After six months of delays, buildup, and anticipation, the much ballyhooed original campaign has kicked off. So far all we've done is get in place and get to know each other, and already it's fantastic.
This is a huge group. Most D&D parties are between three and six people. There are eight of us playing, plus the DM, which is Mr S-P. He has been writing and revising this story all year, and he was afraid we wouldn't think it lived up to the hype. No worries. We were all into it. We also spent months coming up with backstories for our own characters, and providing them to him to fit into the story line. It was amazing how he wove eight radically different people into his world, and it all made sense. All we really did was board a boat and sail about a fifth of the way around our route, but that was enough for us to get acquainted with each other (although I know my Miriam has not yet interacted with two of the passengers to speak of). Some of the secrets have been discovered. Some are still a mystery.
Miriam was introduced to the group having a shouting argument with one of her retainers. She travels with her teenage nieces and her cousin's teenage daughter. On the morning of the second day of the voyage, everyone hears her freaking out to discover that the cousin's daughter ran away, sneaking overboard while tug boats were leading us out of the bay (she went back to shore on one of the tugs). The argument had been over how "boring" our adventures were to an Amazon girl of sixteen, who is approaching her maturity (barely). So now my character is trapped on the boat as a hired guard to a dignitary, while her politically powerful cousin's daughter is seeking true excitement. She is barely sleeping, and when she does, she has nightmares about what a bad guardian she is and how she is not ready to be a parent herself, no matter how much she dreams about having her own child. Anxiety is overwhelming right now.
We all gathered upstairs at 7, our regular start time, while Mr S-P set up downstairs. We were told not to come down unless we wanted spoilers. Then we heard shouting, swearing, and a noise I recognized. Everyone frowned and looked at each other. I calmly said, "That's the sound of [Mr S-P] smashing a laptop. For the third time." Now, to be fair, this particular laptop has lasted much longer than it ought to have. Normal people would have replaced it by now. It had a black line across the screen for the last year, maybe year and a half. It grew recently. And last spring, the Mr had a candle burning too close to the back of it, and he burned a hole in the plastic cover, exposing all of the wiring in an inch-wide spot. So when the screen completely failed while he was trying to hook his laptop up to the TV downstairs, it wasn't out of left field. Really, with a few minutes of distance from the event, it was downright funny.
I did not get my table constructed in time. I tried. Boy, I tried. Half of it is really close. The other half is not. We got the legs in place mid-afternoon, and as we flipped it over to test the fit, I learned that my range of motion is much more limited than it used to be. I ended up getting a sprained wrist and a pretty good scrape in the process. That slowed me down for being able to paint and prepare side two. So hopefully by next week it will be done and in place. I just had too many technical difficulties to get it done for the kickoff.
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