Good morning! Health and happiness to everyone this fine Friday, and an extra Merry Christmas to those of you who celebrate it. It is time once again for me to fulfill my part of the Faustian pact I made with The Red Beast of the North. In exchange for the occasional magical nudge to my die rolls, I must annually humiliate myself by writing and performing a song about D&D, sung to the tune of some Christmas carol or other.
If you’re new to reading Papers & Pencils, be advised that this particular tradition is now in its seventh year. There’s a whole playlist of these for you to mock, each one with even worse singing than the next!
This year I wanted to give the Magic User some attention. I love Magic Users. I love how few spells they get, how fragile they are, and how little control they have over their mystic repertoire. I particularly love calling them “Magic Users,” which is so much more appropriate than the grandiose sounding “Wizard” or “Sorcerer” favored by later iterations of the rules. It is the first class I ever played in an OSR-style game, and one which helped me better understand what I want out of play.
If anyone needed more evidence of how slipshod this whole operation is, by the by, know that I didn’t realize how short Away in a Manger is before I had fully committed myself both to that melody and the song’s narrative thread. I really wanted to fit a denouement in there, but that would have required a modicum of planning, which is against the rules of my previously mentioned Faustian bargain.
Away in a Dungeon – Lyrics
Away in a dungeon, amid a pell mell,
a young magic user has only one spell.
Now lost to her comrades, she clings to torchlight,
while searching for help in the dark dungeon night.
What good is ‘Hold Portal’ to a fledgling mage?
Why must she roll for spells in this day and age?
Her grumbling and grousing alerted a Graw,
who offered her “safety” within its sharp maw.
Praying for a refuge, through dungeon she fled.
To dart through a doorway–plans sparked in her head!
One spell released deftly with Graw on her heel,
knocked low by a door held with mystical zeal.