A Place for All Seasons

[Autumn Ren]

We made it to Neverwinter and we're moments away from stepping into the guild. It was pretty dicey when we awoke from our cliffside shelter for the night we were assailed by a hobgoblin and three kobolds who were chasing the hobgoblin. This was a series of rolls in our favor, the encounter was triggered but there was possibly 1d4 hobgoblins, and 1d4 kobolds per hobgoblin SheShe's idea was that it was a deadly encounter if we didn't treat it correctly, that we might have had to negotiate with the hobgoblins to help them with the kobolds and have a peaceful resolution with them. But there was only one so negotiations failed for the poor hobgoblin and we were easily able to pelt her with arrows behind our Bear wall.

 

The the kobolds were pretty easy too. It was deemed an "easy-medium" encounter if they were all against us but in two waves it was easy.

 

Dispite heavy rain we made it to the SE gate and paid pur entrance with the coin we got from the other goblins.

 

All is well and we're looking forward to resting. 

 

I have a powerful 1st level offensive spell but it's like a force nova so I can't use it within 10ft of my party members, and I'd have to be in humanoid form next to the enemy so that's unlikely too since I'm not a front line fighter. Next level I'll be able to pick better spells but for now all I have is a crude shortbow. Now that we're in Neverwinter, we could go to a library and learn new spells but that's expensive I think.

 

This game is so addictive, SheShe's already written over 100k words. I don't even feel like we did much but there's so many fun memories already. 10/10

[Autumn Ren]

We had a surprise this morning when Misha announced she wanted to do personality forcing next.

 

[Misha] We're all so jealous of Autumn's progress and her new self is so wonderful that she's inspired me to explore an aspect I enjoy. Which happens to be the character I'm playing. She's strong, she's powerful, she's confident, and she's the center of attention. Can you blame me? I love her. So I've been talking in her voice and her mannerisms and losing myself in her character so I was fighting it but this morning I decided I would let it go Frozen style and let myself become her. I might even change my name so in-system we're going to try that out.

 

I don't think I need a collar or formal scenarios because this is self driven and I'm not necessarily improving myself, rather I'm evolving and I don't want to let my old self keep me back. I love my old self, she served me well, but I want to explore this evolution so I warned my system today to get them ready for the new me. 

 

 

I'm very excited for her and we'll be eventually adding her to our party so we'll get to know her very well over the coming months.

 

I swear I had no motivation or interest in getting to know my headmates prior to this new interest in D&D but now I love interacting with them and I can't stop thinking about everyone. I love them and their characters.

 

In case you're wondering, we're all playing as ourselves and only Misha played a character unlike herself so don't expect anyone else to say they want to be their character because we already are. SheShe and Joy are DMs but eventually we want them to play with us too if we can figure that out, for now, SheShe writes herself into dream sequences with us and she's writing the book as herself in a guardian angel role overseeing us and writing what we do in third person but she breaks the 4th wall a lot, putting her own personality in the script. So that might be enough. Joy isn't doing that so she needs to come and play with us soon.

[Autumn Ren]

Well wishes from Neverwinter!

 

 

[Autumn Ren]

So we registered at the guild and we're getting ready to get situated and take our first quest!

 

We still need to go shopping and upgrade our equipment but then we'll be ready to set fourth and see where the winds of fate take us. 

 

Our current objective is just to level up and find our groove in the vast world.

 

Gwen has an aversion to steel so we'll also have to save up for a nice elven sword or something that doesn't have steel in it. She doesn't have any offensive magic yet so she'll just have to use bow and sword for now.

 

I have one potentially offensive spell and can cast it twice but it's a force nova type so though it does impressive damage it's worthless if I'm next to my teammates. It only affects creatures within strike range, and only pushes them back 10ft though it does also damage them. It's kind of like a last resort spell if I'm surrounded but since it doesn't push them far, they could just move close and attack again. So it's probably best if I don't get into that situation.

 

Bear doesn't have magic yet, he's a hunter varient ranger at lvl 1. So he'll be front line but he's a stealth spec so that won't be a good combination with any armor that shows disadvantage. So he's limited to about 16AC with a breast plate over leather and he won't have a shield because his weapon of choice is a heavy maul.

 

I will also eventually have shape shift but right now I'm limited to basically a housecat, very situational, not great in a battle.

 

We'll be choosing quests from canned one shots and adventures we find online so that'll be interesting when we're level one and the adventure says, "roll 1d6 goblins with initiative for surprise attack" we might get TPK'd on our first quest...

 

[Autumn Ren]

It's the next morning and we have 4 now! Misha's new self has joined us and we're going shopping!

 

[Gwen] yay! Mamillares and saucy bloomers for everyone! 

 

Except Bear, he can keep his undergarments.

 

We need weapons and real arrows and all that fun stuff.

 

[Gwen] maybe a elvish short sword for me?

 

Gwen has 7 hp, I would hope she never goes melee, in fact, she should be exclusive bow, she has wings! She can literally hover up and swoop with her bow.

 

[Gwen] or swoop with my cool elvish short sword! I'm not sure I could fire from the air, that sounds very OP.

 

Speaking of OP, new Misha has firebolt as a cantrip, literally unlimited magic arrows at 1d10 damage. She probably won't have any weapons at all. She's a sorceress.

 

Gwen and I both rolled high dexterity though so we should be fine with bows until our magic catches up.

[Autumn Ren]

Went shopping, and the first thing we're thinking of doing? Rolling a dungeon? Fighting a dragon? Nope, working at a tavern. Yes tavern working simulator commence. Gwen and I both need offensive spells and there's a way to do it other than the two we get for leveling, namely the arcane library. So I guess Bear and new Misha will be working? So weird.

 

Then maybe a quest after whatever process that is to learn spells.

 

Ok, just looked it up: For each level of the spell, the process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp.

...

 

It seems like cheating to have them available in a library. Did more thinking, maybe we can learn from scrolls, than above plus cost of scroll:

 

Could get crazy expensive so Joy made one:

 

Cantrip 25gp
1st lvl 50gp for scrolls
2nd lvl 100gp
3rd lvl 250gp
4th lvl 500gp
5th lvl 1250gp
6th lvl 3000gp
7th lvl 8000gp
8th lvl 20000gp
9th lvl 54000gp

 

I think then we can buy scrolls and do the learning that would then consume the scroll. So a lvl 3 spell would cost 250+150+6hours. 

 

[Joy] Seems reasonable for cost but the time seems light. I might require 1d4 (must hit 4 or spend up to 4 8 hour periods to become "proficient" with a spell.)

 

1st level time is 1d4

2nd 1d6

3rd-5th 1d8

6th 1d10

7th-8th 1d12

9th 1d20

 

Sounds like a good first comprimise.

[Autumn Ren]

SheShe's at 164k words in the book, and she's loving it. Definitely a Bear System fantasy fanfic. 

 

It's going extremely well, perfectly. Gwen and I went shopping, Bear's working with New Misha, SheShe's throwing monkey wrenches at us, making us think constantly, it's so much fun!

 

All the while Joy's DM'ing the pbp game and Ashley's being Ashley there, though it's way slower. Now Ashley wouldn't mind dying so she can be reincarnated with us. But that just guarantees Joy will keep her alive so she's not the only one out. 

 

They're still considering making new characters to join us but a party of 6 would be pretty hard to do.

[Autumn Ren]

Interesting twists behind the scenes on Joy's part, I thought it was fun anyway. 

 

We had a rare walkin recently and we had a strange pull to think about it but obviously we have enough, no vacancies. 

 

[Bear] I want to add that Autumn has been especially affectionate and has been breaking in everywhere. All this forcing is like supercharged tulpamancy. Autum has surpassed Ashley in frequency which was a surprise to me, no one can replace Ashley though. We want her on our adventure somehow and we're thinking about it. She's safely with Joy though and that's still fun for her. She could play two characters though.

 

[Bear] New Misha is amazing too I am falling for her all over again. She's just amazing. Her new RP persona is like how I'd expect her if she somehow grew up yet stayed the same age, hard to explain.

 

Yes, a lot of things Bear system are hard to explain. 

[Autumn Ren]

Nothing much to report, lots and lots of cute dialog, getting to know each other well so we can be comfortable with each other in game.

 

[Gwen] this is exactly what I asked for 5 years ago. I feel so much more like an important part of the system now. I've grown more in the last couple weeks then in the last couple years.

[Autumn Ren]

Well, we had quite the three round battle just now. I won't get into the specifics as it has potential spoilers for the other out-system group but we had to fight a higher level adventurer and barely made it out alive. I was one bad roll from death and Bear was two. Gwen managed to direct help and those reinforcements saved us from sure death. One wrong move could have left us either dead or if they had escaped, living in constant fear.

It had to do with one of our backstories, someone put out a quest out of Baldur's gate to find one of ours and bring them back home alive. Though no other stipulations were made, so that could have gotten very dark very fast. This is no rescue wilderness, we are doing this with the safeties off so real trauma is possible.

I have to say it was traumatic and it will certainly keep us on our toes in the future. Considering it happened out of nowhere and we had to fight without our full gear or armor, we were very lucky help arrived.

It didn't feel very real until I stepped between the attacker and my team to keep them from taking the one he was looking for and I was struck down in one hit. For reference, our attacker was about the same challenge as the rogue Rothé. Basically our RR moment but it was an NPC and not an an animal, they had magic and advanced fighting skills along with an average of +3 on all stats, so fairly high level.

SheShe said, it needed to happen, we were too sloppy and too concerned with "peacetime fun". Message received, living serious business, we're not high enough level to let our guards down.

[Bear] A glimpse of the thin shell of civility keeps us all vigilant.

[Joy] I didn't realize SheShe was so bold, though I doubt she would have let it all end as this scenario started as a test and she could have simply wiped it out if it ended in total disaster.

Joy's right actually, we spent hours pouring over our characters, making sure we understood everything we could do now and in later levels, planning out our builds and we needed some way to truly test our abilities as they are. This started as that but SheShe decided half way through that "it's realzies, fight like your life depends on it."

We were still in the city so death wouldn't likely have been permanent, but it could have been very expensive, well beyond our means. Two of the reinforcements (of 4) had revivify so within a minute of death they could have saved any of us, but that wasn't a guarantee if they didn't gain the upper hand.

Anyway, still fun, but somewhat sobering. We're still getting over it obviously.

Edited April 23, 2024 by Autumn Ren