Well, our plan completely backfired. Those blasted Hardware Bandits outsmarted us again, and now our hardware business is doing even worse than ever. I’m starting to think that the Hardware Master of our Hardware Store Bonanza RPG doesn’t want us to succeed. He keeps putting all these obstacles in the way, and I think that he’s doing it on purpose. How do we even know that he’s rolling legitimately behind that screen he puts between us on the table? I thought Chad would want us to become the best hardware retailers in the fantasy realm of Melbourne.
Hopefully, you read Jim’s blog post last week, so I shouldn’t have to explain too much. But basically, we tried to buy bad timber from the Hardware Bandits, then haul it back to the hardware store based in Cheltenham. They must have figured out that it was us, though, even though we had really good disguises. I play the tax evader class and rolled really high on my deception check. I got like, a 12, which surely should have succeeded. That’s only eight less than the maximum 20! With my deception bonus of plus three, it should have worked for sure.
Anyway, we didn’t know that the Hardware Bandits had seen through our plot until we returned to our own hardware store. Harry split from the group to go out and find electrical supplies in the Cheltenham area. I’m not really sure why the game has electrical supplies, given that electricity hasn’t been invented yet, but whatever. As soon as Harry left, we realised that the timber we had bought was clearly fake. I don’t know why we hadn’t noticed it earlier. Perhaps there was some sort of illusion cast over it. I’m sure that’s possible. I don’t really know the rules to Hardware Store Bonanza. The others keep telling me to read the manual, but that would involve reading. Yuck. The only thing I hate more than reading is maths.
Unfortunately, the game involves a lot of maths as well, but I just get the others to add up the numbers for me.
– Franklin