Interlude: On Exhaustion Levels And Cooperation (D&D meta)

Hello, Everyone,

Last time, we had a Q&A session with our DM. I hope you liked it. This here is going to be another one of those meta interludes I like so much.

I’m going to tell you some piece of DM/PC teamwork I’m really proud of.

So, without further ado…

We all know that for most of the duration of the last chapter, Mary was at her last legs, crawling through an endless tunnel and having been tortured by nightmares for who knows how long. We saw her go through different stages of tiredness – denial (I'm fine!), anger (if you touch me one more time), bargaining (I’ll sleep in a bit), depression (why was there suddenly a lump in her throat?) and acceptance (she was finally calm enough to sleep).

She also got through the different exhaustion levels as described in the D&D rules. Before Aurum convinced her to go to sleep, she was reaching level four. At level five she wouldn't have been able to walk. At level six she would be dead.

So, I think a little explanation of what’s been happening above-table is in order. A look behind the D&D curtain, if you will :) Otherwise you’d think that the DM hates me or something, and tortures Mary on purpose.

Which is only partially true.

Way back at level 2, I wanted Mary to have a neat little Eldritch Invocation called Aspect of the Moon. It gives her the ability to never need sleep and I thought it’d be funny to have a bookworm who could read 24-7 without needing to shut her eyes for rest. Our DM, however, like the clever Patron that he is, said that there were way more useful Invocations that I could get and after whining for a bit, I agreed. But the Aspect of the Moon never left my mind.

Completely unrelated, after the first horrors and bloody murders under Belfast happened, I thought there was no way they wouldn’t affect Mary’s whimsical and wide-eyed nature. I decided that she would start having flashbacks and nightmares, and be scared to fall asleep for fear of getting another awful task from her Patron. I talked to our DM and he agreed to include that in his narration.

And then, it occurred to us that this would be the perfect opportunity to include that Aspect of the Moon I was still obsessing about. I don’t remember who mentioned it first but at one point the DM came to me with an offer: get Mary through the D&D exhaustion levels with all their disadvantages and dangers to her--and the whole party’s--survival, and see where that leads her. If she survived the struggle, her Patron would give her the Aspect of the Moon as an additional Invocation, on top of the others that she already had.

We were ready to take it to the end, y’all!

I don’t know what would have happened if she'd reached exhaustion level 6, I’ve never asked. Thanks to Aurum, that never came to pass. It’s good to have friends you can count on! <3

Hope you do, too! See you next time when we’ll continue the story where we left off.

Until then,
Take care an be well!