2020 Geek-A-Long: Crit Happens

Hello, 2020 Geek-A-Longers! It’s your friendly neighborhood llama here for the first time this year. I had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and I took some time off of the internet to just focus on family and friends. I love the interwebs, but sometimes you just need a digital cleanse.

Anyhow, I’m writing this post while wrapped up in the first ever GAL blanket that we kept. If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can read Jac’s 2020 Geek-A-Long announcement post HERE. Don’t worry, we’ll still be supporting the Child’s Play Dinner Auction in 2020, but we are taking a different approach this year.This year I’m making a redonkulously amazing fair isles sweater based on 16 of my favorite fandoms for Child’s Play. We’ll start releasing details on that in July, and the sweater KAL kicks off in August.

For the first half of 2020, your weekly dose of geeking-along is all about Jac’s wooly tribute to D&D. Jac knit all of the squares herself and managed to do so behind my back. I know you guys don’t witness our daily expressions of codependency, but honestly her pulling that off is one of the greatest con-jobs I’ve ever seen. If you missed it, the first square was the Dungeons and Dragons Ampersand, and it is epic. The only way we could possibly follow that is with a critical success!

I think everyone experiences RPGs in their own way, but one thing that is pretty universal for seasoned players is that they have a story about their most epic failures and most epic successes in game. We’ll talk about rolling a 1 another week, for today, let’s all take a moment to bask in the memory of the most amazing natural 20 we’ve had. Leave a comment on this post and share your Critical Success stories. I’ll read them to Mabel the Merciless as empowering bedtime stories.

My most epic natural 20, the one I plan to tell my grandchildren about, is made even better by how perfectly it annoyed Mr. Llama. This was long before we were married, some time back in 2000 and late. These days adulting leaves me much less time to play, but back then we played in a ton of games together. He happened to be DMing this one. I usually play a bard, and it would drive him nuts that I would max out my skill points in random things, but leave traditionally useful skills like lockpicking or acrobatics as dump stats. One of the ones I always maxed was ventriloquism. I didn’t know when, and I didn’t know how, but I knew that when my day came I was going to use the shit out of ventriloquism. I don’t remember the exact circumstances that put our party in a tavern facing down enemies that far out classed us in terms of brute force and magical prowess. I do remember that they were evil clerics of an evil god. This matters. If I weren’t facing down men-of-the-cloth, I might not have pulled this off, but the stars aligned and set me up for the best possible use of ventriloquism:

I rolled a natural 20 and critically succeeded at mimicking the voice of their god, thundering down to them from the rafters of the tavern, demanding that they release and serve us, his chosen few. I think that was supposed to be the boss fight for the night, and with not much left to do we sat back and were served drinks by the thugs that now believed they were god-sworn to serve and protect us. A decent amount of IRL drinking followed, which I maintain was just our way of method acting.

Whether you’re knitting, crocheting, or cross stitching this square, you can download the Crit Happens (D20) pattern here. Instructions and charts for both knit and crochet are listed in the pattern. When you’re finished making it, don’t forget to Instagram your squares at us @lattesandllamasyarn with the hashtag #geekalong! Want to hang out with other people making the blanket? You can find moral support in the Geek-A-Long group on Ravelry here.

~Megan-Anne

One of these weeks, I’ll tell you about the time I ran a campaign where the boss fight required the players to out drink their foe and I pulled out trays of real life shots.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider making a donation to Child’s Play Charity. Here is a direct link to our official donation page benefiting the charity. Please help us raise $1,000 this year. No contribution is too small! Wanna make your donation go even further? Lattes & Llamas will donate $1 for every skein of Geek-A-Long Yarn purchased.