Reroll

“Hey, so now that Frank's graduated and taken that job in Alaska, how are we going to keep the gaming group together?” My friend Jim looks like he'd fit into the goth scene well… but really, he just likes wearing black while being tall, lanky, and pale.  He doesn't write bad poetry or anything… just stupid internet fiction that he doesn't let anyone he knows read.  He usually plays some flavor of arcane spellcaster.

“I did see a flier recruiting for a ‘3.PF in real life’ campaign; we could go take a look,” Ed is a quarterback at our college. He's six feet tall, weighs three hundred pounds, and doesn't have an ounce of fat on him. He deadlifts like five hundred pounds, and I have no idea why he's playing Pathfinder rather than partying it up with the rest of the team… but he's great at building skillmonkeys.

I consider, “I suppose it's better than having one of us take over; we're slightly short on crew as it is.  Worst that happens is we decide we don't like his style.”  I round out our trio; a fairly classic geek, I have thick glasses, carry more electronics than most, and am VERY glad Ed's a friend rather than a foe. I usually end up playing the healbot.  

Jim brightens, “Sounds like a plan; let's go.”

The three of us head over, grab one of the tags off the flier (several are gone already), and head to the indicated room: Franklin dorm, Floor six, room six.  Yeah, all the buildings have donors’ names on them. It's just how colleges work. They put numbers on the maps, though; thus one is dorm six.

“Huh,” Ed muses as we walk up the stairs, “I thought they turned that room into storage after what happened last simester....”

Jim chuckles, “If they got rid of a room every time someone died in one, they wouldn't have many left. While student deaths are rare, this place has been active since the 1600's, and there's like a thousand students every year. If even one in a thousand dies each year… well, you do the math.”

“They'd be short two dorm buildings,” Ed actually will do math, “They have TWENTY.”

“Yes, and how much is that in dorm fees annually?” I join in.

“...point taken,” Ed admits.

I chuckle as I knock on the door; the police took down the investigation tape about a month ago. It was ruled a suicide; some weird ritual garbage with black candles and a pentagram drawn in the dead girl's blood… at least according to the rumor mill.  Not that rumors are reliable.

The door opens, and a cute redhead about my height answers in a red bathrobe… I suppose it is a women's dorm… and I feel that familiar quickening of my pulse as Ed thankfully  pushes me aside takes the lead in the conversation, “We're here for the gaming group advert?” Yes, he made it a question.

“Come into my parlor,” the redhead responds, “Call me Rachel, and yes, I'm recruiting; come on in, there's three of you, so we can get session zero out of the way now.”

As she steps back, I can see into the room.  It's a fairly standard tiny dorm room for two… however, Rachel has picked up a framework that puts the beds up at the ceiling, and instead of putting desks and things underneath, she's set the middle of the room up as a gaming table.  I see her bookshelf, and am immediately envious: Seriously, she has to have basically every D&D book, ever, right there… and all the Pathfinder and Starfinder hardcovers too, plus no shortage of third party material.

The table itself has a DM screen, dice, and a big laptop out, closed. She has the surface of the table set up basically as a whiteboard, and a projector and a… game controller? Ah, one of the types that's actually an IR camera… hanging up on the bed framework, pointing down at the table… a decent way to do battlemats: She'll be able to quickly switch by swapping pictures.

“Session zero?” Ed apparently is relatively new to gaming.

So I explain, “Yeah… you joined our group after we were already well established, so we didn't go through one with you. Basically we'll spend a bit of time coordinating characters, going over house rules, building our characters, stuff like that.”

“Negotiating them, in our case,” Rachel pipes up, “After all, you should have some say in things. Also, I have something to make this fun.  Here….”

She leans down over her laptop, opening it and incidentally giving me a nice view down her cleavage as one of her girls pops out. I vaguely hear Ed licking his lips… and I'm pretty sure Jim's rolling his eyes, but I'm not exactly paying attention to them.

Rachel merrily types away, seemingly oblivious, and eventually stands up, idly putting her clothes back in order, “Sorry about that; but take a look…” she points at the table, where an image of an old parchment rests. It's currently blank, though. She pulls out an odd-looking pen; I notice the tip is faintly glowing red.

Impressive preparations, “I get it; that's an IR light, which will let you write on the ‘parchment’ due to clever software and the little IR camera up there, right?”

“This pen is for writing on the contract, yes,” Rachel answers easily, “Now, the planned campaign is based in the real world, and is going to be quite lethal, but how we get there… well, what do you want? What rules would you like to use?”

“With three of us we probably can use a few boosts…” Jim starts.

“I've been wanting to try out Gestalt,” Ed excitedly adds.

“If it's highly lethal,” I consider, “We should probably address replacement characters.”

Rachel smiles as she leans over the table and writes ‘Gestalt characters’ on the sheet with her pen… and her software does a very convincing fire effect as it follows her pen and leaves the word in a dark red.

“Cool!” we all exclaim… although I'm honestly more entranced by another wardrobe malfunction.

She continues, still leaning over the table, “Pathfinder base?”

We nod, and she writes down, “Pathfinder 1 base system,” and again there's those flames following.

“I've got a few things I want to try from various d20 based settings…” Jim suggests.

“I have access to all the books,” Rachel replies, “So that's not a problem.” She writes ‘Any d20 system compatible content’ on the sheet, and the computer keeps doing the fire effect under her hand. Wait… why isn't her hand casting a shadow if the projector is… my thoughts come to an abrupt halt as she slips further out of her bathrobe.

What was I thinking? Ah, right… “If we're going to die a lot, how about we reroll at the same level whenever we get killed?”

“Or leave play by other means,” Ed injects quickly, “Death isn't the only thing that crops up in games.” Right, he got stoned by a Medusa once.

Rachel leans smiles and writes down ‘No leaving play: Reroll a new character at the same level instead’.

She pauses, “Things will get boring if you keep coming back the same, though….”

“I'm happy with a ‘no brothers’ clause,” I inform her, “I mean, coming back as a perfect twin of your last character is… not great.”

“And switching characters easily will let me try lots of things…” Jim muses aloud.

“Works for me…” Rachel writes, ‘no brothers’ on the image of the parchment as the computer continues to impress… and Rachel's ta-tas drag on the table slightly.

Ed considers, “It can be hard to envision a new character though….”

“I can help with that,” Rachel volunteers, “I have some random tables we can use.”

“Random appearances and backgrounds with each new character solves that nicely, thank you Rachel,” Ed agrees.

Rachel writes down, ‘Random appearance and background with each new character,’ on the sheet as she smiles like the cat who ate the canary.

We go on like that, setting out the character creation rules: We're starting at third level, have a generous point buy, full wealth by level, pre-game crafting allowed if your character could build it, a feat every level, and other boosts… Rachel must be planning a really lethal campaign to give us all of these. Eventually satisfied, she passes the pen around, and has each of us sign it… I feel a tiny pinprick on my hand when I do, but don't say anything.  

“Great!” Rachel stands up once we've all signed, seemingly not noticing she's practically topless, her smooth grapefruit-sized orbs at full attention in the cool air, “We can start tomorrow. For now, please write up your characters; I’ll send each of you a copy of our contract, of course.  Do you all agree?”

“Yes!” we all exclaim.

“Great!” she gestures at the bookshelf, “My library is open; dig in….”

I get down to business, writing up a Feyspeaker Druid (it’s Charisma based, and gets some spells from the Sorcerer/Wizard list at the cost of a few other things), with Hexblade on the side (it’s a warrior-type class that gets some nice bonuses for high Charisma), picking up the Fiery Burst reserve feat so I can always blast things without giving myself away.  I take a large cat for my animal companion, of course… although I am planning on the Monstrous Mount feat at fifth, so I can get a Griffon then. Ed goes with a Beguiler and Factotum combination (both Intelligence based classes, both skill based with some magic… a lot of it, in the Beguiler's case), while Jim writes up a very heavy spellcasting character: A Wizard and Archivist combination using the Eidetic Spellcaster alternative class feature to avoid needing a spellbook.  Both Jim and Ed both nab the Wild Cohort feat for Riding dogs… which basically means we have melee covered with disposable animals.

We all go human, of course, because this is a “real life” campaign.

That all takes a few hours to put together, and then we go our separate ways for the night… ooh, that chest will haunt my dreams….