Magda had turned the boardroom table into something truly amazing.  Covered in books, dice, paper, pencils, chips, dip, pretzels, booze... it was a thing of beauty.  It was ideally the entertainment craze of the future... Wizards and Wyrms.  A storytelling system based on that new-fangled book series by Tolkien.  

Now, the guy who sold her onto buying stock in this insisted that even the slowest idiot could pick it up and would find it enjoyable.  With this in mind, she sent out letters to all her favorite gangsters and molls inviting them to take a sneak peek at this latest craze.

It was 9pm on a Friday night when gangsters started to arrive and began taking their seats around the table.  They came from all over the world, some were old friends... others had recently been on opposite sides of a war.  Surely this would bring some levity back to this thing of ours!

"Please everyone take a seat.  You'll find the characters your character sheets are already in front of your spaces.  They are labeled with your names.  Take a moment to look them over and familiarize yourself with them.  This is a new product line one of our entertainment companies is producing and really this is just to see how much I wasted my damn money."

She smiles at everyone and sits at the head of the table.  "I'm going to be your Dungeon Mistress tonight... I'll be setting scenes for you to respond to.  Remember you're all part of the same adventuring party.  It's assumed you all know each other already so take a moment to go around the table and everyone tell me your character name, race, and class.  Also anything else we might need to know about you."

Magda pauses to add, "And please remember ... no cyborg cookie dough machines, VinandVal ... nor vampires SullivanBlack.  Just NORMAL fantasy characters, if you please.  Now... who wants to start off?  Name, race, class, description and important deets?"  

Magda eats handful of cheezits thinking about how much fun this is going to be!

Sully chuckled and looked at Magda... "Vampires?" Looking at Salena he smirked. "What's she even on about?" Taking his seat, he looked at the book in front of him and frowned, perusing through it. "Um... I like this sorcerer thing, I think... A, a Draconic Bloodline thingy? That could be interesting. Maybe an elf?" He looked at Magda , questions in his eyes as his brow raised.

"Am I even doing this right?"

Grits made his way in and sat down at Magda's left. He picked up the sheet of paper provided for him and looked it over.

"I'm not a Dwarf Magda. I'm almost seven feet tall."

He reached behind him and picked up a bottle of beer, flicking it hard against the side of the table to force the cap off. He took a swig and continued down the sheet.

"I like the fighter part, and the name 'Groft Firebeard' is his beard really made of fire?"

There was a glimmer in Grits' eye then as he looked around the table.

"So I guess that's me, a little man with a big axe and a beard made of fire. My name is Groft. Like Grift, but with an 'o'. You know what a Grift is, shouldn't be too hard to get my name right."

He smiled his sickly smile that normally preceded a physical altercation and reached once again outward, this time to grab a slice of pizza. Nothing like the stuff he used to get in New York mind you, but food was food.

"Yay that's right.  Elves work."  Magda says.  "Sorcerers are magic users that have really specific spells so like there might be one or two things you do often.  So you might choose a special spell you use often?"

She looked then to Grits, "And no one would ever call you small Grits, obviously you're no dwarf for real.  Just pretend for the game.  And it's doubtful his beard is real fire... but... maybe we could make an exception?  For shits and grins."

Magda looks around, "Did someone swipe my dice?  They're pricey little things made from real gem stones... guys I need those.  Not funny.  Cough them up."

Coming into the room with a slightly off beat swagger Bear sits at the table with a large bottle of beer and sets what looks like a small keg of beer down as his feet. Looking around the room

"Mistress, sully, grits. Crom is here. "

Smiling onto himself Bear looks upon his char sheet  and prepares for the game ahead. 

"Good to see you Bear!"  Magda smiles and then looks under the table for her dice.  "What's your race and class again?  I mean... Crom's race and class?"

"ahh right, so I am a Human barbarian so this should be pretty straight foreward!

Magda pops up from under the table holding a dimebag, "Didn't find the dice but found this - party property now!"  She puts it into the middle of the table.  "Um... yeah, Human Barbarian, that's straight forward.  Big guy smashes stuff for the team.  Can't get more simple than that."

Sullivan scribbled things down on his paper as he read over the book in front of him...

"Armor class? I don't wea... Oh... Oh, okay, I understand. So, oh wow, okay, thirteen plus my dexterity? Well, I mean I'm really dexterous so..." he paused, then looked at the dice beside him and grinned. "I swiped them! I needed to roll them." Looking at Magda he could sense the annoyance rolling off of her. "Sorry?" He offered them back.

"Do you have extras? Since I still need to roll for these statistics?" He waved to Bear and nodded. "Crom, hmm? Interesting name. I need a name... What's in a name?" Looking at Salena he smiled. "Name me?!"

looking at sully

before you even make you name what class are you going to be, let the name fit the class. 

youre not going to be a cleric named satan or a barb named Fibonacci! 

Sullivan turned his sheet to Bear and smiled. "Elven Sorcerer with a Draconic Lineage. The magic has to come from somewhere. The book said so. Gave me some options." He shrugged.

you got this bro!

"I got these,"  Magda passes Sullivan a set a cotton candy pink dice.  "The d10 rolls for shit but the d20 is pretty reliable despite the color."

He looked at the cotton candy pink dice, and held them happily. "You will roll for me little ten. You will roll beautifully!"

Rolling it across the table to see, he frowned as it hit a (3). "Listen here you little shit," he grumbled, holding it up to Salena and glaring. "Blow on it please?"

Grinning as she did so, he rolled it again. (4). "Bitch..." he mumbled at the die, then rolled the d20 just to see. (17)...

"You weren't wrong, Mags..." He sighed and prepared to fail many times on doing damage with his fire bolt cantrip, since it used the d10.

Mazdyn sits down at the table exchanging pleasantries and grabs herself a drink. She takes a sip as she looks over her character sheet. She nearly spits her drink everywhere as she begins to laugh. “Alright, who switched sheets with me?!” she says as she regains her composure. A fairy named Stella. Ooh magical powers, and she can read minds. You all might be in trouble here.” She smiles before continuing. “Light blue and purple wings... wait what is she wearing?? Moving past that.” She says as she eyes the party favor Magda found underneath the table, then turns to Magda. “Shall we?”

"Alright so you're all in a tavern at the heart of the city, a shadey place called 'No Place Like Gnome' ... it's run by a fat gnome named Mussolini and his ugly trollish wife named Kaiser."  She smirks.

"Your drinks have just been brought to the table and normally this would be a reason to celebrate but the whole village is consumed with talk of a dark plague that has been sweeping through the land and what dark force could be causing it... does it have something to do with the strange dark clouds seen circling over the mountains to the east?"

"I'M GOING ROGUE!" Sally squealed sing-song across the table with an excited cackle. Being the only normie in Sully's family, she was all in for being anything but in their little pretend universe. 

She chuckled as Sully's dice proved bratty, even with the extra luck. It served him right. It would be quite entertaining for the table to be turned for once. Pondering his question she imagined what, exactly a dragon would be like. In her mind, she conjured up some hulking, dapper thing with a voice like Sean Connery, centuries of wisdom and a tired, jaded outlook on humanity. The more she thought about it, that probably wasn't at all what dragons would be like. As nothing supernatural was EVER what humans expected them to be like. Wait... Were dragons a thing? She'd have to ask Sully later in private. 

Shaking the thought from her head, she giggled childishly as she replied, "LORD Greystoke." It had a certain 'ring' to it... a regal quality that fit well with the Scottish accented scale elder that she'd conjured in her head. Perfectly haughty enough for an Elf descended from Draconic magic. Elves were snooty, right. Wait... were elves a thing, too? Damn it. So many questions and distractions. Focus damn it. 

Siting at the table crom is watching all of the bar wenches 

CROM FEARS NO PLAGUE CROM IS HERE TO DRINK!

Slamming his tankard upon the table again crom demanded more ale and dragged over a beer wench to join the party atleast for a drink or so

 

"You do realize that rogue in this context doesn't mean..."  She shook her head.  Surely Salena didn't think that the name implied she should turn her weapons on her own party at some point in the campaign.

"So ... um... the group of you are listening to the jaunty music played by a man on stage - near to the stage is a bulletin board full of help wanted ads!  The room is full.  There are three humans playing a game of cards near the bar.  There is an elf in the corner, he looks to be a ranger, the sort of man who knows how to travel safely from one place to another.  A small group of halfling farmers are nearest to the door, huddled together talking with grave concern lining their little faces.  The bar maid, unlike the owners, is pretty with sunshine gold hair and ample... tracks of land." 

Magda winks at the group, "You know what I'm talking about."  She says coyly then she pauses to see who might start attempting to play first.

"Well," Sally chirped, "If it's clear that the town is over-all concerned and somber, then I want to go talk to the farmers and see what it is they're on about. Agricultural folk are pretty in tune with the land. And even if they don't actually know anything... there's usually at least a grain of truth beneath the folk tales they'll no doubt spin to assuage their discomfort and fear."