On Thursday nights I play Basic Fantasy RPG with a group of folks via the internet. It’s a style of play more akin to what I played growing up, so it’s a fun change of pace from my 5th Edition D&D game on Monday nights.
Over the last few weeks we had a player drop out of the group, known as the Bearfoot Marauders, and to fill this spot we introduced a new player. This is always a fun challenge for me as the GM 1, as I need to come up with a narrative reason for the character to show up on the adventures. This past week was no different.
We began the session with the group returning to the town of Modrin, an out of the way forest village which had been dealing with some recent raids. As they made their way back to town the group joined up with the local militia and managed to rescue two hostages who had been taken in a raid the previous night. When word of their heroics spread through town, along with the sight of the rescued hostages, the town threw a bash. The group’s thief, who was leaving the party, got carried on peoples shoulders over to where the bash was being held. The rest of the group took care of some business, and then joined the revelry themselves.
This is where things got interesting.
The player who controlled the group’s organizer, Gibeon Starfall, declared that he was doing a keg stand. And while that happened we invited the new character, Thundarr Quartzbeam to the mix. He walked up to the party members and declared his intention to join up with them, but he made this declaration to a dwarf named Nikare, a character played by someone who is new to role playing and tends to not say much at the table. This put him on the spot, and he managed to pull of some great roll playing which helped flesh out the character’s personality. The conversation went something like this.
“You want to join up with us? Good luck.”
When Thundarr described why he needed a change of scenery Nikare replied, “So, you’ve got terrible luck? You’ll fit right in with this group, then. And… you’re drinking craft beer so I guess that’s ok.”
As this awkward conversation unfolded two things happend. First, one of the group’s elves, a character named “Jeffery the Great” looked at Thundarr’s beer and shouted, “Hey, is that Zima?” Second, a tipsy Gibeon sauntered over and began asking questions.
“Are you stabby stabby, or more shooty shooty.”
When Thundarr replied that he liked staying back a little bit, Gibeon shouted, “Great!” He then grabbed an apple from somewhere 2, and stuck it on an elf named Nitro’s head. With a smile he declared, “Shoot that apple, then.”
It is important to note several things at this time.
First, Nitro did not remove the apple from his head and and say, “Not going to happen.” Instead, he used his shield to cover his face. This would have been rather funny had Thundarr missed 3.
Second, apples are unarmored.
Third, this ended up being the first roll this new player would make in game 4.
In the end it was a great way to introduce the player to the game, and character personalities helped fuel it. Roll playing is fun.
Painfully Hopeful 