Morghen
2012-06-07, 02:14 PM
We've begun a new campaign. For those of you who followed my old log (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=194737), we followed through with our GM's plan to run a Harry Potter-style game that follows around a bunch of 11-year olds as they go through seven years of school.
For those of you who didn't follow my old log, you prolly oughta. It was pretty good.
I do a 1st-person style that uses a ton of pop-culture references and is very self-aware and wordy. Expect a lot of links. Also: This whole thing is very much under construction and will be for a bit as I continue to gather information about the world and the school. I'll also be including information about how HackMaster works.
General Stuff
This is not a game I run, but a game I play in. We play once a week on Monday night.
The game is HackMaster.
The youngest player at the table is 34. That's me. Oldest is 42. I think. I joined the group about 3 years ago and we just switched from a high-level game to this 1st-level campaign after a two-month-ish hiatus.
If I explain something poorly, ask me to clarify. I sometimes get too impressed with my own cleverness. Let me know if I'm being too obtuse.
This campaign takes place in the same world as our previous campaign. It also happens during the exact same time frame as that campaign. We are basically on Earth in the 1300-1400s. About a year ago, a lot of the world blew up because of blah blah godwar and other stuff I explain in the other campaign thread. I'm not sure how this part of the world dodged that bullet, but I'm sure we'll find out at some point.
We're all playing the same character class. It's called a Charlatan. From the HM Griftmaster's Guide to Life's Wildest Dreams (http://www.enworld.org/forum/your-reviews/119477-griftmasters-guide-lifes-wildest-dreams.html):
The charlatan is part liar, part faker, and part learning savant. Unlike the other classes, he possesses no special powers or talents, save the ability to copy what he sees. The charlatan is a true jack of all trades, able to learn anything another teaches him. Whimsical storytellers often claim that life is the charlatan's teacher, but do not listen to such pansies. The charlatan learns from everyone around him, putting in hours of study when the rest of the party is drinking themselves into unconsciousness.
The charlatan, more than any other class, must rely on his intelligence and his charisma to get him through life. Where the fighter has his sword, the magic-user his spells, the cleric his faith, and the thief his skills, the charlatan truly has only his wit and his charm. Charlatans travel the world learning from those around them, and to do so they must be quick on the uptake and plaeasant to have around. Most charlatans have to lie and deceive in order to join an adventuring party, for inexperienced heroes often believe that a fellow with no discernable abilities is a liability and the charlatan may quickly find a torch thrust into his hand with the instruction, "Hold it high so we can see."
However, if he can find a suitably supportive environment, the charlatan can flourish. Using his skills and abilities to complement those of his fellows, a smart charlatan is indispensable. He can heal the injured, fight with the warriors, function as a face man for the party, and provide occasional spell support. As a last resort, he can even fake an ability he doesn't have.
The shortsighted player might turn his nose up at such a class, but do not fall prey to this foolishness. The charlatan possesses the most powerful of all powers: the ability to become whatever he chooses. What other HackMaster class has such freedom? None, I tell you. But this is not a power to be wielded lightly. Let this serve as a warning to inexperienced or weaker players: the charlatan is only as much as you make him. In the hands of a a lesser individual, he is doomed to certain failure and an early death. Do not be that player! What that means mechanically is that we can pick up all kinds of awesome abilities like "Dodge or deflect missiles" like a Monk. The downside is that when we start out, we can't do ANYTHING. We have the worst saving throws, attacks, and weapon proficiencies. On the other hand, if we spend a measly 80 XP, we can cast magic-user cantrips. At 2nd level, things like "Cast Cleric Spells" become available, but spending that 220 XP gets you 1st level only. You have to spend another 220 to get 2nd level spells. Then you have to progress to 3rd level and spend another 220 to cast 3rd level spells. As a standard character who is part of an adventuring party, it's far cooler than it is practical. Picking up "Cast Cleric Spells" takes either a month of sneaky observation, two weeks of instruction by a Cleric, or a week of school. However, in a campaign where we're ALL spending every single week in school, the end result is going to be sick. By about 6th level, we're all going to look like this guy (http://i42.tinypic.com/10hsw1i.jpg).
Things You May Need To Know About HackMaster
There's a stat called Honor. It accumulates as you do cool things or diminishes if you do uncool things (back down from a challenge, pee yourself in court). You can burn a little bit to affect a dice roll here or there but the only time we ever use it is to change something that just happened. Usually used as a "get out of crit free" card or to unfail a save. Purging your Honor reduces you to 10% of your former total, can only be done one time per level and until you regain a certain portion, all of your rolls suffer a -1. Saves, damage, skill checks, HP rolls, everything. And you earn reduced XP when you're in dishonor (too low for your level). An important note: When your character is in "Great Honor" (fairly high for your level) you get one mulligan per session. Any roll you make can be mulligan-ed, but you must accept the new roll.
Damage and healing explode when you roll the max. If you roll a 4 on a d4, roll again and subtract one... unless you roll another 4. Keep rolling until you roll something that isn't the max and then subtract one from that.
Skills are based on a percentage system.
People say that Hack (http://www.kenzerco.com/images/rpg/hackmaster/hm_playershandbook.jpg)Master (http://sob.apotheon.org/img/dnd_1e_old_full.jpg) is what 2nd Edition should've been.
HackMaster is nowhere near as high-powered as 3, 3.5, etc. At 1st level, you're probably not going to be soloing... well, anything. It's also far more deadly. See my encounter during the first session for further proof.
The Party
These will get tightened up as the campaign progresses and I learn more about the backgrounds of the party members.
Sigismund Habsburg - Elf
That's me. I'm the heir to the Duchy of Swabia (parts of modern-day Germany, Switzerland, Austria) and I'm an Elf. I'll be going out of my way to make connections with other students (with an eye toward keeping those relationships going once I'm actually ruling) and I'll also be making every effort to form relationships with the cleaning people, groundskeepers, cooking staff, etc. at the school. My father always told me, "The people who keep a palace running are the people who run the palace." At the beginning of my schooling career, my intention is to be a Fighter/Magic-User type. We'll see if I stick with it.
Vittori Vilano - Half-Elf
Remember that old high-level campaign? This is Giovanni Vilano's youngest sibling. He's cut from the same cloth, but is much less imperious. Then again, Vittori is only 11. We'll see how things progress.
Grimm (He's not very chatty) - Half-Ogre
This is the guy who played Brunt the Half-Ogre in our previous campaign. Now he's playing Grimm the Half-Ogre. Grimm likes to eat things?
Kahaal Brandenburg - Elf
This is the guy who played Arinon in our previous campaign. Kahaal is the Crown Prince of Bavaria and heir to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. He's, um... a little spoiled. He's also an exTREMEly private person. Note - This player has the most ridiculous luck with dice I've ever seen. He'll take the d20 you just used to roll 4, 18, 11, 1, 15, 7 and roll 15, 16, 14, 20, 20, 19.
Laurence Llongo Gamehater - Gnomeling
This character doesn't show up until week 2. We'll know more about him soon, but I'm guessing that he goes into sneakery as a career. Gnomelings are good at that. This player was the guy who played Sheba Sugarfist in our previous campaign. Unrelated: Here he is with an absolutely majestic afro. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U3Gk4MIJi4)
Another guy is dealing with some personal stuff. Hopefully he'll come back to us soon.
Stuff About The Campaign
There are five houses at Warthog's. They are Teranic, Aviaxin, Pyrotus, Hydral, and Wraithward. Those correspond to Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit. The house colors are green, yellow, red, blue, and black. We are in Hydral.
We'll be going through seven years of schooling. At the end of our first year, we'll move to 2nd level.
Warthog’s is in Scotland.
First Session: 5/21 Game
Characters Present: Grimm, Vittori, Sigismund
Week 1
When I finally got to the school (on Sunday night), I was greeted by Professor Blash. He’s one of the primary professors who deals with 1st-year students. He was plenty nice, showed me to the room I’d be sharing with five other students, and told me that he’d have some dinner sent up because dinner was almost over. Looking around the room, I saw that I was the last one to show up. One of the beds was quite a bit nicer than the others and had big fancy drapes blocking my view of the inside. There was a foot locker and a closet for each of us. I decided that I wanted to start moving around and checking the school out a bit.
As I was leaving the Hydral common room, I ran into a half-elf and a half-ogre coming up the stairs. The half-elf asked if I had just gotten here and deduced that I must be the missing roommate. He introduced himself and Grimm kinda stood there like a jerk and I told them that I was going to go walking around and explore the place. Vittori immediately decided that he liked me and Grimm kind of stood around and acted sullen. Half-ogres, right?
So the three of us went walking. I wasn't just going for a walk, though. I've got a Talent called Photographic Memory that lets me recall anything once I've seen it. So I was really heading out to make myself a map of the place. As we walked, I learned two big things. One: Warthog's is fracking huge. Like, huge huge. Two: Parts of it are currently under construction. I should check and see if something has happened recently or if it’s one of those situations where things are being modified or renovated or what.
Vittori, Grimm, and I were exploring and we found ourselves on the first floor of the castle. We heard a deep rumbling sound (that I JUST NOW realize we didn’t explore any further), looked around for a second and then Grimm saw a black cat farther down the hall. We discussed the cat for about 10 seconds, and decided to go interact with it because, you know, why include it if it’s not part of the scene?
The cat didn't like us. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68BrauMLt_0)
We approached and it hissed at us. I got closer and it hissed at me. Oh. The cat was standing a couple of feet from a doorway. That’s pertinent. I asked Grimm and Vittori if they had any food. Grimm had a biscuit. I didn’t have a lot of confidence that the cat would be interested in a biscuit, but I was willing to try it if I could get the cat to just chill the **** out.
I still don’t know why I didn’t just leave the cat to be pissed off by itself.
I offered the bread. It didn’t take it. I got closer for some damn reason. The cat responded by tearing me to pieces.
I’m not kidding. I was literally one round of attacks away from being killed by this goddamn housecat. Grimm stood back and watched as I got my face torn off, but Vittori, to his credit, jumped right in. Unfortunately, neither one of us managed to hit the thing for something like three rounds before I grabbed the damn thing by the neck and held it at arm’s length.
The cat immediately started screaming like I’d lit it on fire.
About .5 seconds later, the closest door banged open and a professor stormed into the hallway and started getting all up in my biznass about putting his cat down, and “What do you think you’re doing?” and rageface. I put his cat down and he told me to go to the infirmary. So as it turns out, he DID see the gaping wounds, but chose to ignore them while I had my hands on his Precious.
So we went to the infirmary. Where we met the smokingest-hottest nurse in the whole world. Vittori and I were instantly smitten. I asked her what the deal was with Professor Blofeld and she told me that the professor’s name was Gotman and the cat was Jester. Then Hotnurse put some healing salve on my wounds that took me back to full HP and I passed out because, you know, hot nurse or something.
When I woke up, I was in our room. According to the little magical time-telling device on the wall it was 11 pm. My plate of food had turned into a big fat plate of “Grimm is an ******* who eats the food of his passed-out roommates”. So I went looking for some grub.
From my earlier walkabout I knew where the cafeteria was and I found the kitchens pretty quickly after that. I found a guy named Pavel making some pastries for the morning. I chatted him up and put on some charm and ended up making myself a new friend. He told me that I’d almost always be able to find some kind of pastry in this part of the kitchen at night. He told me to help myself, and I ended up complaining about facing Gotman’s Worst Cat Ever. Pavel laughed and told me that Jester is very protective of Gotman’s territory and that Jester loves sardines. So my little trip to the kitchens ended up being a pretty successful one. Information, access to a resource, and an ally. Score.
Monday morning! The entire student body met in the cafeteria and I got my first look at the assembled school. I was hoping that the students wearing black would all look evil, but they all just looked like students. Bummer. Anyway, Headmaster Ygarstan gave us a little speech about a new year and blah blah and told everybody where to go. The 60 new students (six boys and six girls from each house) were told to meet in the Entry Hallway and wait for Professor Gotman, so we went.
Whatever the opposite of “excited” is, that’s what I was.
Gotman gave us a little speech about learning and blah blah and how for the first 14 weeks we’d all be learning a specific set of skills. We’d be taking one class per week and for our first class, we’d be learning how to work.
Gotman gave each group of six a specific task and told each of us that he’d be coming around to check our work. At some point in the middle of this, Gotman gave the three of us a look that indicated that he recognized us from last night. We gave a collective, “Well, ****.” Some groups got wound up cleaning chandeliers, some were mopping floors, some were washing windows, and some were cleaning toilets.
Guess who was cleaning toilets.
Yup. So we cleaned toilets like crazy. And cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Gotman showed up and told Grimm that his area was clean but that Vittori and I still had some work to do. And he was kind of a **** about it. I couldn’t believe that he snapped at us like that. After a while he came back and acted like a **** some more but ultimately told us that we'd finally gotten our area clean. And then he surprised me by apologizing for Jester tearing me apart the night before. I gave him as much of an "It's okay. Animals, right? Whaddaya gonna do?" as I could muster and we called time on the session.
By way of wrap-up, the GM told us that the 1st-year students spent the entire week doing manual labor around the grounds and that by the end of it we'd all picked up the General Laborer skill.
And then we really did call time.
Questions? Comments?
For those of you who didn't follow my old log, you prolly oughta. It was pretty good.
I do a 1st-person style that uses a ton of pop-culture references and is very self-aware and wordy. Expect a lot of links. Also: This whole thing is very much under construction and will be for a bit as I continue to gather information about the world and the school. I'll also be including information about how HackMaster works.
General Stuff
This is not a game I run, but a game I play in. We play once a week on Monday night.
The game is HackMaster.
The youngest player at the table is 34. That's me. Oldest is 42. I think. I joined the group about 3 years ago and we just switched from a high-level game to this 1st-level campaign after a two-month-ish hiatus.
If I explain something poorly, ask me to clarify. I sometimes get too impressed with my own cleverness. Let me know if I'm being too obtuse.
This campaign takes place in the same world as our previous campaign. It also happens during the exact same time frame as that campaign. We are basically on Earth in the 1300-1400s. About a year ago, a lot of the world blew up because of blah blah godwar and other stuff I explain in the other campaign thread. I'm not sure how this part of the world dodged that bullet, but I'm sure we'll find out at some point.
We're all playing the same character class. It's called a Charlatan. From the HM Griftmaster's Guide to Life's Wildest Dreams (http://www.enworld.org/forum/your-reviews/119477-griftmasters-guide-lifes-wildest-dreams.html):
The charlatan is part liar, part faker, and part learning savant. Unlike the other classes, he possesses no special powers or talents, save the ability to copy what he sees. The charlatan is a true jack of all trades, able to learn anything another teaches him. Whimsical storytellers often claim that life is the charlatan's teacher, but do not listen to such pansies. The charlatan learns from everyone around him, putting in hours of study when the rest of the party is drinking themselves into unconsciousness.
The charlatan, more than any other class, must rely on his intelligence and his charisma to get him through life. Where the fighter has his sword, the magic-user his spells, the cleric his faith, and the thief his skills, the charlatan truly has only his wit and his charm. Charlatans travel the world learning from those around them, and to do so they must be quick on the uptake and plaeasant to have around. Most charlatans have to lie and deceive in order to join an adventuring party, for inexperienced heroes often believe that a fellow with no discernable abilities is a liability and the charlatan may quickly find a torch thrust into his hand with the instruction, "Hold it high so we can see."
However, if he can find a suitably supportive environment, the charlatan can flourish. Using his skills and abilities to complement those of his fellows, a smart charlatan is indispensable. He can heal the injured, fight with the warriors, function as a face man for the party, and provide occasional spell support. As a last resort, he can even fake an ability he doesn't have.
The shortsighted player might turn his nose up at such a class, but do not fall prey to this foolishness. The charlatan possesses the most powerful of all powers: the ability to become whatever he chooses. What other HackMaster class has such freedom? None, I tell you. But this is not a power to be wielded lightly. Let this serve as a warning to inexperienced or weaker players: the charlatan is only as much as you make him. In the hands of a a lesser individual, he is doomed to certain failure and an early death. Do not be that player! What that means mechanically is that we can pick up all kinds of awesome abilities like "Dodge or deflect missiles" like a Monk. The downside is that when we start out, we can't do ANYTHING. We have the worst saving throws, attacks, and weapon proficiencies. On the other hand, if we spend a measly 80 XP, we can cast magic-user cantrips. At 2nd level, things like "Cast Cleric Spells" become available, but spending that 220 XP gets you 1st level only. You have to spend another 220 to get 2nd level spells. Then you have to progress to 3rd level and spend another 220 to cast 3rd level spells. As a standard character who is part of an adventuring party, it's far cooler than it is practical. Picking up "Cast Cleric Spells" takes either a month of sneaky observation, two weeks of instruction by a Cleric, or a week of school. However, in a campaign where we're ALL spending every single week in school, the end result is going to be sick. By about 6th level, we're all going to look like this guy (http://i42.tinypic.com/10hsw1i.jpg).
Things You May Need To Know About HackMaster
There's a stat called Honor. It accumulates as you do cool things or diminishes if you do uncool things (back down from a challenge, pee yourself in court). You can burn a little bit to affect a dice roll here or there but the only time we ever use it is to change something that just happened. Usually used as a "get out of crit free" card or to unfail a save. Purging your Honor reduces you to 10% of your former total, can only be done one time per level and until you regain a certain portion, all of your rolls suffer a -1. Saves, damage, skill checks, HP rolls, everything. And you earn reduced XP when you're in dishonor (too low for your level). An important note: When your character is in "Great Honor" (fairly high for your level) you get one mulligan per session. Any roll you make can be mulligan-ed, but you must accept the new roll.
Damage and healing explode when you roll the max. If you roll a 4 on a d4, roll again and subtract one... unless you roll another 4. Keep rolling until you roll something that isn't the max and then subtract one from that.
Skills are based on a percentage system.
People say that Hack (http://www.kenzerco.com/images/rpg/hackmaster/hm_playershandbook.jpg)Master (http://sob.apotheon.org/img/dnd_1e_old_full.jpg) is what 2nd Edition should've been.
HackMaster is nowhere near as high-powered as 3, 3.5, etc. At 1st level, you're probably not going to be soloing... well, anything. It's also far more deadly. See my encounter during the first session for further proof.
The Party
These will get tightened up as the campaign progresses and I learn more about the backgrounds of the party members.
Sigismund Habsburg - Elf
That's me. I'm the heir to the Duchy of Swabia (parts of modern-day Germany, Switzerland, Austria) and I'm an Elf. I'll be going out of my way to make connections with other students (with an eye toward keeping those relationships going once I'm actually ruling) and I'll also be making every effort to form relationships with the cleaning people, groundskeepers, cooking staff, etc. at the school. My father always told me, "The people who keep a palace running are the people who run the palace." At the beginning of my schooling career, my intention is to be a Fighter/Magic-User type. We'll see if I stick with it.
Vittori Vilano - Half-Elf
Remember that old high-level campaign? This is Giovanni Vilano's youngest sibling. He's cut from the same cloth, but is much less imperious. Then again, Vittori is only 11. We'll see how things progress.
Grimm (He's not very chatty) - Half-Ogre
This is the guy who played Brunt the Half-Ogre in our previous campaign. Now he's playing Grimm the Half-Ogre. Grimm likes to eat things?
Kahaal Brandenburg - Elf
This is the guy who played Arinon in our previous campaign. Kahaal is the Crown Prince of Bavaria and heir to the throne of the Holy Roman Empire. He's, um... a little spoiled. He's also an exTREMEly private person. Note - This player has the most ridiculous luck with dice I've ever seen. He'll take the d20 you just used to roll 4, 18, 11, 1, 15, 7 and roll 15, 16, 14, 20, 20, 19.
Laurence Llongo Gamehater - Gnomeling
This character doesn't show up until week 2. We'll know more about him soon, but I'm guessing that he goes into sneakery as a career. Gnomelings are good at that. This player was the guy who played Sheba Sugarfist in our previous campaign. Unrelated: Here he is with an absolutely majestic afro. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U3Gk4MIJi4)
Another guy is dealing with some personal stuff. Hopefully he'll come back to us soon.
Stuff About The Campaign
There are five houses at Warthog's. They are Teranic, Aviaxin, Pyrotus, Hydral, and Wraithward. Those correspond to Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit. The house colors are green, yellow, red, blue, and black. We are in Hydral.
We'll be going through seven years of schooling. At the end of our first year, we'll move to 2nd level.
Warthog’s is in Scotland.
First Session: 5/21 Game
Characters Present: Grimm, Vittori, Sigismund
Week 1
When I finally got to the school (on Sunday night), I was greeted by Professor Blash. He’s one of the primary professors who deals with 1st-year students. He was plenty nice, showed me to the room I’d be sharing with five other students, and told me that he’d have some dinner sent up because dinner was almost over. Looking around the room, I saw that I was the last one to show up. One of the beds was quite a bit nicer than the others and had big fancy drapes blocking my view of the inside. There was a foot locker and a closet for each of us. I decided that I wanted to start moving around and checking the school out a bit.
As I was leaving the Hydral common room, I ran into a half-elf and a half-ogre coming up the stairs. The half-elf asked if I had just gotten here and deduced that I must be the missing roommate. He introduced himself and Grimm kinda stood there like a jerk and I told them that I was going to go walking around and explore the place. Vittori immediately decided that he liked me and Grimm kind of stood around and acted sullen. Half-ogres, right?
So the three of us went walking. I wasn't just going for a walk, though. I've got a Talent called Photographic Memory that lets me recall anything once I've seen it. So I was really heading out to make myself a map of the place. As we walked, I learned two big things. One: Warthog's is fracking huge. Like, huge huge. Two: Parts of it are currently under construction. I should check and see if something has happened recently or if it’s one of those situations where things are being modified or renovated or what.
Vittori, Grimm, and I were exploring and we found ourselves on the first floor of the castle. We heard a deep rumbling sound (that I JUST NOW realize we didn’t explore any further), looked around for a second and then Grimm saw a black cat farther down the hall. We discussed the cat for about 10 seconds, and decided to go interact with it because, you know, why include it if it’s not part of the scene?
The cat didn't like us. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68BrauMLt_0)
We approached and it hissed at us. I got closer and it hissed at me. Oh. The cat was standing a couple of feet from a doorway. That’s pertinent. I asked Grimm and Vittori if they had any food. Grimm had a biscuit. I didn’t have a lot of confidence that the cat would be interested in a biscuit, but I was willing to try it if I could get the cat to just chill the **** out.
I still don’t know why I didn’t just leave the cat to be pissed off by itself.
I offered the bread. It didn’t take it. I got closer for some damn reason. The cat responded by tearing me to pieces.
I’m not kidding. I was literally one round of attacks away from being killed by this goddamn housecat. Grimm stood back and watched as I got my face torn off, but Vittori, to his credit, jumped right in. Unfortunately, neither one of us managed to hit the thing for something like three rounds before I grabbed the damn thing by the neck and held it at arm’s length.
The cat immediately started screaming like I’d lit it on fire.
About .5 seconds later, the closest door banged open and a professor stormed into the hallway and started getting all up in my biznass about putting his cat down, and “What do you think you’re doing?” and rageface. I put his cat down and he told me to go to the infirmary. So as it turns out, he DID see the gaping wounds, but chose to ignore them while I had my hands on his Precious.
So we went to the infirmary. Where we met the smokingest-hottest nurse in the whole world. Vittori and I were instantly smitten. I asked her what the deal was with Professor Blofeld and she told me that the professor’s name was Gotman and the cat was Jester. Then Hotnurse put some healing salve on my wounds that took me back to full HP and I passed out because, you know, hot nurse or something.
When I woke up, I was in our room. According to the little magical time-telling device on the wall it was 11 pm. My plate of food had turned into a big fat plate of “Grimm is an ******* who eats the food of his passed-out roommates”. So I went looking for some grub.
From my earlier walkabout I knew where the cafeteria was and I found the kitchens pretty quickly after that. I found a guy named Pavel making some pastries for the morning. I chatted him up and put on some charm and ended up making myself a new friend. He told me that I’d almost always be able to find some kind of pastry in this part of the kitchen at night. He told me to help myself, and I ended up complaining about facing Gotman’s Worst Cat Ever. Pavel laughed and told me that Jester is very protective of Gotman’s territory and that Jester loves sardines. So my little trip to the kitchens ended up being a pretty successful one. Information, access to a resource, and an ally. Score.
Monday morning! The entire student body met in the cafeteria and I got my first look at the assembled school. I was hoping that the students wearing black would all look evil, but they all just looked like students. Bummer. Anyway, Headmaster Ygarstan gave us a little speech about a new year and blah blah and told everybody where to go. The 60 new students (six boys and six girls from each house) were told to meet in the Entry Hallway and wait for Professor Gotman, so we went.
Whatever the opposite of “excited” is, that’s what I was.
Gotman gave us a little speech about learning and blah blah and how for the first 14 weeks we’d all be learning a specific set of skills. We’d be taking one class per week and for our first class, we’d be learning how to work.
Gotman gave each group of six a specific task and told each of us that he’d be coming around to check our work. At some point in the middle of this, Gotman gave the three of us a look that indicated that he recognized us from last night. We gave a collective, “Well, ****.” Some groups got wound up cleaning chandeliers, some were mopping floors, some were washing windows, and some were cleaning toilets.
Guess who was cleaning toilets.
Yup. So we cleaned toilets like crazy. And cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Gotman showed up and told Grimm that his area was clean but that Vittori and I still had some work to do. And he was kind of a **** about it. I couldn’t believe that he snapped at us like that. After a while he came back and acted like a **** some more but ultimately told us that we'd finally gotten our area clean. And then he surprised me by apologizing for Jester tearing me apart the night before. I gave him as much of an "It's okay. Animals, right? Whaddaya gonna do?" as I could muster and we called time on the session.
By way of wrap-up, the GM told us that the 1st-year students spent the entire week doing manual labor around the grounds and that by the end of it we'd all picked up the General Laborer skill.
And then we really did call time.
Questions? Comments?