#which is the problem when 3/4ths went to fashion school and the 4th sews as much as the other 3 put together

[mctreeleth]

Today the Hot Messes went to Lily’s house to roll characters for a few-shot D&D campaign I said I would run for us. I was 20 minutes late, but I did bring food, and the books, and a whole lot of big plush dice that we rolled. Maddy was 40 minutes late, but anything under an hour is considered on time.

I explained all the classes and the races and we have ended up with a Dragonborn Ranger, a Tiefling Sorcerer, and a Gnome Bard. Weird party composition, but I prefer mysteries and shenanigans to too much combat anyway.

Our ranger is going for a classic dead parents trope: after her town was razed she hit the road and became a one-woman roaming security force up and down the region, grinding at heroism by beating up small-town bad guys till she gets good enough to find out what happened and wreak some vengence.

Our tiefling sorcerer had the kind of ideas you’d expect from someone who immediately picked tiefling sorcerer: a rich famous party girl whose family had lost everything, except they had become famous for running an exotic brothel, where clients could sleep with all sorts of unusual creatures, but the creatures were prisoners, and her character had known all about this, but been fine with it because its nice to be rich. The other players and I managed to divert that last bit at least, because having a PC that is complicit in sex trafficking is... maybe not the vibe I wanted for my fun little game, so instead she thought mummy and daddy were just old money from the dragon ancestor, and when she found out about the other stuff she decided to start a fire to try to help everyone escape, but it all went wrong in undefined ways, so now she is in a shitty little roadside tavern on the outskirts of town flirting with travelers for a meal and a drink and maybe to steal from them while they sleep.

And our Gnome Bard, who inexplicably rolled no stat lower than a 14. To justify it narratively we decided she’s in her 60s - not that old for a gnome, really, but old enough that she can be a leathery old lady at the tavern fleecing people at card games because hey, it’s just a little old lady, except this little old lady has AT LEAST +2 to everything. At level 3. We think we will probably avoid complicating it with children and grandchildren, but she is definitely someone’s cool aunt, and confers bardic inspiration with affirmations and vicious mockery by asking if their mother knows what they are doing.

And I have my PC as an NPC working behind the bar, a halfling druid who makes an amazing goodberry daiquiri, who is backpacking on her gap year.

The fact that our real-life group has a party name already makes me especially inteerst to find out if the PCs also become the Hot Messes. But we won’t be free to finish making the PCs till next month, so who knows?