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Ainōryoku Sentai Nightmærangers! SS01: Nightmærangers Play A TTRPG!
🕑 Added 2024-12-19 15:06:50 +0000 UTCWhen Tammy had floated the idea of another teambuilding party, asking for ideas of what they could do, Sanny given her suggestion half-expecting the middle-schooler would say no. Instead, the Nightmæranger’s leader had happily taken the suggestion. Tammy had of course heard of the game, sometimes seen it depicted on TV or in movies, but she’d never gotten the chance to play it before. She figured now was as good a time as any, and Ate Sanny seemingly decided to just roll with it.
Hence why the team was spending a Saturday morning at Kuya Kim’s again, this time sitting around the dining table instead of the coffee table in the living room. His family actually had two dining tables: one was right next to the kitchen and was a plain wood table that the family ate their usual meals at; the other was a bigger, fancier table for when they had visitors or for special events. The latter was often unused for its intended purpose, so that was where Kuya Kim, Ryan and Lori did their homework, or in this instance entertained guests.
“So… how do we play this game?” Kim asked as they sat, while Sanny handed out the sheets of paper as well as the printouts of the relevant rules. Tammy had been surprised to learn that most of the rules of the game were available in the public domain, enough that they could use it to play. “I mean, I’ve heard of this sort of game before, but I don’t really know how it’s supposed to be played.”
“Oh, it’s easy,” Ate Sanny said, the tall woman—although Tammy was beginning to suspect that she hadn’t originally been that tall before she got her powers—sitting at the head of the table. There was a bunch of dice in front of her, and while some were the familiar six-sided cubes, there were others that looking strange, like a triangular four-sided one that looked like a bare feet hazard and another that was practically a ball. “Depending on how we do it, it can be a story-telling game, a combat simulation, or an argument generator,” she said, a shit-eating grin on her face.
Wait, what? “Argument generator?” Tammy said, confused.
Ate Sanny nodded cheerfully. “Arguing over the rules is a traditional part of the experience. Basically, you all make up characters, while I put them through an adventure.”
“And all this is for…?” Jas said, gesturing at the printouts.
“Rules for making up the characters we’re playing as,” was the prompt reply.
Kim frowned. “…why are there rules for making up characters?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be a grown-ups game if there weren’t any,” Sanny said. “So, first, let’s go over how to make a character.” She picked up one of the printouts and flipped it open while her other hand picked up cubic dice. “Now, everyone take these dice and we’ll start rolling up your characters. What classes do you want to play?”
“…what’s a class?” Kim asked immediately.
Tammy could almost literally see Sanny’s train of thought slamming into the pile of debris on the track. “All right, let’s go back a little. The game has twelve character classes that you can play as….”
“…now what do you all want to play as?” Sanny asked again an explanation later.
“So, what’s the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer?” Kim asked as he flipped through the printouts. “They’re the same thing, right?”
“Not in the game,” Sanny said. “Basically, a wizard can know a lot of spells but needs to prepare them before he can use them, while a sorcerer only has a few spells, but can use them at any time, provided he has enough spell slots.”
“Spells slots?”
“How many times you can use spells in a day,” Sanny clarified.
“Wait, why? Aren’t wizards supposed to be able to use magic all the time?”
“Not in this game.”
Kim stared at the printouts. “I think I’ll be a fighter, then.” he said with a sigh. “Being a wizard doesn’t sound fun. From what you said, a fighter doesn’t have anything to keep track of, so I can just play the game. I’m still not sure as to how that actually goes…?”
“I’ll be a cleric,” Jas said. “That’s the one that heals everyone using the power of God, right?”
“… sure,” Sanny said, before quickly turning towards Tammy. “How about you, boss? What are you going to play as?”
“I’ll be a paladin,” Tammy said. “That’s the knight with the magic powers, right?”
“… technically they’re holy warriors of the forces of good, but… yes. What about you, Willy?”
Willy just stared at the printout for a moment, then turned towards Tammy. “Which should I choose, Tammy?”
“You can pick whichever one you want.”
Willy considered that. “I’ll choose whichever it was Tammy chose.”
“So you’ll be a paladin too? All right, then. Now we can finally start rolling up characters. We’ll start with you, boss.” She handed her four dice. “Roll these, disregard the lowest number, and write down the total.”
“What if two of them are the same low number?”
“Then you just disregard one of them.” Sanny looked like she was getting a bit impatient. Her cheek was rippling, and a gash-like mouth opened for a moment, exposing her teeth and tongue before closing again.
“Got it! Now what?”
“Now, do it five more times so you end up with six numbers between six and eighteen…”
Tammy had known playing this game would involve math. She’d heard of it in passing and watched a few videos online of people playing, but she’d underestimated exactly how many numbers were involved. First there was choosing which of their numbers would go to which stats—which had required another sidebar as Sanny explained what stats were—depending on what character they were playing.
Sanny had to make her own character—a sorcerer—to demonstrate how it was done, with everyone following step by step. With a lot of help, they eventually managed make their characters, which were all humans because that way she didn’t have to explain the alternate rules for non-humans. And then there’d been buying their equipment…
“All right,” Ate Sanny said tiredly after two hours of them all making characters. “Now, we can really get started.”
“Question,” Kim said. “Why is everything in feet?”
“The game was made by Americans in the sixties,” Ate Sanny said. "It's normally not a problem."
Kim sighed. "It's things like this that hold the metric system back."
“Hey, no argument from me. So, let’s get started! You are a group of heroic adventurers who have just arrived at the small village of Starter—”
“Starter? Really?” Tammy said.
“The names will get better once I’ve had time to mentally recuperate,” Sanny said. “Anyway, you’ve just arrived in town with nothing but the clothes on your back and the items in your bags. You’re there because the town is having a small problem they can’t solve and sent for you from the nearby town of Tutorial so you would come and fix it.”
“Tutorial,” Tammy said flatly.
“I’ve decided to lean into it,” Sanny said.
“Well, that was a fast recovery. All right, so we came to this time because they have a problem… which is?”
“The note didn’t say. You’ll need to talk to the person who sent for you, which is the mayor.”
“All right, so we talk to the mayor,” Tammy said.
“You don’t know who they are, what they look like, or where they live,” Sanny said promptly.
Tammy frowned in thought, glancing at the others. All three were looking at her, waiting for her to say something. “Uh… what do we do now then?”
“Well… how would you go about looking for someone in a small village you just arrived in?”
“Facebook?”
Sanny sat back against her chair, staring up at the ceiling. Finally, she sighed. “All right, give me your character sheets, I’ll show you how the game is supposed to be played…”
The tall woman’s fingers popping off was still as disturbing as it always was, even if there was no blood. Tammy knows she was being a hypocrite, since people weren’t supposed to grow branches and flowers either, but at least she usually did that when she kind of looked like a plant. Sanny didn’t change her hand in any way, and the fingers just fell off, revealing bare bone and raw muscles before more fingers grew to replace the digits. The detached fingers writhed, the skin breaking open before tentacles burst out, then compressed as the fingers became…
Well, little people. As in little, finger-sized naked people, although they were so small there really wasn’t a lot of detail. Each other them ran with surprising speed across the table to stand in front of each of them, standing on top of the ‘character sheets’ that they’d spent time making.
The little… fairy, Tammy supposed, turned toward Sanny and said, in a surprisingly loud approximation of Tammy’s voice. “I look around. Is there anyone I can ask for suggestions?”
“There are some passersby, but they’re all hurrying away from you, so it doesn’t look like they want to stop and talk,” Sanny said. “However, you see that there’s a nearby public house that seems to be open for business.”
“We go there and ask where the mayor is!” the little Tammy fair declared.
“You enter the public house and find it contains three people. One is a man drinking, another is a woman taking a jug of some sort, and the third is the owner of the public house.”
“I walk up to her, put on a pleasant smile, and ask where the mayor is.”
“All right, I think we get it,” Tammy said, a slightly exasperated look on her face.
“You sure?” Sanny said, a small smile on her face. “I can keep going.”
“Aren’t you essentially playing with yourself?”
“You’ve just described the state of modern gaming,” Sanny said blandly.
Tammy looked around at everyone. “It is clear to everyone how we play?”
“Yeah, but… I don’t see why we needed to make the character sheets for that,” Kim said.
“It’s for when combat, and physical or mental challenges happen in the game,” Sanny said. “Like if you get into an arm-wrestling competition.”
“…I’ll take your word for it,” Kim said, still sounding skeptical.
Despite the inauspicious beginning, things started going smoothly after that as Jas and Kim tentatively began to contribute. Willy had to be prompted, and her contributions, after “What do you want me to do, Tammy?” consisted of “I follow Tammy’s character.” Tammy really should have realized sooner, in hindsight. They went through this every time she taught her cousin how to play a new game, and had to outright tell her to try to win whenever the two of them played. Actually, this might be even harder, because there’s no obvious win condition…
They found the mayor and talked to him, finding out that they’d been called because a family of bears had broken into and moved into the village’s grain stores, making themselves at home. The villagers had been trying to lure them out to no avail, and so had sent for help, and now here they were.
“The bear has made the grain store into its den, and as a result the village has been limited to the grain they have stored in their own homes,” Sanny said. “They ask you to deal with the bear, and in exchange they’re willing to offer you a substantial reward. However, they assert the priority is keeping the grain stores intact, because if anything happens to it, they will be going hungry when winter comes. The mayor asserts repeatedly that there is to be no property damage to the grain stores and the food it contains.”
“Does that even need to be said?” Jas said, an uncharacteristic frown on the normal timid young woman’s face. Coming from a family of rice farmers, that sort of thing was probably second nature to her. “That’s probably the town’s livelihood. It’s probably the only wealth they really have. They’re probably planning to pay us in rice, or whatever grain it is they have. My grandmother told me stories about things like this, where they needed something done and all they had to pay with was rice…”
Well, it was nice to know that Jas seemed to be getting into the game.
“You all arrive at the grain store, staying well away from it so you don’t draw the attention of the bear, which is awake but seems to be resting. The front door of the grain store is broken, meaning that the villagers can’t just close the door to keep it out when it leaves. A villager with a rusty spear who doesn’t seem to know how to use it is nearby, and whose job seems to be to watch the bear rather than trying to keep people away from it. What do you do?”
“We attack the bear?” Kim said.
“Is that a question for everyone or are you telling me what you’re doing?” Sanny said.
“Ate Sanny, how strong is a bear compared to our characters?” Tammy asked.
“That’s a Knowledge check, specifically ‘nature’. Since you don’t have that one, roll the D20 dice—the one that looks like a ball—to check how much general knowledge your character has one the subject.”
“Uh… 8.”
“And your intelligence modifier?”
“10. No, wait, it’s the other number, right? Uh, zero.”
“Well, the number you were trying to beat was 14, so try as you might, you don’t recall enough about bears to be able to specifically compare how strong it is compared to you, besides the fact that it is clearly bigger and stronger. So, nothing you didn’t already know.”
“Ugh… can I roll again?”
Sanny shook her head. “Nope, not today. The others can, though.”
“All right, everyone roll! Let’s see if anyone would know anything about bears!”
The others dutifully rolled. Jas also fell short, and while Kim did manage to roll a 14, he had a low intelligence stat of 8, meaning he also didn’t make it.
Willy got a 20.
For a moment, Sanny looked at the dice suspiciously, then glanced at Kim for some reason. Then she shrugged. “Willy’s character tells you all that the bear is way stronger than the four of you all can handle, and you’d all probably die trying, especially since you don’t have a wizard to conveniently set them on fire with eldritch forces.” She grinned toothily at them, and although her teeth were normal and human, serrated shark teeth were implied.
“Does this mean she knows how to get the bear to come out of the grain storage?” Tammy said hopefully.
“Nope! Try something else,” was the cheerful reply.
Hesitantly, they all looked at each other, and then down at their character sheets.
Sanny sighed. “Do you guys need me to use the help fairies again?”
“That’s what you’re calling them?” Tammy said.
“Please,” Kim said immediately, leaning back on his chair.
The little drone who had just been lying down on the table in from of Kim sat up. “Why don’t we set the grain storehouse on fire and kill the bear that way!” the drone declared in an approximation of Kim’s voice.
Jas frowned. “The mayor just said we shouldn’t damage the grain stores.”
The little drone folded its arms. “Well, do you have a better idea?”
“Well… we could… uh…”
“Right. Let’s set the building on fire!”
“Okay, no setting on fire,” Kim said. “Not while you’re playing for me, anyway. Um… How about we lure the bear out with some food and… uh, block the grain storage entrance somehow to keep the bear from coming back in?”
“Wouldn’t the villagers have tried that already?” Jas said.
“Did they?” Tammy asked Sanny.
Sanny grinned again and shrugged. “Why don’t you ask one of the townsfolk?” she said.
“…but… wouldn’t you be the one telling us anyway?”
“It’s the principle of the thing,” Sanny said.
“You said you don’t have principles.”
“Standards, then.”
Tammy rolled her eyes. “Fine. We asked the nearby townsfolk with the spear if they’ve tried luring the bear out with food.”
“He just barely manages to stay polite as he says that of course that’s the first thing they tried. It didn’t work, since the bear wouldn’t move too far away from the building towards any food they left out, and the villagers thought it was too dangerous to put the food too near.”
“Is there any poison in the town?” Jas said.
Everyone stared at her, even Sanny.
“What?” she said. “Everyone knows if something is going to break into the grain stores once, it can do so again. You shouldn’t leave something like that alive.”
“You can ask the townsfolk,” Sanny said, looking mildly impressed—or amused, it was hard to tell with her.
It turned out the townsfolk did, in fact, have a poison they could use. It was usually meant for rats trying to get into the grain, but the person they got it from was sure it would probably work on bears as well, provided they used a lot.
Tammy had volunteered to bring the bait food to the bear, a piece of venison, since she was wearing the heaviest armor. The meat had been injected with poison and the puncture wound covered in beeswax to hold in the scent, then washed to remove any suspicious smells.
“I walk towards where the bear is hiding, the poisoned meat ready to throw,” Tammy said. “I keep moving as close as possible to get the best chance to get the meat to the bear.”
“You see the bear moving around inside the grain store from fifty feet away. It’s looking at you, but that’s it so far. However, when you reach forty feet, the bear starts to growl at you.”
“I get closer anyway.”
“Once you’re thirty feet away from the bear it gets up and starts moving out of the grain storage. However, it stops just outside of the entrance, and rears up on its hind legs to threaten you.”
“You said thirty feet. Am I close enough to throw the meat at the bear?”
Sanny hummed. “Yes, although you need to make an attack roll to see if the meat lands where you intended to throw it. Where are you throwing it?”
“I throw it straight at the bear, then turn around and run. My roll is… 13. Is that good or bad?”
“Hmm… the meat lands just short of the bear, not actually hitting it. The bear lets out a roar, but doesn’t run after you. Instead, it goes down on all fours, picks up the meat in its teeth and goes back into the grain stores.”
“Does it eat the meat?” Tammy asked.
Sanny hummed, then picked up the d20 dice and rolled them, looking at the result. “The bear eats the meat. At first, nothing seems to happen, but after about an hour you hear the bear roaring loudly. It sounds like it’s in pain. Soon, a horrible smell fills the air as the bear continues to roar. After another hour, however, the roaring stops.”
“Is the bear dead, then?” Jas asked.
“Perhaps you should investigate?” Sanny said brightly. “You know, for the full game experience.”
“Uh… I walk close enough to see if the bear is still moving. Do I see it moving?” Tammy said.
“You see the bear has collapsed on the ground, surrounded by a runny, dark substance, and that in its pained throes the bear spread it everywhere. The bear itself is still alive, and is writhing on the ground. As you watch, it throws up bile, partially-digested meat and blood mixing with the dark substance. The smell is even worse up close, and you see the substance has been spread on the sacks of grain, many of which the bear had clawed open.”
Jas looked horrified. “What—?! The grain!”
“Um, this means we failed, right?” Kim said, looking uncertain. “Because we were trying to keep the grain safe?”
“The villager with the spear starts yelling at your for ruining the grain, waving his weapon angrily,” Sanny said cheerfully. “What do you do now?”
Tammy considered the situation. “How about we call this the tutorial and start a real game now?” she said. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this one.”
The blonde sighed, looking disappointed, then shrugged. “All right. So, that’s a glimpse of what a Tabletop RPG session looks like. I kept it simple because this is your first time, but now that you know what it’s like, what do you think.”
“it’s… pretty boring, isn’t it?” Kim said.
“Well, of course you’d think that, you played the least,” she pointed out. “This isn’t Monopoly where you just sit around waiting your turn, roll dice, and then just move your token. The more you participate, the more fun you have. For example, your character could have suggested something else, like digging a pit and luring the bear towards it, or climbing the grain store building and cutting through the roof so you could get above the bear and take it by surprise that way.” She sighed. “Part of that is my fault. I should have prompted all of you more.”
“So, how would you have handled that situation?” Kim asked.
“Well, first I’d have rolled a wizard and used spells,” Sanny said. “But for you… well, you could have looked for a bow and arrow and put the poison on that. The attack would have drawn the bear out, so when it died you at least it wouldn’t have been in near the grain.”
“Bow and arrow!” Tammy said. “Ugh, I should have thought of that!”
Sanny shrugged. “I’m surprised you didn’t buy any, you had plenty of money left.”
“All right, new game!” Sanny declared. “Something we’ll all like!”
“Fine, fine…” Sanny titled her head for a moment, then nodded and took a deep breath. “The four of you have been asked by the local mayor to check on the wizard Bob, who lives deep in the woods outside of town. He’d been commissioned to make magic floating candles for a local town event and has yet to deliver. As he is usually quite prompt in his deliveries, the mayor is worried and asks you to check on him.”
“Why us?” Tammy said.
“Because everyone is get things ready for the town event, a local summer festival,” Sanny said. “The four of you have just arrived, as this if Kim’s hometown and he’s invited you all to stay for the festival.”
“I did?” Kim said, looking surprised at being put on the spot.
“Yup, you did,” Sanny said. “So tell us, Kim. What’s your town like and what is this festival about?”
“Uh… I don’t know…”
“Then make something up, something fun.”
“Uh, the festival is… ah, the local paper airplane race,” Kim fumbled. “Everyone is competing to see who’s paper airplane design can fly furthest. The winner… ah, gets a special victory cake.” His vice was sounding a bit more confident at the end.
Sanny gave him a thumbs up. “Yup. Jas, you saw the sign coming in, what’s the town called?”
“The town is called of ‘NoBears’, all one word,” Jas said immediately. “Because no bears live nearby.”
Everyone chuckled at that.
So of course, they ran into wolves on the way to the wizard’s house, because Sanny was nasty.
