Min-Maxer [Yuletide 2018]
Jan 3, 2019 23:23:19 GMT
Post by Dtmahanen on Jan 3, 2019 23:23:19 GMT
Warning. Warning. This story contains copious amounts of Dungeons and Dragons. And not the story-telling of DnD, but the actual nitty-gritty, dice-rolling, character-creation bit of it. I originally made this fic for Minty as her Yuletide gift for this year, but this is also the first real time I've gotten to write about my other great passion, DnD. As such, I probably get more detailed about...well, the details, than I probably should, but it was fun to write regardless. I hope you all enjoy...
Min-Maxer
“Come on, come on, where are they? Where did I put the ruddy things?”
If one didn’t know any better, they’d think that Bill didn’t have a brain in his head. He knew that he was going to have company shortly, and he was mostly prepared. There were snacks on the table (mostly candy and chips, though, he’s not the best cook), and most everything else was already ready to go.
But then he remembered that dice were important.
See, the annual PC Developers meeting was happening soon, and it was in Goldenrod this year. In a sense, he was hosting. However, Bill also had an itch to try something he hadn’t done since his (admittedly short-lived) days at university. So he’d reached out to the other devs, and five of them seemed interested in playing along. Of course, in order for the experience to be the best it could be, everyone needed to prepare a little beforehand, and Bill had told them that he needed to be there to oversee their creation.
And he needed those Arceus-damned dice to do so!
{knock knock}
“Oh, bloody hell, they’re early.” Bill slapped his forehead in frustration. “Of course they’d be early, Lanette’s one of them. Dammit, where did I put those-”
Suddenly, he felt a little pat on his shin. Looking down, an eevee was resting his little paw on his leg. He was holding a small, transparent box with a black lid in his jaws.
And yes, there were dice inside.
{knock knock knock} “Bill, are you there?”
“Yeah, just give me a moment! I’ll be right with you!” Hoping that would buy him some time, Bill, proceeded to hoist his little friend in the air and give him a kiss on the head. “Oh, I love you, Persimmon, you little lifesaver! Where’d you find – ah, I’ll bug you about it later. Here,” he said, placing the eevee on the already assembled table, “put that near the other pile and the screen, and try to make it look like they’ve been there a while.” With a little squeak, Persimmon did just that.
And with that last little task taken care of, he finally reached the door.
Two red-haired women were wanting for him on the other side of the threshold. Brigette, the taller one on the left, was adjusting her light blue jacket to accommodate the tiny pichu resting in the stomach pocket, but seeing Bill answer the door, she gave a polite wave.
On the right, hunched over from all of the books and papers she was carrying in her arms, was her sister. Bill was once again impressed by how she was able to keep her glasses from falling from her nose, especially considering the altaria which was currently wrapped around her shoulders. “Can we come in, please?” Lanette winced. “I’m not sure how much longer I can hold this.”
“O-of course, of course, come on in!” Bill replied, gesturing for the two ladies to enter. “Set your stuff down on the table, I’ve got everything set up already.”
Lanette rushed over to the table, and was about to haphazardly slam everything all over the place before she saw the whole set-up. All sorts of junk food was positioned in the center, of course, but that wasn’t the centerpiece. There were three chairs lining the table, two at each side and one at the head. Each side chair was lined up with a sheet of paper, four six-sided dice, and a pencil. The head of the table, meanwhile, was adorned with a myriad of items. An ornately decorated cardboard screen was the centerpiece, with a scene depicting a massive red combating a party of adventurers emblazoned on the front. It hid a laptop computer, already loaded onto a screen displaying every sort of fantasy race imaginable. Alongside the computer were dice of all different shapes and sizes, from four- to twenty-sided. And of course, there was Persimmon lying in front of the screen, trying his best to look cute for the new guests.
In short, everything one would need for the character creation session of a Dungeons and Dragons game.
“Ooh, you’ve got the new edition stuff,” Brigette exclaimed, running over to the table herself. “I’ve never played 5e before, just 3.5. Is there a lot of number-crunching in this one?”
“Hopefully not,” Bill replied, grabbing a couple of chips from the bowl, “especially considering Lanette’s never played before.”
“I dunno about that, though,” Brigette laughed. “I’ve told her a bunch of horror stories about some of the numbers I’ve had to deal with in the past, and they only seemed to make her more excited.”
As if on cue, the whole table rattled as Lanette slammed into one of the side chairs, her huge stack of notes thumping onto the tabletop. “So, what’ll we be up against?”
Bill and Brigette gave her a quizzical look. “Um…what do you mean by that?” Bill asked.
“Exactly as I just asked,” she continued, moving one of her braided pigtails behind her ears. “I want to know what we’ll be up against. I’ll want to counter it as best I can, right?”
“Oh. OOOOOH!” Bill, cracking his knuckles, let out a little chuckle. “Yeah, you don’t get to know that.”
“What do you mean?” Lanette responded, a confused expression spreading across your face.
“Exactly as I just said,” Bill quipped, happier than he should’ve been to throw Lanette’s words back at her. He didn’t get to do that often, so he relished the moment. “A lot of the fun of the game is not knowing what I’m going to throw at you, and seeing how the party responds to it.”
“Well, how am I supposed to be able to efficiently counter the enemy if I don’t know what they are? Isn’t that the whole point of battling?”
“That’s not how – argh, this is already turning out how I feared. Brigette, a little help please?”
“I told you this was gonna happen, Bill,” Brigette laughed, taking the seat opposite to her sister. “You know better than anyone how she much more stubborn she is with you than, like, anyone else.”
Bill’s face turned a deep scarlet. What could she possibly mean by that? It’s not like I…oh wait… “Could we not talk about that?”
“Of course.” Giving Bill a wink, she turned to Lanette. “Look, I’ve played this before, like I said, so I’ll give you some basics before the whole character creation starts.”
“Fine, go ahead,” Lanette said.
“So, basically,” Brigette continued, “Dungeons and Dragons is basically collaborative story-telling with some luck based elements. The Game Master – that’d be Bill – plans each session and presides over the game. He makes the scenarios, locations, NPC’s, enemies, the works. The rest of the players have characters, sure, but they’re sort of along for the ride.”
“It’s actually a little bit the reverse of how you were thinking it,” Bill interjected. “I know your capabilities so I can plan encounters involving all of the players. Think of it a bit how a challenger goes through the Battle Factory in Hoenn, and you have a small comparison to how I run things.”
“Then why did I make all of these Arceus-damned notes?!” Lanette cried, gesturing to the pages and books resting by her seat. “Did I not need to plan at all?”
“Lanette, that’s what today’s for!” He laughed, running his hand through his auburn hair. “Not everything about the game is numbers, you know.”
Lanette let out a sigh, slumping over in her seat. “And to think I made all that clutter in my house for nothing. You could’ve told us this ahead of time, you know!”
“Eh, yeah, that probably would’ve made things – wait, us?” He turned to Brigette. “You planned ahead too?”
In response, she reached into her pack and took out a sheet of paper. It was a sheet nearly identical to the one on the table, but entirely filled out, complete with numbers and traits already scrawled across its surface. “I already had an idea, so I made my character ahead of time. Is that alright?”
“Uh, give it here, let me have a look.”
It…was a good-looking character, all things considered. Brigette had clearly done some research on how to make a character, but also clearly had an idea of the kind of thing she wanted to play. He hadn’t expected her to pick a tiefling – a half human, half devil – and definitely hadn’t expected her to be a beastmaster ranger as well. Those things were notoriously badly designed, so it was a bit of a shock for him (and perhaps a bit of a welcome surprise). And taking a look at the animal companion she picked, as he’d specified that they’d all be at level 3 –
“Um…you do know that a pikachu isn’t in the monster manual, right?”
“I know,” Brigette exclaimed, “but I thought we could spend some time homebrewing it. Look, I even made some notes on how I thought it could go. And besides…” She reached into her coat pocket and picked up her sleeping pichu companion. “I just think it would be great to have Ohmy in the game with me, you know?”
Bill had wanted to fight it. He really did. Brigette knew how tricky homebrewing was, surely. And with newcomers at the table? It would be even worse.
But how could he say no to that cuteness.
“Let’s talk about it after we make Lanette’s character,” he relented, “but for now, I think it’s okay. I can absolutely work with that.”
“Awesome, thanks Bill!” She placed her character sheet on the table over the (now unnecessary) blank sheet already placed there. “Now, let’s see if we can get my little sister as excited as I am.”
-------------------
“So, the first thing you’ll need to do is roll for your stats,” Bill began.
“Why would I need to roll?” Lanette asked. “I found that players can just pick certain stats and work with those. I believe it’s called Standard Array, right?”
“You can, but I’d be remiss not to mention that you can potentially have much better stats if you roll for them.”
“But also potentially worse ones.”
“Well, that’s part of the fun of it, at least for me.” He gestured towards the six-sided dice. “You wanna give it a go?”
Bill could tell that Lanette was hesitant. He knew her history of often going for the most efficient route towards solving a problem. It’s why most every Trainer agrees that the Hoenn PC Box system is the most effective of all the regions. However, it was also the ugliest, and sometimes that flavor is important. There’s a reason why everyone thought Cassius’ PC Box design was the best, even though it was surprisingly cumbersome to actually use. It just looked the prettiest.
“You don’t have to roll if you don’t want,” Brigette intervened, “but I personally find it fun.”
Lanette let out a heavy sigh. “If you say so.” She reluctantly grabbed some six-sided dice. “So how do you want me to roll?”
“It’s pretty simple, to be honest,” Bill said. “Roll four dice, and get rid of the lowest number. Do that six times, and you’re done.”
She let out a frustrated sigh. This is what Bill was worried about with Lanette. She’s normally so much more upbeat than this, but any sign of something inefficient or against how she thinks something should work, and she deflates like a balloon.
“If it makes you feel any better, this is always the most annoying part,” he continues. “The actually character creation is more fun.”
“Well, we’d already be there if I could just use the damn array!” Lanette retorted. “Why don’t we just do that?”
“Look, I’ll tell you what,” Brigette intervened. “Let’s do one round of actual dice rolling. If you don’t like what you get, we’ll just go with the array. Sound good, Bill?”
“I was actually just about to suggest that,” Bill said. “Along with one other thing.”
“And what might that be?” Lanette asked.
Wordlessly, Bill picked Percy up from where he was resting on the table, and walked him over to Lanette, where he plopped him on her head. The little eevee immediately curled up on her orange hair and began to purr.
“Fuzz therapy,” Bill giggled. “Fuzz therapy?”
Letting out yet another sigh, Lanette gave Percy a quick scratch on his neck scruff. A little smile appeared on her face.
“Fuzz therapy.”
All told, Lanette was actually pretty happy that she chose to roll in the end. In the Standard Array, the lowest score one can receive is an 8. Her lowest ended up being a 9. She also rolled a 17, far better than the top score of the array, with the rest falling between 11 and 13. Good stuff all around, and Bill let her know as such. Plus, the fuzz therapist was working his magic, calming Lanette considerably from before.
But now came the tricky part.
“Alright, now it’s time to pick your race and class,” Bill said. He glanced at Lanette’s note pile. “I take it you’ve already done extensive research?”
“Yes, but it’s extraordinarily difficult for me to decide what to play when I don’t know how to optimize to the other players. I know that Brigette made a ranger, and because of that I feel like I should be a melee fighter, but I don’t know-”
“Wait, why do you say should?” Brigette interjected.
“It’s a simple deductive process,” Lanette continued. “Rangers are long-range fighters that have some magic, so I thought, so I could best complement her, that I should be a big beefy melee fighter, but I don’t know if I want to be that-”
“Then don’t.”
The room was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry, pardon?”
“Then don’t,” Bill repeated. “If you don’t want to be a melee fighter, you don’t need to be.”
“But…” Lanette began to shuffle through her notes, tossing random sheets of paper into the air. Percy was having fun pawing at some of the floating leaflets. “But I already thought of a few race/class combinations that would be highly efficient, and I don’t want to-”
“Do you remember what Karen always says?” Bill interjected.
“…I don’t follow.”
“What Karen says about the pokémon you choose as companions and partners?”
“…that strength doesn’t really matter, and you should just pick the pokémon you like the most?”
“Well, the same holds true for Dungeons and Dragons parties.” Bill continued. “Except in this particular case it’s collective. I’ve heard of groups that just have barbarians, or rogues, or clerics, or some other weird gimmick, and they’d have more fun than groups that are perfectly balanced because it was weird, and it was fun. Others like that balance, but still pick characters that aren’t perfect – hell, not even that strong or efficient at all – and still had a great time. So, I’ll ask it again.” He pointed his pencil at Lanette, Percy miming him with his paw. “What do you want to play?”
Lanette was silent. There was a part of Bill that considered that this was probably the most coherent that he’d ever sounded, and it wasn’t even about PC tech. But he was on a roll, and Lanette just had to…roll with it.
“There, uh…” Lanette paused. “There was this one class that looked interesting. The one where you could manipulate magic? That would be...fun.”
“Sorcerer, eh? I like it! You have a race or backstory in mind?”
“I’ve got a few ideas, but maybe you could help a little.”
“It’d be my pleasure.”
If one didn’t know any better, they’d think that Bill didn’t have a brain in his head. He knew that he was going to have company shortly, and he was mostly prepared. There were snacks on the table (mostly candy and chips, though, he’s not the best cook), and most everything else was already ready to go.
But then he remembered that dice were important.
See, the annual PC Developers meeting was happening soon, and it was in Goldenrod this year. In a sense, he was hosting. However, Bill also had an itch to try something he hadn’t done since his (admittedly short-lived) days at university. So he’d reached out to the other devs, and five of them seemed interested in playing along. Of course, in order for the experience to be the best it could be, everyone needed to prepare a little beforehand, and Bill had told them that he needed to be there to oversee their creation.
And he needed those Arceus-damned dice to do so!
{knock knock}
“Oh, bloody hell, they’re early.” Bill slapped his forehead in frustration. “Of course they’d be early, Lanette’s one of them. Dammit, where did I put those-”
Suddenly, he felt a little pat on his shin. Looking down, an eevee was resting his little paw on his leg. He was holding a small, transparent box with a black lid in his jaws.
And yes, there were dice inside.
{knock knock knock} “Bill, are you there?”
“Yeah, just give me a moment! I’ll be right with you!” Hoping that would buy him some time, Bill, proceeded to hoist his little friend in the air and give him a kiss on the head. “Oh, I love you, Persimmon, you little lifesaver! Where’d you find – ah, I’ll bug you about it later. Here,” he said, placing the eevee on the already assembled table, “put that near the other pile and the screen, and try to make it look like they’ve been there a while.” With a little squeak, Persimmon did just that.
And with that last little task taken care of, he finally reached the door.
Two red-haired women were wanting for him on the other side of the threshold. Brigette, the taller one on the left, was adjusting her light blue jacket to accommodate the tiny pichu resting in the stomach pocket, but seeing Bill answer the door, she gave a polite wave.
On the right, hunched over from all of the books and papers she was carrying in her arms, was her sister. Bill was once again impressed by how she was able to keep her glasses from falling from her nose, especially considering the altaria which was currently wrapped around her shoulders. “Can we come in, please?” Lanette winced. “I’m not sure how much longer I can hold this.”
“O-of course, of course, come on in!” Bill replied, gesturing for the two ladies to enter. “Set your stuff down on the table, I’ve got everything set up already.”
Lanette rushed over to the table, and was about to haphazardly slam everything all over the place before she saw the whole set-up. All sorts of junk food was positioned in the center, of course, but that wasn’t the centerpiece. There were three chairs lining the table, two at each side and one at the head. Each side chair was lined up with a sheet of paper, four six-sided dice, and a pencil. The head of the table, meanwhile, was adorned with a myriad of items. An ornately decorated cardboard screen was the centerpiece, with a scene depicting a massive red combating a party of adventurers emblazoned on the front. It hid a laptop computer, already loaded onto a screen displaying every sort of fantasy race imaginable. Alongside the computer were dice of all different shapes and sizes, from four- to twenty-sided. And of course, there was Persimmon lying in front of the screen, trying his best to look cute for the new guests.
In short, everything one would need for the character creation session of a Dungeons and Dragons game.
“Ooh, you’ve got the new edition stuff,” Brigette exclaimed, running over to the table herself. “I’ve never played 5e before, just 3.5. Is there a lot of number-crunching in this one?”
“Hopefully not,” Bill replied, grabbing a couple of chips from the bowl, “especially considering Lanette’s never played before.”
“I dunno about that, though,” Brigette laughed. “I’ve told her a bunch of horror stories about some of the numbers I’ve had to deal with in the past, and they only seemed to make her more excited.”
As if on cue, the whole table rattled as Lanette slammed into one of the side chairs, her huge stack of notes thumping onto the tabletop. “So, what’ll we be up against?”
Bill and Brigette gave her a quizzical look. “Um…what do you mean by that?” Bill asked.
“Exactly as I just asked,” she continued, moving one of her braided pigtails behind her ears. “I want to know what we’ll be up against. I’ll want to counter it as best I can, right?”
“Oh. OOOOOH!” Bill, cracking his knuckles, let out a little chuckle. “Yeah, you don’t get to know that.”
“What do you mean?” Lanette responded, a confused expression spreading across your face.
“Exactly as I just said,” Bill quipped, happier than he should’ve been to throw Lanette’s words back at her. He didn’t get to do that often, so he relished the moment. “A lot of the fun of the game is not knowing what I’m going to throw at you, and seeing how the party responds to it.”
“Well, how am I supposed to be able to efficiently counter the enemy if I don’t know what they are? Isn’t that the whole point of battling?”
“That’s not how – argh, this is already turning out how I feared. Brigette, a little help please?”
“I told you this was gonna happen, Bill,” Brigette laughed, taking the seat opposite to her sister. “You know better than anyone how she much more stubborn she is with you than, like, anyone else.”
Bill’s face turned a deep scarlet. What could she possibly mean by that? It’s not like I…oh wait… “Could we not talk about that?”
“Of course.” Giving Bill a wink, she turned to Lanette. “Look, I’ve played this before, like I said, so I’ll give you some basics before the whole character creation starts.”
“Fine, go ahead,” Lanette said.
“So, basically,” Brigette continued, “Dungeons and Dragons is basically collaborative story-telling with some luck based elements. The Game Master – that’d be Bill – plans each session and presides over the game. He makes the scenarios, locations, NPC’s, enemies, the works. The rest of the players have characters, sure, but they’re sort of along for the ride.”
“It’s actually a little bit the reverse of how you were thinking it,” Bill interjected. “I know your capabilities so I can plan encounters involving all of the players. Think of it a bit how a challenger goes through the Battle Factory in Hoenn, and you have a small comparison to how I run things.”
“Then why did I make all of these Arceus-damned notes?!” Lanette cried, gesturing to the pages and books resting by her seat. “Did I not need to plan at all?”
“Lanette, that’s what today’s for!” He laughed, running his hand through his auburn hair. “Not everything about the game is numbers, you know.”
Lanette let out a sigh, slumping over in her seat. “And to think I made all that clutter in my house for nothing. You could’ve told us this ahead of time, you know!”
“Eh, yeah, that probably would’ve made things – wait, us?” He turned to Brigette. “You planned ahead too?”
In response, she reached into her pack and took out a sheet of paper. It was a sheet nearly identical to the one on the table, but entirely filled out, complete with numbers and traits already scrawled across its surface. “I already had an idea, so I made my character ahead of time. Is that alright?”
“Uh, give it here, let me have a look.”
It…was a good-looking character, all things considered. Brigette had clearly done some research on how to make a character, but also clearly had an idea of the kind of thing she wanted to play. He hadn’t expected her to pick a tiefling – a half human, half devil – and definitely hadn’t expected her to be a beastmaster ranger as well. Those things were notoriously badly designed, so it was a bit of a shock for him (and perhaps a bit of a welcome surprise). And taking a look at the animal companion she picked, as he’d specified that they’d all be at level 3 –
“Um…you do know that a pikachu isn’t in the monster manual, right?”
“I know,” Brigette exclaimed, “but I thought we could spend some time homebrewing it. Look, I even made some notes on how I thought it could go. And besides…” She reached into her coat pocket and picked up her sleeping pichu companion. “I just think it would be great to have Ohmy in the game with me, you know?”
Bill had wanted to fight it. He really did. Brigette knew how tricky homebrewing was, surely. And with newcomers at the table? It would be even worse.
But how could he say no to that cuteness.
“Let’s talk about it after we make Lanette’s character,” he relented, “but for now, I think it’s okay. I can absolutely work with that.”
“Awesome, thanks Bill!” She placed her character sheet on the table over the (now unnecessary) blank sheet already placed there. “Now, let’s see if we can get my little sister as excited as I am.”
-------------------
“So, the first thing you’ll need to do is roll for your stats,” Bill began.
“Why would I need to roll?” Lanette asked. “I found that players can just pick certain stats and work with those. I believe it’s called Standard Array, right?”
“You can, but I’d be remiss not to mention that you can potentially have much better stats if you roll for them.”
“But also potentially worse ones.”
“Well, that’s part of the fun of it, at least for me.” He gestured towards the six-sided dice. “You wanna give it a go?”
Bill could tell that Lanette was hesitant. He knew her history of often going for the most efficient route towards solving a problem. It’s why most every Trainer agrees that the Hoenn PC Box system is the most effective of all the regions. However, it was also the ugliest, and sometimes that flavor is important. There’s a reason why everyone thought Cassius’ PC Box design was the best, even though it was surprisingly cumbersome to actually use. It just looked the prettiest.
“You don’t have to roll if you don’t want,” Brigette intervened, “but I personally find it fun.”
Lanette let out a heavy sigh. “If you say so.” She reluctantly grabbed some six-sided dice. “So how do you want me to roll?”
“It’s pretty simple, to be honest,” Bill said. “Roll four dice, and get rid of the lowest number. Do that six times, and you’re done.”
She let out a frustrated sigh. This is what Bill was worried about with Lanette. She’s normally so much more upbeat than this, but any sign of something inefficient or against how she thinks something should work, and she deflates like a balloon.
“If it makes you feel any better, this is always the most annoying part,” he continues. “The actually character creation is more fun.”
“Well, we’d already be there if I could just use the damn array!” Lanette retorted. “Why don’t we just do that?”
“Look, I’ll tell you what,” Brigette intervened. “Let’s do one round of actual dice rolling. If you don’t like what you get, we’ll just go with the array. Sound good, Bill?”
“I was actually just about to suggest that,” Bill said. “Along with one other thing.”
“And what might that be?” Lanette asked.
Wordlessly, Bill picked Percy up from where he was resting on the table, and walked him over to Lanette, where he plopped him on her head. The little eevee immediately curled up on her orange hair and began to purr.
“Fuzz therapy,” Bill giggled. “Fuzz therapy?”
Letting out yet another sigh, Lanette gave Percy a quick scratch on his neck scruff. A little smile appeared on her face.
“Fuzz therapy.”
-------------------------
All told, Lanette was actually pretty happy that she chose to roll in the end. In the Standard Array, the lowest score one can receive is an 8. Her lowest ended up being a 9. She also rolled a 17, far better than the top score of the array, with the rest falling between 11 and 13. Good stuff all around, and Bill let her know as such. Plus, the fuzz therapist was working his magic, calming Lanette considerably from before.
But now came the tricky part.
“Alright, now it’s time to pick your race and class,” Bill said. He glanced at Lanette’s note pile. “I take it you’ve already done extensive research?”
“Yes, but it’s extraordinarily difficult for me to decide what to play when I don’t know how to optimize to the other players. I know that Brigette made a ranger, and because of that I feel like I should be a melee fighter, but I don’t know-”
“Wait, why do you say should?” Brigette interjected.
“It’s a simple deductive process,” Lanette continued. “Rangers are long-range fighters that have some magic, so I thought, so I could best complement her, that I should be a big beefy melee fighter, but I don’t know if I want to be that-”
“Then don’t.”
The room was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry, pardon?”
“Then don’t,” Bill repeated. “If you don’t want to be a melee fighter, you don’t need to be.”
“But…” Lanette began to shuffle through her notes, tossing random sheets of paper into the air. Percy was having fun pawing at some of the floating leaflets. “But I already thought of a few race/class combinations that would be highly efficient, and I don’t want to-”
“Do you remember what Karen always says?” Bill interjected.
“…I don’t follow.”
“What Karen says about the pokémon you choose as companions and partners?”
“…that strength doesn’t really matter, and you should just pick the pokémon you like the most?”
“Well, the same holds true for Dungeons and Dragons parties.” Bill continued. “Except in this particular case it’s collective. I’ve heard of groups that just have barbarians, or rogues, or clerics, or some other weird gimmick, and they’d have more fun than groups that are perfectly balanced because it was weird, and it was fun. Others like that balance, but still pick characters that aren’t perfect – hell, not even that strong or efficient at all – and still had a great time. So, I’ll ask it again.” He pointed his pencil at Lanette, Percy miming him with his paw. “What do you want to play?”
Lanette was silent. There was a part of Bill that considered that this was probably the most coherent that he’d ever sounded, and it wasn’t even about PC tech. But he was on a roll, and Lanette just had to…roll with it.
“There, uh…” Lanette paused. “There was this one class that looked interesting. The one where you could manipulate magic? That would be...fun.”
“Sorcerer, eh? I like it! You have a race or backstory in mind?”
“I’ve got a few ideas, but maybe you could help a little.”
“It’d be my pleasure.”
