DreamLyrics™ Play-by-Post Forums Hall of Fame - Latest Top 10 completed games HHE: The Haunted Helm OOC: The Table Pre-Game

Nem the GM finishes setting up his 'space' at the round dining room table. A green felt cloth has been laid over it, for the dice rolling and to protect the finish.

Behind the GM screen, the hefty 322-page 13th Age hardback lies close to hand, on top of another less welcome addition (for the players), the 13th Age Bestiary. A home-made notepad and chunky ballpoint pen are his primary tools. The notepad is made from discarded sheets of A4 paper, folded, a piece of string, and a classy AD&D birthday card with a metallic finish, depicting Keith Parkinson's Gods of Lankhmar.

As usual, he's left his fancy Chessex dice at home and intends to borrow Gypsy's, since hers have strange, otherworldly powers that his own polygons do not. (This has also proven to negate the hexes she casts on his dice rolling.)

There's a plastic wallet with printouts of everyone's character sheets, but hopefully the earstwhile players have brought their own. He settles into his highbacked chair and opens a can of vanilla Dunn's River Nurishment. This will sustain him until the customary evening meal. It will also turn his pee green.

He toys with his moustaches. He thinks he is ready. And as with all GM's when they think that, he is wrong.

Lovely set-up...

Thanks Owain. I hope you brought some snackage! Pull up a pew, the others should be here shortly.

You have your character sheet, right? You'll also want to warm up your dice, since we'll have a few rolls before the game starts.

yep... Big bag of blue corn chips, cup of tea, automatic pencil with extra eraser and a container of leads, bunch of scrap paper cut into 4x4 pieces and of course, said dice...

Owain is right, nice setup <g> I am bringing some wine ... as well as several sets of Chessex dice ... you can never have too many Chessex dice <chuckle>

Sitting down after having dropped off soda and chips and pulling out my Gencon commemorative dice set, old pencil stubs without any erasers left, but a nice pink block eraser instead. Slipping a newly printed pc sheet onto the table and smiling at those gathered.

"Man I haven't been at a nice FTF game in forever." He came in and set down his backpack. Pulling the bag of little sweet mandarin oranges out he took a couple and set them on the community food space. Returning to the table, he slipped his water bottle out and pulled out his tablet. Turning on the tablet and his blue tooth keyboard, that portion was ready. But he added a chainmail dice bag with copper colored links spelling the P that matches his last name. A mechanical pencil, a binder with lined sheets and blank pages, a nice white eraser and a package of colored pens.

His little corner of the round world setup, he opens the binder with a printed version of his character sheet to go with his electronic one. He was ready.

Staggering in late with a big box of Cheezits and a 64 ounce Lemon-Lime Gatorade, he put a mid-sized steno pad on the table and pulled a Zebra mechanical pencil and two narrow point highlighters (yellow and orange) from a pocket along with a Crown Royal bag of dice of all types and placed them all on the table.

"First time I've played an FTF game since uh... 2008, I think."

"I guess I'm the last one to the party?" Grabs an empty chair, sets a 12pk Shiner Bock on the table and sits. Opens the notebook, takes out character sheet, pentel .5mm pencil and blank hex paper. "Damn, forgot my dice!"

"I have spares," he offers from the chain mail bag. "Oh and Exeter texted. He is running alow. So your not last, yet."

Actually, I think Gypsy will be last, it's her birthday today and she said she'd be a little late.

Surprised you made it on time, Zeim! I heard you were celebrating at Stringfellows into the wee hours?

If you need a cup of coffee, I think Phoenix Prime's in the kitchen making hot drinks, if anyone's interested.

You in there, Phoenix!?

...

Anyway, great to see you all. So first thing's first. Over here on the left you can see the dice rollers. Currently there's only one called Pre-Game. That's where you roll your dice.

We don't want any d4s going rogue. We all know what happens then.

I'll create a new dice roller for each phase or battle in the game, and that will also help us keep track of how spent the PCs are.

Generally speaking, when the rolls are standard D&D-style rolls, I'll roll the dice for you, to keep things moving. When there's an interesting 13th Age specific roll, I'll highlight it and you can make the roll.

OK, next. You'll notice my Battlemat and miniatures are still in my bag. The 13th Age creators wanted their game to take place in the "theatre of the mind" and designed the rules with that, um, in mind. So unless a battle gets really arse-backwards, we just use our imagination.

So before we start, I'd you all to tell us a little about your character. Pitch it to us as succinctly as possible. Short and to the point, tell us their "name tag" name, race/class and well, what excites you about them, I guess.

We'll go around the table...

Weston is a Human fighter. He knows the city well ... assuming we are in the city where he grew up ... haven't really talked about that part yet and don't know the world geography so well. He tried his father's trade of caravan work, but found it awfully boring. So he is currently enamored of the adventurer's life and has decided to try that.

And tell us what excites you about Weston as a character, MikeD.

<Owain finishes his chips and pulls a beer out of the small cooler at his feet, making mental notes on the characters his own will be relating to soon.>

Phoenix has never had a cup of coffee or hot tea in his 49 years of existence. So while he is in the kitchen, charged with the task of making the hot beverages, I would be really reticent to try anything he brings out with him.

as usual when it comes to FTF gaming, Phoenix brings his stellar wit and charm (and an exaggerated sense of both) but little in the way of understanding when it comes to game systems.

"You mean this isn't AD&D 1st edition?"

Owain's head whips around... "I thought it was 3.5?"

"Silly. Trixs are for kids." He shook his head before continuing. "My character has a one letter moniker of D. He has more of a name but that will be for later. D is a Dark Elf Rogue. What excites me about him will be exploring his personal story, answering some of the questions that motivate him, and finding the whys. He will be fun to play. That is a great part."

<Scribbles mathematical equation.>

OK, I've worked it out, and I think it's D&D 4.65.

I'd say 'have a flick through the rule book', Phoenix, but the interesting stuff isn't that obvious on a skim read.

Nice one, Pandemonium. So we'll have to wait until play begins to learn your character's name, right? Sounds very mysterious.

How about you, Owain?

"Nestaron grew up in the wilderness and is good with herbs, as well as the more conventional Clerical healing stuff. He's a bit... intense sometimes, as if he's always looking at something that only he can see, or for something he very much wants to see. Private, averse to crowds and urban areas, he's either incredibly shy or trying to avoid somebody."

Ah-hah, and what's got you excited about Nestaron, Owain?

Btw guys, don't be afraid to share your creations openly. In-continuity, much of what makes your characters most interesting is "secret", yes, but the gaming group should be in on these secrets so we can enjoy them too.

And let's face it, the characters can push-and-pull all they like, but as a gaming group, we should all be pulling in the same direction. Maximal Probability of Big Fun Time.

Seyja is a female human barbarian who was raised in the mountains far to the northeast by a clan who had close ties to the Orc Lord. Since becoming an adventurer, she has become more of a vagabond/wanderer type, staying away from her clan for reasons she would not want to reveal yet.

She wears leather armor, is exceptionally tough and prefers the greataxe.

I like her secrets, all of which even I don't know yet.

Ok in the interests of sharing secrets, Nestaron managed to upset some minions of the Crusader, so he keeps a wary eye out for those fanatics. In addition, he sometimes acts as a courier for the High Druid, and has a really complicated relationship with the Priestess-crew, that he doesn't much like to talk about, but it's more like he's embarrassed about it than anything else.

Healing, fixing, correcting are the things he is always doing or trying to find ways to do. Even if he can't always figure out how, he usually know what he wants to do in a given situation to make it better, or as he says, 'Align more properly with the way things should be'. He's also very knowledgable concerning beer and ale...

Whoops - almost forgot what's got me excited. I look forward to him getting better at seeing more of the underpinnings of creation and finding new ways to more properly align things to it.

"Well in interest of baring secrets. D was a Prince. He did things that weren't exactly the best, heck might even be considered nefarious. He and his entire family was killed in a very brutal way. Then for a time he was something different.

"Should I let that one out of the bag too? The name is cool.

"Now he is back and doesn't have all the answers. Heck not even a few of them. He knows that he made an enemy of The Black, one of The Three. For some reason The Diabolist and The Archmage both have beneficial to him. He has no idea why.

"I could swap the beneficial Icons to match with someone else. I don't have any real agenda other than offering something mysterious to offer threads for the GM."

"Guess you never played Paranoia", he said in response to Neil's comment about pulling in the same direction.

"As to secrets, other than being orphaned at an early age, which he =does= know, the only other secret he has he doesn't know, so can't share yet.

"And as to what gets =me= excited, is getting to know Weston better and seeing how he does in the world.

"Well, Zoltan Molnar, my pc, is a Tiefling Paladin. Though perhaps 'demon-touched' is more accurate. He is an Orphan as well. He knows who his parents were, though he has no idea if one or both still live. He has no memory of them, but knows his father was a demon. He grew up scrabbling among the ruins of The Golden Citadel, near the Red Wastes, and was taken in by forces of the Great Gold Worm when he was young.

He found a god, The Herald, and he is a zealous follower. He believes, as The Herald does, that it is only by killing all that is evil in the world that heaven on earth can exist.

He is opposed to the Diabolist, naturally, and has a positive relationship with the Crusader. Not because he works for him. Crusader followers would probably want to kill him due to his blood. Rather his goals are aligned with the Crusader's. He has a conflicted relationship with the Great Gold Worm. Paladin's typical fall into the GGW's purview, but he is a bit too zealous for comfort.

While a Tiefling, his outer features are muted. Small horns covered mostly by long hair and a hood. No tail. Soft golden skin tone and red eyes that alternate between burning with intensity and having a haunted look.

Besides the contradiction of a pc with demonic blood in his veins who hates demons, the fact he is also a Holy Paladin gives him more flavour.

I look forward to exploring those contradictions and seeing where it takes him."