After two skipped sessions, we finally returned to playing The Magical Millennium. When last we left our beleaguered students, it was their first day of magical classes and they’d survived a harrowing encounter in the lunchroom. They’d breezed through their first day of classes–aside from that one disastrous lunch period–even earning a commendation from the teacher of their Adventuring Class for a stellar performance, and then went their separate ways at the end of the day, united by their experiences, the assignment that they perform as a party, and the single group chat one of them put together. It took three sessions, but we’d finally finished the first day of school!

This time, as we struggled to pick up where we left off a month and a half ago while also being short a player (she had a much more important prior commitment), we went through what everyone was getting up to in their normal high school classes, in their evenings after school, and at their jobs (for those who had them, anyway). We got a lot of fun little roleplaying scenes as the players navigated the fraught world of being a teen while trying to make friends as part of being a group of five relative strangers with incredibly different interests. We also got a lot of fun roleplaying as everyone geared up for the party thrown by the rich kids’ older brother (and herself, of course, but mostly him in terms of organizing it), picked out their outfits for said party, and then started out with their first hour of party attendance at what has become a start-of-year tradition amongst the movers and shakers of the school’s popular crowd (and the sports teams). I even got to end on a cliffhanger thanks to a natural 1! The party’s paladin had just finished speaking with the real power behind the student government and what I’d intended as a “your rival/ex-friend is here with her new best friend” moment instantly turned into that plus “and she saw you up here, with the cool older teens, and could see you talking to the guy presiding over the party.”

All-in-all, it was a great return to the game. We’re unfortunately not playing again until the first weekend in June due to scheduling issues, but we’ve still got plenty of party to get through and things are starting to ramp up as the major flashpoint for drama, this paladin and her ex-friend, have spotted each other across the party. We’ll have to see where things go from here since I’m making my players roll to see how well their characters manage to participate in/avoid being noticed by the party, all of which will build up to and potentially complicate whatever their individual goals are in attending. I expect that we’ll get some kind of fun drama before too long, as a result of either some failures or significant successes and, who knows, it might even wind up resolving via a dance battle! That could be a lot of fun to run through. I won’t thumb the scales to make it happen, but it definitely feels like a way things could go if tempers rise and calmer heads don’t prevail. Or maybe there’ll a knock-down, drag-out fight at the party! Who knows! I expect it won’t be that one, though, since that kind of runs counter to our general ethos of this being a “slice of life with fantasy tensions” style game rather than a more typical “heroic fantasy” type story.

Plus, a fight feels a little too out of character for our mixed bag of teens, especially considering most of them have ulterior motives of some kind. The Plasmoid artificer has some kind of business deal they want to pitch to someone while using the party as a way of rubbing elbows with people they wouldn’t normally meet. The Yuan-Ti paladin wanted to speak to the power behind the student government who happens to be the guy presiding over the party and also the older brother of her party member. This party member, a Half-Orc barbarian, just wants to have a good time and make friends, which isn’t an ulterior motive since she’s been plain about that interest since day one. The Aasimar cleric is here to make friends and innocuously fit in a bit while adjusting to their new home and the people around them after spending their childhood cloistered in a church dealing with arcane magic, which also isn’t much of an ulterior motive because that was pretty much my experience as a teen minus the arcane magic. Finally, the Moth-Person bard, whose player was not present at this past session, is sure to find some juicy gossip or interesting story to write about for her job as an investigative reporter for the school paper, which kind of counts as an ulterior motive, but will only definitely count as one once the player has returned to the game and formally confirmed what her character is up to.

A lot of the time we spent outside the party–the first half of the session–was spent on figuring out what people’s schedules look like outside of their Magical Ability classes. Most of them have projects they’re working on, jobs they have to work at, and home lives to contend with in some way or another, so I’m sure I’ll continue to find plenty for them to do. Assuming they don’t fill all of our game time themselves. Everyone did a pretty good job during this first week of finding little scenes to do with other player characters, some as detailed as active roleplay and some just little descriptions of moments or actions taken with another party member or that involved another party member. It’s been a lot of fun getting to sit back and watch as my players drive the story forward in this game. I mean, I’ve still got my overarching stuff and it will soon be time to introduce The Plot, but it’s been nice to start our campaign with a nice, gentle take-off. Really makes me appreciate my players, even if we might not be meeting as often as I’d like.