Puzzling on Library

Valentine Duell

February 14, 2022 6:00 PM

Adventure awaits heroes! [Gaming Club] by Valentine Duell

It was a new year, and that meant new adventures! Not just with school things either, the gaming club needed a new set of quests to embark upon. Nobody had graduated out from last year, so she assumed the same people would be showing up again as last year... and maybe some new faces! In light of that, she had planned the initial adventure around the existing characters from last year and made a few pre-generated characters for anyone new that came. She had done a bit of planning over the summer, figuring that she had the time at home and probably wouldn't have so much extra time once school started up again. This was also before she knew that she would have prefect duties as well. Now she was quite glad that she'd worked ahead over the summer.

When the Friday evening rolled around for the first gamer's club meeting, she made her way to the library early. Val liked to get there first and have things somewhat set up as everyone else arrived. She also met with Mr. Fox-Reynolds the librarian and club sponsor to make sure everything was still okay and there weren't any new policies or anything that she needed to know about. She also had to drop off his snack-tax. Then she made her way over to the gaming club's traditional table, far back in one of the out-of-the-way corners of the library, shielded under a quietness charm so they wouldn't disturb anyone trying to actually study in the vicinity.

Setting up wasn't too difficult, and it was getting easier as she got better at magic. The books and things were at least lighter now to carry around. She set a few rule books out and her notebook, then pulled out an impressively bound and very old looking tome, it literally glowed faintly of magic. It's title glinted in gilded lettering 'Secrets for Magical Gaming'. She smiled at the book, it was one of the club founder's 'artifacts', it was only a few years old. Gary had made it to keep all the magic charms and things that he thought made gaming more fun and interesting; Animating the miniatures, Transfiguring the maps and table into actual dungeon walls, making illusions for display or generating mood lighting and sounds. Naturally he'd needed to make it look impressive. He'd passed it down to Ness, and left plenty of room for future gaming presidents to add to it, Ness had. Now it was hers, and most of it was still a bit out of her reach, but not as much as it had been when she first got it. She wondered if she would have much to add to it before she graduated.

As the members, old or newcomers, arrived she greeted them cheerily as she busied herself in organizing books and notes and things. This was a ruse of hers, she was mainly listening to everyone talk to each other as they waited for things to begin. She hoped the talk revolved about the club and would give her some insights on what they liked, what they didn't so much, and help her make things better and more fun. Eventually it looked like everyone had arrived that was going to come.

"Hello again and welcome to another year of fun and adventures in Sonora's Gaming club!" She welcomed them all as a group with a bright smile. "Before we get gaming, there is always the club business things to go over once more. Oh, I'm Valentine Duell, the club president." She began for the sake of any new people. "Now, rule one is to have fun. That is the point of this particular club, we do that by playing role-playing games, along the way we go on great adventures, make great stories and have a good time. If you're not having fun, please come see me and hopefully we can work things out." She paused and gave an encouraging smile to everyone.

"Rule two," she gave them all a serious look, "Respect your fellow club members. As stated in rule one, we are all here to have fun. Please don't ruin someone else's fun for the sake of your own. We'll come back around to helping with that in just a moment." Her expression softened a bit, "Rule three, be careful with the snacks. We are in the library and need to keep that in mind. We are in charge of cleaning up everything at the end of the evening and I don't want to disappoint our staff advisor Mr. Fox-Reynolds." So far it hadn't been a problem, hopefully it wouldn't become one. Snacks and gaming went together, but they could get banned at any point if things went bad.

Valentine pulled a few papers from her folder and passed them around. The folks from previous years would recognize them. "Clubs don't normally give out homework, but this is the one exception that I know of. This is a consent sheet, it just lists some common topics that can come up in a game. You just need to fill out how you feel about them; You don't mind them, you'd prefer if they only happened 'offstage', or you don't want to deal with them at all in the game." This is an update for returning members. "You'll notice there isn't a place for your name, that is on purpose. Get them back to me by the next meeting and I won't even look at them until I've shuffled them all together. I'll make one master sheet and share it with you all so that we can all see what things the group is okay dealing with. Feel free to include anything that you might think of that isn't on here already." Val paused for a breath, "Also, if something comes up in game, do not hesitate to say something. We'll stop and go another way with it. Rule one is to have fun, and some things just aren't fun for some people." She smiled warmly around at the group again. "Any questions so far?"

After answering questions, it was time to finally get into game stuff! "This year we will be starting off our adventures as something of a continuation from last year. However, quite a few years have passed, and we are looking at the next generation of adventurers." Valentine set two piles of papers in the middle of the table. One stack was blank character sheets, the other pile were already filled out sheets. "If you had a character last year, try to tie this character to them somehow. Perhaps as a child, biological or adopted, maybe your old character was their mentor, anything that might get them some connection. If you didn't have a character last year, find someone here who did and work together to make some fun connections to them. Previous members can also work together if you want to as well." Val liked it when people worked together.

She gestured towards the papers in the middle of the table. "You can pick one of the pre-generated characters or start from scratch on your own." She'd had fun making characters and there were a variety of different ones present. Some had been made with her players in mind, and she wondered if any of them would be picked. "Tonight will mainly be figuring out characters, I'm happy to help and answer any questions I can. To give you a little context to get you going, your mentors/guardians have enrolled you in a suspicious educational facility isolated on an island away from prying eyes. They are sure dark things are happening, and it's up to you to find out what and report back." Val's normally friendly, warm and welcoming smiled turned into a devilish grin, "What could possibly go wrong?"

OOC: Ness parts approved by their author.

Feel free to partner up like a class if you so desire and have some fun coming up with character concepts. Tag Val if you want her for anything!

For anyone interested, the Sonora gaming club does meet up for real online gaming sessions. If you'd like more information ask over on Chatzy or contact the site administrators!

Subthreads:

So Durra had a kid. And she is just like Durra. by Philippe Delachene with Valentine Duell

Puzzling by Bertie Jackson

I am not Groot. (tag Gabriel) by Phil Carson with Gabriel Wilson

2 Valentine Duell Adventure awaits heroes! [Gaming Club] 1490 1 5

Philippe Delachene

February 25, 2022 8:00 PM

So Durra had a kid. And she is just like Durra. by Philippe Delachene

Philippe had really liked his character last year. Durra was hugely fun to play because she was big and rude and had a terrible bedside manner, but was also secretly a big green softie who liked to hang out with old ladies so they wouldn't be lonely, and she took in all kinds of strays. Plus, being the healer was pretty important, and it was a role he enjoyed playing, so when Valentine said they were continuing from last year, he perked up in excitement, but no, it was the next generation. No Durra. But maybe Durra's protégé or even her kid? Her kid protégé? Who was maybe a whole lot like Durra?

He leaned on the table to get a better look at the character sheets Val had spread out, and yup, there was an orc cleric. Philippe snagged that one. He glanced over it. It was a little different from Durra, slightly different skill choices, maybe a shift in attributes, though that might just be because this one hadn't had any ability increases yet. He could work with it.

There was just the matter of where this new orc had come from. Durra wasn't exactly a people person who would readily date anyone. She barely came into contact with anyone who wasn't directly related to the adventure at hand. And if Durra 2 (who really needed a name of her own) was a full blood orc, like Durra was, she needed an orc dad. How was a good orc (well, chaotic neutral orc) supposed to meet another orc who wasn't a rampaging bad guy?

... Unless he was a rampaging bad guy when they met? Philippe had been on the internet enough times to have seen the meme about the critical failure hero and orc couple.

He pulled out a piece of parchment and started scribbling furiously.

Rudda is the daughter of Durra, an orcish cleric, and Rodal, an orcish ranger. Durra met Rodal during the course of one of her Pathfinder missions. He was one of the adversary party, and he happened to be the one left alive at the end of a fight where they randomly picked on to knock out to ask questions. Durra brought him back to consciousness, and he tried to intimidate her, but . . . ended up complimenting her by mistake (he rolled a one). She tried to figure out what he meant by that but her insight wasn't very good (she rolled a one) and she thought he fancied her and was flirting. Flattered but uncomfortable, she tried to tell him off and threatened him to tell her what the party needed to know, but . . . rolled a one. She accidently complimented him, too, so he wasn't intimidated, but he was confused. By the time the rest of the party came in to see how the interrogation was going, they were formally dating, and she'd convince him to join the party and show them exactly how to get into the secret area of the sewers where they could find the guy they needed to find. Rodal stayed with the party for the next six adventures, but they both left it when Durra got pregnant. They used their adventuring profits to buy a nice house, with an attached healing room, where Durra set up a small local hospital and a shrine to Gozrah.
It was here that Rudda was born and raised, helping her mom in the hospital, and going out on hunting trips with her dad to get meat to sell to the butcher and plants to sell to the apothecary.
Her mom also insisted on teaching her to use a greatsword, because 'you never know when a greatsword might come in handy'.

Looking up at from his page, he pushed it toward Valentine for approval. "Rudda is an orc warpriest like her mom. I really liked playing Durra last year, so I'm keeping with pretty much the same concept."

OOC: Internet meme

1 Philippe Delachene So Durra had a kid. And she is just like Durra. 1489 0 5

Valentine Duell

February 27, 2022 6:42 PM

I think Durra would be proud by Valentine Duell

Valentine couldn't help but smile as Philippe pushed the character sheet in her direction. "Durra was a great character," she commented as she picked up the sheet to examine. To be fair, any character had a chance to be a great one if they meshed well with the player. Philippe and Durra had worked together wonderfully. As such, she wasn't very surprised by Philippe's decision, and she giggled quietly when she looked at the sheet and saw it was the one she had made up for Philippe.

The numbers and details on the sheet hadn't been altered at all, even though they'd been a little different from Durra. So either she'd guessed really, really well or... "You know what you are doing well enough Philippe, if you just wanted to use the sheet as a baseline and make some tweaks, you are allowed to." She didn't want him to think it was a matter of using this exact sheet or start from scratch, she knew enough now to know that there were a lot of places to fall in between the two endpoints of a spectrum.

Her eyes then fell upon the bit that he had written on the sheet. Val did her very, utmost best to stifle the laughter that tried to bubble up out of her as she read the story. She mostly succeeded, mostly. "That's a great story Philippe!" Val commented as she slid the sheet back to him between giggles. "How did you come up with that one?"

2 Valentine Duell I think Durra would be proud 1490 0 5

Bertie Jackson

March 01, 2022 2:53 PM

Puzzling by Bertie Jackson

Bertie was excited for gaming club. The regular attendees had been regular for long enough that his elven aloofness towards them was wearing off. Much like, Nirro, a lot of this process was internal, and mostly meant that he had gone from actively wishing they weren't there to being fine with it. Internally, he even had positive things to say about most of them. Philippe had attempted to be helpful in the one non-gaming interaction they had had. Phil had plenty of nerd cred. Henry was quiet and unbothersome. Freddie... was less annoying than first impressions suggested would be the case? It was a low bar, and the Teppenpaw was barely scraping over it. Still, three out of four wasn't bad, and there were enough other regulars around the table to balance out Freddie (and Morgan, who still hadn't stopped being Morgan).

Usually, once an adventure got going and they no longer had to be themselves, everything got easier. Bertie was looking forward to that, though there was likely to be some set up first.

He greeted his fellow gamers with nods, working on a puzzle until the meeting proper got started. As he had suspected, they were doing character generation. He was glad Val was giving them an excuse to make very similar characters to last time, as he had enjoyed Nirro. He had dedicated quite a lot of time to studying him, memorising his stats and abilities, so he would know how to use them without asking Val to re-explain. He wanted to use that, and a mysterious school sounded like it would have a lot of things to investigate. He really hoped there were some deep, complex conspiracies that he could pursue over weeks of diligent investigation.

"Investigator!" he called it, when Val let them start work on characters. He shuffled through, finding the character that matched, but mostly to use as a reference guide/keep anyone else from taking it. He also took a blank sheet, not one for taking shortcuts or letting someone else decide for him.

The other thing to consider was his new character's relationship to Nirro, given that Nirro hated everyone. He could have found a partner worthy of his intellect, and been drawn to her, because that happened in real life, or he could have got an apprentice. Given that he didn't actually need the wish fulfilment of fiction on the romance front, Bertie was leaning more towards apprentice. Though again, how and why... Perhaps Nirro had-yes! That would work! He noticed Philippe scribbling a veritable essay, and not to be out done, he set to plotting his character bio, using some scrap paper first, as he would most likely need to make revisions in order for his art to properly imitate the lives of his fictional characters.

Once he was satisfied it was done, he cast a projection charm, so that the text floated above the table, a wicked smile on his face.

'If you skip ahead by 2 generations then:
Nirro has never acquiesced, even slightly, to pressure over getting a suitable, a worthily curious, successor, and he only retired relatively recently. After this, his only real requirement for happiness was frequently, quietly reading old books and,
no longer working, he goes out. Retirement is devilishly boring and tricky to enjoy - puzzles help.'

13 Bertie Jackson Puzzling 1497 0 5

Phil Carson

March 03, 2022 6:08 PM

I am not Groot. (tag Gabriel) by Phil Carson

Phil didn't really know what he wanted to play going into a new year of gaming. He'd had fun with Groot, but there had also been a lot of limitations in the way he'd chosen to play the character, and he didn't want to do that again. Monk hadn't been bad, but he wanted to try something new. It was going to make for an interesting continuation, if he wasn't being a leshy again, and not a monk, so what connection could Groot possibly have to his new character?

He looked through a few of Val's pregenerated characters, pulling them to him one at a time, then pushing it back to the middle, mostly looking for inspiration rather than a fully formed character. He'd made Groot last year, and he wanted to make his own this year, too. When he got to the last of them, he grabbed one of the blank sheets and stared at the top lines, hoping at least one of them would jump out at him with an answer for him to work with. Only one line seemed obvious.

He wrote "1" as his character level.

Maybe if he had some background first, the rest would come easier? He turned to Gabriel, who he'd gotten into the habit of sitting next to last year when Talaro was the only character in the party able to understand what Groot was saying. "Since Groot and Talaro were kind of a team due to Groot's language barriers, do you figure ours grew up together? I'm definitely having someone who speaks Common this time, so you're off the hook for translation duty this year. But if he has any connection to Groot, he probably speaks Sylvan."

He flipped through the core rulebook to the ancestries summary. "Oh, Gnomes start with that as a language. Maybe I'm a gnome. Not sure what the connection to Groot is though. I don't want to be a monk again. Maybe I'm some kind of whippersnapper he took in? Maybe we both are, and Talaro and Groot raised us together? We could actually be siblings, or we were both orphaned from the same disaster or attack and the party happened to be nearby to rescue us?"

Realizing he was maybe being an annoying younger kid tagging after an advanced student, he backed off slightly, and gave Gabriel an out: "I'm just spinning ideas, we don't need to be connected if you just want to do your own thing."

1 Phil Carson I am not Groot. (tag Gabriel) 1536 0 5

Gabriel Wilson

March 08, 2022 9:53 PM

Well, it's time for us all to have new characters by Gabriel Wilson

Gabriel was thrilled that his younger sister Piper was now at Sonora too,though he was slightly disappointed that she wasn’t in Aladren with him. It would have been nice having her in the same house but he was sure they’d still get to spend more time together then they had when he was here and she wasn’t. Plus, Teppenpaw was a good place for her since she’d always been so sweet and kind. He wouldn’t have to worry about her having to be in the same house as those who weren’t. Gabriel really hated the idea of people being mean to his sister and not that those in other houses were necessarily mean…but they could be. Not that he could think of anyone specific that he felt he wanted his sister to avoid, but it wasn’t as if he knew any of the students that were closer to Piper’s age, other than Phil, who was totally awesome and he’d totally be okay with being friends with the first year.

Gabriel was also thrilled that Lavender and Stanley had both gotten prefect which meant he’d get to spend more time with them. He felt bad for Wally but obviously he and Lavender couldn’t both have it. The sixth year was also really excited about being in Advanced classes. He had decided to pretty much keep all his classes, not to be a show off but because Gabriel genuinely enjoyed them and found them interesting. Hopefully, others would also see it that way too. He really did not want to look like he was showing off.

And he was totally looking forward to another year of Gaming Club. He really enjoyed it and was sad to think that in two years,he was going to graduate and not be able to play anymore. However, Gabriel generally chose not to look at it that way. He preferred to put a more positive spin on it and think about how he still had two more years to play. Besides, afterwards he’d go to college and maybe he could get a game going there if there were people who’d either grown up with a non-magical background or had been introduced to it through those who did like the Aladren had been. Hopefully someone who wanted to run the games since he preferred to be one of those in the party.

Val began the meeting by welcoming them and giving them a refresher on the rules, which were all fairly reasonable things. Gabriel was generally careful with snacks,given they were in the library, a room that bordered on sacred to the members of his house and being respectful of others was important too. Of course, he worried about accidentally being disrespectful. Some people just expected him to know that something was wrong when he was unfamiliar with it. How was he supposed to just know ? Yeah, Gabriel knew to just be nice to people but sometimes he worried about saying the wrong thing. Or that someone just expected him to say something wrong eventually and was waiting to pounce on him for it.

Then sometimes others said things that made him uncomfortable during the course of game play. Last year, Bertie’s character Nirro, an elf, had kept making snide comments about how dumb humans were. Fortunately, Gabriel hadn’t been playing one, and neither had anyone else in the party, but that didn’t make it okay. Nobody had called him out on it and Gabriel hadn’t wanted to either, because, well, conflict-between the gamers or their characters-lessened the fun. Plus, he wasn’t sure he was in the right or would be considered as such by other players.

Maybe Gabriel should mention it on the consent sheet. Especially since they were anonymous.

Anyway, now they were on to something more interesting, character creation. Gabriel knew that he wanted to be someone who used magic as usual. Before he could get too far into it though, Phil began to speak to him. “I’d like that.” The sixth year replied. “I was thinking maybe Talaro was teaching my new character about how to use magic but the two could definitely be siblings or other orphans that we rescued. I sort of want to be something other than a kitsune this time.” Gabriel liked to always use magic but was cool with being a different race each time. “And I’ve never been a gnome before, so if you wanted to do that, that would be all right with me.”

11 Gabriel Wilson Well, it's time for us all to have new characters 1481 0 5

Phil Carson

March 27, 2022 11:20 AM

A fresh start can be a fun and welcome change by Phil Carson

Phil grinned in relief as Gabriel agreed to make a character with a close familial connection to his own. "Cool," he replied to the older student's thoughts on his own character. "So let's see," he pulled over a copy of on of the cheat sheets for what the different ancestries and classes were. "I kind of want to do something that's primarily martial, but maybe has some magic, since Talaro is one of my dads."

Looking through the class selections, he stopped at Magus. It looked like pretty much exactly what he'd just said he was looking for. Key ability was Strength or Dexterity, but Gnomes had a penalty to strength. He supposed he could play it as a Dex based character, but as he looked through the hybrid training styles that the magus could specialize in, one of them was Twisting Tree which was just so right for the adopted kid of Groot. Staves weren't a finesse weapon though, so he'd need to go with a Strength build.

"Not sure gnome is going to work for me after all," he told Gabriel. "Need something with good strength." He looked down the list of ancestries, looking for an option that was small, so he and a gnome brother could at least be close to the same size, but almost all of them had a penalty to strength (or were a Leshy, but Phil wanted to try something different). "If you still want to be a gnome, I think I'm gonna be the really big brother."

He tried to find something that would give him bonuses to both Strength and Intelligence, which he'd need for his spellcasting. Dex and Con would also be good for AC and HP respectively.

Human had two free boosts, no flaws. Hobgoblin gave him Int and Con, with a free boost which he could use for Strength, and the flaw was Wisdom, which was fine. He didn't need that. Lizardfolk had started to look promising with a boost to Strength, but their flaw was in Intelligence, so that didn't work. Orcs were strong with a free bonus and no flaw.

"Hobgoblin looks the most promising for the kinds of stats I want, though they're usually a bad guy race. Phillippe had a full Orc last time though and it was fine, so we can probably make it work. Groot's not racist. Did you want to be biological siblings or just adopted ones? I can also work with Humans or Orcs to get both Strength and Intelligence. Humans might make the most sense for the disaster survivor story we were thinking of, but we can tweak that back story or just say the less socially accepted races were the ones who didn't have any surviving family left and the other townsfolk weren't so willing to take them in so Groot and Talaro had to step up."

1 Phil Carson A fresh start can be a fun and welcome change 1536 0 5