Dungeons and Dragons
A week or so later at the sanctum Strange was finishing table set up with Bruce. “So I met Barnes the other week. Loki thinks we should include him in game night. What do you think?” Bruce looked up from the papers in his lap. “It might be good for him. He seems to enjoy things that are completely new to him more than things he should know. We are just about finished the campaign anyway but he still isn’t really cleared to leave the tower without Steve or occasionally Sam. Perhaps we could bring game night to him? If you don’t mind that is. I mean I love having it here but again we don’t know if he will be allowed to come.” Peter had now sat down and joined in the conversation. “It would be awesome to have Mr. Barnes be a part of game night. I think he would love it. We’ve been having a great time watching movies together. It’s really surprising when you look at him and find out he’s a nerd like us.” Wong smiled “Well I think we know what Peter’s answer is. “I’m sure we can manage it. Would be nice to have some new characters.”
The next day Bruce caught Bucky while he was in the kitchen on his own. “Hey I wanted to ask you something, We normally have game night every week or so at the sanctum but we have to move to the tower for a while. I wasn’t sure if you wanted to join us.” He looked around the room “You want me to play? What kind of game? Also who’s involved cuz I don’t think I can handle competitive things with stark yet.” He smiled “Nope this one is 100% Stark free. It’s me, Peter, Dr. Strange, Wong and sometimes Loki. We play a game called dungeons and dragons. It’s a lot of fun. You make a character and then the dungeon master controls the story or campaign you follow. I can lend you the character and rule books if you like and you can think it over.”
“Sure why not. I might not get the hang of it too quickly but It’s at least something. I’m supposed to be making more friends anyway.” Bruce almost jumped for joy. “Excellent follow me I’ll help you get setup.” He followed Banner to his floor at the tower. He had never been there before and from what he understood most hadn’t. He pulled a stack of books from the shelf and sat them down on the coffee table. It’s pretty simple, you pick a race a class and an alignment. Then you roll the dice to figure out things about your character like how smart are the how strong are they how well can they talk their way out of or into something. You use those to work with the other player to complete a story.” They sat together for a few hours talking over characters and he was a little surprised that he chose a Tabaxi who was also a bard. “So basically you are a singing cat?” He smiled “yes with a chaotic good alignment.” He could tell from the grin that they may have created a monster.
Later that week they had the table in the common room setup with a map and small buildings and even some little people. Steve and same walked in and Sam frowned. “Who took over the table with nerd stuff?” Bruce moved over to it with his papers and books. “That would be us. We moved game night from the sanctum so Barnes could join us.” Steve had picked up one of the little figures of a wizard which Bruce quickly took and placed back on the map. “This doesn't seem like a total surprise. Bucky has always been a bit of a nerd and from what I have read this is top tier nerd. We’ll leave you guys to it come on Sam we will hang out on my floor and leave them to their dragons and dungeons.”
After a few hours not only was Bucky a natural but he was showing a completely different side of himself. Bruce even tested the waters a bit to see if he would really live up to the bard portion of his character. He was surprised when he had no problem paying the innkeeper with a song which he actually sung. Things ended rather abruptly when Tony came in and both Bucky and Strange vanished neither in the mood to deal with Tony’s condescending snark. Bruce sighed and made a note of their stopping place and he and Peter boxed everything up. He would take what he could from this and call it a victory. Bucky had shown a lot of his true personality through the evening and it was nice to see the carefree charming person that Steve wanted them to see.