D&D 6E: a digital tale

Filed under Fiction on March 11, 2008
Tagged: d20, dice, orc

Inspired by Lukahn’s comment about Microsoft Surface:

The doorbell rang and everyone yelled “Come in!” The door swung open and Danny sauntered in, his tote bag swinging from his shoulder.

“Hey, guys. Hope you saved some pizza for me?” Danny plopped down in the space reserved for him on the couch. He rifled through his bag for a second before a triumphant “there it is” heralded the emergence of his hand with a memory stick in its grasp. He leaned over and plugged the stick into one of the open ports on the game table. A few taps on the screen produced the dungeon map with everyones’ avatars in fully rendered, 3D glory, right where they’d left them last week. “Okay. You defeated the orc shaman and his dire rat minions. The battle wasn’t exactly quiet; it’s only a matter of time before someone investigates. What do you do?” Before anyone could answer, Danny got up and walked over to the kitchen counter where the pizza rested. He slapped a slice on a plate, grabbed a Dew and headed back to the couch.

Erick leaned over the table and tapped his avatar, the lithe elven sorcerer Gilshanon. The LED light on his memory stick flickered as it called up his character sheet. Gil escaped the combat unharmed, but had depleted much of his arcane energy pelting the monsters with magic missiles. “I’m going to take a short rest to regain my encounter powers. Then I’m going to search for any secret caches in the room.”

“I’ll search, too,” Logan said. He placed his finger on the avatar of his halfling rogue Oblin and moved it to the wall opposite Gil.

“All right,” Danny said around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. “Make Perception checks.” Logan selected Perception on his character sheet and dragged the d20 icon on the game table over to his avatar. The virtual die started to tumble as soon as he lifted his finger. It stopped on a 4 then added in Oblin’s skill rank and ability modifier before displaying a final result of 11.

“Ah, man. This dicebot sucks.”

“That’s why I prefer to roll.” Erick loosed the strings on his dice bag and plucked a d20 from its velvet interior. His hand closed around the polyhedron and he shook it several times before releasing it onto the tabletop. It rolled across the smooth surface and tumbled to the carpet.

“Hahahaha. Erick needs the bumpers.”

“Shut up, Scott.” Erick scooped up his fallen dice and rolled again. This time it stuck. The game table scanned the object and pulled the result from the chip embedded in the d20′s center. Erick tapped the box for Perception on his character sheet then dragged the displayed result over his avatar and the table added in his modifiers. The total was 18.

“While Gil and Oblin are searching, Karisk will heal Rynn.” Scott opened his character sheet, selected cure light wounds and tapped Rynn, Ann’s human fighter. Karisk’s dwarven avatar moved to the square next to Rynn, and everyone watched the casting animation. That never grew old. Ann checked her character sheet and discovered Rynn was back to full health.

“Okay, Oblin searches the walls, but finds nothing. Gil eyes the shrine’s altar, and notices an outline in the floor just underneath it. Rynn’s wounds disappear as Karisk applies the divine power granted to him by Pelor.” Danny leaned over and tapped the d6 icon, followed by the d10. The players passed knowing looks amongst themselves. Danny sat back and innocently asked, “so, what do you do next?”

“I could use some help moving this altar,” Erick said.

“Rynn gets up and walks over to help,” Ann said.

“Ah will na profane mehself by touchin tha evil artifect,” Scott said in his assassination of the Irish brogue.

“Gil and Rynn shove the altar, which makes a horrible screeching sound as it drags across the stone floor.”

“Ach, we’re doomed.”

“Suddenly, a secret door in the north wall swings open,” Danny touches the map’s legend icon and drags the symbol for a secret door over the section of wall in question, “and an orc patrol charges in.” He taps the Monster Manual tab at the bottom of the screen, does a search for “orc” and selects “orc warrior” from the entries. He grabs four orc warrior avatars from the window and drags them to the map.

“Roll for initiative.”