One of the few highlights of quarantine is the weekly Dungeons & Dragons game with the Michigan folks. Before everyone was locked into their homes, I think it would be pretty much impossible to get someone to commit to playing a game, in person, every week, for 3-4 hours at a time. People have lives, and we’re not kids anymore where we can just screw around all the time. But now, with shelter-in-place extending into the endless future, people have time on their hands and don’t need much of an excuse to socialize, so here we are.
I play a warlock, a class that is defined by their pacts with powerful, otherworldly beings. They’re granted different magical powers, but are expected to pay a substantial cost in return. The “cost” of your pact is determined entirely via role-playing: there are no written mechanics in combat or anything which actually impose a penalty on you. Mechanically, you’re just another spellcaster, albeit one that can cast fewer powerful spells per encounter, but those spells are more easily restored.
Contrast this the warlock class in World of Warcraft. Up until very recently, one of the signature abilities of the class in WoW was Life Tap, which costs health and gives you mana, your spellcasting resource, in return. This game mechanic synergizes perfectly with the fantasy of your role, of giving up something precious to you (your health) in exchange for power (your spells).
I’ve always gravitated towards the idea of warlocks swearing oaths and making contracts with beings that they might not necessarily like very much, but hold their nose and do it anyway because it grants them the power they crave. In a way it mimics the real world: you do things for your boss, for corporations, for the government. You don’t want to do these things, but you do it anyway. You carve away bits of yourself, chunks of your time, your body, your soul, to achieve the goals you think are important.
It’s a bit cynical: why then, among all my options, would I favor this class? But it most closely represents my view of the world, and playing one just feels right to me.
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