You've got your stats, you've got your sword, and you've got your invisible wand

[dragonmouth]

Who: Everybody!
What: IC D&D Night mingle
When: A couple of days after the Fire Festival
Where: The library and the common room, depending on the day
Warnings: Possible murderhobos. Also, threadjacking is not only allowed, but encouraged!

[Not long after the Fire Festival ends, Tali puts up a quick post on the network. She's got her huge-ass binder full of notes, and she's not afraid to use it:]

The next Dungeons and Dragons session will be tomorrow in the commons.

For those of you who are new to the Station, I'm more than willing to go over the process in the library today! We can go over the general rules, perhaps help brainstorm your character ideas. I think this is a great opportunity to get to know your fellow station-mates and perhaps dabble in a little creative exercise.

Comments

Library (Day 1) | Character Creation/Brainstorming

[dragonmouth]

[ Tali has her giant binder out along with a shitton of small fingernail-sized toys and random miniatures that she raided from Incendia. Looks like she's already heavily modded a lot of them, and is in the process of writing some more notes when people start coming in. ]

[nor_iron_bars]

[Jail flops into the nearest armchair and begins talking without preamble.]

So, I'm thinking 'cleric'. But, like, a shitty cleric.

[dragonmouth]

...and what god does this shitty cleric serve?

[ She's rollin with this. Hey, hey, check her campaign notes she's handin' you, Jail. It's even got a pantheon now. ]

[nor_iron_bars]

[Truly the mark of a good DM.]

They used to be a priest of the Dawnfather, but they got kicked outta their monastery for drinking and sleeping around a bunch. They're a total mess, basically don't follow any of the vows about self-denial and shit that they oughtta, but they still give a crap about people and wanna help 'em out anyway, so they got to keep their powers even though they're in disgrace with basically the entire Dawn Temple now.

[dragonmouth]

[ Silence. And then. ]

Amazing.

[ She's going to just slowly hand you a character sheet. ]

[nor_iron_bars]

Aw, thanks.

[Jail takes the sheet and begins filling it out with the details of the shittiest cleric to ever cleric.]

Re: Library (Day 1) | Character Creation/Brainstorming

[have_hat_will_travel]

[Tali, this is Pidonus, who you know to be a bard. But this time...]

I'm not sure what I want to play, actually?

[dragonmouth]

Well, not to impose, but we've quite a lot of spellcasters... perhaps you'd like to be a fighter or a monk? Or perhaps a ranger?

[have_hat_will_travel]

Hmm. Fighter would be an interesting optimization challenge. Don't think I can convincingly pull a Lawful alignment. so not Monk.

... Yeah let's just try simple Fighter.

[dragonmouth]

Sounds like an excellent start. Not that this is how things worked in my world, but I suppose if you ever needed help fleshing out the details, I could try going off personal experience.

[ She's very much 100% a Fighter when you take away the power nullification thing. ]

[have_hat_will_travel]

[Pidonus slowly slides down to a seat, looking over the items at the table ...]

I'd best grab the rulebook. This book looks newer than my world's ruleset...

[dragonmouth]

Well, alright. Any particular race you're considering today?

[She's gonna hand Pidonus the handbook, along with some hand-written notes on a few other races that she's found from bits and pieces- so far in addition to the 5e core races she's got aasimar, tabaxi, aarakocra, firbolgs, and kenku, along with some notes she's done for a homebrew race of human looking magical androids who are suspiciously similar to Warforged in terms of stats.

Other areas of interest:

-Dwarves can apparently eat rocks in this setting, Tali having interpreted them as Basically Gorons.

-Elves are absolute dicks most of the time, with high elves having a superiority complex and some of them going so far as to enslave other races. The wood elves, disillusioned with their brethren's excess and slavery practice, left and began to live simpler lives fending for themselves in the wilderness. And then drow are still fucking drow.

-orcs are nomadic hunters who sometimes mingle with human nomad groups, meaning that half-orcs actually usually have less terrible childhoods than half-elves in this setting

-most of the other races aren't too different from vanilla D&D ]

[have_hat_will_travel]

Probably just going to go with Human, honestly? I mean, where I'm from it's not the greatest choice around but for a game-mechanics side of things it's a good fit. Also, it's the cultures I have the most experience with where I'm from, so...

[dragonmouth]

Well, alright. I'm not sure how we should really go about this, but...

...do you have any sort of backstory for them?

[have_hat_will_travel]

... That would be important, huh?

When telling fictional tales in my world, I always would integrate with the place to craft the tale, so... Er, can you give me a sense of place?

[plentyfriendly]

[Phi strolls in casually, like she was meant to be here.]

I didn't know someone had set a campaign up already. Anyone playing a Rogue yet?

[dragonmouth]

Most of us are spellcasters, I believe. There's a girl who's dropped in once or twice who plays a half-orcish fighter, but I'm not sure we can really count on her presence.

[plentyfriendly]

I can't say I'm surprised.

[Wizards are more useful on average, if nothing else.]

Still, in that case I'm going to stat up a rogue.

[dragonmouth]

Oh. Oh, yes.

What race are we considering today?

[plentyfriendly]

Let me take a look... ultimately I want something unexpected but still effective.

[She takes one look at one of the writeups and passes on it immediately.]

And also not Tabaxi.

[Sigma has ruined cat people.]

[dragonmouth]

...unexpected. Well.

Have you considered a kenku?

[plentyfriendly]

Let me look at that one again.

[She reads it over.]

...Potentially, but something about it seems wrong for some reason.

Then again, I suppose the way this game works any race you wouldn't expect a rogue from isn't well-suited to it.

[dragonmouth]

I suppose if all else fails, there's just the simple human...

Besides the half-orc, I believe we've mostly got just dragonborn. Dragonborn as far as the eye can see.

[plentyfriendly]

That leaves a lot of options open.

Though at this rate, I'm thinking a wood elf is the right choice.

[dragonmouth]

[ a pause. ]

I suppose I should tell you, then, how elves work in the setting...

[ OH GOD.

ELVES.

SHE DID NOT CONSIDER THAT SOMEONE WOULD ACTUALLY PLAY AN ELF. ]

[plentyfriendly]

...You weren't expecting that, were you.

[No points for this, the easiest of reads.]

[dragonmouth]

Well, I probably should have.

[ She can admit her own mistakes, thankfully. ]

But I'll admit that this is wonderful, narratively speaking.

[ She's fumbling with a small stack of papers right now. HO BOY. ]

[plentyfriendly]

I'll be working on the backstory for a while, then.

[giltfoil]

[Ravus stands awkwardly instead of taking a seat straight away. Considering his height, this may prove intimidating.]

Explain this...activity?

[dragonmouth]

It's a sort of storytelling game.

[She's 5'3" don't kill her]

My role is to provide the setting and supporting characters. You'll make a character according to the rules that are set out - their attributes, weaknesses, and the like - and play out along with the other members of your party.

I think so far, we've got maybe four other players?

I'll direct the plot according to everyone's decisions, but there's still quite a bit left to chance.

I hope that explains the basics...

[Don't get her nerding out over the stat system. ]

[giltfoil]

[He's not going to kill - okay, yes, he does have a sword on the belt at his hip, but he feels naked without it. Putting it on is just automatic at this point.]

A...collaborative storytelling? That is. Interesting. What kind of story tends to result?

...Who else is playing? [There are people he isn't collaborating with, game or no.]

[dragonmouth]

...well, we've got Maddie and Jailbreak intrested, along with Kana, Pidonus, and... a girl whose name escapes me, presently. But she's got white hair with glasses. It's usually the sort of story where you have your heroes go on some sort of epic quest, full of daring adventures, slaying monsters, the like.

[giltfoil]

[Ravus relaxes visibly. He can live with this lineup, even if being the only man present will be an unusual experience.

[He finally sits down at the table.]

Heroic adventures? [There's something pitifully amusing about this concept.] Do we die at the end, or is it a true fantasy?

[dragonmouth]

I do think it's meant to be unrealistic. At least as much as the players allow, anyway.

[Her expression falls for a bit, and she fiddles with her dice. She's fudged a roll or two to keep people from dying horribly in their first battle by now, probably.

And though she's tried to forget, Nakari's words echo in her mind:

"I've seen you die."

Lets leave explaining how death saves work for another session.]

After all, isn't that what people entertain themselves for? An escape?

Commons (Day 2) | Campaigning

[dragonmouth]

[ When our heroes last left off, they had gone from the port city of Blackwater and defeated some kobolds, which, as we all know, is the absolute worst threat some level 1 adventurers can come across. Y'all even leveled up! In the forest, there had been some rather telling signs, like sugary residue left on some of the plants and a strange, pink glow...

Well.

There's a couple of villages in the wooded areas further and further inland. You could stop there. You could explore the dank spooky forest a bit more.

Or you could slaughter some random NPCs, who knows. ]

[blackestwitch]

[ Maddie is chilling in an armchair, as per usual, with her headphones plugged into her phone, but the headphones themselves mostly resting around her neck instead of being properly worn.

There's not much for a bardbarian to be doing here, so she's mostly waiting to see what everybody ELSE is doing. Smart move, Maddie. And it has nothing to do with being totally new to this hobby and unsure what TO be doing when it's not getting into bar fights, the Classic. ]

[dragonmouth]

[ At first, all Maddie hears from Tali is the sound of rolling dice and shuffling papers. ]

Morning comes, and after all of you prepare to travel further out, you meet an old woman washing her clothes in a clear, swiftly running stream. Her hair is a soft pink, and she pulls it back before reaching into her basket of clothes.

...well, alright. I'd like all of you to roll perception checks.

[ She wasn't expecting y'all to run into the arc villain this soon? ]

[nor_iron_bars]

Uh...

[Jail rolls, peering suspiciously at the dice.]

'Kay, I got a fifteen, what's that get me?

[blackestwitch]

[ It takes Maddie like, forty-five seconds. She's messing with her phone for most of it. No dice are rolled. Then, ]

Thirteen. Higher is better, right? So Jail wins. [ You're not rolling AGAINST Jailbreak, Maddie. ]

[dragonmouth]

I... it's not that sort of game, Maddie.

[ There's a sort of flustered-ness in her voice? She's smiling, but it's Maddie. ]

Let's add your modifiers, and...

[ Look, no one's actually written up a character sheet OOCly or anything and I'm not gonna make you guys go through that hell, so let's handwave that Tali has copies of everyone's stat spreads and rattles off some numbers to the players...

Wait a minute. Jail's playing a cleric, and even a shitty cleric has to have decent Wisdom so as not to be unplayable. So Jail's character still probably comes out a little higher.

OOCly, we don't have the name of Maddie's character yet, but she calls it first. ]

...you notice that as she's washing these clothes, the air smells sweet, almost sickly. There's hints of vanilla and a sort of warm bitterness. Caramel?

[ Then she calls out Jail's character's name. ]

You smell the same thing. But underneath the sweetness, there's also a faint, ferrous, coppery tang. Streaks of red and brown are barely discernible in the water, but if you look down, they're there.

[nor_iron_bars]

Thaaaat's probably blood, isn't it. Shit. ...any chance we can just back away quietly and pretend we didn't see this?

[dragonmouth]

She's still rather consumed with her washing, so... I'll allow it.

[ She will allow just about everything. There's a bit of an odd gleam in her eye... ]

How do you go about it?

[nor_iron_bars]

So this is definitely a trap.

[Jail considers her options thoughtfully.]

I'm just gonna turn my head and take a quick look behind us, then back up slowly and quietly if I don't see shit. Keeping my eyes on her while I'm backing up.

[dragonmouth]

[ An innocent little smile. ]

Make a stealth check.

[nor_iron_bars]

[Jail rolls, and winces.]

...Eleven?

[dragonmouth]

You turn, and her eyes are still on her washing. But between looking at her and what lies behind you, you neglect to look underneath your own feet.

Snap! A twig lay underneath one. It was thin and blended with the earth below, so you hadn't noticed it before, but now it's impossible not to.

[nor_iron_bars]

[...a moment of thought, and then:]

I keep backing up and don't say shit. When in doubt, just keep on pretending you meant to do that.

[This adage explains so much about her own life choices.]

[dragonmouth]

She turns to you and...waves. She's seen you, but there doesn't seem to be anything on her besides the washboard and basket.

She pulls her pinkish hair into a bun.

[nor_iron_bars]

Iiiii... wave back and say 'hi' politely.

[Probably better not to risk pissing her off.]