All characters are adults
Copyright @Planeis Productions
Completely Fictional
Roll For Initiative Ch. 01
Will had spent a good portion of his first 33 years trying his best to hide how much of a nerd he is from most people. His true, close friends, which normally amounted to 1-2 people at a time, he allowed to see it. But even from them, he hid certain things. Like, when he was 17 and really into anime for the first time. He dove deep into it as a hobby for about 18 months before his interest mellowed out and regressed to more of a passing interest. But, during that whole 18 months he never once mentioned it to his close friends because he was afraid of what they would say. Why? Social anxiety? Fear of rejection? Who knows. No one who knew him ever treated him anything other than nice, the only people who treated him badly were the same stupid assholes at school who treated everyone bad. But for whatever reason, he always felt like he needed to hide certain things about his interests from people.
One of the things he had an interest in, but never told anyone about, was tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons. But, because he was shy about his interest, he never played it. Games like that are a social experience, which are very hard to have if you don't talk to anyone about them. So, his interest always stayed casual. Occasionally he would read about a game, or an update to Dungeons and Dragons rules, or he would see it discussed on social media like twitter or YouTube. But he never mentioned it to his friends and never played himself.
Until now. Finally, as he approached his late 20s, he started to relax a little and open up to people more often. He no longer felt the need to hide everything and was much more open to getting together with people than he ever had been before. Then, one day a few months ago, he was chatting with some work friends and his opportunity arose. He was eating lunch in the cafeteria at work, he worked as a financial planner for an investment firm. A lot of the people he worked with were smart, but also pretty down to earth regular people. One of them, Jane, mentioned that she was watching a TV show where they mentioned Dungeons and Dragons and that she didn't really understand what it is.
"Like, I get that it's a game, but I don't really understand how it's played."
None of the others spoke up. Will cleared his throat and said, "Well. I've never played personally, but I know how it works. Have you ever played a video game like Zelda or something like that?" Everyone nodded their heads. "Well, Dungeons and Dragons takes place in that type of setting, a fantasy setting with monsters and weird creatures, magic, swords, arrows, right. But in a game like Zelda, the boundaries of what you can do and where you can go are set by the people who designed the game and wrote the software, right? Like once you get to the end of the map in Zelda, that's it. If you want to make Link do something, if the designers didn't program that action in, you can't do it. Well, in Dungeons and Dragons, anything can happen. Same type of setting, you build a character. And the thing that determines the boundaries of what you can do and where you can go is basically determined by the game rules, and by a friend of yours."
Will just got a bunch of blank stares. Heather spoke up. "A friend?"
"Yes, so one person has to run the game. So, for example if we all decided to play, one of us would be the Game Master or Dungeon Master. So you design a character, we start playing, and if you say, "I want my character to fly through the air," the game master might say "Ok well, your character isn't capable of flying, but there are things in the setting we could find that would give you that power." And then maybe you can try to find them. Stuff like that."
Will continued while he had everyone's attention, "And then there's the roleplaying aspect. So, you all design a character, give it a name, a description, you can design its backstory, whatever you want. Then, when we play the game, maybe your character meets someone from its fictional past and you have a conversation with that person, like maybe... I don't know, a robber killed your parents like Batman. So you confront them, in character and say what you want to say, and then the Game Master responds back to you. The game master is responsible for playing all the beings who aren't being played by the other players."
Jeff said, "I think I get it. So a lot of it is just acting."
"Yea sort of. There's rules for battle and rolling dice and stuff to0 which is a big part of it."
Jane looked transfixed. "I think we should play."
And now, here they all were. It had taken a few weeks, but eventually they all decided to meet at his house for an introductory game. He had been spending a few hours with everyone helping them design a character and learning a few of the basic rules. Now, they had eaten dinner, he was set up behind his game master screens so they couldn't see what he was doing and they were spread out at the table around him. Jane, Heather, Jeff, Mark and Tanya.
Will couldn't believe it. He'd finally gotten people over to his house to play a game, people that he liked, that he thought liked him, and they seemed to be enjoying it. Not only that, but one of them, Jane, looked... stunning. And he'd had a crush on her for the longest time.
Jane had chosen to play a Bard style elf character and had come prepared with a few songs to go along with her bardish nature. Everyone seemed to have picked up the rules fairly easily and were enjoying the game so far. They had one small combat encounter and now they had told Will they wanted to visit a tavern. Pretty simple game that had gone on for about two hours, including a lot of introductions to rules and the players testing things out for themselves.
Will says, "Ok, so after a while you are all pretty drunk and have racked up quite a bill with this bar. What do you do now?"
Jane says (in character as her elf Pixy), "I walk up to the bar and order one more drink, stumbling slightly because of how drunk I am. So I walk up to the bar and ask him how much the bill is, and I kinda toss my long pink hair across my face."
"Okay, so the bartender looks at the tab, writes down some notes and says 'You and your friends owe 45 gold pieces."
Jane (as Pixy) says, "But gee Mr, we don't have that kind of cash right now. Is there a way I could uhm, earn a discount?... and then I pull down my shirt a little to show off my cleavage." Jane in real life pulled down her shirt a little and also revealed some more of her impressive cleavage.
Will knew his eyes boggled at the sight of Jane's chest being more revealed. He'd never seen anything like that around work and hadn't been expecting it here. As people at the table giggled like children, Will gathered his wits about him again and said in game, "Well, that is an impressive offer. Make a persuasion roll, with advantage." Will briefly explained to the group how performing a skill like this works with the dice and Jane rolled two twenty-sided dice, both of which were middling rolls.
Wanting to keep a good thing going and keep it fun, Will said, as the bartender, "You're fun, but 45 gold is quite a bit of cheddar to just be wiped away. I think you'll need to pay at least 40 and maybe I'll call the rest even."
Jane got a mischievous look in her eye and said, "Can my character whisper to the bartender?"
Will was intrigued, "You want to tell the bartender something that the rest of the group can't hear?"
"Yes."