When I was a teenager, I loved Dungeons & Dragons. Without the option of video games to play – they were banned in my house until I was 18 – but with an interest in fantasy and the idea of RPGs, plus an inherent love of stories and storytelling, it’s a small wonder I found D&D. From my first campaign, I was obsessed with the game. The challenge of roleplaying and the complex rules didn’t deter me; rather, I found the complexity intriguing, and telling stories came naturally to me – and what was roleplaying but telling a story, first person?
I played several campaigns as a teenager and young adult; bear in mind, that was pretty much the decade between 2003 and 2013. So, the Decade of the Pretentious Edgy Goth Kid on the Internet. Thus, Anti-Paladin was my dream class, though I’m not exactly sure I ever played one.
Despite the trendy-edgy theme, I did have a great time creating characters. They are a bit embarrassing to look back on, but I will share a few of my early D&D designs here:
I absolutely loved creating D&D characters. And though I am no longer a pretentious edgelord (or at least am less of one!), I still love designing characters, especially anti-paladin types. So when OgreWare told me that one of the Troops was going to be a Dark Knight, I was super excited.
I asked if the Dark Knight could be female and was told “Sure, why not?” And so I poured all my angsty teenage love of anti-paladin characters into this design. She is an absolute badass – and still manages to have pretty hair. (I never said my inner edgelord was logical!) Here she is, with her standard look as well as her Holy variant – aka the Anti-Anti-Paladin!
The Dark Knight is one of only a few characters in Calling All Heroes that are more or less realistic humanoids, and she is closer to the style I use in my manga-style comics than she is to the cartoony Slime and Imp, but I think that the design still works.
Let us know what you think in the comments below, and if you haven’t played Calling All Heroes version .75 yet, click here to play in your browser or here to play on Android.
-Admin Taylor