itsjustagamerp | Where's the Mountain Dew?!

Entry tags:

Where's the Mountain Dew?!

Characters: Tom Servo and anyone and everyone who volunteered to learn DnD!
Content: Characters roleplaying...other characters.
Location: Tom's room on deck 2
Time of day: Thursday evening
Warnings: Tom is the DM...

Tom Servo was beyond excited as Thursday finally rolled around. At last, he had people he could play Dungeons and Dragons with! Crow and Mike never seemed to want to after he attempted his first session with them. This time, with such a big party, things were bound to go better!

Tom had actually managed to clean up his room a little bit for the occasion...or at the very least, to hide his underwear collection. Tom had the manuals open already, and he was dressed in his purple wizard robe and hat. A whole bunch of snacks and drinks were ready in the mini-fridge. Now all he needed was the players!

[This thread will be split into THREE DIFFERENT SUBTHREADS. Check below for what you can do in each!]

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"Hey, wait a minute!"

Minako also smelled a rat. Er, robot. Er...robot rat?

"I didn't even get to introduce myself to my party! How'm I supposed to work with my group like this!?"

In all honesty, Liz should've seen that coming. She watched the show. LINKARA watched the show. Even HE pointed out how silly it was to ask Servo to DM.

And really, Liz didn't have an answer. Maybe she was so excited about playing that she forgot. Maybe she just didn't want to DM fourth edition. Maybe Rule of Funny screwed with her brain.

She shot Linkara a look that said "Not a damn word," slamming her second can of mountain dew to the table.

"A fire an arrow at the nearest Balrog and arm another one aimed at the Dungeon Master."

Even without knowing about the game, Aqua knew something was very wrong here. Yes, hard fights did happen sometimes. But she'd yet to see one that came at the very beginning of things. There was always a beginning, and when the monsters that were hard for one person to defeat came along, that was one called on one's friends. This, on the other hand, was almost too much.

"Are you sure this is where we're supposed to start?"

"Oh, can I see that real quick?" Pinkie took the creature book from Riku and opened it, flipping instantly to a picture of a Balrog. Her eyes widened at the sight. "Ooooooooh..."

"Well we can't just leave Riku there!" she exclaimed, slamming it shut again. "Can we try just talking to them first?" She rubbed her chin with one hoof thoughtfully. "Does one of them maybe have a thorn in his foot?"

Namine frowned in confusion. Hadn't Liz said that they would be starting off by getting a bit of background story, and fighting easy enemies to get stronger? From the way Riku the others were acting, something was wrong.

She quietly slid the book they'd used to make their characters towards her and flipped to the Cleric page. She wasn't going to leave Riku behind, but she wanted to be sure exactly what she could do in case Tom couldn't be persuaded to let them start over.

Overhearing Pinkie, she answered. "I don't think they coud understand us if we tried, and Tom didn't mention they were hurt before they attacked."

Terra didn't know what a balrog was either but he leaned over and looked over Pinkie Pie to see. He winced. He was pretty sure even his heavy hitting character wasn't going to survive an attack like that. "Uhm...Tom you are aware that this is supposed to be a beginners game right?"

He shook his head, he didn't want to leave Riku's character either. Terra pulled the book over and started looking for a way that his character could help in some way.

Unfortunately, Tom was just way too caught up in his game to really notice the protests from his players that this may have been too steep a challenge for beginners. Or, too big a challenge for experts, really.

But Tom didn't care! This was no time for checking the manuals and other rules! There were Balrogs! And everyone here had to be hardcore, or else the game just wasn't as good!

"NO! No, you fools! Use fireballs! Throw fireballs at them!" Tom cried...completely ignoring the fact that fireballs probably wouldn't be effective against a fire-based demon. All that mattered was that FIREBALLS were a great spell and looked awesome! "QUICKLY, NOW!"

"Fireballs?" Pinkie frowned down at her character sheet. She was a wizard, but she didn't think she had any fire spells. That kinda made sense, though - those were probably really hard and she had just started being a wizard. She frowned and flipped back to the picture of the Balrog. "But if they're on fire and we shoot fireballs at them, wouldn't that just make them even bigger and fiery-er?" Tom was the one running the game and all, but that just didn't make sense to her.

Maybe this was really some sort of secret test, to see if they could win all by themselves! Pinkie thought about it, and perked up as a thought occurred to her. "Oooh, oooh, does anyone have a bucket of water or a hose or something?"

Harry had, thus far, been sitting back with a look of utter bemusement as he watched the proceedings, which given he was a grown man sitting at a table with a bunch of twenty somethings and teenagers, and at least one pony, playing D&D being run by a robot, he likely had little reason to feel so above it all. Luckily, anyone who might have pointed that out was busy trying to deal with Balrogs and their insane DM, and to be fair most of his amusement was from picturing how Butters would react to Tom's adventure design.

Finally deciding to step in, he leaned forward to rest his elbow on the table, other hand surreptitiously tapping the entry of a potent healing spell in Namine's book as he did, before declaring, "Don't worry, I know the Balrog's one weakness." He grinned wickedly. "Namely sharp objects applied directly to the gut. Drawing his mighty axe, Nerrath Rotblow lets out a fearsome battle cry and charges the Balrog to try and cleave it in two!"

One might think this was Harry just goofing off, but really compared to some of the plans he'd implemented in real life, this one was actually rather well thought out.

"And meanwhile!" Minako points to her own book. "I use my legendary charisma to try and negotiate a truce with the remaining Balrogs, who are probably trembling at the prospect of being decapitated by the Barbarian or stabbed by the Half-Elf! I roll my 20-sided dice with my Charisma modifier, aaaand...!"

Roll....roll...roll...

"...Twenty-four? Awww...nuuuuts! They're still unfriendly, even though they've stopped attacking! They now have started gossiping about Sora's hair and won't let him sit at their lunch table!!"

This was quickly becoming even more difficult, especially for a starting game. But at least all of their team was banning together to stop the Balrogs! One of their warriors was going to cleave it in two! They were supposed to use fireballs against them, but Sora didn't think his character knew any fire spells.

And then it looked like maybe they could have convinced them to stop attacking...except now the Balrogs were making fun of him!

"I didn't want to sit at their lunch table anyway! And at least I have hair!"

Pinkie gasped as Harry's character made his brave charge. "YAAAAY! Go Nerrath!" she squealed, bouncing up and down in her chair with as much excitement as if something was actually happening other than dice rolling.

She quickly forgot Nerrath's bold move, however, as Minako continued the story. "Awwww, it's okay, Sora!" she said, patting the boy's arm with one hoof. "You can sit at our table! It's totally the best table - we have cupcakes!"

In a strange way, this new twist made Liz feel a little better about it. It reminded her of the old days when she and Linkara used to play with Spoony. The guy always was good for a laugh when it came to the things he and his friends did in D&D.

"Well, if they're going to make fun of Sora, my ranger is going to say 'Hey, pick on someone your own size!' and shoot the nearest one square in the foot."

Sure, Servo was likely to mess this up even further real soon, but dammit she was going to take advantage of this while she could.

Unfortunately for Liz, Tom was going to mess this up very quickly.

Tom was completely caught up in the story now, his teensy little arms flailing about in excitement as he hopped around. "Nerrath Rotbow's axe cleaves the first Balrog in two! A sacred fire burns up the jungle-dungeon at the creature breathes its last!

"The second Balrog howls in pain at its foot being shot! It yells at the last Balrog to give these foolish adventurers what-for!

"The last Balrog FLIPS the lunch table into the ground! The force of this mighty blast causes a MAGNITUDE 18 EARTHQUAKE that swallows up your entire party into the stony depths of the earth! ALL. IS. LOST."

Tom then began to chant it was most likely Klingon.

Linkara had known what was going to happen going into this. He watched the show, and hell, it wasn't like he hadn't warned Liz about it. Anyone who knew anything about D&D could probably see that Linkara had put zero effort into creating his character; you don't spend time on cannon fodder, after all.

He hadn't said a word the entire session, partially because he was sure Liz would kill him for anything vaguely resembling an 'I told you so' and partially because he didn't trust himself to not burst out laughing. The arrival of the Balrogs didn't help, and the talk about the lunch table just about killed him, but it was the death by table flip that finally got him, and he doubled over, snickering into his hand. "I guess we can't table that decision, huh."

What even.

What. Even.

She should have seen all this coming. She really should have seen it coming. After tonight, she never wanted to hear anyone ever again call Spoony a cruel dungeon master. If he had wanted to cause a giant earthquake via tableflip, at least he would have let them roll for it or give them a chance to land in some underground tunnel with new puzzles to figure out. And he would have been funnier about it, too.

And now Linkara was laughing. AND beat her to a good pun on top of that.

There was just...nothing left to do but let her head hit the table with a heavy thud.

Riku certainly didn't have any fire spells, but again, why would creatures already ignited be hurt by more fire? This made no sense.

Ad now the monsters were making fun of Sora. These giant, powerful monsters were just gossiping. Riku definitely didn't look amused. "You won't let him sit where? Is that really the best you got?"

"All is lost." He looks at his sheet. Nope, no flying spells. But he looked at Linkara and smirked. "Not unless we flip this table too." Not that he had any plans to.

Aqua might have had a few fire spells, but either way, she wasn't about cast Fire on something that was so clearly aligned to that element. At best, it wouldn't have really done anything. At worst, it would have only made matters worse.

Of course, all of this was neatly forestalled by what seemed to be the sudden appearance of lunch tables in the middle of what had been described as a dungeon in a forest. Surely they were supposed to have known about that before had? Or had they brought the tables with them in case they might some monsters that wanted to have lunch.

Not that it seemed like it mattered much, given their sudden death by table flip. "I think it would only be a counter at best, now."

Sora had gotten into the story when the lunch tables were introduced, but fell out of it again quickly when Tom killed them all via tableflip. Well...that put an end to their campaign pretty quickly. Sora scratched his head, a little confused with how this had gone. He was pretty sure the entire party wasn't supposed to die on the first monster. Especially if the first monster was just mad that people were telling him off for making fun of his hair!

Linkara was just laughing, and Liz looked absolutely mortified. They knew more about this game than he did, so chances were they also knew that it wasn't supposed to go this way.

"Maybe we should just...start it over again?" he suggested. He left out the obvious 'without Tom in charge' part.

"Nah, I don't really feel like picking up scattered dice." Linkara shrugged. He was only willing to take the joke so far, after all.

He perked up a bit at Sora's suggestion. Maybe a do-over was just what they needed. "You know, that's a really good idea," he commented, "and I know just the person to run the new campaign." He turned and grinned at Iron Liz. True, he knew she hated fourth edition, but he also know she loved getting people into tabletop and they had a roomful of willing people whose first experience with D&D was shaping up to be a poor one if someone with experience didn't step in. "What do you say, Liz? Be our DM?"

He was totally sleeping on the futon tonight.

"I don't care who DMs, as long as they aren't that idiot robot."

It was the first time Isa had said something in a while, since he had all but given up on the game at the first sign of trouble. Maybe if the robot had actually put some effort into DMing instead of just dumping three monsters on them from the get go he would have actually tried to play along.

That prediction probably wasn't far from the truth.

Liz hadn't moved as the group talked, until Linkara spoke up, at which point her head snapped up to look at him.

She almost opened her mouth to declare that she'd rather rewatch Gooby with Bennett the Sage than DM fourth edition. But she paused, taking a slow look around the room. She had wanted to teach them. Especially Isa; he seemed really interested right off the bat and talking to Servo at the party seemed like it was such a good chance. Maybe that's why she didn't really think this through...she just wanted a chance to teach some newbies and have fun.

But DMing fourth edition? Really?

She was clearly torn as she looked back at Linkara with an expression that absolutely hollered 'do I have to?'

Pinkie was a little confused at the sudden direction the game had taken. It wasn't supposed to be that hard, was it? Everyone else seemed kinda upset, so she figured that maybe Tom had just messed it up a little. He was probably used to playing with people who played it a lot. Either than or he just wasn't very good at games - but that was okay, not everyone was!

"Aw, come on, Liz!" she chirped. "It'll be fun! And Tom can play with us too, and show us how to flip tables at people!" While the pony saw the point in getting a new DM, she didn't want the robot to feel left out; it was his game, after all.

"But first we should have snacks! I brought cupcakes!"

Aqua wasn't entirely sure about the idea of having someone along to teach them how to flip tables (it seemed a slightly inconvenient way to solve monster-related problems) but she couldn't argue about the idea of trying again. Provided, of course, that someone else was running things. She wasn't exactly looking forward to having that same situation play itself out again.

"It can't be that hard, can it?" she asked, with a hopeful look in her eyes. Anything had to be better than death by tableflip, as far as she was concerned.

Edited 2011-10-02 05:29 (UTC)

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Where's the Mountain Dew?!

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Whoo, appropriate icon!

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