So, during the pandemic, my roommates and I have begun playing Dungeons & Dragons. And my one roommate wrote up a one-shot that we could play on our back patio with their relative who was in town visiting family. The story revolved around a dinner murder mystery and some hidden treasure. It was a blast to play. But to stay socially distanced from our traveling friend, we had to get creative for our battle maps. So, used some sidewalk chalk to make a grid, and various action figures to represent the characters and monsters.
But me being me, I wanted to go a step further, and make a custom figure of my character for the event. I decided to base my character on Gorr, but because this was a fancy dinner party, he had to be dressed in his “finest clothes.” The backstory I developed for Gorr was that he was his village’s protector, spending most of his days just wandering around the perimeter, making sure that no trouble ever came to his neighbors. But because he was outside and needed to look intimidating, he mostly just dressed in his furry loincloth and boots. So his “finest clothes” were just a brown t-shirt and some fairly uncomfortable pants.
Astute folks will immediately recognize that this used to be a JAKKS Pacific WWF Bone Crunchin’ Action Big Show Paul Wight action figure, released in 1999 or 2000. I wanted to make sure that, as a half-orc, Gorr was bigger than the other player character figures, and I haven’t used this Big Show figure for anything in over a decade. I figured this was a better use for the toy than sitting at the bottom of a toy box in my closet.
Gorr got to grapple and suplex an animated stone gargoyle during this particular one-shot, so I considered the entire game a rousing success.