The Magpie Emporium, Thursday (3/9)

[drumsticksandd20s]

A while ago Steph had backed a 5e module on Kickstarter that she was super excited about. It wouldn't be out for a fair bit yet, but when the creators had sent out an invitation for backers to help playtest the module, of course she'd jumped at the chance.

So if anyone needed her today, she'd likely be poring eagerly over the freshly-downloaded playtest materials for a good portion of the day.

Hopefully she wouldn't give in to the vague temptation to run a test session for the gremlins.

[OOC: Open, with that usual work SP caveat.]

Comments

[no_culdesac]

Maybe it was homesickness, or something like it, but while Nancy had noticed this store before, she'd never ventured in before today.

It wasn't like she knew what any of these games were, really, or how to play a tabletop game that wasn't Monopoly or Parcheesi or whatever, but...she knew enough to feel a little pang at the very idea of weirdly-shaped dice and little figurines, and that was why she was poking in today.

"Hello?"

[drumsticksandd20s]

"Hey there! Welcome to the Magpie Emporium," Steph replied cheerfully, typing something frenetically on her laptop for a second or two longer before she'd looked up with a smile. "First time stopping in?"

[no_culdesac]

"Yeah," Nancy admitted, just a touch shy before actually rolling her shoulders back and telling herself to cut that out, and answering Steph's smile with one of her own. "I mean, hi! You guys do, like, Dungeons and Dragons here, right?"

Demonstrably, Nancy, but it was a good start.

[drumsticksandd20s]

"Among other things, totally." Steph shut her laptop and set it aside. "It's generally one of my go-tos, for sure. Were you looking to get into tabletop gaming, or...?"

[no_culdesac]

"Maybe?" Nancy hedged, shrugging up a shoulder a little awkwardly as she wandered over. "I don't really know much about it -- or, honestly, that there was more than the one game out there. That's pretty cool. I actually came in because I was hoping to get some of those funny dice?"

Nancy helpfully mimed something many-sided between her hands, which was mostly to make up for how she did not know the correct term for a D20. (Her apologetic face was a similar gesture.)

[drumsticksandd20s]

"Definitely not a problem," Steph said, lighting up with too much clear enthusiasm to leave any doubt that she didn't care if Nancy didn't know the correct term, or that there were different kinds of dice, or anything at all about any kind of gaming. "We have... way too many choices."

Don't look too closely at the prices on some of the high-end luxury sets, Nancy.

She bounded out from behind the counter and gestured toward the free-standing shelf unit with the sign that read "MATH ROCKS" above it. "Were you looking for a whole set, or individual ones?"

[no_culdesac]

"You know, I'm not really sure -- I guess a whole set?" Nancy replied, unsure as she peered at the shelf unit (she agreed with the signage to a degree, though she also suspected she did not actually get why math rocked in this case.) "My brother and his friends play this game, and their dice aren't that fancy. Pretty sure they just use white ones?"

Though wow, now that Nancy was looking here, "People really get into this, though, huh? Some of these are beautiful." Not to mention Steph's enthusiasm also signaled that it was still popular even in 2023 (or whenever; Nancy was not yet practiced enough at identifying modern clothes to tell when Steph was from beyond, 'Sometime past 1986.')

[drumsticksandd20s]

"It's gotten super popular in the last ten years or so," Steph confirmed, nodding. "Most of that is because it's designed to be a lot less intimidating for new players now, and honestly? It's just kind of cool."

She gestured at the meta Critical Role merchandise. "Hell, there are people who play professionally as entertainment. A lot of them. They'll sell out whole theaters doing live shows, even."

Which was probably mindblowing to anyone used to the whole Satanic panic era.

[no_culdesac]

Yeah, that was pretty mind-blowing to Nancy for multiple reasons, and not just that her very roommate had been hunted down as a serial killer for playing this Satanic game.

"People like watching that?" she asked skeptically. "Sorry! Sorry if that was rude, I just didn't realize it was like...sports?"

It did not seem like sports, exactly. That was probably the wrong comparison.

[drumsticksandd20s]

Steph burst out laughing and waved a hand. "No, I know. It's still pretty fucking wild to me. Nowhere near the level of the Super Bowl, but way more popular than it was when I was twelve and getting bullied for being a nerd."

She reached out to rearrange a few of the brightly multicolored acrylic sets that someone -- maybe the gremlins -- had put in the wrong places.

"Are the dice for you, or someone else?"

[no_culdesac]

"That's actually awesome," Nancy told her sincerely. Again, people got bullied at a minimum and accused of serial murder at a maximum for being into that kind of thing back where she was from, so that was -- heartening to hear. "They're for me. I mean, not that I know what I'm doing with them, but...maybe I can learn how to play?"

Put all those words she knew to good use, maybe. At the very least, though, she wanted a set of dice.

And maybe some of those little figures that the boys usually had set up in the basement.

[drumsticksandd20s]

There was no shortage of miniatures around here either! Prepainted ones, too, in case the idea of having to learn how to paint them on top of everything else was a bit much.

"Hell yeah you can learn how to play," Steph said in a tone that carried a clear implication of and fuck anyone who says otherwise. "Do you have people in mind to play with, or are you looking for that too?"

She'd never judge anyone for wanting dice just for the sake of the pretty. Or because they were fun to roll around. Just ask Watts about that.

[no_culdesac]

Honestly, Nancy could probably use a little relaxing miniature-painting in her life. All the appeal of a three-dimensional coloring book, with bonus points for being a perfectionist.

"I hadn't even thought about it," Nancy admitted with a little laugh. "This might be kind of dumb, but I kind of was just, like -- drawn to the idea of dice? And the little --"

She pointed to a nearby miniature, probably something on the scale of a Games Workshop figure, "-- guys. I just used to see stuff like this around my house all the time and I sort of...missed it."

Again, she knew it was dumb.