That sounds like it was done perfectly.

This is the kind of thing I love.

So I’m curious about this kind of thing.

I’ve been playing since the blue box days (on and off but have been interested in getting back into it). In the games I’ve run and the groups I’ve played with, we’ve generally played in such a way that the PCs don’t get killed off if we’re doing a long running campaign. For one off games that has everyone with a new character and is finished in a couple of sessions, we will sometimes play with PC deaths, but for ones where players actually take their characters from level 1s on up, we take the plot armor approach.

I’ve considered it appropriate because I see D&D as interactive fantasy literature rather than a game that people can lose. If a player wants to quit, we can Tasha Yar them out of the story, but otherwise we manage it so that they end up wiping and getting another go (eg, the way it works in a game like WoW), or whatever works for the storyline.

If you do have character permadeath in your games, do you have the player just roll another 15th level whatever and join the party as a new character? Does role playing get affected by that?

The great thing is that when you get with one of them you don’t have to worry about wearing protection. You’re going to get Vulcanized.

Worst. Episode. Ever.

The traditional hand sign indicates that Vulcan culture is primarily straight, but kinky.

The Blind Swordsman is a massive trope in fantasy literature. Take a look at David Carradine’s character in Circle of Iron for an archetypal example. It’s a staple in many kung fu movies - the Master uses their hyper developed senses for sounds and for movements in the air to sense and react to their enemies. Or take Luke Skywalker fighting the drone with his eyes covered by using the Force. Hodr was the blind son of Odin.

Blindness also occurs throughout mythic traditions, sometimes as punishment by the gods. It occurs in Greek and Jewish myths. The witch-woman in Hawk the Slayer was blind (played by the great Patricia Quinn, who also starred as Magenta in Rocky Horror).

I think it makes perfect thematic sense to include blindness in characters. A blind beggar, a blind prophet, or a blind samurai are all staples of the fantasy tradition. I’d actually love it if we had to work out a player character who is blind, but that would take a fair amount of effort. I think the payoff would be remarkable and memorable, though.

I saw James Cromwell, the actor who portrayed Zefram Cochrane, on a flight into Albuquerque about a decade or so ago. He was wearing a colorful kufi hat, and he’s so god damned tall I could easily see him from like three rows back. I was 99% sure it was him, and when I saw him again picking up his luggage I became 100% sure. He’s a freaking giant.

I have a very strong introvert aspect to myself. I very badly wanted to tell him how much his portrayal of Cochrane influenced my life and my career, but I chickened out. For the record, I am a research scientist who now works in big tech.

I think what I loved about him was his flaws. I especially loved how his self-awareness of the chasm between the person he saw himself to be and the legend that grew around him caused him to freak out and panic. I also really understood his whole self-destructive and self-sabotaging stage. And despite all of that, he won through, and Starfleet was the end product.

I love what you’ve written and I think it speaks to the ethos Roddenberry built into his universe to show us what is possible, but I really loved the idea that it grew from this flawed human before it blossomed.

That’s not to say the vroom vroom person was correct. Quite the opposite. A mirror universe Cochrane reimagined as Elon Musk would have lead to… probably the mirror universe but worse. It was more about the struggle possibly being worth it, despite how you feel about yourself and even if the end is something you can’t even imagine.