Day 1: Introduction

Antoine followed behind.

"Why mine- never mind." He tried the door.

"Yeah, Martin's right. When you're keeping track of the motivations of several NPCs and background events, and have to create a lore that feels lifelike while knowing how to not make it feel like you're just dumping information on your audience, it gets messy pretty fast. Keeping people interested's tough even when they really care, let me tell you."

The door responded to the corresponding student's bracelet, letting out a beep and a light click.

Antoine opened the door after the click.

"Dnd's a'ight. I like to play wizards, just so I can build up the most broken shit." He chuckled, "I think once I snubbed my whole group. Served them right. Thought my lady was cheap. I kinda miss her. She was a cool tiefling, and I rolled lucky on some stat rolls!"

Jordan kneeled down to be beside Cobalt, "Nah, you're the one with the cape."
She frowned at Miranda; however. "You, make sure everyone's safe? You were wearing a piece of evidence."

"I don't think we should split up right now. Let's all go as a group."
She did not trust letting Miranda out of sight right now.

Bedrooms


Each room had some changes of clothes, medications, and such belonging to the respective student, along with any trinkets or things that were important enough to them to pack for a trip.

Lisa unlocked her chair and nodded, gripping her armrests tightly.

Jason looked at Jordan and nodded. "Yeah, I agree. We all have to stick together right now, I agree. We're going to the -" he looked at the map on his watch - "- lets go back to the tutoring room for now so we can talk about this."

"Pffft, your group rolls for their stats? What is this, 1978?" Ariel's eyes, surprisingly, lit up. "I've actually been working on an entirely new method of rolling stats. If I had a deck of cards I could show you, but basically it combines the consistency of point buy with the randomization of die rolls. Every character will have something they're actually good at and a reasonable flaw or two. But MAD characters can actually be well rounded and useful. Pretty cool stuff."

Ariel then walked to the loveseat and sat down. "Anyway, I'm good to chill here until whenever. You guys do you."

Martin nodded along to Airel, only picking up half of what she was saying. What the hell was an NPC?
Avery seemed to know exactly what she was talking about though. Not wanting to feel left out Martin added, "I...would like to play."

He said, a bit more quietly, "How do I make a character?"

Dark stepped in after Antoine. "Like hotel room," he mused. "Not bad. I'm sure my father is doing all this." He waved his arms in grand gestures to indicate he was talking about the whole building. "I wonder he is planning what..."

Antoine walked over to the closet. He jerked back after opening it.
"These are my clothes. Why... are they here?"

"Well, first we have to decide on a system - and more importantly I need a story concept so we can plan out a campaign. I could try making a one-shot story so you can see if this is your kind of thing." Ariel said.

"Avery, you played D&D, right? You think Pathfinder would be a good start, or should we go with something a bit... simpler? AD&D is simple, but cruel."

"And we'll need paper. And pencils. And dice. And rulebooks - but I can always improvise."

"I'm not saying we split up! Just make sure nobody else got decapitated! Hello! Murderer still around!" She huffed, "And if we go back, more people can just go in and flip out! Maybe even more the whole thing!" Well, she already kinda did. But the bear head was hers now.

"I mean, there has to be a reason the head was cut off! They got stabbed too... Which one killed him?"

Jaden threw his hands up in the air. "Oh my gosh, we do not have time to play DnD right now! Do you all not see the bolted windows?!" Suddenly frustrated, Jaden stormed into the corner of the room, unable to be around the others. "I'm surrounded by idiots, oh my god!"

"I don't know." Isaac signed back to Claire, nodding as he now knew Miranda's name.
He...had a lot of names to catch up on.
"It was there before Miranda walked in. Someone put a...bear mask on it." His eyebrows furrowed as he signed about the bear mask, it was weird. "Not sure if someone else was in there and left before I went in."

"OK, so we're in a prison for our class retreat. So what? We're probably gonna be here for a while so we might as well make the best of it," Ariel retorted. "Really, though, what do you propose we do instead?"

Avery made an audible 'huh' as he was still trying to look for suggestive DVDs. No dice there.

"Make it simple. If nobody ever played before, they'd get glassy-eyed at skill points and equipment weight." He shrugged, flinching when Jaden blew his lid. "Ok, but. You want us all freaking out? Because I'm preety sure someone would be freaking out. Staying chill with talk of chill stuff is self care."

Dark peered into the closet behind Antoine. "Nice clothes," he muttered. "Very American I think. You look very weird if in Cairo." He gave a hearty chuckle. "You not put your clothes in closet?"

Cobalt walked out, fighting to keep his head held high.

Rachel beamed at an opportunity to talk about her work. "Yeah, kinda! I commentate on wrestling matches, which uh ... usually one guys the goody goody superhero-type and the other's a cheating dickhead. I root for the dickhead!"

She said it with a smile. "It's an important job, and I'm glad to do it! Besides .. getting heat is fun, hehe!"

"Wh-no, I do put my clothes in a closet." He turned around and quirked an eyebrow. "But we all just woke up here. Unless... you didn't?" He straightened himself a bit.

"Dark, you keep talking a whole lot about your dad, and you don't seem at all confused. Do you know something?"

Jordan blinked.
"Pardon me for thinking you were obstructing the scene." She said, "Standing on Lisa was important, huh?"

She took another deep breath and sighed, "Sorry." At least Miranda was suggesting something helpful now. She turned to Cobalt, "Let's just get going. We're in the top corner of the building so lets do a circle."
Jordan walked over to the door. The sooner everyone was out, the better they'd all feel.

"The body was in the room before Miranda was there. Some person left a bear head on the body...? I'm not sure if some person can have been in there before me..." She finished interpreting and switched back to simultaneous communication as best she could.

"So we have no idea who did it. But we know who did not, which is the five of us." If she wasn't signing she would have been clutching her arm tightly in nervousness. "I will not lie, I'm a little freaked out."