Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
February 11, 2018 1:22 PM
The Threat of Blackfang (nm) [Tag: D&D Group] by Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
Subthreads: Setup and Introductions by Gary Harper, Dungeon Master with Parker Fitzgerald, Dwarven Cleric, Zevalyn Ives, Kir, Lily Spencer
The Opening Scene by Gary Harper, Dungeon Master with Parker, Nefrig Boneaxe
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Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
The Threat of Blackfang (nm) [Tag: D&D Group]
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Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
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Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
February 11, 2018 2:03 PM
Setup and Introductions by Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
Gary entered the library with his arms full, and backpack bulging on his back. He smiled and nodded to the Librarian and then found his way over to the group project table in the corner that they had decided would work best for his purposes earlier. He unloaded the plastic bins, rolled up mats and other paraphernalia onto the table and dropped his backpack next to the chair in the very corner that he had claimed for his own. He had met up with everyone that had grabbed the various invitations he had placed around the school, and told them where and when to meet up. The place was here, and the time was about half an hour from now, that should give him enough time to get set up and prepped. If people showed up a little early, that was alright as well. It would also give the librarian some time to swing by and see what was going on if he was interested.He unfurled the play mat across the middle of the table, it was a roughly 2' square wet erase plastic mat with a 1" grid pattern. Next he pulled a binder out of the backpack and pulled out the pre-generated characters he had made for the adventure. Each was on a double-sided piece of paper, in a standard plastic binder sleeve, those got placed at each player seat around the table. Along with the character sheet, each player spot got a small pad of paper, a pencil, a rules reference sheet, a small cloth bag shut with a drawstring that contained the seven various polyhedral dice needed for the game, and a 1" miniature that matched their character sheet. When he had met up with each player, he had gotten them to tell him what gender character they wanted to play, but hadn't yet required a name.
Once the player areas were ready, he began working on his own station. He pulled out the three hardbound rule books and set them nearby, hopefully he wouldn't need them, but it was always good to have them handy. He got out his DM Screen, a low landscape orientation one that didn't block his view to much. A set of wet erase markers for drawing on the map were place within easy reach. His dice bag was set to a rolling tray behind the screen, it had proven to cut down on dice scatter when rolling. Then a stack of index cards, some blank and some filled with all sorts of scribbling. Finally was his game binder, which contained the skeleton framework for the adventure the players were about to set out upon.
Now it was a matter of reviewing notes and praying that all went well until people arrived.
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Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
Setup and Introductions
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Parker Fitzgerald, Dwarven Cleric
February 11, 2018 2:47 PM
This is... overwhelming by Parker Fitzgerald, Dwarven Cleric
Parker had talked to Gary and mentioned that he had found the paper and was interested in being a cleric, which apparently meant a priest of sorts. Parker had remembered watching Lord of the Rings, so he remembered what Dwarves looked like at least.When Gary asked what gender he wanted to be, Parker had paused. Parker had assumed it would just be his own gender. He quickly chose male, just cause he was uncertain what would happen if he chose female. Would he have to dress up like his character? Parker didn't really want to put on any dresses, or wear wigs.
He was also confused about what DnD consisted of. He'd heard people talk about it, but they were not overly nice in their descriptions usually and many of them equated it to acting out a video game. So Parker decided to arrive early to the first event to ask a few questions.
Entering the library seemed different this year, last year it seemed so big and intimidating, this year it didn't seem confusing or big. In fact, it seemed to have shrunk ever so slightly Parker thought upon entering. He saw Gary in the corner sitting behind a low screen.
Parker liked Gary. Gary was a bird-fish too and Parker felt comforted by the fact that he wasn't the only student who didn't know magic coming in. Gary though seemed a lot better at getting the hang of this magic. Also Gary seemed to really get Transfiguration, so Parker had taken to sitting near him in the hopes it would rub off. It hadn't. Yet.
Parker walked up to the table looking at all of the stuff.
"So what exactly is it that we're going to be doing? Is this more like Ticket to Ride but acting out what we do or more like a video game I might have played?" Parker asked as he slid his bag from his shoulder and squatted down looking at the little figures. He found one that was short, squat with a beard and giant hammer of some sort.
Picking it up Parker asked, "Is this me?"
OOC: I realize that you probably have created most of the characters in depth, but seeing as the character is a Dwarven Cleric I assumed he was probably a follower of Moradin thus the war hammer.
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Parker Fitzgerald, Dwarven Cleric
This is... overwhelming
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Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
February 11, 2018 3:51 PM
It's not to bad... eventually... by Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
Gary looked up from his notes as Parker came up to the table, he gave his classmate a grin. He was the one student in the group that was in his class, all of the others were older and therefore much more intimidating. "I expect that'll be a popular question, I'm not sure how prevalent the game is in the magical community. The video game analogy isn't terribly far off, you have your character that you're controlling and deciding what they do in reaction to the situation." Gary gestures to the character sheet, "We'll go over it in more detail once everyone arrives, but this is your character sheet and describes your character and what they can do. The neat thing that makes this different than a video game, is that you don't have a computer decided what you are allowed to do or not. You are not limited to 'Jump' or 'Shoot', you can use your imagination and try to come up with interesting solutions to problems. As the Dungeon Master, I take what I know of the obstacle you face, whatever facets of the world are relevant and decide if your course of action is possible, and if so, how difficult it is. You then roll some dice to account for uncertainty of the universe, add in your character's applicable skills and see if you can overcome the problem.""As for the acting bit," Gary paused for just the briefest of moments, "Some people really enjoy getting into their character and losing themselves in the fictional world and story. They make up voices, do accents, and go all out. That isn't necessary at all though. If you like, you can, but a lot of people just prefer to say what their character is doing directly. Either way is perfectly valid."
Gary nodded as Parker picked up the figure, "Yup that's your character, the Dwarven Cleric of Moradin. He's a bit gruff as most Dwarves are, but cares for the well being of all those around him. He'll heal and buff up the group, but won't shy away from using that hammer to smite any evil creatures that threaten the innocent or his friends. Have you come up with a name for him yet?"
OOC: Nope. As this is an experiment, and I'm not sure if it would actually work as a 'play-by-post' actual game, I'm running real loose and narrative focused. Any of the players whose author's are familiar with the game can pretty much define the pre-generated characters that Gary handed out to them in any way they want, so long as they conform to the basic character creation rules for 5e. In your case, naturally the Dwarven Cleric is a follower of Moradin and thus does use a war hammer. If anyone is not familiar with the game, I'll supply basic details, no worries there.
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Gary Harper, Dungeon Master
It's not to bad... eventually...
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Zevalyn Ives
February 11, 2018 4:25 PM
Arrival of Amber the Valorous by Zevalyn Ives
Zevalyn arrived in the library a bit early, intending to grab some books for her DADA supplemental reading to close that last little bit of gap between where she was and where she was supposed to be for her age group, but before she found the books, she found the D&D table. For a moment, she stood there abruptly uncertain about the wisdom of this, with her now being sixteen and the other two already at the table being kids who started Beginners after she had left it. But she had already told Gary she was in, so she approached, kibitzed about the table until she found the Fighter's character sheet, then sat down in front of it.She pushed the provided bag of dice back towards Gary and dropped her much larger purple suede bag of dice in its place. "I've played before," she explained. "I'm a second generation geek." She made this statement of fact with a smile and a note of pride in her voice so they both knew she wasn't speaking ill of them for opting to play or gm. 'Geek,' in the Ives family, was a compliment.
She untied her dice bag and dumped it out over Amber's character sheet. Most of the dice in it were purple and black or a cool swirly and shimmery mixture of both colors. She separated them out by dice type, having about four of each of the lesser used four, eight, ten, and twelve siders, with six twenty siders in case they turned against her, and a few extra six siders just because they were the sneak attack damage dice from the previous character that she last played.
"Hi, I'm Amber," she told the second year who wasn't Gary, holding out a hand for shaking. "Amber the Valorous. I'm blonde," which was true for Zevalyn as well, "really tall," she glanced at the strength attribute on her sheet to double check a basic assumption, and continued, "and really muscular." Those later two descriptions were decidedly less true for Zevalyn herself. She checked another two parts of her sheet and finished, "I'm wearing chainmail and carrying a freaking huge greatsword."
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Zevalyn Ives
Arrival of Amber the Valorous
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Parker
February 12, 2018 3:08 PM
Hope Eventually arrives soon by Parker
When the older girl walked up to the table Parker swallowed a bit. He'd hoped it hadn't been loud. He knew from talking with Gary that Gary had collected quite the array of students to play, for some reason Parker just hadn't assumed it would be older girls. In Parker's mind, DnD was pre-teen boys sitting around drinking soda, and to be honest, that's what he had expected.As she walked about the table Parker leaned over the Gary as he held onto his Dwarf, "Who did you get to join Gary? How..." Before he could start she brought out her own bag. As she opened them Parker knew he was in for something else, her dice looked beautiful, like a still lake on a moonless night.
Parker sat there as her words of Geek ran through his head. His parents had said they were nerds in school, and Parker had not really thought about if he was one or not, but he had not played before.
Hi, I'm Amber. Amber the Valorous.
Parker was about to stick our his hand when she continued. He began to realize when she looked down at her sheet and said she was muscular that she was talking about her character not herself. Parker was impressed. She knew what she was doing, and from the sounds of it was a fighter. He also felt amazingly uncomfortably out of his element. He wasn't sure what his element was, but right now, it was not this, and both Gary and "Amber" were in it.
"Hi Amber, I'm..." Parker paused trying to think of a name on the spot and could only think of John which didn't sound very Dwarf-like, "Unnamed, as I've never played before so am unsure of how to. But I am a Dwarf who is here to help you all heal." Parker held up his figure, "I also have a big hammer to smite people. That's what clerics do right? Smite?"
Parker put down his character's figure and looked at the character sheet in front of him.
"How long have you been playing Amber the Valorous?" Parker asked, hoping she'd drop some good knowledge for him to pick up in the process.
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Hope Eventually arrives soon
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Gary
February 12, 2018 9:47 PM
Eventually arrives when it wishes, there is no rushing it by Gary
Gary had watched as Zevalyn approached. Out of all of the people who had grabbed the invitation sheets, she was by far the most intimidating. He was about to respond with some level of uncertainty to Parker's first question, then she pulled out her own dice bag. At that he grinned wide, she was a gamer and knew what she was doing. This was good. Hopefully she'd be willing to help out some of the other players that weren't quite sure how the game worked."Welcome Amber,we're glad to have you aboard." Gary greeted her as he collected the dice bag she had tossed back his way. As Parker started his introduction, Gary immediately set about flipping through pages in his binder. A moment later he popped open the binder's rings, removed a sheet of paper and snapped the rings shut again. Then he handed the paper to Parker. "Here is a list of Dwarven-sounding names, feel free to pick one of those if you'd like. I usually find names to be the hardest part of creating a character." The paper has three columns, the left one was labeled 'Male', the middle was labeled 'Either' and the right column was 'Female'. Each column was a list of fifteen to twenty names. "It never hurts to be prepared."
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Gary
Eventually arrives when it wishes, there is no rushing it
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Zevalyn/Amber the Valorous
February 13, 2018 8:06 AM
Smiting helps though by Zevalyn/Amber the Valorous
"Hullo, Dwarf," Zevalyn told the newbie player when he finished introducing himself, as much as he could without having picked a name. "I'll appreciate the heals. Figure I'll be the front line and be most in need of it. But smiting is good, too, specially, when them undead get underfoot."She sat back and broke character. "In real life, though, I'm Zevalyn. I helped roll my parents' dice for them when I was really little, and started running my own D&D character when they set up a kids game for me and some of their other party members' kids when we were, I don't know, eight? Nine? Something in there. When I was thirteen, they let me roll up a Pathfinder character and join their grown up campaign."
She grinned at Gary, figuring he might appreciate this, "I'm actually named after one of my mom's Pathfinders. The Society one she was using when she met my dad at a con. Oh, right, and we've hit gaming conventions as long as I can remember, but I didn't really join the Role Playing tables until I was maybe eleven, possibly twelve? Of note, I didn't start Sonora until I was just about fourteen, so that's more time gaming than it might sound like to you. Haven't done much the last two years, though, because Sonora happened and I had two years worth of classes to make up so I've been doing basically nothing but studying. Mostly caught up now, though, so you had good timing, Gary. Thanks for running this."
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Zevalyn/Amber the Valorous
Smiting helps though
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Kir
February 14, 2018 9:27 AM
I... play music? by Kir
Kir had been a bit uncertain after taking the invitation for D&D. He wasn’t really sure what he was getting himself in for, and he was kind of self-conscious that the game was being run by a second year, and that everyone else in the group might be considerably younger than him. Neither of these fears had really been resolved by talking to Gary (once he’d figured out which second year Aladren Gary was by asking the French Teppenpaw second year whether Gary was the one he always hung out with or the other - he was the other one) because Gary hadn’t known who else was signed up at that point, and Kir left that conversation without much more knowledge about the game than he’d gone in with. Only that he needed to pick a gender. There didn’t seem to be any kind of… anything that went along with that in terms of ability (which raised the writers of the game in Kir’s estimation) and which little figurine would represent him. He’d been torn between Proving A Point that he Didn’t Care About That Sort of Thing and playing a female elf, and playing a male elf because… well, he had enough to remember without referring to himself as ‘she’ all the time. In the end he’d decided that, as elves possessed a fairly high number of traditionally feminine traits (based on the brief intro Gary had given him), he was bucking more gender stereotypes by playing a male elf than a female one, at least in terms of his character, if not him as a person. At least, that was his defence if his sister called him out on it.He arrived in the library a bit before the game, in case Gary wanted to get started promptly with game play at the appointed time, because he felt like he needed some substantial filling in on what the heck was going on before he was ready to roll (a phrase he would come to realise could be applied quite literally).
It being out of hours, he’d eschewed his school robes and was wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a lightweight grey hoodie. He had his school bag with him, because he wanted to pick up a couple of books, and he thought he might ask the librarian to put up a McLeod Foundation poster on the library board, seeing as that was somewhere where all the students would be able to see it, so he had one of those, and some pamphlets in his bag.
He was pleased to notice Zevalyn in the group, meaning he wouldn’t be the only intermediate - or even the youngest, he guessed, given that she’d been made prefect, although he had trouble keeping track of her actual grade.
“Hey,” he greeted everyone at the table. “I’m Kir,” he added, because he wasn’t sure The Second Year Who Was Not Gary or The French Teppenpaw would know that, especially given that he’d just mentally called him The Second Year Who Was Not Gary or The French Teppenpaw. He also wasn’t sure whether Zevalyn would know his name, even though they were in classes together, because he was starting to get this crushing feeling that he was invisible to girls, until he had direct conversations with him, at which point they were forced to notice his existence but probably only saw him as a friend.
He gravitated towards Zevalyn, and then noticed that their character sheets were out. Happily, his was next to hers. He hung his bag - a plain black satchel but adorned with a merry assortment of pins, many of them bearing rainbows - over the back of his chair and sat down. He cast his eyes over the sheet. There were… a lot of numbers. He had kind of assumed that playing a part would involve more words than numbers.
“So… I’m an elf musician thing?” he asked, unabashed at his own complete lack of knowledge. He’d been up front with Gary about it, and he’d still accepted him into the game.
OOC - previous conversations and character stuff checked with Gary (by proxy). Roping Dorian in by proxy allowed cos I author him too. Are we going with set posting order for intros? Normally multi person threads maintain the same order, the exception being Quidditch, which would mean this goes Parker, Gary, Zev, Kir (for now!)
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I... play music?
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Lily Spencer
February 14, 2018 8:16 PM
Is it supposed to do that? by Lily Spencer
Lily was running late because she’d almost forgotten about the adventure game she’d decided to join. It sounded like a fun thing to be a part of, albeit much more organised than what she was used to. Still, it couldn’t be too bad. When Gary had asked about her character’s gender, she hadn’t even thought about it before saying she’d play a male character. It was always more fun to play a boy. Lily could still pass as one with her short haircut, sharp features and boyish clothing style, but her body was slowly changing with every year. It made her feel strange sometimes, not being able to quite fit in with either gender stereotype, but she didn’t really think about it very much. She just did what she liked.She had hastily thrown on her favourite flannel over a white shirt and jeans before rushing down the corridors until she made it to the library, several minutes past the appointed meeting time. She pushed past the door and looked around for Gary and any familiar faces. Lily took a moment to catch her breath, then made her way towards them. She had been a bit nervous that she would be stuck playing with younger students, but then she saw a familiar face – at least the face of someone her year – and felt a bit better.
“Hi everyone,” she said as she sat next to a fourth year. “Sorry I’m late. I’m Lily.” This was a rather grand set-up for a game of make-believe adventure. She scanned the entire table before picking up her character sheet. “This is mine?” she asked. “I’m brand new at this, so apologies in advance for being slow.” Lily read over her character sheet and then felt uncertain. When she’d taken the advert, she’d expected it to be a bit more active. This didn’t seem like something she would be very good at. “I’m a rogue. That means I’m a thief?
She didn’t notice it right away, but Zevalyn’s colourful dice began floating. Lily placed down her sheet and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “That’s cool,” she started to say, and then the rest of the objects on the table began floating as well, her character sheet included. “Is it supposed to do that?” she asked curiously. She wasn’t quite certain how they were going to play when everything was floating. It wasn’t stopping either, just going higher and higher. Lily watched it, confused even more.
OOC: Apologies, but you’re all at risk for the infection now.
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Is it supposed to do that?
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