#was so close to dming them but they post every DM in their story and I’d like to stay crypto

[would-probably-be-called-a-tehm]

…do they hear themselves

[artemissoteira]

3, 7, 10, 15 :)

thanks for asking!! (ask game from this post)

3. What two feats would you have (IRL)?

oooh. in game I take Perceptive (UA, giving perception expertise and faux-darkvision) on anyone who can even tentatively justify the wisdom bump and IRL I am notoriously unobservant about my surroundings, so I would probably go with that!

the other would have to be magic initiate, right? I think I would go druid for goodberry and druidcraft / shape water for cantrips.

alternately: sentinel to be able to hit fucking fruit flies when they leave my reach even if they take the Disengage action.

7. How do you go about making a character or NPC?

my design philosophy for almost everything I do in D&D is 1) make a choice 2) make it weird 3) make it work. weird being a broad term that also includes just, like, initially unintuitive or suboptimal pairings, because that gives me something to optimize around to keep my min-maxing in check.

tetra is probably the best example of this -- I wanted to play a druid (step 1), but I wanted to do something funky with it, so I decided to make intelligence tied with wisdom for my highest stat (step 2). that led me to look at races with a wis/int bonus, of which cosi merfolk also get an innate wizard cantrip (step 3). firebolt on a druid = use for the int bonus + a story hook for the character to come up on land to join the adventure, bc she was interested in exploring more about fire and that's hard to do in. the ocean. now there's a base to start spinning off those mechanical choices into who this character's actually gonna be.

ithren was a bit different in that there's nothing weird or counterintuitive about them at all (/s). so step 2 for ithren was just that they would have so many bags, and in one of them would be a grenade.

10. What is your favorite class to play?

rogue rogue rogue baby! expertise, bonus actions, uncanny dodge, evasion, extra ASI, reliable talent -- I love every single part of rogue mechanics at every level. no resource management. inherent failure mitigation. reliable burst damage. such a good chassis for anything you want to do. don't get me started on swashbuckler, my beloved.

druid comes a close second, I love the versatility and the knowing the whole spell list and the bonus action options. stars druids fuck so much. plus, animals. also love a healer bc no matter what I play I am constantly calculating the shortest possibly trajectory for me to reach & bring back up another PC if needed. the drama.

15. Do you prefer to DM or play?

I like both a lot! before playing with JD I would probably have given a slight edge to DMing, but now I'll rank them:

1) conspiring with JD about eir game and being heckled by eir actual players for it 2) playing with JD as a DM 3) DMing in general 4) playing in general

[tbehartoo]

Dungeons, Dragons, and Dating

A Present for @justknitstuff my giftee for the @lukanette-exchange. This sort of turned into a beast of a chapter and they haven’t even got to the game yet! I promise to get chapter two out as soon as I can.

Summary: Luka knows it’s hard to make new friends when all you do is work and study. He can’t believe it, but Rose and Juleka have finally convinced him to come to the university’s gaming club with them. There he meets some unique characters, and he’s not talking about the ones they create for their Dungeons & Dragons game. Hopefully among this room of strangers he can find some good friends for these hard times.

Author’s note: Set in a post pandemic world. After multiple plagues have swept the world, some daily things will have changed, but there are other things, such as the need for connections to each other, that haven’t.

Beta’ed by:  @soloraven​ and @platypan Thank you both for your amazing help! They did their best, any mistakes are mine alone.

First Club Meeting

The first meeting of the University’s Gaming Club of the fall semester was full of nothing but the sound of rolling dice, the muttering of voices and the flipping of papers when Luka followed his sister and her girlfriend through the door. One of the lounge rooms off the cafeteria had several round tables with various people spread thinly around them. The room’s HEPA filters were humming quietly in the corners, a sound so common that it barely registered but comfortingly underlying the feel of the room.

A man hurried towards them while they stowed their masks in their packs. Luka thought the black eyebrows on the man’s head looked more like wings than brows. They were excellent at drawing attention from the guy’s balding head but couldn’t disguise how short the man actually was.

“Welcome, Rose! Welcome, Juleka!” he called as he passed out papers to the newcomers while they each took turns to put their hands under the automatic hand sanitizer dispenser. “It’s nice to see you back again this semester. Hope the summer break treated you well.”

“Oh, it was busy for sure,” Rose said as she smiled at the professor. “I did an internship at the library and Jules was able to pick up some work for local commercials.”

“Wonderful, girls! Wonderful!” He looked at Luka and picked up another bundle of papers. “And is this a friend of yours?”

“This is my brother Luka,” Juleka said as she took a packet from the man. He was practically vibrating with energy. “Rose has finally convinced him that he needs to come with us to the game club.”

“I’m Professor Damocles, the faculty advisor for the game club, and my pronouns are he/him,” he said nodding at Luka. “I ask you to please fill that packet out tonight. It goes over the club’s rules and by-laws as well as our expectations for following the university’s current pandemic procedure plans. The last page is for you to sign agreeing to abide by our rules and give us an email to contact you. You can use your school email or a personal one.  Later, when we’ve got it processed, you’ll get your own invitation to our Discord channel and be able to look over what games the club has, as well as respond with your interest in each game. Go ahead and review the papers while we wait for the meeting to start.”

“It looks like you’ve already started,” Rose said and waved at a girl with black hair sporting bright blue streaks in her ponytail sitting a couple of tables over. Luka saw Juleka wave as well so she must be a friend of both of them.

“Oh, well not yet,” Professor Damocles said as he cleared his throat. “Our club president from last semester isn’t here to open the meeting and start the vote for club leadership. She said she had to stop off for something, but she should be here soon. In the meantime, I’ll have the vice-president-” he turned back to the room, “- ah, Adrien?” A blond young man looked up at the name. “Do you think you could get these three set up at a table while we wait for Marinette to get here?”

“Sure thing,” Adrien said as he came over, giving the three of them a small nod of acknowledgement. He scanned the tables before beaming at the girl Rose had waved to before. He nodded at the young man sitting a chair away from her. The guy wearing the baseball cap nodded and Adrien moved in their direction.

Those two don’t seem to be dating, Luka thought. Though they do seem pretty comfortable with each other, he noted they were both writing on something between them. 

“Have any of you played Dungeons and Dragons?” Adrien asked as they wove through the tables.

“I have,” Rose answered, “But Jules and Luka refused to come to my game group with me.”

“It’s your time to be with your friends,” Juleka said with a chuckle. “We both have time away from each other,” she poked her girlfriend in her shoulder, “And you like to spend that time with them.”

“Her group always wants to meet while I’m at work,” Luka added on. He looked at Rose and smiled. “I’ve met them all as they seem to order from my pizza place only when I’m working and always request me as their driver.” He rolled his eyes, “I can’t even recall all the weird scenes I’ve walked into during  their game nights, but I’ve never had a chance to play.”

Rose scoffed, but Juleka nodded to strengthen Luka’s claim.

“Well, last semester the club decided to try out twice monthly D&D games,” Adrien told them. “That way we can get a campaign going but still play our game closet every other week. Those who have played are helping the newbies roll up characters. Rose, if I put you with Kagami and Nino, do you think you can help Juleka and,” he paused before continuing both his eyebrows raised, “Luka?”

Luka nodded.

Adrien’s shoulders relaxed. “Yeah, uh, Luka, to roll up characters?”

“Sure thing, Adrien,” Rose said as she sat down at the table leaving two chairs between her and Kagami. 

Juleka sat next to Rose while Luka claimed the seat next to Juleka.

“It’s good to see you again, Gami,” Juleka said, peering closely at the stacks of paper in the middle of the table.

“You, too Jules, Rose,” Kagami greeted the girls with a nod of her head. She raised a questioning brow at Luka.

“Oh, this is Luka, my brother,” Juleka said then tacked on, “-we all share an apartment off campus.”

"Ah, that's why you're not observing the mandatory one seat apart rule,” Kagami replied.

“Well it doesn’t apply to us as we share living quarters,” Juleka said with a small sigh.

“This is Nino,” Kagami said, indicating their other tablemate with a tilt of her head. “He’s Adrien’s brother from another mother and soon to be best man.”

Rose squealed and clapped. Juleka’s face broke out into a big smile.

“So who asked first, you or Adrien?” Rose demanded.

Nino barked with laughter. 

“They had the audacity to ask at the same time,” he informed the beaming listeners. “So all bets have been cancelled.”

“Alix must be in a mood about that,” Juleka said with a grin.

Nino nodded. “She wouldn’t talk to either of them for a month. But now she’s working a couple of bets on swimming challenges between Kim and Ondine if you want in on that action.” He used his head to point out a girl at the next table. She was kind of short, wore clothes that Luka associated with skaters, and sported hair in a pink Mohawk with short cropped sides.

The whole group had a small laugh before Kagami’s face grew serious.

“Okay, I’m sure you’re familiar with the game, but here’s the short, short explanation just so we’re all on the same page. D&D is a group storytelling game. Every person has a character who has both strengths and weaknesses based on things like what fantasy race you’re from, like troll or elf, as well as what level you are in a certain job known as a class, like a fighter or sorcerer. 

“You know, like my tenth level high elf pirate, Mistress Delores Myra Woodfield-Dee,” Rose said.

“We’re familiar with her,” Luka said nodding his head.

“Very familiar,” Juleka murmured.

“The Captain was so flattered when you made your character, well, her,” Luka grinned.

“Yeah, mom wouldn’t stop asking about her and suggesting things for Mistress Dee to do next,”  Juleka informed Kagami.

“Mom didn’t understand that I had to listen to the directions from the DM,” Rose sighed. “She thought I could just take my pirate crew anywhere I wanted.”

“The DM is the one in charge, right?” Nino asked Rose.

“Yeah. The DM, a.k.a. the Dungeon Master, is the one that leads the story and settles disputes,” Rose said.

“It’s not an easy job, even though Adrien makes it look like it is,” Kagami said. “He’s been playing for years and DMing almost as long. He’s learned a few tricks to make things flow easily and he’s so nice that he rarely has people rules lawyering at him.”

“Rules lawyering?” Luka asked as he looked at Kagami then turned to his housemate, “I haven’t heard Rose say that before.”

“That’s because Skylar, my DM, doesn’t let James play anymore,” Rose grumbled. “He would argue over every little thing and try to pull out the rule book after nearly every play. It got so bad that Claire and Gia refused to play any more and the others in our group started to dread going.” She huffed and put a hand on Luka’s forearm. “If you really have a question about what happened or why something turned out the way it did, then, yeah you should ask the DM for clarification, but in a nice way.” Luka nodded at her as she continued, “Don’t be an ass about it.”

“I usually try not to be one in my day-to-day life. Why would I change that because of a game?” Luka asked.

Kagami shuddered, “Because when people really get into character and the game gets intense then you can have the sweetest, kindest person you know,” she looked directly at Rose, “Turn into a blood lusting, amoral, beast that makes you worried to try the cookies she brought.”

Rose’s jaw dropped. “Those cookies were from T&S! How could you question their fitness for consumption?”

“Because you set fire to the orphanage with the orphans sleeping inside it, for one,” Kagami said “And then you rolled a boulder through the school house while classes were in session!”

“Surti Snan was a chaotic evil Kobold!” Rose said defensively. “You cannot hold him to human standards of behavior.”

“I most certainly can and will,” Kagami replied with a smirk on her face.

“Besides,” Rose almost pouted, “My plan to lure out the mindflayer worked.”

“Only after you decimated three-quarters of the town we were sent to save!” Kagami pointed out.

The two stared at each other for a moment and Luka worried that they might need to figure out a way to deescalate the situation when the two girls broke out into laughter.

“We were fortunate that Marc was the DM that night as they were the one to get everyone to cool down after the orphanage incident,” Rose said with a grin. “I didn’t end up banned from the table or the game.”  

“And that is why you need a good DM,” Kagami said. “They have to keep everyone working together and keep emotions from overpowering the game. They’re also responsible for adding in all the little things like descriptions of people and places and being all the NPCs.”

“Non-player characters,” Rose said as she saw the furrowed brows of Luka, Nino, and Juleka, “are like the shopkeepers or the townsfolk that you meet along the way, but aren’t permanent members of the party like our characters will be.”

“Oooh, Adrien told me that Damocles is going to pop in as some of the NPCs for our game this semester,” Kagami told the table.

Rose squealed, happiness showing clearly on her face, “He’s going to be the funnest little blacksmith!”

“I don’t think funnest is a word Rose,” Juleka said with a smile.

“I can totally see him as a blacksmith, too,” Kagami said. “He’s got all the in-depth history of historical weapons. I bet armor shopping with him would end up being a small comparative history lesson on why a Japanese Do would be better than a French cuirass for a specific race or class.”

“No one told me there’d be actual lessons involved with this,” Nino said with a scoff. The effect was ruined by the huge grin he was throwing in Kagami’s direction.

“Well you’d better get practicing your math facts before we start,” Kagami said as she pulled the visor down on his cap. “There’s a lot of adding and subtracting once the dice start rolling.”

“What are we using the dice for?” Juleka asked.

“Pretty much everything,” Rose said as she leaned into Juleka’s side. “They add chaos and luck into the game so it’s not just a match where you look to see who has the highest AC-” noting the confused looks of the uninitiated she added, “armor class.” Juleka still looked confused. “Dice are used for movement during confrontations to see if your actions hit and how much damage is done. But another important thing the DM uses the dice for is when we roll initiative before there’s a fight to figure out what order people go in, including the bad guys.”

“Does that even matter?” Luka asked skeptically.

“Yes, yes it matters a lot,” Kagami answered quickly. “If you have a party of five brawlers going up against two archers, and the archers go first, they can have the brawlers down on the ground before they ever get close enough to lay a finger on them.”

“But if the brawlers go first, they can get to the archers and overpower them while their bows become useless because the archers don’t have the distance any more,” Rose tacked on.

“And it can get real tricky and dicey, no pun intended, when they’re mixed up,” Kagami said.

“So is it better to be an archer or a brawler?” Nino asked.

“Yes,” Rose answered with a grin and Nino just groaned.

“Well, every character has strengths and weaknesses,” Kagami replied slowly. “It keeps the game more balanced and keeps even the gods from being too OP. So the answer to your question really is that it just depends. That’s why we’re hoping that not everyone will chose to be an Orc Barbarian or the only thing we’ll be able to do is be murder hobos.”

“Murder hobos?” Juleka asked with a wince.

“That’s when the group’s answer to every problem is to stab, club, or smite it and hope that makes it go away,” Kagami answered.

“It gets kind of boring when fights are all you do,” Rose said.

“But Rose,” Juleka said with a frown on her face, “every character you’ve ever talked about was a fighter of some kind. Your pirate, your kobold, the chef from the insane asylum,” she was ticking them off on her fingers, “there are a lot of others that you’ve made, and they’re all fighters.”

Rose blushed a little before answering. “Well, yes, I do like to play fighters more than say clerics or warlocks, but that’s because I use my characters to get out all the aggression I can’t use in real life. It’s just not appropriate to hit the library patron over the head with the book he keeps requesting, but then says it’s the wrong book every week.”

Everyone at the table chuckled.

“So if we’re not just getting into fights, what else is there to do?” Luka asked.

“There can be riddles, murder mysteries, royal court intrigue, puzzles, and, well, it is called Dungeons and Dragons,” Kagami said while shrugging, “so besides slaying dragons or raiding their hoards, there are also dungeons or other structures to explore. Some, well okay, all of them have traps of some kind or they might also have monsters in them.”

“One time Marc did a dungeon crawl where you had to come up with a rhyming couplet to get out of the rooms using the name of the treasure found in it,” Rose said thoughtfully. “We spent so much time trying to figure out a rhyme for the handy haversack,” she murmured.

“What did you rhyme it with?” Luka wanted to know. He was already creating a list in his head.

“We, ah, put it in the middle of the line and just rhymed floor and door,” she admitted. “Then we did that with the rest of the rooms and pretty much made Marc cry that night.”

Kagami was nodding along with Rose’s story. She looked at the three sitting at the table. “One thing you should always keep in mind,” she said to them, “is that the party always ruins the DM’s plans. The DMs know this and they try to be ready for it, but sometimes they just have to call a break or end a session because the group has gone off on a tangent even they didn’t predict.” She smiled at them. “It’s kind of fun, but it’s not something you want to make a habit of or the DMs don’t want to play.”

“What I’m hearing,” Luka said to Kagami, “is that we all just need to play nice with each other and the game will be fun.”

“That pretty much sums it up,” Kagami smiled back at him.

“So how do we get started making our character?” Juleka asked.

Kagami pointed to the piles of paper in the middle of the table. “If you haven’t played before, there’s a few races and classes to choose from on the papers. The more experienced players can bring in other races or classes if the DMs approve. Our DMs are Adrien,” she pointed at the young man they’d met answering a question for a girl in glasses with hair that started a rich brown but changed gradually into a deep red color, “and Marc” she pointed to another person sitting at the adjoining table with short black hair and some killer eye liner. Marc was helping someone with long, bright red hair pulled back into a bun that helped their mask stay in place. She gestured back to their table. “The pink papers have races on them and the details that you should know for that race. The green papers have classes on them. So you can either choose two papers at random or you can look through them to see what sounds interesting. To make things easy on all of us, we’re all starting at level one.” 

“This all sounds pretty easy,” Luka said.

Kagami’s face lost all expression.

 “That’s what I said to Adrien when he first introduced me to the game,” she shook her head. “You might want to get out now-- while you can.”

Rose reached a closed hand over to gently nudge Kagami’s arm. “You don’t mean that,” she said.

One side of Kagami’s mouth quirked up. “No, I don’t. It’s a wonderful game, but it can be kind of overwhelming, especially when you’re new at it.” She slid the stacks of paper towards the little group along with the bottle of hand sanitizer. “As Adrien’s one of the DMs, he asked Nino to play a paladin for story reasons so he just had to choose a race. These are free for you to look at.”

Rose took the sanitizer and squeezed some into her palm before passing it down the line. Luka knew that her time in the library made her very careful to clean her hands before handling something others might also have to touch. She took the pink stack while Juleka looked at the green. Luka said he was going to do the random thing so he started filling out the club rule packet.

A few moments later, a young woman burst through the door carrying a large box of what turned out to be individually wrapped treats from T&S. Tom and Sabine, the proprietors of the bakery, always greeted everyone with warm smiles and tasty samples. T&S was a favorite with students for having delicious pastries, as well as simple sandwiches on freshly baked bread, at prices even those struggling with their finances could afford. 

Luka heard the girl apologizing to Damocles for being late, but she’d had to wait for her order to get finished- at this point she nearly dropped the box as she tripped over something by her rushing feet, but Adrien was there to catch both the box and the girl. He didn’t even hesitate to wrap an arm around her shoulders as he moved them over to a table at the front of the room.

They can’t be dating, Luka thought to himself. Adrien and Kagami just got engaged. And neither of the girls asked Kagami about how her or Adrien’s girlfriend was taking the news so they probably aren’t in a poly relationship together. They certainly don’t look like siblings, but I know well enough that siblings don’t have to be little carbon copies of each other. Maybe they’re roommates? Quick, be cool Luka, they’re coming this way.

Adrien walked the girl over to their table where she sank into the chair next to Nino and Luka felt his heart drop to the floor. 

She must be dating Nino, who is Adrien’s best friend, so they’ve probably been around each other a lot. Which is why she’s sitting next to Nino and why Adrien felt comfortable enough with catching her, Luka reasoned.

Adrien put one hand on Nino’s shoulder as he leaned across the chair between him and Kagami to give his fiancee a quick kiss. He straightened up and gave Nino’s shoulder a squeeze before removing his hand.

“How are you so late?” Nino asked the girl with a teasing tone. “You left the house with an hour and a half’s head start.”

The girl blushed before she started talking. “When I got to the bakery, Felix was there,” she began. Luka noticed that Nino, Adrien, and even Kagami suddenly tensed up and Nino’s lips formed into a line. “He thought that just because I couldn’t be the club president this semester that I’d stop coming, even though I told him I still had to come tonight to open the meeting and to take nominations for the new president. He-”

“He just went all Felix on you didn’t he?” Nino said followed by a short huff.

She nodded.

“I know he’s my cousin,” Adrien said to her, “but sometimes I really wish he wasn’t related and could have gone to a different school instead of our family’s Alma Mater.” He reached around Nino and gave her a couple of pats on her shoulder before leaning back toward Kagami and grasping her hand. “Then you’d never have met him and all our lives would have been easier.”

This Felix guy must be, what, pestering her? They don’t seem to be worried about her safety, so he’s probably not stalking her. I guess everyone has that one friend you just have to limit time with, Luka thought.

She gave Adrien a strained smile. 

“But then I never would have met you or Kagami,” she said. “You would have just been that one weird guy that Nino was in a bromance with in his Roman history class. The one who has an unnatural affinity for Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood,” she added scrunching her nose up.

Adrien’s laugh was loud and free. Kagami, Nino, and the girl all relaxed at the sound and smiled at one another. 

“Okay, you got me there,” Adrien said. “But don’t knock the bromance.” He batted his eyes at Nino. “The feelings of the bros are true, pure, and noble.”

At that, Nino pretended to swoon as he murmured, “Bro, don’t do this to me in public, bro.” He looked up at Adrien, his eyes open wide and a pout on his lips. “You know I can’t handle it when you declare your love for me.”

Both of the men tried to hold onto their awkward posing, but Kagami poked Adrien’s side and the girl leaned into Nino. They started sniggering immediately.

“If you’re really that taken with him,” Kagami said to Adrien with a grin, “I could always give him the engagement ring.”

“You’d do that for me? For us?” Adrien cried melodramatically. 

Luka could see why Adrien would make a good DM if he was always this theatrical. Kagami and Nino also seemed able to drop into a performance easily. Even as a stranger, Luka could tell this was all in good fun and that Adrien seemed quite devoted to the girl whose hand he’d yet to let go of.

“Don’t worry Kagami,” Nino said to her solemnly. “I would never want to be the one to ruin you and Adrien’s happiness.”

Kagami pinned the boy with her stare. “You are the only one who ever could come between us, Nino,” Her tone icy, almost menacing. “ You know the terms: Sabers at dawn.”

Nino sat back quickly holding up his hands in surrender, clearly dropping out of the scene they’d been playing.

“Unh-uh! No way!” He made an ‘x’ with his arms. “I have seen you with your saber and I want no part of that,” he declared.

Kagami and Adrien both smiled fondly at Nino as they chuckled.

“A wise decision,” Adrien remarked. “Oh excuse me, it looks like Alya has another question.”

He pecked Kagami’s cheek before hurrying back over to glasses girl.

When Luka looked back at the table, after watching Adrien go over to the girl who must be Alya, it was to see Nino with his arm around his seatmate’s shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Marinette?” he’d asked quietly. “I know how Felix can get when he’s...disappointed.”

Luka was pretty sure that the only reason he heard the question was because he was seated on the girl’s other side.

Marinette took a deep breath in and let it out before nodding her head. 

“I’m good Nin,” she’d replied.

The look on Nino’s face seemed to sport a trace of disbelief, but it was gone so quickly that Luka wasn’t sure that’s what he’d seen. Before he could think about it more, Professor Damocles stood at the front of the room to call for attention.

After introducing himself to the group and welcoming everyone to the club, he turned the meeting over to Marinette as club president. She called for nominations for a new president and the club officially got under way. 

Soon enough Adrien, as the new club president, addressed the gathering.

“Well, as your new president, I’d like to welcome everyone here. I hope that we can all have a great time getting to know one another and having some fun playing games.” He grinned as his eyes scanned the crowd. Luka was sure he wasn’t the only one to notice the wink he threw at Kagami. 

“Our good friends over at the Crazy Squirrel,” he gestured to a table covered in dice, velvet bags, trays, books, and brightly covered boxes with two smiling people seated behind it, “have brought a small selection of what they have on offer at their game store. You can look over the merch at any time tonight and be assured, they take all forms of legal tender. If you don’t find what you need, they’re willing to give student discounts all next week as long as you show a valid student I.D. Who knew those cards were good for anything, right? If you aren’t going to use an app for your dice rolls, you will need to make sure you also purchase a tray.” The smile dropped from his face. “We can’t have stray dice roaming the tables.” At this statement, there were various murmurs of assent.

“Marc and I will be DMing this semester,” he pointed to the student Kagami had indicated earlier, “so if you have any questions please feel free to ask us, but we’ve made sure there are two or three people at each table that can help you make a character if you’ve not done that before.” He smiled at the group. “We have a lot of plans for our game but tonight is going to be dedicated to creating your character and getting familiar with the mechanics of how things work. There’ll be several links to videos up on the server so that you can watch the pros in action, but please don’t expect that level of ability of your DMs.” 

“You’re no Matt Mercer, but you’ll do,” a young man with brown skin, dark glasses, and blond dreadlocks pulled into a top knot said to the president who returned his smile.

The crowd broke into snickering.

“We know we’re not Max,” Marc replied from his table, “but then again you’re no Taliesin Jaffe or Travis Willingham either,” an ‘oooooooooooo’ ran through the room, “but you don’t see Adrien and I complaining.” Marc grinned at Max.

That got another round of chuckles from the group.

Adrien hastily added, “We’ll all just have to do our best.”

Professor Damocles stood up and Adrien ceded the floor to him.

“Alright everyone, back to your characters,” the professor said with enthusiasm. “Make them unique and special. Try new classes. Find out where your character came from, even if it’s a roll of the dice by the fates, and then prepare them to go out adventuring!” He practically vibrated with excitement.

“I am way too sober for this,” Alix mumbled into her travel mug before taking a long drink.

“One more thing,” Damocles said after Marc whispered something into his ear. “This is meant to be a friendly game, but permanent character death can happen.”

“You don’t say,” a female voice carried through the quiet room.

“Let’s have a moment of silence for Kagami’s weak ass tabaxi bard,” the pink hair girl called to the room. Everyone chuckled, but a few bowed their heads in Kagami’s direction. While a voice chided with a hissed, “Alix!”

Professor Damocles continued as if nothing had been said, “So, you might want to make a backup-” he looked directly at the source of the voice, “-or two-- Kagami.” He beamed at the room. “Let’s get busy!”

Kagami and Nino immediately put their heads back down to the paper they’d been working on. Kagami pointed to something and Nino’s phone sounded out the rolling of dice. Rose and Juleka each chose a paper from their stacks and then switched colors. Luka looked at Marinette for a moment. She seemed to notice his stare and turned to him.

The first thing he noticed was how very blue her eyes seemed. They were eyes he felt he could gladly get lost in. The second thing he noticed was how expressive her face really seemed to be. The expression right now was curiosity bordering on concern.

“Um,” he had to clear his throat before he could continue. “Doyou- haveyou-” he took a short breath to slow his words down, “Have you already made a character before?” he asked hesitantly.

“Oh yeah,” she answered. “I showed Adrien my character last week when he was over for Brotherhood night.” 

“Oh, well, could you-” he tried not to look as pathetic as he felt, “could you help me?” He had to look away as soon as he’d asked.

He heard her giggle before she shifted over to be only a chair away from him, carefully observing the university seating policy, while still showing her willingness to help him out.

“I’d be glad to help you with your character,” she said and grinned.

Luka tried to get his face to move from its stunned expression, but all he felt was a bit of heat forming in his cheeks.

“Thanks,” he croaked out. 

Juleka was quick to nudge him with her elbow while muttering, “Stop acting like a weirdo, ya weirdo.”

Rose giggled at his behavior, but issued a soft, “Jules, leave him be,” in his defense.

“I’m Marinette,” the girl in question said as she smiled at him again. “Nino and I rent a house close to campus-”

“Because you just have to have your craft room,” he mumbled without looking up from his phone.

Okay, they’ve got to be dating if they aren’t already married, Luka told himself. They’re living together and they’re close friends with Kagami and Adrien who just got engaged. Statistics show that you tend to mirror the actions of your peer group so why wouldn’t they be married? It’s so weird to think of people my age as being married. Why does it even matter? You’re here to make new friends and get away from work and school. This isn’t a dating service, Luka. And now you missed what she was saying.

“-but we’ve lived in each other’s house since forever. Nino’s dad and my dad have been friends since kindergarten,” she threw a smile in his direction. “I grew up calling Nino’s parents Uncle Sami and Auntie Halima and wondering why he had aunts and uncles I never saw at our family reunions, but never questioning that we were related,” she laughed a little at herself. “What about you?”

“Well, um, Juleka and I grew up on a houseboat with our mom. And Rose started coming over a lot when she and Jules were what, twelve? thirteen?” He looked over at his sister who nodded and then smiled at Rose. “She kind of joined the crew when her dad proved to be less than ideal as a parent.” He scowled remembering the night that a tear soaked Rose showed up on the boat and he had to hold Juleka back from killing a man while the Captain held the sobbing girl that was to become a second daughter to her. “It was obviously his loss, but certainly our gain. Mom keeps asking Jules when she’s going to make Rose official,” he stopped when he heard Juleka groan.

“She preaches free love and that marriage is just a piece of paper then goes and asks about ‘the wedding’ and ‘how soon am I gonna to get some grandbabies’,” Juleka grumbled.

“The Captain is a woman of many moods and an example of the most conservative rebel you’ll ever meet,” Luka confirmed to the half of the table that was looking at him with stunned expressions.

“Well she certainly sounds like an interesting character,” Marinette said.

At that, the rest of the table broke up into laughter.

“What did I say that was so funny?” she asked the group.

“Rose is way ahead of you on that one, Nettie,” Nino replied.

She looked at Rose. “Is she--Mistress Dee?” she asked with delight.

Rose just nodded.

“Oh. well then, I stand by what I said- Quite the character.” 

Luka merely grinned at this assessment of his mother while the others returned to their own character creation.

“So,” Marinette said as the table got back to work, “Are you ready to make your fighter?”

“Does it have to be a fighter?” he whined, then the dumbest line that he’s ever heard slips off his tongue as he leaned directly into their shared space, “I’m more a lover than a fighter.” He grinned at her as he winked, then proceeded to blow her a kiss.

She stared at him dumbstruck as he saw Juleka facepalm out of the corner of his eye. Marinette hastily moved back a chair. She seemed to be almost terrified of him and he felt his gut clench in worry that he’d somehow offended or intimidated her.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me,” he apologized as he sat back with his hands up trying to make himself seem less of a threat. 

“You’re doing your flirty delivery persona,” Rose said through clenched teeth, not even looking over at him. “It might get you more tips at work, but Marinette has a-” she paused and Luka was worried to find out what the next words out of Rose’s mouth would be, “-protective boyfriend so you’d best stop,” her voice had dropped to a dangerous whisper.

Luka looked anxiously over to Nino whose lips had flattened out from what had seemed like a permanent grin, as he put an arm around Marinette. He gave a short nod in Luka’s direction to confirm Rose’s statement. 

“He’s not here Nette,” Nino murmured as he patted her shoulder. “He can’t give you crap over Luka’s fake flirt.”

“But he’ll know, Nin,” the shaken girl whispered. “He always knows.”

Nino just shook his head and sighed as he tried to get Marinette to breathe slowly and tell him everything she was going to do to the plain wooden box she’d picked up at the craft store.

Great, I’ve already insulted Marinette and made Nino distrust me. A wonderful way to go about making new friends, Luka, he mentally chided himself. You went overboard on the flirting. Just because they play along with Adrien and Kagami doesn’t mean they’d let me play the same way. How many times have I said that to the kids?

Luka’s head dropped to his chest in defeat. “Rose is right and, again, I am-- so sorry. I can see that I’ve caused you a lot of distress and that was never my intention. Please believe me when I say, it will never happen again.” He hadn’t even looked over at Rose as his whole focus was on Marinette. “I understand if you don’t want to help me with this after... that, but I do want you to know that I would never want you to feel unsafe around me.”

Marinette was still taking deep breaths and holding them before letting them out slowly. A nervous giggle escaped her.

She grinned timidly at Luka. “It’s not your fault,” her voice had a faint tremor. “You don’t know Felix or that we’re dating,” she said as her voice started to lose it’s warble. She looked at Nino for help.

“Felix... is mostly all bark and no bite,” Nino tells him sincerely. “The only problem is that no one has fitted him with a shock collar to keep him from barking all day and all night.”

“Nino, he’s not that bad,” Marinette protested.

Nino just gave her a flat look. “Do you not live in the same house I do?” he asked incredulously. “I’ve known him to call at 3 am to ask where you are and who you’re with,” his eyes dared her to dispute the fact. “And then there’s the morning and evening check-ins.”

“It’s nice to get texts first thing in the morning,” Marinette argued.

“No doubt about that, but he blows your phone up until you respond, and while I know you can sleep through a tsunami I cannot tell you how much I hate your phone’s notification sound.”

Rose laughed at that. “Oh man I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to tell these two off for leaving their phones on the charger and then not answering them when they’re getting notifications.”

Both Luka and Juleka looked sheepish.

Marinette looked back and forth between Luka, Juleka, and Rose and grinned.

“I see Rose is the one who rules the roost,” she teased. 

Luka nodded and Juleka mirrored the action.

“Do not get Rose mad,” Luka whispered to the whole table. “You wouldn’t like it when Rose’s mad.”

Everyone including Kagami and Nino laughed and the tension round the table seemed to ease. Luka couldn’t help but notice the look that passed between Marinette and Nino.

“Sounds familiar,” Nino said as he grinned at Marinette and waggled his eyebrows.

“Shut it,” Marinette said, her confidence returning to her a little, as she stuck her tongue out at him.

“Make me,” he taunted back.

“Careful, Lahiffe, I know where you sleep and also where you keep your gear.”

At Nino’s gasp and look of mock horror, Luka asked, “Your gear?”

“Yeah, I’m an EMT and also in the nursing program. I have a lot of emergency supplies,” he looked back at Marinette, “Which you promised to never touch again unless I ask you to.”

“You have a tape emergency one time-” she grumbled. “Besides you just asked me to shut you up. Sounds like asking to get in your kit to me.” She singsonged at him. “I could probably tape you to the bed without you knowing, you sleep so deeply once you get off shift.”

“How many times must I say it?” Nino said as he rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Don’t use expensive, high-quality medical tape for something that duct tape can do better.”

Marinette smiled as she bumped into his side. “I know where we keep the duct tape, too.”

The entire table had a laugh at their antics before getting back to their characters.

They really are a cute couple, Luka thought as he watched them. Nino seems like he’d be a better match than this Felix. At least, I don’t think Nino would be setting off a panic attack if some goon flirted badly with her. Luka couldn’t help the frown that crossed his face as he tried to puzzle out the two.

“And now we see who runs the place at your house,” Rose said with a giggle before instructing Juleka to grab one of the white character sheets so they could start rolling up her tiefling fighter.

After a moment of awkward silence between the two, Marinette began with, “So?” 

“So?” Luka repeated, not understanding what she was asking. 

“Are you ready to make your fighter?” She shifted to be a chair closer again. 

This time, Luka thought of the space between them as a vast wall to keep her safe from his own apparent foolishness.

“Oh, um, Kagami said I could just pick one from each pile to make my character,” he said mostly to the table in front of him. He looked up and saw the scowl that Marinette shot the mentioned girl. “Isn’t that okay?”

Marinette’s lips pressed into a thin line. “It’s true that that is one way to create a character, but it makes you less invested in your player and by association into the game.” She huffed in Kagami’s direction, “Just because she’s gone through so many characters that she no longer cares-”

A muffled protest “Hey, you try to care about your fiftieth character your boyfriend has killed off this campaign alone,” came from across the table. “I can’t find anything he won’t take out. And I don’t mean on a date!”

“- that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t at least look and see what’s out there. This way, even if you don’t choose that race or class you’ll still have some idea of what’ll probably show up in our game,” Marinette supplied. “Though personally, when I have time, I do like to get deeply into creating my characters, especially their backstories.”

Nino snorted. “Please tell them about the time you created a complete novella of your dwarven mage only to have him k.o.’ed by the first henchman your party crossed,” he laughed again, “and you hadn’t even got to tell them your name yet!”

“They buried her with a headstone reading ’To the unknown dwarf. Gone and now forgotten.’,” Kagami added with a grin.

Marinette shook her head. “All that dwarven lore and history gone before it could be shared.” She looked at Luka, “I spent three nights typing up Thomyll Tharrgrisson’s clan affiliation, genealogy, home life, general education, apprenticeship, and mage studies.”  She smiled and sighed as she seemed to drift off into another world. “If I’d had another night, I would have gone into his courtship, marriage, and widowhood as well as his daughter’s apprenticeship as a baker and his sons’ work in the war forges of their people. Thomyll and his family always felt most at home around a fire.”

Kagami snickered and the sound brought Marinette back to the table. “That’s what makes his death so epically ironic,” the laughing girl told Luka. “It was a freaking first level fireball that took him out.”

Nino joined in her laughter, but Marinette just rolled her eyes and turned her back to them.

“I was down to a single hit point,” she grumbled. “We’ll just ignore them,” she instructed Luka. “Nino is barely starting and Kagami hasn’t yet learned the importance of,” she changed her voice to be pitched lower and more nasally as she said, “Backstory! Backstory! Backstory!”

“Too bad you’re stuck with me and not Perry the platypus then,” Luka said with a small grin as he’d recognized the voice she’d been trying to imitate. Her thumbs up made him hope that maybe he hadn’t ruined everything.

“And when do you ever have time to write something that epic?” Juleka teased.

“Probably not much this semester,” Marinette answered her with a wry grin. “There’s already a student showcase to be prepping for this year. Fortunately they’ve all been told they can only use the black blocks we have as their sets and most of the student directors are doing one act plays that are set in modern times so their casts are using their own clothes.”

“Marinette’s a drama major and is into major drama,” Nino confided to Luka with a grin.

“Ugh, Nin that line is getting so old,” she said with a small eye roll. Nino didn’t look put out in the least. She thought for a moment. “I think they’re not going to be allowed to request any backdrops for the showcase either, so I just have to get all their props. Which is good since we only have one stagecraft class and they’ll be responsible for the main play this semester.”

“Oh is it that Voltaire play you were so excited about doing costumes for?” Rose asked.

Marinette nodded, “That’s the one.”

Rose’s eyes widened considerably. “Are you going to have to make dresses and suits for the whole cast?”

Marinette burst out laughing. “No, I won’t be making everything from scratch. Thankfully our costume storage has a lot of pieces that can be altered to fit our needs as well as our actors. It’ll still keep me plenty busy.” 

“Well we know you’re really good at altering a situation for the best,” Nino said out the corner of his mouth, not really looking up from something Kagami wanted him to re-do.

Marinette reddened around the ears, but looked at Juleka. “Are you going to try out for this one?”

Juleka shook her head. “Madame Haprèle made me the lead make up designer.��� She smiled a huge smile. “I get to design or approve designs of all the cast’s make-up and then I’m responsible for making sure everyone in the costume/make-up class knows how to read their sheet and apply the design to their actors.” 

Marinette’s smile broke across her face and Luka could clearly read just how happy she was for his sister.

“That’s excellent, Jules!” She seemed to dance in her seat. “That’ll look really good on your résumé and it’ll be some sweet, sweet make-up.”

Juleka hid her face in Rose’s shoulder. It was a familiar action Luka knew she did when she was a little overwhelmed by any intense emotion.

“Thank’s Nette,” she said muffled by Rose's sweater.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” Marinette said quietly as she tried to dial down her excitement. “But you should know I only spoke the truth.”

“She’s right and she should say it,” Luka said as he nudged Juleka’s shoulder with his.

“Don’t you meme me boy,” Juleka said as she pushed back at him. “You may be older, but I’m trending.”

Luka laughed a little too loud at this. “You’ve got me there,” he conceded. He looked back over to Marinette. “Anything else that you’re doing this semester that’ll stand in the way of developing your character’s backstory?”

She thought for a moment. “I know that they were thinking about adding a comedy at the end of the semester to try and help the rest of the student body keep their spirit’s up before the winter break, but I haven’t heard back about it.”

“Didn’t you tell me the dance program was doing something from the Nutcracker?” Kagami asked. “You wanted to borrow my saber for it.”

Marinette facepalmed. “How could I forget that I’ll be trying to get about twenty bon-bon costumes made or borrowed?”

“What? Why?” Luka asked.

“She’s the headmistress of the costume department,” Nino told him. “Only the dean has higher authority about what goes on stage. So when the dance department tries to do some kind of cross study with local dance studios to keep the littles doing ballet--” he pulled a face at Marinette and she shakes her head at him, “--to keep them dancing until they’re in college, it’s Marinette’s responsibility to make sure everyone from Sugarland is dressed as cupcakes or whatever.”

“I keep telling you there aren’t any cupcakes in the Land of Sweets,” Marinette grumbles at him.

“Then how can it truly be magical?” Nino demanded. “You know your parents would never approve of a magical land of every good dessert if it didn’t include cupcakes and pain au chocolat.” 

“Why not?” Luka asked.

“You know T&S?” Marinette asked in reply. At his nod, she went on, “Well Tom and Sabine are my parents.”

“Oh, well, yeah,” Luka said as he smiled at Nino, “You’re right about that. No magical world would be complete without T&S pain au chocolat.”

“I knew you were a man of good taste,” Nino said. Behind Marinette’s back, Luka saw Nino point at him and then her and flutter his eyelashes.

Luka’s face began heating up. Okay Nino was turning out to have a good sense of humor, even if it was at Luka’s expense.

“Any way,” Marinette said thoughtfully, “I think that’s everything big going on stage this semester.” She thought some more then mumbled more to herself than to anyone in particular, “Of course we still have to do preproduction for the spring musical…”

Luka was just staring at her while Juleka and Rose were nodding along. “You have all that on top of classes?” he asked with a low whistle. “And I thought doing a double major and part-time work kept me too busy.”

“Oh Nettie never stops moving,” Nino said. “In her spare time,” he said the phrase dripping with sarcasm, “she’ll work on crafting things like some of the dice boxes over there,” he pointed at the table from the Crazy Squirrel.

“Nin, I don’t make the boxes! I just, like, add to them,” Marinette protested.

“And Michelangelo just added to the Sistine chapel’s ceiling,” Nino retorted. “As well as fighting the Foot Clan’s ninjas at night.”

Luka laughed, but Marinette glared at her housemate.

“Wow,” Luka said  as he squinted over at the table with the boxes as Marinette seemed to shrink in on herself. “That’s seriously impressive.”

“It’s not that big-” she began only to be interrupted by Nino again.

“It is,” Nino said looking directly into her eyes.

“Nino, stop,” Marinette whined. “Go back to plotting with your co-conspirator. Help me out here, Gami.”

“Sure,” she said. Kagami looked Luka directly in the eyes and said with the most deadpan expression he’d ever seen, “Marinette is an angel come down from heaven. She does what no mere mortal can and her sweetness and kindness knows no bounds. She has been cursed to suffer us unworthy mortals as she is forced to live amongst the most idiotic and stubborn of humans.”

“Hey, no need to tear me down as you build Marinette up,” Nino offered in mock protest.

Kagami flashed him a smirk, “I didn’t mention you by name but if you feel the description fits...”

Nino and Kagami chuckled and the others grinned at their shenanigans.

“Hey Luka I just had a thought,” Marinette said as she looked determinedly away from Nino and Kagami. “Rose and Juleka need time to roll up their characters and you’ll probably want a set of dice even if you do eventually just use an app. Why don’t we go over to the vendor table and let these people work? You can even see my embellishments, up close.” 

“You’re just going to avoid us now?” Nino asked with a grin.

“Yes,” Marinette said as she got up. 

Luka was quick to follow her lead. They didn’t say anything until Luka was looking at the display of the different sets of dice and dice trays.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked her quietly. “You seem a little-- distressed.”

Marinette bit one corner of her bottom lip, but shook her head. 

“It’s an old argument,” she said. “Nino thinks I should speak up more about my job titles and accomplishments, but that seems so much like bragging and I hate people that do that. Like, my accomplishments should speak for themselves, you know?”

Luka hummed for a moment before replying, “I see where you’re coming from, but the problem is that you can’t let your accomplishments speak for themselves if you don’t let people know you’ve accomplished them.”

“And am I supposed to go around telling people that I’ve eaten all of my sandwich as well as my chips today?” she asked without any heat.

“Do you have problems actually eating your lunch?” he asked with a grin.

She looked away, but quickly looked back. “Maaaaaaayyyyyybe,” she slowly admitted.

He laughed at her sheepish expression, “Well then maybe you do need to tell people, but only if they ask. Or if you’ve done something hard that you are proud of and a good friend would be happy for you, uh, for.” He smiled at her. “If Nino hadn’t jumped in, would you have told me about being in charge of so much?”

“I might’ve,” she replied truthfully. “If you’d asked about it. But why go over all of that if it isn’t your jam? If you’re not into theater then giving you my titles will only be confusing and lead to misunderstandings,” she did an involuntary shudder at some memory. “But if you are into theater than me saying that I work in props and costumes lets you either ask more or tells you that we have some common interests we can discuss later. Right?”

He nodded as he picked up a set of teal dice that were transparent like glass and started looking at the trays. Most were plain boxes, some also had velvet lining.

“These aren’t the fanciest boxes to choose from,” Marinette said as she looked over the selection with him. She looked at the dice he’d chosen. “With the white numbering you’re probably going to want a mid to dark color inside to help make reading them easier, but something like black might make it harder to find your dice in the tray.”

“Well they only seem to have the plain wood or the black velvet,” Luka murmured.

“I bet Marinette could help fix up a tray for you that would be perfect,” the woman behind the table said. “She’s done almost all of these, but I know she has an Etsy where she sells the real fancy ones that most of our clients just can’t afford.”

“Thanks Ms. Watson,” Marinette said with a grin. “You know I offer you a first chance at the more ornate ones.”

“Don’t you be tempting me with any more of your magic boxes,” the woman said with a smile. “I’ve already bought more than my husband realizes. I’m just fortunate that he keeps putting off making the display for them or he’d realize how much the pile’s grown,” she mock whispered.

The man helping Max with his purchases couldn’t help but turning his head and saying, “Oh I know that it’s grown, but it’s so big she doesn’t realize how many I’ve snuck onto the pile.”

“And this is why it’s dangerous for two pack rats to own a game shop,” she said to Luka. “You know Marinette, if he buys one of the plain boxes you can probably fix it up for him in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Marinette paused for a moment then grinned at Luka.

“I think I have some gray velvet at home that would be perfect for your needs,” she closed her eyes and seemed to be scanning something with her forefinger. She brightened up before saying, “I even know where it is. If you buy one of the plain boxes, I can fix it up before our next meeting.”

“But you just said how busy you were going to be?” Luka objected.

Marinette rolled her eyes. “Those things all have their timelines and we’re at the beginning of the semester.” He didn’t look as if he believed her so she continued on, “You know what classes are like the first week. They'll only be going over the syllabus and discussing which books you must have, which books are extra reading suggestions, and which ones are only required because they were written by a member of the faculty but you can totally not go to this specific web address to get the text in question. Hint. hint. So it’s not like they’re even assigning homework this week. Or not on the first day.” 

She grinned at him and he nodded, having had several of those classes previously. “If you suggested this project two weeks before winter break, I’d probably have a break with reality as I tried to be several places at once including my house working on it but-” she shrugged her shoulders “- like she said, I have an Etsy where I do stuff like this all the time. It brings in a little extra income and gives my hands something to do while I listen to lecture notes or my e-reader.”

“How much would you ask for a project like this?” Luka wanted to know.

“Well, you’re already going to be providing the box so it’s just parts and labor you’re paying for,” she said. “If you just want the velvet, which I already have, it’ll take me about ten minutes to cut and use spray adhesive on it-- then I’d say about five bucks. If you want me to give it a bit of a stain for some color then add another five?”

“You’d be getting a good deal,” the vendor said. “Our prices are pretty low this week because we remember what it’s like to be in school and want all the cool stuff, but don’t want to have to survive on ramen. However, we can’t sell them this cheap forever. And even though the box will only cost you ten dollars, once Marinette’s done with it, it’ll look like a million bucks!”

Luka picked up a basic pine box that had a small compartment for carrying his dice and the rest was an open tray. “So for twenty bucks, I can have this turned into that?” He pointed at a similar box that had a royal purple stain and black velvet lining.

Marinette smiled before saying, “Sure if you want purple, I could do that or something else if you’d prefer.”

“And it won’t be a problem for you?” he asked with real concern. “It won’t be stressing you out?”

She shook her head. “I promise, it won’t stress me out.”

“Okay, it’s a deal,” he said to both the women. Luka used his card to pay before asking Marinette, “So do you take Paypal, Venmo,” he paused before asking, “maybe cash?”

They started walking back to their table.

Marinette shook her head. “I try not to deal with cash if I can help it, but I do have Paypal set up with my Etsy or you could Venmo me.”

“Well, what’s going to make you more comfortable?” Luka asked as he sat back down next to Juleka.

“Oh,” Marinette brightened as she pulled out her purse. “I have a business card. Do you want to grab a pic of that? It has all the needed information on it”

Luka smiled as he pulled out his phone. “That would be perfect.”

He snapped a picture of the card before grabbing shots of the people at their table and then the rest of the room. After he played with the screen, Juleka and Rose’s phones both pinged. A few seconds later Marinette felt her phone buzz, too.

“Did you just send us pics of ourselves?” Juleka asked.

“Yup,” he grinned, “Sent them to the family chat. You know how the Captain is- Pics or it didn’t happen.”

Rose smiled back at him while Juleka rolled her eyes.

“Did you get the payment?” he asked Marinette. “Let me know if it didn’t go through and I’ll cancel that one to make sure you get paid.”

“What are you paying her for?” Juleka demanded.

“For your information I have just commissioned, uh, an angel from heaven I believe were the words, right, Kagami-” he lifted a brow in her direction and she nodded, “-to take this drab little box,” he held up the plastic bag containing his purchase, “and change it into the ultimate dice throwing experience.” He shrugged, “Well as ultimate as $20 can buy, anyway.”

The table laughed as he passed the bag over to Marinette after first wiping it down. She put it next to her purse and then grabbed a blank character sheet and the rejected pink and green sheets from Rose. 

Marinette rifled through the class sheets while asking, “Do you really not want to be a fighter? I think there are a couple of other things in here like, um,” she pulled out one paper, “No, that’s Barbarian which is the opposite of not a fighter. Here’s wizard,” she lifted a few other pages, “-or there’s a bard.” She pulled out another paper, “or sorcerer.” She seemed to deflate. “That’s it for the less stabby, stabby occupations, unless you want to be a cleric or paladin which are more like holy fighters.”

Rose snickered. 

“You should totally be a bard,” she said. She wiggled her eyebrows at Kagami who also broke out into snickers.

“Yes,” she agreed with Rose. “A bard would be perfect for you.”

Nino’s eyebrows contracted as he looked at Luka. “I don’t know if he’s got it in him to be a bard. His first attempt at barding was pretty lame and I don’t think he should be barding all over Marinette.”

Luka looked at his sniggering tablemates and then at Marinette who had some pink in her cheeks as she facepalmed.

“Okay, what’s up with the bard?” he asked everyone in general.

Marinette whispered, “Stop it Nino,” threateningly in his direction before answering Luka.

“Bards have a bit of a reputation for being highly charismatic, or thinking they are highly charismatic, and then trying to sleep with everything that moves and even some of the furniture.”

The table erupted into laughter.

“Oh,” was all he said even as he processed the earlier tittering. “I thought Rose was suggesting bard because I can play several instruments.”

“That never even entered my mind,” Rose said unhelpfully.

“You do?” Marinette asked. “What do you play?”

“Well, pretty much anything with strings but mostly guitar. Then I play percussion, some piano, clarinet, and sax and occasionally I play the bagpipes, badly.”

“I keep telling you,” Juleka piped up, “no one actually plays the bagpipes well. Otherwise they wouldn’t sound like that.”

The whole table broke into laughter.

“Are you in a band, dude?” Nino asked.

“Not right now, but I still sit in with a couple of guys I played with in high school. I don’t have much time with my job and trying to fit a double major into a single major time frame.”

“Oooh. What are you majoring in?” Kagami asked as she leaned over to hear his answer.

“Well music, obviously, but my other one is psych. I’m hoping to be able to do music therapy with children. Especially in lower income schools as they have kids that have high stress situations but low avenues for expression.”

Nino whistled. “That’s so cool man. What types of music do you even play?”

“Oh, I like folk, rock, pop, and metal, but I’ve also tried to branch out into punk and rap. I want to be familiar with the forms that the kids are used to and then help them express themselves through that music. It’s going to be tough though.”

“Why’s that?” Marinette asked.

“Because the school I was doing training in last semester has lots of kids whose families are from Mexico, Laos, and Pakistan and I just don’t know enough about traditional music for any of those groups. Not that they only listen to traditional at home, but those can be familiar to riff off. I mean I’ve heard of Mariachi music before, but it’s not the only traditional Mexican music.”

“Dude, you can’t be expected to know everyone’s music. You should probably let the kids show you what they like,” Nino said even as he motioned for Luka to continue.

I know that it’s not the only music they’d be exposed to or familiar with, but I only know about four phrases in Spanish-’ Mas, por favor, tortilla, and sí’. I don’t know any Hmong or Laotian words, and I’d like to think my little Pakistani friend wouldn’t try to teach me bad words, but I’m afraid to use what I learned from him in front of his mother. I’ve seen My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding!”

The group laughed again

“You certainly have your work cut out for you,” Marinette said.

Luka nodded then looked away. Seeing Kagami, he said, “Kagami you’re the only one here I haven’t really heard about majors or working. So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I’m not entirely sure,” Kagami said with a grimace. “I’m a math major because I love it and a science minor because chemistry is just amazing, but I’m not sure what I plan on doing with either of those things.”

“It’s okay not to know what you plan to do yet,” Luka said gently.

“Doesn’t Adrien want to be a professor of History?” Rose asked, with a sly smile.

“Yes, what about it?” Kagami asked, raising an eyebrow at the grinning girl.

“Think about it, Gami,” Rose said with a sigh. “You and Adrien could be that cute professor couple that all the students ship! You could teach chemistry, because you seriously were the only one that got me through that class last semester, and Adrien could teach ancient Mediterranean history. And you could sneak into each other’s offices for lunch dates. I bet you could even keep the students guessing if you’re in a relationship or not for years. It would be perfect!”

Kagami smiled at her friend. “I don’t know if it works that way, but it might be something to look into,” she said to the girl who looked like she was actually making heart eyes at the prospect.

“Okay Luka,” Marinette said. “Grab a white paper and we can start creating your bard.”

The genuine smile on her face was something Luka couldn’t help remembering even after they left the club for the evening. He carried home his new dice and the hope that he’d actually found some new friends.

Two nights later, Luka was pulling up to an unfamiliar house with a very familiar person standing out front. He secured his mask and the pizza carrier before walking up the steps to the landing. Nino’s expression was a mixture of embarrassed and pissed, and when Luka heard the discussion coming through an open window he understood why.

Nino spoke up quietly while Luka was climbing the stairs, pausing at the top step.

“Um, sorry about this, but I kind of walked out without my mask or my wallet,” he apologized. “It’s just that whenever she’s talking to Felix, I end up wanting to punch a hole in the wall and we can’t afford to lose our deposit.” He smiled, but the joke attempt fell flat. “Can you just hang here for a bit? They’ve almost got to the end and then I can go get your money.”

“How do you know they’re almost done?” Luka asked.

Nino glanced over his shoulder and grimaced. “I’ve heard it enough times.”

In the awkward silence that hung between the two of them, Luka heard Marinette’s voice.

“I can’t afford to break my lease and leave Nino in the lurch for the rest of the semester as well as contributing to your rent.” There was a silence before she continued, “Because he’s my very good friend and you don’t do that to friends and then get to keep them afterward.” Her voice rose in volume, “No, I can’t just move in with you and have your parents pay for me, Felix. I’m not going to sponge off of your parents or have them telling me I owe them for this for the rest of our lives.” Her voice suddenly sounded tired. “There’s nothing wrong with where I work. I like it. No, it doesn’t pay as much as where we were, but it’s not as stressful.” And now she sounded just done. “I’m not having this argument again Felix.” 

Nino just sighed heavily, “She says that every time, yet here we are.”

Luka tried not to make eye contact with Nino or eavesdrop, but, well, there wasn’t much else he could do unless he wanted to pay for the pizza himself and then leave.

“I can’t come right now, I just ordered food and it’s on the way.” Her voice had lost all it’s color and vibrancy. “Nino’s not in. I can’t ask him to get it.”

Luka couldn’t help glancing at Nino when she said it. He had the decency to look away. Her next statements sent up red flags for Luka.

“No, I’m not meeting someone.” Her tone got higher, a little more insistent. “No, I’m not cheating on you with the delivery driver! Nino’s on his way home. He’s probably going to be pulling up just as the food gets here.” 

This time Nino watched him as he looked away. He knew there was nothing going on between himself and Marinette, but still he felt the blush as the accusation fell from her lips. 

Her voice got low, she was pleading with him now. “Felix, I’m going to eat my dinner and finish my homework so that tomorrow I won’t have anything hanging over my head when we go on our date.” 

Another pause before, “You’ll have me all to yourself, just the way you like.”

“Please, Felix, I can’t.” Each sentence was more full of begging for understanding. “Not tonight.” She got quieter. “Don’t be mad.” She started to sound like she was talking in a fake, cutsie  voice- more childlike and with less adult authority. “Okay, you’re not mad.” 

“Don’t be upset, Fe,” her tone was wheedling for his favor.

“Yes, of course, I want to see you!” 

 “Yes, I’m being good for you.” 

They do this all the time? he thought. Luka was finding it hard to keep his chill and looking at Nino’s drawn brows and thin mouth the other man wasn’t liking what he was hearing either.

“You’re the only one for me,” her tone cowed and sweet. 

“Bye now sweet-” apparently Felix already hung up as they could now hear Marinette taking in great gulps of air.

Nino took that as his cue to hurry into the house calling, “Pizza’s here!” In a few moments Nino returned with his mask on and wallet in hand.

The sound of ragged breaths was the only thing they heard as Nino rummaged in his wallet for his card to tap on the card reader Luka held out for him. Luka couldn’t help the incredulous look he gave Nino as he slid the box out of the carrier onto Nino’s waiting hands.

“Yeah, I know,” Nino said to the silent accusation. “I’ve tried to talk to her about it, but she insists that she loves him.”

Luka nodded as he closed the carrier.

“It sure doesn’t sound like love on this end of the line.”

Nino’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know.”

Luka nodded to him and hurried to his car.  As he started up the engine, he pulled out his phone and made sure his ear piece was on. He was pulling away from the curb when his call was answered.

“Jules, I’m screwed,” were his first words to his sister. “It’s Marinette. She’s a princess in distress and I want to save her from her a-hole boyfriend because, as we well know, I have a savior complex.” 

He listened to her talk him through a grounding exercise before they continued their conversation. 

“I know. I’m not responsible for saving anyone. We all have to save ourselves,” he sighed. “All I could ever hope to be is support. She has to want to get out of the situation and from the sound of it, she’s in it for the long haul.” 

Juleka’s anxious voice mumbled the name Brinley. Luka laughed mirthlessly. “I’ve learned my lesson--no white knighting for me.” 

He thought back to the overheard conversation. “But if I ever meet the guy in person, I’m going to deck him. I swear I’ll... I’ll give him concrete shoes and drop him over the side of mom’s boat at midnight. What do you mean what for?” he asked in surprise at Juleka’s question. “For making her feel bad for wanting to keep her friends, her independence, and her mental balance.” 

Luka laughed at Juleka’s squawk and her subsequent expletive filled threat for Felix. 

“No way, Jules! Rose’ll only have enough to bail one of us out and we both know she’ll choose you.”

Juleka’s bright laughter rang through the ear piece. 

“Thanks, Jules,” he said quietly. “Yeah, I’ll bring home a Julerose special.” He smiled, grateful for the friendship of his sister. “I should be done in about an hour, yeah. Love ya!”

As he drove back to the pizza parlor, he couldn’t help but recall the quiet sobs at the end of Marinette’s call. His heart went out to her. He’d been there before, and it well and truly sucked. He determined that he’d try to be the best support he could for his new friend.

[vvakarians]

I need to be vulnerable for a second.

It’s been a year. I’ve made a lot of progress and am still uprooting shit I’ve been wading in for a while now. I’m growing and learning. But I’ve never gone into detail really, maybe on twitter and mentioned it a couple times but yeah. Been thinking a lot.

TW for Homophobia / Abuse

TLDR; My best friend was a shitlord and I spent ten minutes painfully sobbing about it. I’m fine lmao just needed to make a messy post.

Won’t be mentioning who they were on SM here but if mutuals who are and were friends w/ both of us want to know, hmu lmao. I sincerely hope y’all didn’t get shit on like I did

I’m so tired. I’m tired of knowing that someone I used to call my best friend literally cyberstalked me in a discord server and when I told them I wanted to have a space without them/wouldn’t be interacting with their character, they lost it.

I’ll call this person A. They were there for me through a lot but it got weird towards the end for sure. A was always clingy, always needed to be right (passed it off as an OCD thing), and always felt like they needed to be included in things I was doing. Abandonment issues due to trauma they said, still doesn’t excuse it but you know? Fine.

I identified as aro/ace for a long time bc I was severely traumatized. Someone thirst followed me and cornered me into a relationship/took my kindness for granted (Not A, not yet). A’s reaction was to assume I would never have time for them and we would drift apart, just because I had a partner. They complained about this to me and said that even if I was just their friend and QPP (we were both aro/ace) that they still felt I would abandon them. I tried to calm them down the entire time, this was October 2018. Three days later I had a severe PTSD break (unrelated trauma) and broke up with my ‘boyfriend’. A said it was the right decision and we left it at that.

Cut to me a year later having recovered a bit and realizing I had romantic feelings still. That I *wanted* to kiss and take someone out, and do heavily romantic things. During this time A and I had severe issues with D&D parties also where they would break down if they didn’t know everything and said that I couldn’t produce any part of my worlds for profit bc theh had contributed in a small way. It was a bad time. It lead to the complete disintegration of two relationships that I can...probably never get back. One of which I’m not sure I *want* back, but that’s a different story.

Basically they wanted to be the DM with half the credit despite only making npcs I could easily replace or cut out entirely. Now that I started playing again, I have.

I still was friends with them, still waveringly QPP’s with them. Though I’d often feel my skin crawl when they touched me or wanted to be in my space. This was all the time, not when I got triggered into a PTSD episode. I was annoyed when they wanted to always be in my space and have all my attention. But I felt obligated to A and had been recently traumatized again.

Even with all of this I wanted to come out as gay / mlm but still keep part of my aceness with me. Of course in feeling this, I approached A to let them know. Their response was to immediately come back with ‘we can do all of those things you want to do with a romantic partner’. Which I felt may be true for some aspecs but not me. I wanted to *be* with someone and not just...a friend. I wanted to have a boyfriend and be cheesy. I told A that it was probably true but I wanted something else. That I wanted space to think on what they had said. They came back with ‘you’re abandoning me. You just don’t like me. Everyone always leaves me’. Once again with the ‘you get a bf you’ll forget I exist’ rhetoric 🙃.

I told them that they weren’t the person I wanted to be romantic with. I was looking for someone else. I wasn’t attracted to them that way. They took that as an insult. Though to me they relented. Come to find out A got one of our mutual friends involved bc they lived in the same area. They vented and complained to them that I was going to abandon them, that I was punishing them, that they didn’t know what they did wrong. Which was behavior my parents exhibited when I was forced out as trans to them. That Inwas punishing them somehow for a misdeed or that they knew me better, they did something ‘wrong’.

The only outlet I had away from A was TikTok, we weren’t really doing D&D anymore because the party had dissolved due to their controlling habits. Every account I had was heavily monitored by A, I would vent and they would immediately pull it up and ask if I was okay. Even if I had explicitly said before that I was alright and needed some space. But TikTok was a place they barely went on. So I cosplayed more after our last visit (October 2019), and got a small following after joining a lovely d&d tag ran by one of my now closest friends. I also met my boyfriend through this tag, and several other very close friends. I made an oc that I integrated in one or two sessions of D&D before I completely stopped DMing.

Now, it gets worse. I get a following for cosplaying my oc Asariel Whately, join a server, and for a time have a pretty okay place away from A. Some breathing room. When I mentioned that Asariel (who we had talked about maybe being w/ an oc of theirs) was going to romance my now boyfriends oc in the tag, they got upset. They said that they were sad to see them with someone else, and asked if it could all be before my campaign/not actually be real. I told them no and that I’d continue doing what I wanted.

Well, after that and scouring my TikTok (i made the mistake of saying anything in the first place), they got invited to the server and started RPing/cosplaying in the tag. Which they’re allowed to do, but A has a history of wanting to be in my things and being the center of attention. When I say A got involved with *several* other characters, including a possible *minor*, that doesn’t even cover the worst of it. They got involved in a huge polyam relationship (which is fine, i’ll explain why their behavior was weird tho) that LITERALLY took up chunks of the whole server. Any time my bf and I got into chat to rp out some scene for Asariel and Fraanic, A was there to bury our scene in their own garbage. Could have been conicidence but who knows. Then the minor got added into the mix and most of us just had the server on mute/rped in DMs. It was so bad that other people noticed their bad behavior, meta gaming, and needing to be right.

Our relationship ended when someone from a private close knit server made up of all the people who wanted to remove ourselves from the toxic environment, outed our server. Said there was an nsfw server and A immediately jumped to say they wanted an invite. I panicked and DMed them for the first time in weeks to say that they couldn’t. That I needed space from them and this was the one place I had. We had a fight, they said ‘they’re my friends too’ and I pointed out that they had forced their way in, that I said I needed space. Eventually they gave up on it, thank god. But it left me wrecked for months. I didn’t create, I retreated into a two person server with my best friend who is now my boyfriend and just never looked back.

While I’m grateful that this massive upheaval gave me a new support network, got me into a good place for a romantic partnership, and allowed me to heal...I still have a lot of pain. I felt like I had been commodiefied, like an object because of how kind and soft and pliable I was. Because someone thought I was beautiful and *theirs* in the worst way. My ocs who are some of my largest coping mechanisms were tainted, I could barely play Dragon Age, couldn’t think about it. Because someone had conpletely obliterated my love for it. I hate to think they then continued to do that same thing to other people but I honestly have no clue what A is doing now. They dropped off the planet and honestly good riddance.

[dungeons-and-danis]

How I Prepare For Major Arcs & Organize My DM Notes, As Well As Just General Narrative Advice!

So, I got a question quite a while back to try out this neat little trend of displaying and explaining away how I prepare for a session, as well as show how i organize and utilize my notes as a DM. I’m going to be using my upcoming, work-in-progress arc, “Nightingale”, as a visual reference throughout the post. 

So, I know i’ve released my DM’s notes on worldanvil before, but I gotta admit that the platform I most like to use for notes and plot setup is always OneNote, which I have for free via my college. It’s versatile, organized, and easy to navigate on any platform (even my phone!). So if you can get your hands on it, I highly recommend it.

PART ONE -- THE MAIN PAGE OF CENTRAL INFORMATION

What I like to do first, is create a central tab of navigation, the first thing that will pop up when I open my fresh set of notes! Things I like to include in that main tab would be any of the following:

Format Key

This will come in handy later, but essentially I have a key to differentiating different types of text throughout my notes and it looks like this (note: your notes DON’T have to look like this, but I recommend having a specific format for all these types of text to help keep you organized):

Reference Links

This is to link to articles I have on world anvil with more detailed information

Settings

NPC’s

Organizations/Factions

Misc.

Plot Setup/Brainstorming

This is helpful to get you started on your overarching plot! Be as messy as you want and DON’T DELETE ANYTHING, even if you think it’s stupid. All brainstorming is good brainstorming.

Objective

Themes

Relevant History

Hooks

Encounters

Small Outline of Main Questline

Reputation Points

I like, especially for big cities with lots of factions and NPC’s, to keep track of reputation and karma with a point system. Every good deed or bad deed, I like to record and assign a certain number of points to add or subtract from the total score of each faction, based off of just how good or bad that act was. This will help decide things in both the conclusion of that arc, as well as the conclusion of my campaign. This way, your actions really do have consequences.

PART TWO -- BUILDING THE PLOT IN ACTS

So I believe it is pertinent to keep things simple when it comes to notes, especially when it comes to major arcs where your players have a lot of freedom and you need to do a lot of writing in order to allow that freedom. So i like to build in 4 acts, each of them being dedicated to its own special needs. You can add however many acts as you might need, but this is just a base line! 

Act One: The Introduction

Act Two: Exploration/Information Gathering

Act Three: The Rising Action

Act Four: The Conclusion/The Climax

To add onto this, I usually put these acts as Major Groups in OneNote, and they look a little like this:

Act One; Introducing Your Players To The Setting

This, in my opinion, is the most important act of the four. I usually like to send my players into the setting with a BANG! Throw something at them that they don’t expect! An eerie exorcism, a public execution of an old friend, a plague that keeps the party away from public entrances, anything you can think of! The intro should be narrative heavy, not battle-heavy. That will just make your party snore. Give them a reason to fight, a reason to care about this story and its NPCs. Make sure that this first part is your best work, because it sets the story from here on out and will determine if your players are eager to return to the table. Do not forget to set the precedent of your arc’s main plot goal here. If you don’t do it now, it won’t make sense elsewhere. Make the PC’s care right away!

For example, some snippets of my introduction notes look a little bit like this (remember my format key from before? well here it is in use:)

Act Two; Exploration/Information Gathering

This is a big one, because this is where the majority of your work will go. This is the part where the players can roam around the setting, getting to know the NPC’s and the environment for themselves and make their own opinions on the current state of affairs wherever they are. I like to get super organized with this part, because it can get VERY hectic while going live. You want to write where you leave room for players to move, but also keep them focused on the task at hand. So whatever dialogue or side quests you introduce in exploration, keep it brief and drawing back to the central plot line at hand. 

I will expand more on this in PART 3, because it deserves its own section.

Act Three; The Rising Action

Yes, just like your english teacher taught you in 6th grade, there has to be a Rising Action in your plot line! This is self explanatory, it might seem. But this is the hardest part about writing up a plot line for D&D, because you never know how your players are going to change the plot. So keep things loose and relative, allowing for wiggle room and improvisation. But still, have a decent chunk of the plot ready to go in this act, because this will be the majority of your plot and usually where the information gathering from act two will start to come in handy. Things need to start coming to a head towards the end of this act, or else you’ll be stuck with a very unsatisfactory conclusion. Another helpful tip during this act, is to write down EVERY, and I mean EVERY SINGLE LITTLE question your players might have. Figure out an answer to all of them, even if the answer is “you’ll find out later”.

Act Four; The Conclusion/The Climax

This is the end. The part of your story where everything starts to come together into a full circle! You need to be prepared to answer all those questions your players had during act three, in one form or another. There’s nothing worse than ending an arc finding that there were a million plot holes that didn’t get accounted for. So prepare, prepare, prepare for this final act. On top of that, prepare for several outcomes on top of that! Don’t be afraid to change the ending on the fly, just make sure you answer those questions somehow--be it out right, or implied in the narrative. My best advice is to not write out the ending until you’re at least half way through act three. Because your player’s choices should matter, and should have a major effect on the ending. If they don’t, then whats the point in running a narrative-heavy campaign? This is where my reputation points have come in handy in the past.

PART 3 -- EXPANDING ON EXPLORATION

I wanted to give you guys a taste at how I organize my exploration section. And to be honest with you, it’s fairly to-the-point and straight forward. I’m using a city setting for my example, but I feel like this can apply to any settlement setting to be honest. But I usually like to start with a table of contents as the first page for me to land on when going to my Exploration section. It looks like this, and each link, links exactly to that page on the document so i don’t have to guess at where everything is.

I also have a page dedicated to general information about the city in my worldanvil, linked on the Reference Links page I mentioned before! But it’s always good to have a central source of information about your settlement when prepping.

Now, let’s take a look at what one of the shops looks like, as that’s most likely going to be the bulk of what you’re writing. We’re gonna start with my shop “Dagna’s General Goods Store”, which is simple enough. Here, you can see all the pages I have for this location:

These are specific to a certain encounter, but to put it in a more general sense, this is how I would organize any relevant location in a settlement:

Introduction

I like to introduce my players to the outside and inside of every establishment in my settlements. So, narrative of the outside... and then a narrative of the inside. For example, this one looks like this:

Then, from there, I can dive into whatever introducing encounters I may have planned for that shop on the same page. This is just to give the players an impression. I continue for this page like this:

I like to put in brackets before voicing a new character, how their voice may sound. But that’s just me!

The NPC(s)

Always have a page for NPC’s relative to the establishment! I usually like to link to my worldanvil at the top, but sometimes characters are so small that I don’t make them a page. For those instances, I like to write just a little bit about them under the following format:

Appearance

Personality (including voice/accent)

What They Know

Willing to Share

Not Willing to Share (requires skill checks, or otherwise)

I like to keep this brief as possible, because too much text will just overwhelm me when i’m actually DMing live. Don’t make them too complicated, unless they’re major NPC’s, otherwise you will suffer.

Whats For Sale

Self explanatory, especially for shops. If the establishment sells things, I like to take screenshots from the books and place them in this page. Or I make tables myself! Cause OneNote can do that lmao.

General Information

I like to split this up into three categories:

Schedules

What time does the establishment open and close? When is the owner there? When does the owner go to bed? Is there anything the people living there do at certain times that are of relevance? This all becomes helpful when trying to nail down routines and time tracking.

Points of Interest

Things the players can find! Maybe a secret heirloom, a private letter, or a family tree! Usually these require skill checks to find, but can also just be apart of the apparent environment!

Encounters

Events that happen to the players. This can happen at certain times, or only when the players are currently present! It’s entirely up to you. But don’t equate encounters with battle, encounters are just events, battle or otherwise!

Mine looks kind of like this, though it needs some more fleshing out-- which will come with time as my plot progresses.

Missions (if applicable)

This can split off into various sub pages, if need be, and may not even be applicable to this specific establishment! But sometimes, you can acquire missions from people and places. I like to write the mission pages in the Establishment or NPC pages that will give them out. 

And well, that’s about it! Sorry for the huge post, but it gave me some time to kill, so there you go! LOL Have fun with that, guys.

[intimatevoid]

Notes for first-time DMs, from a second-time DM whose mistakes are fresh in her mind

So you wanna DM, but you’ve never done this before and have absolutely zero experience with D&D whatsoever? Here are some things you should know.

The most important thing you need to worry about is energy management. You are DMing your first game and you going to be spending a great deal of energy to do so. Unless you manage that energy, you will burn out. Most of the following tips revolve around this. Don’t worry, the world will get smaller and more familiar for you, and then you’ll be able to play around, but for now you’ve gotta learn how to manage the stage and backstage at the same time.

For the love of all the gods, please do not homebrew your first campaign. I know how tempting it is. I know how you’ve seen all the tumblr posts and are starry-eyed with the wonderful world you wanna present. Please, for your own sake: resist. Go with a pre-made module, official or fanmade but definitely not made by you. Making up your own module is exhausting and right now you need to be spending that energy on memorising systems that have been tried and tested by people who are better at this than you, not trying to change those systems “for flavour”. Once those systems are as natural to you as breathing, then you can try changing them. There are plenty of beginner campaigns and oneshots out there, many of which are free. Use ‘em.

Relating from the first tip: Your players are not gonna care if, like I did, you have an epic story you wanna tell them. Forreal. This sucks but you know what they’re here for? Their OWN story. If you want to tell a story, write a novel. I know this sounds harsh but D&D is designed to be made up as you go along, not planned out in advance, and if you do this then players will sense it and either resist or get bored. Take it from my disappointed self and my hours upon hours of wasted writing. It’s okay, you will definitely have enough stories from regular gameplay.

You don’t need a dozen sets of dice. Two sets is more than enough for any DM. If you’re like me and are easily distracted, it helps for them to be different colours, so that you can keep track of whether you’ve lost any.

What you DO need is a notepad,a mechanical pencil, and an eraser, to jot down anything and everything. Enemies’ HP, NPC names, little mistakes they’ve made which will affect them later, etc. Don’t bother trying to record the actual story that happens; instead, strongarm a player into being your scribe. You already have enough stuff to do.

For real, you do need a record of your games, at least a vague one that tells you where you left off. Cause you’ll forget, and so will everyone else who has any kind of life outside of that one game.

If you can help it, please don’t roll a DMPC to join the player party. I know how tempting it is! They get to play, why shouldn’t you? The answer is because it’s REALLY hard to multitask that many things. Your mind should already be busy learning behind-the-scenes knowledge. Unless that knowledge is second nature to you, you are going to be under a great deal of stress trying to remember everything and roleplay a character of your own. Instead, focus that energy on making NPCs interesting and engaging.

On the subject of RPing, you don’t have to do fancy voices or accents for everyone. I found it helped for me to imagine a facial expression for each NPC -- haughty, excited, bored, or the like -- and speak them with a voice that matched it. It helps you keep them unique without straining your mind by having to remember every single voice.

If you’re gonna play online, http://roll20.net is your friend. You can run your entire game through that, for free, including voice chat that is supposedly more reliable than discord. My own D&D mentor uses it to run their remote games.

If you’re playing in person, you are gonna feel yourself physically ageing every time your players open their handbook to look up deets for spells they’ve cast a thousand times and ought to have memorised for now. There are a number of ways to help with this:

Encourage them to make little cards with spell deets, and put away all but the spells they have prepared that day. Or, have them write down the spells’ page numbers so they can instantly reference them without having to fumble through the index. Or both.

Be prepared to pull up your brower and type in “5e <spell name>” because they’ve lost their cards and written down the wrong numbers and it’s all taking too long anyway.

In a nutshell: players are NOT gonna memorise their own stuff. You gotta manage this one for the sake of game flow, otherwise a single round of combat can and will take twenty minutes, as everyone else gets distracted every time someone takes more than ten seconds to present the deets of their spell or skill

Keep a card (or a piece of paper torn from aforementioned notepad) with everybody’s name, armour class, speed, and passive perception on it. Again, it’s much faster and less mind-numbing than having to ask the player every single time.

If you wanna draw hard copy maps, that’s gonna be a lot of work. Consider whether it’s worth your effort, depending on how visual your players are. If you absolutely must do maps, perhaps consider limiting them to dungeons and/or special areas, and keep the following in mind:

Official D&D maps are typically drawn on 1-inch grids, at least to an extent, to allow for easy calculation of movement. You can save a lot of time by investing in a lined vinyl mat, so that you don’t have to be drawing grids all the time. Use bulldog clips to fix baking paper over it, so you can see the grid through it, and draw your maps on that.

Or if you’re on a budget, buy an A2 sheet of 5mm grid paper from any stationary store, get it laminated, and use a permanent marker to line in every 25mm. That’s close enough to an inch to match standard D&D minis, and you can use the inbetween lines for stuff like drawing furniture and making consistent wall thicknesses.

Or, y’know, just 1/4 inch lined paper, if you’re in a country that uses imperial.

There are COUNTLESS other things that are useful to know, and plenty of other guides which will help you with that. These are just some real basic things that I’ve never seen put in a guide before, so hopefully it’ll help someone out there.

[nellieshill]

I posted 2,561 times in 2021

19 posts created (1%)

2542 posts reblogged (99%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 133.8 posts.

I added 697 tags in 2021

#funny - 118 posts

#video - 113 posts

#animal - 70 posts

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#writing - 56 posts

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Longest Tag: 136 characters

#listen ''he just doesnt have one'' may be a stupid thing to say but it is also 100% something i have thought/said about a friend of mine

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

36 WIP questions

1. What is the title of your WIP?

2. What is your WIP about?

3. What Genre is your WIP?

4. What is the target audience for your WIP?

5. How long have you been working on your WIP?

6. What draft are you on?

7. Did you plot your WIP before you started writing, or are you pantsing it?

8. What program do you write your WIP in?

9. What inspired your WIP/how did you think of it?

10. Share a song that makes you think of your WIP.

11. What is your WIP’s aesthetic?

12. Do you want to publish your WIP traditionally, self publish, post it online, or keep it for yourself?

13. A little bit about your protagonist?

14. A little bit about your supporting cast?

15. A little bit about your antagonist?

16. What is the setting of your WIP like?

17. One fun fact about the world of your WIP?

18. Do you have any faceclaims/picrews for your characters?

19. Share a song that makes you think of your protagonist.

20. Share a song that makes you think of your antagonist.

21. Does your WIP have romance? If so, what is your favorite couple?

22. Favorite friendship in your WIP?

23. Characters with the best dynamic?

24. Share a song that makes you think of your favorite character dynamic.

25. Easiest character to write?

26. Hardest character to write?

27. Which character is the most like you?

28. What is the strangest thing you’ve had to research for your WIP?

29. What is the latest you’ve stayed up/earliest you’ve gotten up to write?

30. Do any of the names in your WIP have significance?

31. Favorite line from your WIP?

32. Is your WIP action heavy, or more relaxed?

33. What are your favorite tropes you use in your WIP?

34. Sum up your WIP using only emojis.

35. What are some of the themes of your WIP?

36. What is the message you want readers to take away from your WIP?

179 notes • Posted 2021-04-09 04:24:16 GMT

#4

The Basics Of Writing a D&D Campaign

I love to play TTRPGs with my friends. Since I am the most prolific writer in the bunch, the task of DM usually falls on my head. I’m fine with this, cause as a writer, I love DMing the games! But when I first started out, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I knew how to write a book, but a campaign? Not so easy. Thankfully, with time, practice, and I little bit of research, I’ve got the swing of it. Here are some tips I’ve gathered for you to start writing your own game.

Gather all your info in one place. Whether a Google doc, a journal, or a fancy leather notebook, you’ll want all your information close by and readily available when you’re playing.

Start with the basic premise of your campaign. In a bulleted list or a small paragraph, outline your campaign setting, conflict, antagonist, stakes, and deadline. These five things should be enough to get you off the ground.

Start small, and don’t get too attached to any one idea/detail right away. Annoyingly, your players will never do what you want them to, almost ever. Rather then building up a huge, intricately detailed plot, building something small your players can work from, make it pretty, and then be willing to let them take the reigns with you. On that note,

Let the players take part in the game creation. Obviously they can’t write the story with you, but let them have a hand in world design and magic and mechanics. Not only does this make your job easier, the players are happy because they helped make the world they play in and already know about it.

PREPARE SCENES/NPCS/ETC IN ADVANCE. I hit this point so hard, because I have learned from experience 😔. Though improvisation and spontaneity is the crux of D&D, if you do not have any sort of structure or plan for encounters and NPCs, you will fall short. This goes for important NPCs, unimportant NPCs, vital encounters, random encounters, and more.

Don’t be afraid to steal. Sounds funny, I know, but really. This is for your friends. You aren’t publishing it as a work of fiction. Don’t be afraid to steal ideas, plots, mechanics, items, etc. from your favorite pieces of media and put your own little twist on it.

Make yourself cheat sheets. Whether they’re for monsters, NPCs, important dialogue, or locations, don’t be afraid to make papers for you to look at so you don’t forget stats in the middle of a battle or the villain’s epic monologue during their scene.

Fill your campaign with variety. Add lots of different puzzles, traps, locations, and encounters to keep your players engaged and thinking. Give them mysterious clues and sweet loot to reward them for figuring out your puzzle (that you could’ve sworn wasn’t that hard).

Use your resources! There are a million websites, book, and online tools to help you keep your campaign all together. Don’t be afraid to use them, and to invest in the nice ones I’d you’re serious about it! The help will go a long way.

D&D is one of my favorite things I do with my friends. Even when my meticulously planned session goes completely off the rails, and they do something I never expected causing me to have to improv back to something familiar, the energy and humor of the sessions is unmatchable. I hope these tips help you out, and happy writing!!

222 notes • Posted 2021-09-16 04:40:49 GMT

#3

The “What-If” Writing Method

Sometimes when I’m writing, brain just....stops. No more ideas. No more words. Nothing. Sometimes, the solution to this problem is to simply take a break from writing and let your brain relax. Other times, though, you really are just at a block for ideas. This happened to me significantly more often than I would like, but thankfully, I’ve developed a solution that works well for me, and it’s uncreativly titled the “what-if” method.

Get a piece of paper and pen. Or a Google doc, or whatever works best for you.

Start brainstorming questions about your story, or possible “what-if” scenarios. (Ex: What if my character got framed for a crime they didn’t commit?)

Write down every single idea that comes to your head. Even if it doesn’t really work for your story. Even ones that deviate from your existing plot. Even the stupid ones. Especially the stupidest ones.

Cross out the ideas you don’t like, circle the ones that you do like.

Start coming up with answers for the questions you circled, or expand in the by coming up with more questions. (Ex: They would have to prove they didn’t commit the crime to regain their freedom. How do they prove it?)

Repeat until you have a full idea that you can work on/write with.

That’s it. That’s the whole strategy. I’ve used this a million times, and it’s gotten me out of a million cases of writers block, so hopefully it can work well for you too! Happy writing!

532 notes • Posted 2021-04-08 05:48:33 GMT

#2

Common Elements of Gothic Novels

Gothic fiction is a genre that combines both horror and romance, two of my most favorite things. I’m currently trying to write a novel with gothic energy, but I realized, I didn’t actually know what a gothic novel entailed outside of social commentary and dark aesthetic, and what separated it from plain horror. After doing some research, here are the common elements you’ll find in a gothic novel.

The main character behind as a nice, decent person, but must ultimately face the monster within them. Gothic characters tend to be representative of own desires to go buck wild feral and release a “darkness” within. A prime example of this is Henry Jekyll from Jekyll and Hyde.

Gothic literature is about transformation, an element that is not necessary when writing straight horror.

In Gothic literature, the past haunts the present. Whether that’s a dark act or memory for the protagonist, or an actual literal ghost, there is always some form of a past the MC would rather forget.

Romance in goth lit is tragic or bittersweet. Also, general romanticism levels are through the roof. Nearing melodrama.

The drama of despair drives goth lit; violence and blood drives horror.

Heightened, almost melodramatic emotions.

A gloomy, decaying, or abandoned setting with an atmosphere of mystery and suspense. An old decaying mansion or estate is a popular location in goth lit.

Often features a prophecy, legend, or omen.

Often features supernatural or otherwise unexplainable events.

Turns out I have less gothic elements in my story than I thought, but now I know how I can fix it! Hopes this helps somebody else too!!

925 notes • Posted 2021-04-28 03:53:50 GMT

#1

932 notes • Posted 2021-08-16 03:53:25 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[dmwisdom]

Hi ! So I'm pretty new to d&d in general; I've only done 2 one shots at my local game store haha. but I want to start my own homebrew campaign, since I don't have time to go to the game store every week. do you have any tips for writing a conspiracy/mystery style campaign, or just beginner DM tips in general? I know that a conspiracy will somehow be involved, but I'm just beginning to lay the groundwork. thanks so much (and I love this blog!!)

Wassup! I want to start this out by saying that my intention with this reply is not to discourage you from DMing -- seriously, we can’t ever have enough DMs and those of us that do run groups are always extremely excited and grateful when a player (or non-player/newbie) becomes a DM.

With that being said, it’s really important to know that running your own homebrew campaign is a ton of work. I usually put around 4 or 5 hours a week into the game, and that’s when my players aren’t really doing much. If I need to design a dungeon, detail the encounters and their triggers, come up with new ways to throw baddies at my players, maybe think up some fun puzzles, etc. I’m looking at a lot of prep work. On top of that, you will be worldbuilding; so you have to come up with locations (both a map of and details about said locations); people (who they are, their background, their personality); lore; etc.

So, my advice, if you don’t have time to go to the game store every week, is to pick up a module. Lost Mines of Phandelver, the module that comes with the starter kit, is a really great starter campaign! If you find yourself struggling to find time to come up with homebrew content, I would suggest you pick up one of those modules and work your party into that story.

The upside: all of that ^ is a lot of fun! It is oodles of fun coming up with your own dungeon. I never get tired of my players walking right past the thing they’re looking for, or watching my players try figuring out a puzzle when the answer is slapping them in the face! I haven’t run any official modules yet (I will soon though!) so I can’t really speak for how much fun running one of those can be, but I will never not enjoy watching other people interact with something I created all by myself (bonus points if they enjoy it!)

(I didn’t realize how much time I spent on that section of the post, whoops!)

You asked if I had any advice for a conspiracy / mystery style campaign, I do. (Wait, what? Shocker!) I haven’t run a game like this, but the campaign that introduced me to DnD had some of these elements. Story time: Some delinquent decided to torch the local school because they were teaching the students things that didn’t quite line up with the dominant religion of the region (lots of homebrew so I’m keeping it vague.) Since we are kind of a special police force for the city, we investigate the fire. After intense investigations, breaking through doors with an ethereal tiger, setting a criminal hiding under an invisibility cloak on fire, and the usual, we finally get down to the bottom of the crime. There were two people who did the actual arson (owner of the house with the now-broken door and the guy in his basement... who we set on fire...) and another person who orchestrated it. Now, we didn’t have any solid evidence of her involvement, but we are 98% sure she was behind it. The real kicker was that we couldn’t do anything to her because she was basically a cardinal to a pope (who later will become pope, making her even harder to touch agh!) The point of this story is that we know she did it, but we have no way of proving it. The actual police knows she did it, but they can’t prove it. The frustrating part of the conspiracy lay in the fact that we can’t actually prove anything so her smugass gets to walk free knowing she can’t be touched. It’s really, really frustrating.

My next piece of advice for a conspiracy/ mystery campaign is to have a few betrayals. One betrayal hurts but isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Too many betrayals and your players won’t trust anyone you introduce them to. My DM (same campaign from earlier) has revealed a couple of people to be behind some pretty major, shady events in the campaign and it sucks. It especially sucks because they were NPCs that we all really liked. I would also suggest having a red herring NPC; someone that is 100% involved and 100% in the open. That way, your group will be even more shocked when they learn about the involvement of one of their faves.

Since I’ve already written close to 800 words on this reply, I’m going to end it with some pretty general tips. Find someone on youtube who creates DM advice videos. Matt Mercer (Critical Role) has his own series. I prefer Matt Colville, however. His videos includes advice and examples from games he’s run. I can’t say whether or not Mercer does this, but he didn’t in the videos I watched.)

If you want me to expand upon some general DM tips, hit me up with another ask! This is already more than a page worth of content and I don’t want to overwhelm the homies.

[virmillion]

//ignore me, long post ahead

ok so obviously them in the off chapters vs in the on chapters will have to reveal things about their personality/inner thoughts/home life/whatever that they absolutely refuse to tell anyone else, even though these things have a way of leaking through when you least expect it. to that end, i think it would be rather fitting if the kid DMing is the youngest of a family with a bunch of brothers and sisters, or the child in a family that’s not necessarily traditional (so grandparents live there, aunts and uncles and cousins, so many relatives on a constant rotation such that you never have a moment alone to breathe - you don’t get lonely, per se, but you can still feel alone amidst the chaos). more specifically, i don’t think they should be the DM right away, either. you should have them try to go as a PC at first, the most basic pre-built character sheet possible, no backstory, and they just hang back, do the rolls when asked, and don’t really participate. the person running it (probably the teacher, but maybe just a kid that’s nicer (NEXT PARAGRAPH)) notices this kid (now called James, subject to change) hanging back and is like ‘hey, um, i’m no good at telling stories, do you want to give it a go?’ and james goes ‘uh, i guess, i don’t know if i’ll be any good at it though...’ and no one really cheers him on or anything, just kinda nods and picks at their nails as the seats get shuffled around and james tries to pick up where the og DM left off. now he’s literally been Handed a chance to be in charge, and he’s definitely going to fumble it, and maybe try to convince someone else to DM, but everyone refuses - at first because they Want to be PCs, but later on because they like how james runs it, and they want to support him as he finds his voice. (james absolutely protests outwardly about ‘having to’ be in charge the whole time, but deep down on the inside where he would never tell anyone in a million years, he’s secretly thrilled that he has his own little world here where people will actually listen to him, and care about what he has to say).

og DM kid will now be called Kate (subject to change). kate is the DM at first because she’s always got a story, maybe she’s the oldest sister in a family with a single mom or something, and she’s always been forced to be in charge, the polar opposite of james’ situation (except that they both have big families, it’s just that james is at the bottom of the totem pole, and kate is at the top, and they both wish every now and then that it could be the other way around for themselves, grass is always greener and all that). so kate’s arc (wow lab breaking out the big guns when you literally haven’t even started an outline, huh?) is gonna deal with learning that it’s okay for her to put herself first sometimes, that the world won’t fall apart if she takes a second alone to breathe, and also there might maybe probably be a little spat/falling out between her and james at some point, re: grass is always greener, since they both think the other should be grateful for what they have.

generally speaking, there should be an even mix in terms of how characters play their PCs. that is, some kids might be (metaphorically) pink in real life, so in the game they could play as green (the polar opposite to how they are outwardly, maybe the equivalent to how they are inwardly), they could play as red (how they act outwardly but amped up to eleven, which would allow for their PC to go through a character arc as well (YIKES)), they could play as orange (close to how they are outwardly, a little different than normal, stretching their comfort zone, that sort of thing), they could play as blue (far from what they would consider their personal brand of normal, but still a little closer than zero to how they actually are, either outwardly or inwardly). you’re using the words ‘outwardly’ and ‘inwardly’ a lot in this thing, so i would say that, once you actually get this one going, it would be smart to draw up a chart for what each character is like/deals with in reality (column 1), what each character plays as in terms of behavior (column 2), how similar/different this is from what they deal with in reality (column 3), the arc that [column 1] will have to go through (column 4), and the arc that [column 2] will have to go through (column 5). you should also set aside some lists of which kids interact a lot in reality, and whether that carries over into the game. for example, if suzy hates maya in reality, will PCmaya try to befriend PCsuzy and get shunned in the game? will PCsuzy try to rally everyone else not to trust PCmaya, or even talk to james about making PCmaya secretly a villain? ideally romantic relationships won’t play a huge role in this because duh, but if they do, there could be some harbored tension among a few of them, like, say, timmy and billy used to go out and now they’re awkward-friendly-uncomfortable, so that will strain their character relations in-game as well as being something they’ll actually have to deal with in reality.

[gamethyme]

Let's Talk About 5E, Shall We?

I eat a lot of Mexican food. Probably too much, actually. But when I go to a new place, I'll generally order either something I've never seen before or chicken fajitas.

"Something I've never seen before" is pretty obvious. Those are likely to be the specialty of the house and will set them apart from the tacos and burritos that are ubiquitous on Mexican menus. Chicken Fajitas are a little less obvious - it's because chicken is a good platform to highlight unique or special spice blends. And I've never had two chicken fajitas that tasted the same. My wife, by contrast, orders enchiladas. Most of the flavor of an enchilada comes from the sauce, and - much like fajita spice - that can vary wildly from restaurant to restaurant. Most Mexican restaurants have more than one enchilada sauce (and many of them allow you to mix and match sauces on your enchiladas). So what does this have to do with Dungeons & Dragons?  Especially the fifth edition of same? A lot, actually. I've been playing D&D since I was ten. It was 1e at the time, and we played it on the playground at recess. I didn't get to play a lot, as my parents were part of the satanic panic of the eighties. This means I definitely wasn't allowed to own any books or dice. Because of this, I played the simplest class. The one that had the fewest complex rules. In 1e, that meant I played a fighter. Why? Because the fighter's only real decision was "Which foe do I want to hit?"  Mechanically, 1e fighters were (and continue to be) super-boring. By the time 2e rolled around, I was familiar enough with the rules that I was able to play something different. I dabbled with Wizards and Rogues before settling on (don't laugh) Bards. Because Fighters continued to be boring. When Wizards dropped 3e on us, Feats made some interesting changes. Suddenly every class had interesting customization options (and Fighters were more interesting). Some of the fighter feats meant that there were occasional interesting decisions to be made. I only played a tiny bit of 3e (I was much more a DM than a player at that point).  By the end of 3e's run, however, it'd turned into an optimization game. "The best fighter takes and and ." Or "Check out this broken Feat combo!" Pathfinder took the optimization aspects of 3e and turned them up to eleven. The game's power curve was structured so that players who didn't optimize were left behind. It also highlighted those parts of 3e that I didn't like, turning them into the focus of play. Note that I'm very carefully not saying "Pathfinder was bad." I'm saying, "Pathfinder wasn't for me." Then we hit 4e. Suddenly every class was equally interesting. And theoretically balanced. Fighter powers/abilities hit harder or applied status effects (stun and knockdown were pretty common). Wizard powers/abilities did elementally-flavored damage and applied different status effects to foes. Feats were less-important than power selection. And now we have 5e. For those of you who are wondering, I haven't broken my self-imposed boycott of 5e. I received a copy of the Player's Handbook (PHB), Dungeon Master's Guide (DMG), and Monster Manual (MM) as gifts from a friend.  I spent the next few days following that gift reading the 5e PHB and ... meh.  I don't get all the love it gets. One friend, when he saw that I had 5e in my hands, asked if I was "finally tired of that tactical combat simulator" that 4e was. I've got news for you, Matt: All editions of D&D are tactical combat simulators. And 4e is the best/most interesting of the bunch for most classes. Every edition of D&D has fallen desperately short when it came to mechanically rewarding non-combat encounters. Which means that 5e is - for what I want in a game - significantly less-good than 4e. Because it's a less-detailed tactical combat simulator. Reading through 5e, it's like a bizarre cross between 2e and 3e. There's good in there, mind you, but for the most part it strikes me as a huge step backwards. The only real "killer app" of 5e is the Advantage/Disadvantage mechanism. And possibly "Inspiration," which lets you trigger Advantage. I did what I often do when I confront something that is so popular that I just plain don't understand: I went online and asked my friends. Here's what I heard from them:

Combat in 5e is faster. This is both bug and feature, as you can have multiple small combat encounters in a single session, but big set-piece battles are less interesting.

Classes in 5e have three sub-classes that characters move into at 3rd level. Only one of the Fighter subclasses is boring 2e Hit 'Em more/better.

There are fewer ways to apply fewer status effects in 5e, which is cleaner and easier to understand for newer players.

Combat in 5e supports "theater of the mind" better than 4e and 3e. While you can use a map and grid, it's not as strictly required as it was in those editions.

DIY players have an easier time tweaking 5e, as 4e was so tightly interconnected. Creating a power here-and-there for 4e was simple enough, but creating new classes was a lot of work.

Even a lot of 5e players expressed frustration with how boring and limited it felt after a very short time. One friend said, "Loved 5 E at first, got bored with it after a couple of years." And that was pretty close to consensus.

5E hits on more cylinders than 4E for me and also has some good ideas. I have played it several times and will likely play it again. 

All things considered, I would still prefer to play OSRIC, Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Blueholme, or Low Fantasy Gaming.

Other games came up, too. Both OSR retroclones and newer branches of the d20 tree (Pathfinder and 13th Age especially). And games that aren't from that family (Fantasy Age got a lot of love).

Indie gaming legend Ron Edwards left a long comment that I'm going to quote in full, here:

I just played 5E for the first time, just a couple of days ago, as a player. It struck me as a very 2000s game, maybe even 2010 on the nose. That's not a slam, but identifying it very much as of its era, and not any kind of old-school whatnot which in this case makes most sense as precise marketing.

More importantly, as a game, it is caught like a writhing insect in what I called The Impossible Thing Before Breakfast. If I play my character, in the sense of all this characterization and agency that the creation process fires up, then the DM cannot create the story, as everything about DMing and especially the published scenarios and campaigns emphasizes. And vice versa, perhaps especially, vice versa. Everything for the player presumes a DM who isn't actually the DM as written/encouraged, and everything for the DM presumes players who aren't actually those players as written/encouraged. The net effect is almost always the same: the players are reduced to posturing, establishing and repeating tropes, and (eventually) goofing in order to enjoy themselves, as the DM waltzes them through fights that lead to clues, and clues that lead to fights. 

Exalted, all over again, and that's merely a refined point of reference among a sea of game texts of this kind. 

As with so many of these games, the solution is obvious: pick one or the other, and ignore, as in obviate, reject, abandon, defy, reverse the text and most of the rules concerning the one you didn't pick. But that solution is not arrived at very often. The more usual one is to play while insisting loudly online that this is the most awesome thing ever, then to limp along wondering about or resigned to the necessary outcomes of the Impossible Thing, and eventually to shift into lonely fun with one's extremely expensive purchases.

 There was also a ton of nostalgia for 3.x.  Publisher/designer Cam Banks said (in one of his comments):

When I moved to 4E, I hit a wall with the way the game was designed to centre around powers/techniques/etc. As a 3rd edition designer, I knew that system back to front; I could come up with stats and monsters and spells on the fly, and I even ad hoc'd a prestige class for a player (and wrote the whole thing up the next day). 4E was an inscrutable black box by comparison. I ran it like I ran 3E, and stumbled. I couldn't make my own classes easily, I couldn't eyeball anything, even with the famous page 42. It was extraordinarily frustrating because I liked what they were doing with the game, but the game didn't let me in.

 Peter Darley said:

It seems like D&Ds primary strength, in any edition, is to be a lowest common denominator. I don't think I would ever chose to run or play it given the universe of games available, but since not everyone likes the same stuff, D&D is often something that people can agree on.

 I had more than fifty comments on that post.  I'd link to it, but it's on Plus and Google is shutting that down next week, so the link would be useless.  There was disagreement, but not much. And it never got heated. So the long and short of it, for me, is this: If I am forced to play D&D and am given a choice of edition, I will still choose fourth edition. I can see some of the appeal of fifth, and I might play it a bit to see how it compares to second and third, but I don't see anything there that I can't easily find in a dozen other games.  Realistically, though, I'm more likely to play something else. I didn't get into it here, but it's worth mentioning that the DMG for fifth edition is quite good with some solid advice that applies regardless of the game being played. It's a shame that the game itself is so uninspired. from Blogger https://ift.tt/2Ulyp0F via IFTTT

[dungeons-and-danis]

do you have any tips for first time DMs! i'm doing a quick 5-7 session campaign with some close friends to ease me into it and i'm not sure what to expect!

Sure! Ive gotten a couple similar questions abt this, so I’ll answer that here! These are some tips that I think have helped keep me grounded as a DM the most.

1.) Learn to improvise and prepare for the unexpected.

I’ve personally always just wanted to take an improv class to help me with this, as my mind can often have a brain fart. But the more practice you have as a DM, the better you’ll be at improvising during the unexpected. Because trust me, your players WILL stump you and ask some questions you’re not prepared for. Just generally be ready for that and try not to let it frustrate you. It’s expected, and part of the process. Again, you’ll master these things with practice. So don’t be intimidated.

2.) As a counter to my last point, try not to overprepare.

Over preparation can quite literally kill your flexibility and creativity. By over preparation, I don’t mean preparing for the general likely outcomes of certain plot points. That is what you should probably already be doing. No, I mean doing what I once did by writing the exact narrations for every tiny little thing that I could possibly think of happening, even if it had a very slim chance of ever truly happening. Keep descriptions short and simple and only include the basic information that you need. Because often times, you don’t even have the time to review the entirety of your notes while in the middle of DMing.

3.) Don’t try to steer the story where you want it to go. Let your players decide where they want to go and what they want to try.

I get it. Sometimes we have a certain idea we have for how we’d like our campaigns to go. But, and forgive me if this sounds rude, you simply cannot be so narrow minded as a DM. We’re all guilty of this, but we have to allow some room for our players and ourselves to breath. Try to give them a choice and make them feel like they’re exploring a real, open world. Linear plots are fine and all, but the more freedom you give your players, the more fun everyones gonna have. Obviously, though, freedom is a totally different story than derailment. You do not have to put up with derailment from players.

4.) On that note, don’t be afraid to break the immersion sometimes if you need a moment to think about something or prepare an outcome in your head.

I know, I know. It’s DM taboo to break the immersion and not be 100% prepared for everything. But I think that’s an unrealistic standard to adhere to. Your players should understand you’re just human. Sometimes I quite literally have to tell my players “Give me a minute, I didn’t have any notes prepared for that.” while I think about what i’m gonna do. It’s totally fine to need a minute to collect yourself and review your notes. Players are fucking crazy sometimes, so you can’t be prepared for everything! Don’t even be afraid to call for a break while you think about what to do. Sometimes that’ll even build some suspense.

5.) Learn when to bend the rules.

Rules, especially for DnD, are meant to be broken. If you’re so caught up in following every tiny little rule there is in the books, 9 times out of 10, you and your players are gonna have a terrible time. Rules help guide the game and provide some structure and balance, so i’m not saying to throw them all out the window. But you have to learn when it’s appropriate to bend the rules sometimes. This is all dependent on who you’re playing with, as well. The rule of cool is a good rule-bending example that still maintains structure and integrity of the game!

6.) Care about and play into your players’ backstories!

This is quite literally my favorite thing to do as DM. But i’ve noticed there are so many DM’s out there that simply just do not care about their players’ backstories, nor will they do anything interesting with them. It makes no sense, because the story is about the players, right? So pay attention, even add little clues and reels into the story to lure the players’ in. I personally like to reward my players with backstory stuff the more they develop and help their characters grow. Players fucking love when backstory stuff comes up, though, and I guarantee you will too when you get the hang of it. And you can do it even in a one shot, too. It’s not impossible. I could write a whole other post all about this step, because I feel it is just that valuable.

7.) Finally, you’re not required to be a DM for anyone.

This sounds odd at first, I know. But DMing is a tough fucking job that not everyone is prepared for. And it can be doubly hard if you’re playing with players who just want to derail and destroy your campaign, too. If you run into someone who just wants to throw all your hard work in the garbage, you are not required to continue that campaign. You’ll just be miserable in the end, working so hard for people who don’t care to appreciate it. So be picky about who you DM for, because your comfort and happiness are important too.