Survival Of The Fittest

"I don't know if you guys have read Erfworld,"

nope.avi

"But I kind of got the inspiration for this game form it, so..."

Well damn. There goes any chance at knowing anything.

"It combines RPG stuff with strategy, kinda like Fire Emblem,"

Oh, Fire Emblem? Well why didn't she say that first? Riley loved Fire Emblem. Much easier to imagine the structure of things now.

"You start out with 41 units..."

Riley found herself a seat at that point, sat down, and listened. Basic concepts were explained, stat sheets were handed out, and between sentences, the green-haired girl looked over the hexed map and pondered where she'd start her glorious empire of excellent brilliantness. Well, maybe it wouldn't be called that, but it'd have a cool name and it'd be cool either way. Something about specialists raising the dead? Oh hells yes, undead up in this game, zombie apocalypse army lead by vampires or demons or something awesome. Any prior doubts about how excellent the game was going to be were allayed, Riley was gonna infect the entire world, ensuring Complete. Global. Saturation. Heh, that offhand thought settled the name of her leader, then.

"Questions, concerns, comments?"

Too busy thinking about how cool her Umbrella Corporation Empire was going to be, Riley almost missed that one. First Faria started asking about orbital cannons, which, all things considered, seemed a little out of place. Karen seemed to think so too, scaling it down to something more reasonable. Even so, with the comparisons to Fire Emblem, she'd been expecting a lower tech level than artillery and snipers. Oh well, everyone's units were still going to be equals, so the fluff didn't really matter, did it?

Timothy then asked how long the game was going to last, as if he wasn't expecting multiple sessions. Huh. Was he not present for the overlong explanation and did he miss the part where this practically counted as a grand strategy game? 'course it was going to last a while, maybe months if the meets were infrequent enough. Didn't matter how long, she just waited for an answer, so she could ask her own, rather more simple question.

"So... can my guys be zombies?"

Faria grimaced as she heard Karen's answer, tapping her index finger softly on the table as she considered her options. Sure, two hex range wasn't that bad but she had privately been hoping that it would be more. She decided to keep that option on the backburner, then, and contemplate other abilities for her specialist to have. She glanced briefly at the others, wondering what sort of questions they would ask. It was always good to get information about the people you were competing against.

Neither of them really gave any hints as to anything else they were planning, though. Nothing overt, at least. Timothy simply asked how long the game would last and Riley wanted to know if she could make zombies. She made a face at the mention of zombies, wondering just what Riley wanted. Probably something to do with changing enemy soldiers into zombies too or something like that. It certainly didn't make her feel comfortable with her chances of winning. She hated zombies.

Either way, she remained silent. Better to wait and see what sort of answers Karen would give before planning anything else.

She considered Tim's question.  "Given that any complex maneuvers on our part'll take awhile," she said.  "I'd imagine it'll take at least a few sessions."  She considered.  "Well, maybe one long session."  She glanced towards Riley, frowning and trying to figure out what she meant.  That her guys could be zombies?  "If you want to call them the undead or something, that's fine, but it won't change their stats or nothin'."

Or did she mean that she wanted a necromancer?  Karen didn't really like Wanda Firebaugh--kind of a strange character, overpowered, sexual, couldn't believe the most recent chapters had focused on her--but necromancy was a cool power...

"If you want a necromancer as your specialist, that'll probably work," she said.  "We'll have to hash out the growth details, though.  I'm thinking she can bring back a certain number of stats per turn, be that one awesome unit or a handful of weaker units.  We can figure that out later, though."  She really wanted to play this game, and she needed them to do it.  So that meant finding a common time...

"You guys let me know when you're free," she said.  "And I'll make room."  She passed around a paper.  "Email addresses, numbers."

((I'm really sorry about this again. I'll try to be more timely with my posts from now on.))

Timothy fidgeted around in his seat as he thought of ideas to use for his army. 

Let's see...

His mind came up blank. He tried to pull ideas from the militaries that he'd read about in history books, but he couldn't think of any concrete ideas. He began jotting down random notes in his notebook.

This is a lot harder than I thought it would be...

He looked up from his notebook and began looked around the room. As he looked over at Riley, his eyes stopped.

That's a pretty neat hair colour...

He quickly looked away, embarrassed. He hoped that she didn't notice him staring.  He wrote a bit more into his notebook, before looking up at her again.

A zombie army would be pretty cool to face...  

After trying fruitlessly for a few more minutes to think of units for his army, he looked up from his notebook, this time quickly turning over to face Karen.

"So, will this session be just for preparations and familiarising ourselves with the rules? I'm kind of unsure of what our goal is for the first day."

((Edited to fit better in continuity with Chib's post)

"If you want to call them the undead or something, that's fine, but it won't change their stats or nothin'."

Riley had figured that much, the stat sheet dealies Karen had handed out made it pretty clear all the units were mechanically equal. At least until they started gaining levels and such. Heh, how was she going to explain that away fluff-wise anyway? Devouring flesh, she guessed, unless someone else decided to roll with battle droids or something. Now that'd be a sight to see, Umbrella Corporation vs Trade Federation... assuming they could motivate the undead to actually fight machines. What was she thinking about again? Oh yeah. Mechanically equal troops. Yeah.

Karen returned from her own, rather different, train of thought to add the part Riley had been more concerned with; necromancer specialist was acceptable. Of course it was though, she'd already mentioned it as one of the things a specialist could be. It'd prompted Riley to ask about zombies in the first place. What a pointless circle-jerk of an enquiry that had turned out to be. Oh well.

"We'll have to hash out the growth details, though. I'm thinking she can bring back a certain number of stats per turn, be that one awesome unit or a handful of weaker units. We can figure that out later, though."

Or not, that was a pretty good point. Wouldn't be fair to be able to arbitrarily resurrect whatever, whenever. Something of value was gained from what Riley had seconds ago denounced as a stupid question. Score. And then Karen was asking for contact details. Completely oblivious to the awkwardness already brewing in the room, the green-haired boor couldn't resist a quip. "My number? Gosh, what kind of girl do you think I am? I'm flattered, of course, but..." She trailed off there, opting to produce a pen and note down her details anyway, pausing for a moment as she finished her email address; silvermoonsuperstar. It did look rather lame, come to think of it. But she'd been about twelve at the time, and really into blood elves. Still was, really. Lucidia and Teoksil Silverheart, the pointy-eared dream team. They'd even had an IC child, and some British guy playing with his girlfriend had opted to play her, the plucky Giray. Good times.

Shaking herself out of the reminiscence, Riley handed the paper over to Timothy, whilst he asked what the group would be doing for the rest of the afternoon, seeing as they were all together anyway. She waited for him to finish before, a stray strand of lime hair falling from her mouth where she'd been idly chewing it, interjecting with "Oh and uh, I don't know when I'll be free off the top of my head, so like, email me and I'll get back to you when I do?" beat "Do know, that is."

'Ehhh? Revival? Mmmph, I guess that makes sense, but now I'm worried that my own idea is going to be a lot worse in comparison. I really need to think of something useful, then. I wonder if Timothy is going to come up with something good. I wish he'd just tell us. But anyway um...ideas. Maybe I can pull something from card games. I mean, there's a supporter. Maybe increased damage? I already had the orbital strike. Um...maybe giving it a turn-based transformation ability? Or maybe reviva-oh wait that's the same as necromancy.'

The thoughts ran through Faria's mind as she wore a solemn expression, staring down at her notebook. The last thing she wanted to do was lose at this strategy game, but there wasn't anything really good that came to mind. Still, this was just the beginning. If she could get everything to work well and understand all the rules and her opponents, there wasn't any way she was going to lose.

She looked up at the sound of Riley making a joke, but it trailed off and Faria could only manage a half-hearted laugh in response. It looked like the other girl was finished with the paper, but she handed it to Timothy instead of her and stifled a sigh as she looked back down at her notebook. Her fingers were beginning to twitch with frustration and impatience. She decided to follow up after Riley's response and murmured, "I'm in the Photography Club and part of the school newspaper, but I guess I'm free when there aren't any meetings or something. Um, yeah, I guess that's about it."

(I might legitimately make this a game using google docs, if you guys are at all interested.  Got to put some ideas together, make sure that's something I can actually do)

Karen glanced over at Timothy.  "Most of the time I come to these things," she said.  "There's a lot of people online who say they wanna come and then just a few people who actually show.  I just wanted to see who'd actually come to something like this.  I figure, if you come in person, you might actually come when it's time to start."  She did not mention that she'd gone ahead and planned a raid in WoW in the next few hours, and had no interest in extending this first session further while people tried to think things up.  It would be far more interesting if they had time to plan.

Not that they'd win, of course.  But still.  Make the game more fun.

She got slowly to her feet.  "Guess you're the only one who could have issues.  We'll schedule around you."  She put everything in her bag.  "I'll email you over the next few days."

Not the most interesting bunch of people, but their specialist ideas--necromancer, sniper--were interesting enough.  Maybe this game would be fun after all.

(Karen Idel continued elsewhere)

Karen got up to leave, mentioning that Faria would probably be the only one to have problems. Oh yeah, wasn't Riley in both of those clubs too, amongst others? Good point, they did take up a fair few of her evenings, not to mention all the other things she did with her free time. Yeah, maybe she would have to be pretty selective with when she offered to be available. After all, her guild couldn't realistically be expected to pluck up a new tank-healer on short notice, and she wasn't about to let them finally finish heroic Dragon Soul without her on the team either way.

Regardless, it was a bit late to speak up, Karen had already gone. And hadn't she herself originally been in the store looking for the new Vertigos? Was that even a real plural? The new comics, at least. There was supposed to be a Hellblazer she hadn't read yet, and she still had a few of the old Sandman collections left to catch up on besides. Riley gathered her things and got up too, stopping at the foot of the staircase.

"Laters yous two, guess I'll see you again when we start this dealie up, yeah?"

With that, the girl gave a mock salute, her customary gesture for goodbyes, and started up the stairs into the store proper. Time for another delightfully cynical adventure with John Constantine, she thought.

[Riley Moon ==> Passing Slowy Through the Vector]

People were leaving and it seemed like the meeting was over. Well, not seemed like. More like the meeting was over and Faria fiddled with her things awkwardly as she slowly began to pack up. It seemed a little...anti-climactic for the first meeting to really end like this, but that was just how it was. She'd just have to wait for Karen's e-mail and then maybe the next time they met up, there could be actual fighting or gaming or something. She slowly got to her feet, slinging her backpack over her shoulder as she looked at the room's other occupant. "Ah...uh...well, later."

She slid her headphones back into her ears, a small, comforted smile coming to her face as she turned on her MP3 player and listened to her music. She had no plans on going home just yet. She hadn't taken a good enough look at everything yet, after all. There might be some new treasures that they had just gotten in. Maybe. It was never certain. But it would be nice.

(Faria Young continued elsewhere.)

((I'm really sorry for the lateness))

Timothy looked down at his watch.

Wow, that was a short meeting...

He picked up his bag and left, following the others out.

((Timothy Abrams continued in Passing Slowly Through the Vector))