When he agreed to accept in a last-minute party addition of Cloud's friend, and also everyone's mutual friend, he hadn't quite thought that he'd look at their character sheets from the game they were abandoning and have to go, "So, when you said it was homebrew, I didn't think it was that homebrew."
There are details and races mentioned in these things that he's never even heard of, and Genesis - overachiever that he is - had gleefully dragged him through every niche spin off and suggestion in possibly every TTRPG forum or website there was. Which means that Sephiroth's father is even more of a weird recluse and freak than Angeal had known him to be, and he'd already known him to be absolutely a fucking freak and asshole.
"He had a very particular idea of how the campaign should be run," Sephiroth says plainly, and does not say much more than that. He doesn't have to. While Hojo apparently has particular ideas on how tabletop campaigns should be run, Sephiroth has a particular tone he has when talking about his father.
Well, while Hojo might like to think of himself as some really unique and brilliant individual, Angeal is pleased to say that this particular characteristic of him isn't that uncommon: the kind of GM that doesn't actually care about the group interest or dynamic, and would rather just have a captive audience to tell his idea of a story. The kind of dipshits who should just get into fanfiction and stop making it other people's problems.
At least it's no longer Sephiroth and Aerith's problem. Just Angeal's, as he sits here away from where the rest of the group is arguably "watching" what is allegedly the worst theatre production of Loveless filmed. What they're really doing is just listening to Genesis have Very Intense Opinions about why it's so bad. Zack has somehow gotten roped into a discussion. He doesn't look like he knows where he is even as passionate as he is. Angeal is pretty sure that Lazard and Cloud have just started talking about class planning, at this point.
That is of course why he had that particular movie chosen. Angeal had just wanted something that wasn't food to occupy the rest of the party's time, while he sits here with their new last minute additions to try and integrate them into the campaign he'd had planned.
That hadn't seemed too hard, in theory. In practicality, he squints at the papers in front of him. There's so much, but something is leaping out at him, here. "...Please tell me I'm wrong and I'm reading too much into this, because I'm getting some weird breeding kink vibes out of this."
Aerith takes no prisoners and gives no mercy, because she just cheerily says, "You're not wrong!" When Angeal is done groaning and peeking out from his fingers, he finds her leaning across the kitchen table. "We were in hell," she tells him, still chirpy but also painfully sincere. Then again, he isn't sure what other response one can really have to this kind of life experience.
Sephiroth is stalwartly staring somewhere over his shoulder. He might actually be dissociating his way through this part of the conversation. Which is... the only other response available, Angeal guesses.
There's no helping it. Angeal lets out a breath, putting the character sheets down. "Okay. I don't want to waste all the time that you two were forced into putting into these, so I'm thinking we'll not scrap them completely. But we are going to have to rework them pretty heavily, just so that they can mesh better with the rest of the party. This is a new campaign, and, unedited, these two are..." He squints at the sheets again. "...pretty over the top." Another single tap of his finger against the table. "But I think I can work these in otherwise."
Snapping out of his brief stint of dissociation, Sephiroth frowns slightly to him. "Is that all right, Angeal? I know you were working on this for some time..."
"So we won't get to tear up the character sheets?" Aerith asks, having completely separate priorities.
Right, one at a time. "I think it should work out fine," he tells Sephiroth, before turning to Aerith. "And you emailed me the PDFs on all of these, so I can just look back at those, if you really want to shred them." The words are barely out of his mouth before there's the sound of gardener fingers punching holes straight through.
Hm. He is sensing a lot of eager rage inside that petite little body.
Good thing he already had his laptop open, and Angeal taps his way over to hers, first. "Alright, so let's just start erasing all the weird breeding bullshit first..." Fucking hell. Actually saying it out loud again has him squeezing his eyes shut. "I am so glad, Sephiroth, that Gen committed arson to your house so that you could move into your own apartment."
Apparently, he'd said that loud enough, because Genesis suddenly whirls away from whatever heated argument he was having with Zack. "And I would do it again!" he announces with a flourish, looking maybe just a little manic as he props one foot up against the couch armrest. "To find liberation through the flames is nothing less than what you deserved, Sephiroth, and I am more than glad to show you that path."
Dragging his hand away from his face, Angeal glances over to purposefully make eye contact with Lazard. Lazard fortunately seems to understand what he means, at least if they ever want to get this first session up off the ground. He finally speaks up on the whole matter. "Genesis, what were you talking about with how they butchered the meaning of the Prisoner's arc...?"
That's more than enough to draw Genesis's attention back, incensed once more into his thesis. Angeal will make sure to buy a proper coffee for Lazard later as thanks.
For now, the important things: he leans across, turning his laptop around so that he can point and talk at the same time. "So, to start with, along with lowering the levels, let's talk about any changes you want to make to the skills on your sheet..."
Fortunately, Sephiroth and Aerith are both pretty easy to work with in their own ways. It doesn't take as long as it could otherwise for them to rework the character sheets for both of their characters. The Loveless movie is only mostly done by the time they all finish up, and the takeout they'd all ordered finally arrives. It takes up most of the kitchen counters, tons of Wutai food for seven starving college students; Zack had insisted he not cook tonight while also taking on the heavy role of GMing.
GMing also being the reason why nothing is on the counter save for anyone's character sheets, a map for Angeal to draw on when needed, and his laptop with everything he'll need for tonight.
After reminding Zack to eat neatly so that nothing stains on his table ("And it's your own problem if you spill on your character sheet"), Angeal settles down at the head of the table. He's lucky his mother made sure he picked out a big one; tables where you can have an entire feast at were always important for their family even if being so poor didn't mean much on their idea of 'feasts'. Not most of the time, anyway.
"Right, so I caught Aerith and Sephiroth up on most things," he informs the table, "but just to recap, we have Zack playing paladin, Cloud with fighter, Lazard picked up thief, Genesis already has grand plans for bard-multiclassing-into-sorcerer... And for the rest of you, we have Aerith coming in with a druid and Sephiroth is covering warlock. We're going to introduce your characters one by one in scene as we go along, so, Zack, try to be patient for once in your life."
Over on his side, Zack has been trying to get a peek over at Sephiroth's face down character sheet for a good five minutes now with his face stuffed with noodles, to no avail. He jerks his head up when addressed, and gives a pathetic puppy dog eyes look. "Hey, why aren't you calling out Genesis for being impatient too?"
"That's because Genesis is one of the characters being introduced first, or else I know that he'd never let me go to sleep in this damn apartment." The redhead in question just preens, looking quite self satisfied about the whole thing.
He really shouldn't be. There's nothing to be proud of there.
no subject
There are details and races mentioned in these things that he's never even heard of, and Genesis - overachiever that he is - had gleefully dragged him through every niche spin off and suggestion in possibly every TTRPG forum or website there was. Which means that Sephiroth's father is even more of a weird recluse and freak than Angeal had known him to be, and he'd already known him to be absolutely a fucking freak and asshole.
"He had a very particular idea of how the campaign should be run," Sephiroth says plainly, and does not say much more than that. He doesn't have to. While Hojo apparently has particular ideas on how tabletop campaigns should be run, Sephiroth has a particular tone he has when talking about his father.
Well, while Hojo might like to think of himself as some really unique and brilliant individual, Angeal is pleased to say that this particular characteristic of him isn't that uncommon: the kind of GM that doesn't actually care about the group interest or dynamic, and would rather just have a captive audience to tell his idea of a story. The kind of dipshits who should just get into fanfiction and stop making it other people's problems.
At least it's no longer Sephiroth and Aerith's problem. Just Angeal's, as he sits here away from where the rest of the group is arguably "watching" what is allegedly the worst theatre production of Loveless filmed. What they're really doing is just listening to Genesis have Very Intense Opinions about why it's so bad. Zack has somehow gotten roped into a discussion. He doesn't look like he knows where he is even as passionate as he is. Angeal is pretty sure that Lazard and Cloud have just started talking about class planning, at this point.
That is of course why he had that particular movie chosen. Angeal had just wanted something that wasn't food to occupy the rest of the party's time, while he sits here with their new last minute additions to try and integrate them into the campaign he'd had planned.
That hadn't seemed too hard, in theory. In practicality, he squints at the papers in front of him. There's so much, but something is leaping out at him, here. "...Please tell me I'm wrong and I'm reading too much into this, because I'm getting some weird breeding kink vibes out of this."
Aerith takes no prisoners and gives no mercy, because she just cheerily says, "You're not wrong!" When Angeal is done groaning and peeking out from his fingers, he finds her leaning across the kitchen table. "We were in hell," she tells him, still chirpy but also painfully sincere. Then again, he isn't sure what other response one can really have to this kind of life experience.
Sephiroth is stalwartly staring somewhere over his shoulder. He might actually be dissociating his way through this part of the conversation. Which is... the only other response available, Angeal guesses.
There's no helping it. Angeal lets out a breath, putting the character sheets down. "Okay. I don't want to waste all the time that you two were forced into putting into these, so I'm thinking we'll not scrap them completely. But we are going to have to rework them pretty heavily, just so that they can mesh better with the rest of the party. This is a new campaign, and, unedited, these two are..." He squints at the sheets again. "...pretty over the top." Another single tap of his finger against the table. "But I think I can work these in otherwise."
Snapping out of his brief stint of dissociation, Sephiroth frowns slightly to him. "Is that all right, Angeal? I know you were working on this for some time..."
"So we won't get to tear up the character sheets?" Aerith asks, having completely separate priorities.
Right, one at a time. "I think it should work out fine," he tells Sephiroth, before turning to Aerith. "And you emailed me the PDFs on all of these, so I can just look back at those, if you really want to shred them." The words are barely out of his mouth before there's the sound of gardener fingers punching holes straight through.
Hm. He is sensing a lot of eager rage inside that petite little body.
Good thing he already had his laptop open, and Angeal taps his way over to hers, first. "Alright, so let's just start erasing all the weird breeding bullshit first..." Fucking hell. Actually saying it out loud again has him squeezing his eyes shut. "I am so glad, Sephiroth, that Gen committed arson to your house so that you could move into your own apartment."
Apparently, he'd said that loud enough, because Genesis suddenly whirls away from whatever heated argument he was having with Zack. "And I would do it again!" he announces with a flourish, looking maybe just a little manic as he props one foot up against the couch armrest. "To find liberation through the flames is nothing less than what you deserved, Sephiroth, and I am more than glad to show you that path."
Dragging his hand away from his face, Angeal glances over to purposefully make eye contact with Lazard. Lazard fortunately seems to understand what he means, at least if they ever want to get this first session up off the ground. He finally speaks up on the whole matter. "Genesis, what were you talking about with how they butchered the meaning of the Prisoner's arc...?"
That's more than enough to draw Genesis's attention back, incensed once more into his thesis. Angeal will make sure to buy a proper coffee for Lazard later as thanks.
For now, the important things: he leans across, turning his laptop around so that he can point and talk at the same time. "So, to start with, along with lowering the levels, let's talk about any changes you want to make to the skills on your sheet..."
Fortunately, Sephiroth and Aerith are both pretty easy to work with in their own ways. It doesn't take as long as it could otherwise for them to rework the character sheets for both of their characters. The Loveless movie is only mostly done by the time they all finish up, and the takeout they'd all ordered finally arrives. It takes up most of the kitchen counters, tons of Wutai food for seven starving college students; Zack had insisted he not cook tonight while also taking on the heavy role of GMing.
GMing also being the reason why nothing is on the counter save for anyone's character sheets, a map for Angeal to draw on when needed, and his laptop with everything he'll need for tonight.
After reminding Zack to eat neatly so that nothing stains on his table ("And it's your own problem if you spill on your character sheet"), Angeal settles down at the head of the table. He's lucky his mother made sure he picked out a big one; tables where you can have an entire feast at were always important for their family even if being so poor didn't mean much on their idea of 'feasts'. Not most of the time, anyway.
"Right, so I caught Aerith and Sephiroth up on most things," he informs the table, "but just to recap, we have Zack playing paladin, Cloud with fighter, Lazard picked up thief, Genesis already has grand plans for bard-multiclassing-into-sorcerer... And for the rest of you, we have Aerith coming in with a druid and Sephiroth is covering warlock. We're going to introduce your characters one by one in scene as we go along, so, Zack, try to be patient for once in your life."
Over on his side, Zack has been trying to get a peek over at Sephiroth's face down character sheet for a good five minutes now with his face stuffed with noodles, to no avail. He jerks his head up when addressed, and gives a pathetic puppy dog eyes look. "Hey, why aren't you calling out Genesis for being impatient too?"
"That's because Genesis is one of the characters being introduced first, or else I know that he'd never let me go to sleep in this damn apartment." The redhead in question just preens, looking quite self satisfied about the whole thing.
He really shouldn't be. There's nothing to be proud of there.