Lecterns’s O&O installment (last update 6 October 2019) · 6:07am Jul 18th, 2019
This evolving post exists partly for the entertainment of spectators, partly to illustrate my idiosyncratic authorial process, and partly to keep track of things for my own benefit. All you folks who’ve contributed ideas, even those I don’t end up using, will be credited in the author notes.
Just as fifth-edition D&D has de-emphasized alignment strongly, so shall I. (Besides, I never liked alignment anyway.) Moreover, as is my usual practice, specific names and titles not already established in-universe will be avoided. This includes names of races identifiable as part of the D&D milieu, though it may not preclude genericized versions of such races.
Sci-Twi excitedly introduces her friends to “the latest version” of Ogres and Oubliettes—in metafictional terms, based on Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition—for a one-shot session in the front parlor at Lectern’s. Gathered at her invitation and minimal briefing, they in turn are humoring her with varying degrees of enthusiasm. All at least have heard of the game, though only a few know more about it than the vaguest premise.
As part of her game-master paraphernalia she brings a dozen pre-generated characters, some designed specifically to match her friends’ personalities, others generalized makeweights; she might half-finish them, allowing players to do things like “choose three from this list and cross off the rest”. Otherwise they’re pretty basic, just a set of numbers and listings for the players to project invented personalities onto, without quirks or other leading elaborations. Any character portraits are generic illustrations grabbed from available images. (Most of this is cribbed from a friend’s clever approach to the concept, though the idea of choosing from a list of options is mine.)
Pinkie is first to select a character and grabs an unexpected one. Her explanatory comment, that a role-playing game is a chance to do things differently than one normally would, inspires everyone else to do likewise. Twilight face-faults when the players end up with, from her point of view, completely topsy-turvy characters, even a couple of the makeweights—though there’s something about each character that appeals to the chooser, even if obliquely.
Listed below is the set Sci-Twi settled on, along with who each character was intended for and, where applicable, who actually chose it. (Feel free to debate the choices.) Some of the makeweights are healing-oriented; Twi will operate one of the unchosen characters as a group NPC, most likely a heal-bot, and wanted a good selection. In some cases, when I couldn’t decide any other way, I went with the simplest or most archetypical subclass.
- Barbarian
—path of the bear totem warrior: intended for Rainbow Dash, chosen by Fluttershy (“Oh, look, this one has the ‘Speak to Animals’ spell!”) - Bard
—college of glamour: intended for Pinkie Pie, chosen by Rarity (“Daaaahling, I amall aboutglamor!”) - Cleric
—domain of life: makeweight, operated by Twilight - Druid
—circle of the shepherd: intended for Fluttershy - Fighter
—champion: intended for Applejack, chosen by Sunset Shimmer (“Huh. So all of ’em have some kind of spells except this one, right? That’s pretty different, I guess.”) - Monk
—way of the open hand: makeweight - Paladin
—oath of devotion: makeweight, chosen first by Pinkie Pie (“—And this one looks like it’s about as different as I can get!”) - Ranger
—hunter: makeweight, chosen last by Applejack (“Kinda hard fer me t’ tell, not knowin’ th’ rules an’ all, but this one don’t look as complicated as mosta th’ rest.”) - Rogue
—arcane trickster: intended for Rarity - Sorcerer
—divine soul: makeweight - Warlock
—celestial patron, pact of the chain: makeweight - Wizard
—school of evocation: intended for Sunset Shimmer, chosen by Rainbow Dash (“EXPLOSIONS!”)
Needless to say, that’s only a harbinger of difficulty to come; the players run off the rails fairly soon, forcing poor Twilight to improvise feverishly, something she certainly is not comfortable with. One possibility is a group decision, tacit or discussed, to veer into being dastardly or avaricious ne’er-do-wells of one sort or another rather than upstanding heroes. Another is taking up with an NPC intended as a villain—or as a simple cipher of a spear-carrier with no backstory.
At some point Lectern stops by, reminisces briefly about playing the original edition of the game lo these many decades past, and drops a hint or two, helping Twilight deal with the situation. This could include such sentiments as “don’t sweat it too much; this is just a game and everyone’s here to have fun, including you” as well as DM tips. Since I plan to keep the story’s focus tight on the girls and the game, his will be the only guest appearance.
- Applejack may not quite get the point of let’s-pretend, but with dice, and might be the aggravating player who has to be told every time how to do something under the rules. (This definitely is a pet peeve of mine.) However, she may warm to it enough to compare damage output with RD as an extension of their usual competitive rivalry.
- Fluttershy figures out the plot—but nobody listens. In the climactic combat she says, “Um, I would like to rage, please, if that’s all right?” in a tiny voice and may do the Saddle Rager thing.
- Pinkie Pie may derail and-or save the game and may analyze people’s play styles.
- Rainbow Dash gets into the story despite her murder-hobo tendencies, plays her character as a Daring Do clone, and probably gets called on it, somewhat like her music-video idea in “Dance Magic”.
- Rarity chews every curtain in sight and, at the end, pouts in disappointment that the elaborate backstory she’d concocted for her character never saw the light of day.
- Sunset Shimmer, who at least has heard of the pony version of O&O, enjoys herself more than she expected to; after all, though her personality is very different from either Twilight’s, she still is a nerdy-girl at heart. Also, I figure by now she’s reconciled to magic, especially fictional magic, working differently in the human world.
There is an art that I can’t find where Shy rolled up a fighter. It’s adorbs and cute and I’ll link it in the Discord since I don’t. Red links there.
Well the countdown puzzle would serve best as a character exercise, and a way to demonstrate how well they do or do not understand the subtleties possible in a game of D&D.
"I start ripping up the floor!"
"Wut?"
"I'm going to dig a hole out under the door!"
"...Alright then."
I mean, Dash should absolutely be playing her bard as if they were Daring Do, to her own detriment, and possibly go through three or four characters in the session because she's an idiot. :D
Yeah, if we want the girls to play against type, then several of my suggestions just won't work. Though I will note that a "demon-blooded" race is a fairly generic concept for any RPG system with physical incarnations of evil. And speaking of evil, I can't help but imagining Rarity pausing in her drama just long enough to dominate the in-game economy. Seriously, that girl could conquer the world without anyone knowing and look good while doing it.
The way I would do it.
Since Twilight is making pre-gens I would have her make characters she thinks her friends would like. Those are of course the kinds you typically see in a story like this.
So with Fluttershy in mind, she makes an animal-focused druid. For Rainbow Dash, she makes a high damage Barbarian. For Applejack she makes a Cleric devoted to a god of Home and Family. For Rarity she makes a charismatic Rogue. For Sunset she makes a cunning Sorceror. For Pinkie Pie she makes a fun-loving Bard.
A rule of thumb with pregens is that you make 2 or 3 more than the number of players so whoever picks last still has a choice. But because Sci-Twi "knows," which characters the others will pick she makes these completely generic and by the numbers say a Fighter, a Ranger and a Monk.
Of course, none of the girls pick the classes she expected them to and at least two of the "by the numbers," pregens get picked.
I kind of want someone to break the game's action economy, just because that's usually the best way to mess with the game's balance. Maybe Fluttershy takes the sorcerer and clogs every fight with hordes of demons?
Follow up thought. If Rainbow Dash grabs the Rogue Twilight intended for Rarity that enables FanOME's Daring Do idea.
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It was indeed totes adorbs.
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Spike gets to play an animal companion?
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. . . Mmmmmaybe? I haven’t written Spike much, partly because Lectern isn’t in the loop on all the magical shenanigans, and it’s kind of hard to explain a talking dog. On the other hand, Spike seems to have his own Youtube channel, so . . .
When it comes to playing dastardly types my suggestion was to have them be mercenaries focused on profit. That's a Neutral motivation not an evil one. Think of it as playing classic Living Greyhawk treasure hunters rather than Dragonlance style paragons of goodness.
The intended character swapping can go cool places, depending how much they were personalized. A wizard intended for Sunset and one intended for Rarity is already an interesting division, even before Dash paints the whole thing red and slaps on rocket boosters.
Assuming a fast and loose 5E class-race-background dealio for ease of conceptualising?
I'd actually nominate Pinkie for the Paladin, both for alliterative purposes and for watching her channel Maud and her father for playing the fun police.
Not to monopolize, but
>Attempt at voices goes comedically poorly, Twilight loosens up after Lecturn lecture and plays that angle more
>Players mostly run roughshod over the names (I recall a game where the DM finally just named a major city Detroit to save time and attention)
>Rarity for companion druid, because MINIONS
>AJ and ooc knowledge struggle
The "You all meet in a tavern" worked for dragonlance, but this seems like a good spot for a dungeon crawl. Maybe
>hired by rich dude as escorts through a monstery maze
>"tutorial" section with the npc being unhelpful and obnoxious, basic puzzle or two, basic fight
>npc vaporized by trap
>...WITH THE MAP AND WHY WE WERE DOWN HERE TO BEGIN WITH
>Key to get out is at the bottom, of course
>pregens carefully don't have shape stone or a port that can get them out
>Figure out what he was after, get the gold, get out with your lives
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Don’t worry about monopolizing—as far as I’m concerned, input is good, and I like pretty much all these, to one extent or another. I chuckled out loud at the adventure outline.
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Since you were planning if for the abilities, why not pick-from-three backstories?
>I went to magic academy
>*...to impress women and/or men
>*...to prove to father I'm not useless
>*...to shoot fire out of my hands, fire is pretty, mind your own business
>I'm following these weirdoes down into a monster infested ruin
>*...because I'm still paying off the repairs from the last time
>*...because I need booze money
>*...because ruins are full of cool magic stuff and I want a flying carpet or a staff that shoots lightning or something
My cousin plays a bear totem barbarian multi-classed into battle master fighter, and he is terrifying. He can/will fight anything, and is death on swarms of smaller creatures. Gruul by name and Gruul by nature.
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Fighter-barbarian combinations universally seem to be pretty good blunt instruments. My character Grey of Duskdale started as a fighter (samurai) but, unexpectedly, developed in-story reasons to multiclass as barbarian. He always has been the group’s tank, but now he’s become a disproportionately tougher and nastier wrecking ball—though at least he seems to be a more cerebral sort than Gruul!
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Yeah, once Gruul rages he will go straight at the nearest, biggest thing he can find. It's how my cousin compensates for having a minimum fifteen-something damage per hit, with a potential six swings if he crits and action-surges. If he fought tactically he'd put undue strain on the DM's scenarios.
Which is funnier?
Twilight starting with an easy encounter because they’re novices only for their real world teamwork experience to translate resulting in them crushing it.
Or Twilight starting with a tough encounter because she expecting their skilled teamwork to translate. Only for them to all get in each other’s way and be forced into an ignominious retreat.
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That . . . is a darn good question. The latter might translate well to Arkonfleight’s idea of the patron NPC being vaporized mid-adventure. I’ll have to think on that.
Self-written adventure or prewritten module?
I still think "Where she picked it up" is important information, at least in passing. After all, what's a ttrpg introduction without "This one time, my character..."?
I can't see the shadowbolts spending frivolous time, and if they did it would have been an information gathering tool more than a game.
The banter is going to be important as well, the other story that comes up is whatever absurd in-joke gets brought up now and again.
I don't know if a single combat is workable, it's a pretty combat focused system (barring offbrand blurring) and having Fluttershy's character push blocks isn't likely to be entertaining for long.
I would suggest a Glados or Shodan-alike, something they can communicate with in a position to help or hinder them, but that's difficult to murder.
Will also suggest a combat/puzzle encounter at some point, like
>puzzleboard in center opens the several doors around the room based on cryptic (on a side note, Twilight cryptic might be a bit much for most of the party) clues
>'wrong' answers produce a troublesome monster, breaking the board opens all the doors
>some kind of time limit or automated sequence to keep the pressure on for locating the exit sequence
Away from dungeon crawling, there's the classic murder mystery, locating an object, investigating a strange occurence, etc. Dungeon crawls just focus the party into simpler goals without the distraction of "How about we abandon the current quest and become sky pirates" or "All this intrigue is tiresome, imma fireball the king.".
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Either way you could get some mileage out of Twilight having to swiftly recalibrate the balance of her planned future encounters on the fly.
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Realised I was retreading a bit.
Spoopy cult village would have an investigation segment for the first bit, then can segue to combat anytime. You can toss in a minidungeon for the end, even.
Tutorial npc going missing works anywhere, of course.
I just figure combat's enough of a system focus that doing the whole explanation and tactics and minis and etc. etc. all in a lump at the end is going to be rushed. Toss some fodder, zombies, skeletons, planty wolves at them so they can figure it out (and use some spell slots) first. On that note, Dash running out of slots sounds like an excellent learning experience for her.
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Essentially, the idea would be to familiarize and make them comfortable with the usual solutions: Talky, Skilly, Magicy, Murdery. Then they can be turned loose on problems and choose how to deal with them or figure out their own.
For banter, I'd suggest the Fell's Five IDW comics for inspiration.
I just hate being half the comments on a thing, is all.
>Proceeds to dump a jillion words of disjointed greentext
>Friend is playing a moderately psychopathic halfling that dresses like a human child to bait predators because drama apparently needs applied with a backhoe
>Party grabs a "person of interest" off the street for interrogation, all the party is aid anothering to boost intimidation rolls
>Spooky halfling with knives tells him to take a seat
>Immediately in the ooc chat: "(friend's character) pulls her mask off to reveal she's Chris Hansen in a really good disguise"
>Every one of their characters since is ooc Chris Hansen in a really good disguise
>Different friend is dming, we're dealing with an obnoxious religious bureaucrat
>Absolutely nails the one priest from Princess Bride
>five minutes of in-jokes and memes ensue
>discover he's never actually seen the movie
>discover the accent was an accident
>still spend the rest of the session trying to get him to say "mawwiage"
>spend a game dealing with a guy justifying being a gigantic yayhead be having an evil alignment
> decide to make a less crap and more team playery evil guy, end up with a cannibalistic gnoll that's only not an assassin for class clarity reasons (magically invisible and silent people with greatswords are kind of off model)
>everyone else showed up with the usual assortment of psychopaths (including the halfling from earlier, because serial killing is CG, apparently)
>end up the most reasonable person in the party and playing essentially a border collie to have the party not implode
>working for a jerk, payout rapidly becoming not worth dealing with him
>almost as bad as some managers i've worked in proximity to
>Stiffs the party of heavily armed, unstable mercenaries
>Tells my character to go fetch a bone
>character still has his femurs in a bag somewhere
>playing 4E (only notable for how awful the group was, not the system)
>DM is ripping off Seven Samurai because I suggested it when he was looking for ideas and that was literally it for suggestions
>playing an effectively-banished kobold from Totally-not-anti-dragon-rebellion-soviet-russia (complete with wave tactics and sketchy supersoldier programs)
>over two months of weekly 8-10 hour sessions, we have assembled the group, watched two people awkwardly flirting, and contemplated gnawing our own limbs off to get away from these people
>literally, that 70ish hours has accomplished two combats and everyone being reminded of the plot, how their characters work, how dice work, etc. several hundred times each
>cue internal screaming
>finally go out and raid an orcish outpost, which takes all session and an hour of another
>we can steal their boat, or burn it
>everyone but me and the buddy that found this game sit on the dock for the next ten hours (session ran long) arguing in circles
>clear out the buildings because CONSUMMATE PROFESSIONAL
>take all the loot I can get my grubby mitts on and start piling it on the orc boat, because I am in favor of not burning a perfectly good boat
>A weedy little kobold casually walking by the rest of the arguing party with all the dosh and supplies, 50 pounds or less at a time
>okay, that's done, what now
>well, all the buildings got loaded off the boat in the first place...
>proceed to deconstruct the entire outpost and load it back
>one piece at a time, because weedy git
>talk ranger (buddy's character) into using nature magic to remove traces of buildings
>even the dm is fed up, because he's cranky and sleep deprived, announces it's nearly dawn, when more orc probably show up
>tell the rest of the party to get off the dock, it's leaving with the rest of the outpost
>"b-but we still haven't decided on the boat"
>all the loot's on the orc boat, deal with it
>carve CROATAN on a piece of wood and leave it
>sunk the bodies earlier, no other traces
>and that's how one weedy git stole an entire orcish outpost (with slight elf help).