Rollin', Rollin,' Rollin'...

3...2..1...and the Geekin' hath begun.

Last week's PowerPoint "Basics of DND" presentation went over about as well as could have been expected, with only a few forest-creature-in-the-headlight moments. So today, at noon, in Assembly Room A, (which one of our party had cleverly booked for "Team Lunch" [not, under any circumstances, "D&D", because we aren't idiots and we knew the property management company would have refused that room invitation]), we assembled and awaited the pizza delivery.

For what in the name of Olidammara is a game of Dungeons and Dragons without friggin' pizza?

The hour struck noon. (It didn't, really. But the smoke detector in the hallway is dying, and it chirped at least a hundred times, so call one of those The Chirp of Noon.)

The energy in the room sizzled. (Or maybe that was just the sound of WiFi fritzing, and the one member of our team who was attempting to join us via Google Hangouts cutting in and out. Oh, yeah. That's what it was. After a couple of aborted attempts, I said "Fuck it" and turned on my iPhone's personal hotspot. So if I go way over on my alloted data this month, it's because I love you thiiiis much, work-at-home-on-Fridays new mom!)

• First order of business: Roll for your set of dice. Since this crazy idea was mine, the organization had fallen to me. I splurged for a giant $20 bag o' dice from Amazon. It came with 15 sets of beautiful polyhedrals--See above. Just the thing we needed. But some were prettier than others, and how should we fairly divvy up the loot? With the roll of a d20, of course! Winner takes first choice. And so on. And so on. There are still two full sets left in case somebody else wants to play.
• Second order of business: Order of character selection. We're playing in teams of three. Each team will run one of four prefab characters from the starter box. But which one? Also, one very lucky team would get to build its very own character from scratch. Who would it be? Would it be J___ and M___, both of whom were the most eager newbies, eager to play a particular race and class?

Each team rolled three d20s--one per player. Possible range: 3 to 60.

And behold! J____, the Vegas native, came out on top, with a total of 49! She and M___ took all of 10 seconds to yell "DRAGONBORN PALADIN!"

And we were off.

Who you gonna be?

My team, with a roll of 36 (consisting of Yours Truly plus two of the most introverted women in the office), will be playing a half-elf Wizard. We've got some pretty cool spells in our book already. Go, Ray of Frost! 

The other three teams selected from among a dwarf cleric, human fighter, and halfling rogue. For the next half-hour, mouths stuffed with pizza, with the Hangout team member fading in and out (we'll do better next week, I promise, Telecommuting Mommy!), and the room broke down into small teams as we scrutinized character sheets, getting to know the characters, at lesat on the surface level.

Our wizard? A bit of an arrogant asshole. 

We like that. 

Last week, we'd also each rolled for trinkets--one of the coolest new features in D&D 5th Edition. So our half-elf wizard has a silver bell missing its clapper (from me) and two other trinkets from the other two ladies on the team. As a team of ladies, we've decided to play the wizard as a She. 

In fact, the party looks to be shaping up as a majority-female party, which should be a) lots of fun, especially in taverns, and b) interesting inasmuch as traditionally, D&D associated penalties with selecting the female gender. Not so in this new, enlightened edition.

Actually, the team with the human fighter is going play the character as "androgynous"--which I think is a really cool choice, although it may inadvertently get the character into some bar fights...

Well, that escalated quickly

The DM was absorbed in helping the Dragonborn Paladin team assign a standard array of ability scores to their character--they also have their hands full working up a background for their character, which those of us playing prefabs don't have to worry about.

Five minutes before we were ready to break, everybody else asked the DM to please take a moment, pretend they knew nothing and explain,in very small words, what the numbers in the lefthand column of the character sheet meant. Which he did, remarkably effectively. (They're ability scores and modifiers.)

And then we broke, everybody laughing conspiratorially about our characters' backstories and what we were going to do to flesh them out before we meet to really start the game next week.

At which point, our other true telecommuter, a German programmer from Chicago, sauntered in from a meeting. "What, it's over?" His team told him what character the team would be playing. I handed him a set of dice. We told him we expected to see his face on a computer screen at 10:00 am Chicago time every Friday.

The DM let it slip that we will begin the adventure in jail.

Let the Game (really, finally) Begin.