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what if… dnd au but instead of them being heroes and adventures within the dnd universe, they are just a bunch of nerds playing tabletops rpgs together?
like, Tango is the dm who has spent forever crafting the perfect home brew campaign and is determined to make it the most amazing campaign any of them have ever been part of. He’s got the custom maps and characters figures and costumes and voices and one session he even brings in a fog machine for ambience. He’s like the perfect dm to a bunch of perfectly terrible players who will only encourage each others worst dnd habits.
Etho is the one whose been playing dnd since, like, edition 1, and who shows up to the first session of the campaign and starts describing his character and someone’s like “are you playing kakashi from naruto?” And Etho’s like “oh is that who this is? I just found it premade online and thought it sounded cool” and he’s got the emo backstory and looks real cool but is in reality not actually that good of a character and whoever made it horribly messed up the stat distribution but for some reason he always avoids death and it stuck with the underpowered not-kakashi for forever.
Joel is the murder hobo (it’s a dnd term guys trust) who tries to kill everything who also renames all his spells and weapons on dnd beyond to really silly things and then forgets what they were originally and needs someone to translate for him. He will always make sure things get out of hand, accidentally starting cults, making sure the party is always at least mildly morally gray, killing people left and right, aggressively shipping his character with other peoples jus because. He is the embodiment of chaotic neutral. (He says he is chaotic evil in the life series but I think he is more chaotic neutral because chaotic evil will cause chaos for the sake of evil and chaotic neutral will cause evil for the sake of chaos)
Bdubs is the one constantly trying to befriend everything, who also unnecessarily narrates everything he is doing (ex. “I Am RAISING my EYEBROWS at you!!!!”) and he has a million pets and always makes Tango explain what each one is doing at that moment every five seconds and is constantly yelling at Joel for killing everything while Joel is always yelling at him for befriending everything. He will argue that the dice are rigged if he rolls badly and 100% has one of those dice time out chairs and will be extremely superstitious about which dice he uses.
Jimmy is the one who keeps having really great ideas but really terrible luck with the dice rolls, and always manages to stumble into traps. He’s also the only one trying to actually follow the rules and remain completely in character, like everyone’s like “oh it’s probably over here!” And Jimmy’d be like “yeah WE know that but guys our characters wouldn’t!!!!!!!!” And he’s like the perfect player in terms of how nice and easy he makes it for Tango to dm but is terrible at the actual gameplay. He will loudly boast to the enemy that they are about to “get WRECKED, FOOLS!” And pulls out a spell that should kill them instantly if he rolls anything but a nat 1, and guess what he rolls lol.
Scar is the one whose character dies first session and he just picks up a pen, writes “jr” next to the character name, and shouts “I’ve come to avenge my father!” he’d also name his character something like “Hotstuff McSexyman” (if Joel doesn’t take that name first) but actually be surprisingly wholesome and moral, if kinda bad at combat. Extremely oblivious as a player, Tango has to spell out the answer for each puzzle and he will kill an ally genuinely thinking that it’s an enemy.
Grian is the one playing a firmly non-human character who has just the most normal guy core backstory, like “yeah I’m Clarence, I’m 45 with a wife and kids and I’m going on this adventure to celebrate my retirement.” But he’s like a lizard guy or something
Gem is the one who makes a really nice and sweet and normal dnd character and then combat starts and she takes out a magical great sword powerful enough to one shot the BBEG (it stands for big bad evil guy and it’s real dnd term. Gotta love nerd culture) and rolls a nat 20. She is also the only reliably sane one here (Grian goes about managing his sanity like he does shifts at the permit office, and Etho is sane but his character turns out actually to be pretty ineffective at, like, everything so there’s not much he can do except have the privilege of being driven insane rather than already being so. Everyone else is a maniac, some just their characters but not in real life, some are just as crazy “irl” [as in within the au] as their characters)
there is a lot more that could be done with this and a bunch of other people to include these are just the initial thoughts I had.