketches with returning premises. Before Bing, I had not played many characters for multiple outings and those that I did were ones I had little input into shaping.
While the initial concept behind Bing was mine, he was developed with my sister, our dungeon master, and subsequently informed, as we are in real life, by the beings around us. Over the course of our games, I have had to decide how Bing reacts to the deeds and words of others. What delights him? What makes him ill at ease? Which lies is he willing to perpetuate?
After playing him regularly for almost two and a half years, I now have a strong sense of who he is and what he stands for. I can confidently justify actions with a clichéd cry of 'it's what my character would do!'. In this case, the thing he usually does is STRESS.
Oh, Bing is so worried! He worries about his family, his fellow adventurers, the prospect of war... RPGs can be a vehicle for wish fulfilment - you can create a character who is tall, confident, strong. I've unintentionally cast myself as someone small and anxious.
I never set out to create a homesick fretter. As you may be able to deduce from his name, Bing Whistles was a character initially built around a joke. My original concept was that he wanted to be a stage magician*. He lives in an universe where spellcasters abound - and he himself can cast many a powerful cantrip - but what he wants to do for a living is ask 'is THIS your card?'.
The name 'Bing Whistles' is in fact a stage name, one that could only have been generated by a child poorly ad-libbing, saying what they see nearby à la The Brady Bunch's George Glass. It is not a moniker to be intoned with respect or reverence - it's nonsensical.
In short, Bing Whistles was intended to be a little boy pursuing a job which, within a fantasy realm, was very silly indeed. A happy chap with a wholesome dream.
Well, you make plans and God laughs. While Bing would prefer to be known for his closeup magic, the incident of his that is brought up most often is that the first time he cast the spell Shatter, it made a man's head explode. No wonder he's a nervous wreck.
A perhaps unsurprisingly consequence of Bing being worried is that I in turn worry about him. There's a lot of pressure on the little guy. Bards have such an incredible range of abilities that the question for them is not so much 'can I help' but 'in which way shall I help?'.
Bing can use spells to hurt, heal, teleport, deafen, and silence. He can send messages across lands and banish enemies to demiplanes. Within six months of in-game time, he has brought four beings back to life. That is a huge amount of power for anyone to handle, let alone an eleven year old.
However, while he can save the lives of others, he cannot resurrect himself. This is his tragedy. At some point in the game, I will have to stop playing Bing Whistles. That is mine. Whether it's when our party can level up no more or in a battle where his body and soul are irredeemable, eventually I will end my run as Bing Whistles. I and my friends will experience this loss as we would with an actual death. It would be impossible not to having spent so many hours in his company.
I of course hope his final outing is not any time soon. I enjoy exploring the world through his eyes. I am curious to see how he grows.
To that end, I started our one hundredth game with Bing realising it might be his birthday. He is now twelve!
By the end of the session, he had almost died three times. Plans, God, laughing, etc.
For now though, he lives and I love it. Being Brendan is pretty good but I am always excited to be Bing for a while. Even if I do wish he would learn to relax.
*No disrespect intended to this profession - my grandpa used to be a magician.
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