yeah that sounds like...parents

specifically your parents who never like anything you do

you’d think they’d be proud of you or something if you moved for it it’s probably a cool gig

to be fair to them it is like nonzero suspicious

highly lucrative and so far very pleasant! but I guess anything with that description that falls on me is going to be sketchy by default

tho also what actually happened on their end was that they found out there was a wealthier unmarried man in my house and decided my virtue would be found dead by morning, so

what

you’re not ME

your virtue is so well taken care of it’s gonna be an honor student

awwwww

that is the plan

everyone's been pretty cool so far, guy in question has mostly been working and occasionally regaling me with his opinions on batman 

oh oh that was the other thing! z do you wanna help me on my quest. batman housemate wants to play D&D but he thinks he's too much of a nerd for it

it's very sad

I'd need three people for a party and I couldn't help but notice that you are a person

oh man

imrainai dnd!!!!!!

i’m so down

can cassie come too i promise she won’t eat him

yeah that sounds good

promise tho! I'm pretty sure I need him alive for housing cost stuff

I'll set up a discord server or something

yeah it’s cool she only devours people consensually

link me when it’s done?

She sets up a discord server and writes up some notes and waits, like, two entire days to drop more things on Lev, and then she presents her dastardly plot to him.

"Hey, so you remember last week when you said you might want to play D&D apart from the thing where it was also sort of terrifying?"

"Yes?" 

Lev is carrying around Zana on his shoulders and going where she points him, which is very often a wall.

Awwwwwww they are so adorable. If Lev turns out to be secretly evil at this point she's going to be so disappointed.

"So I thought about it. And I have some friends who might want to play over the internet? Which is like really ideal, if you think you'll do better if nobody can see your face and if you can type if you suddenly lose the ability to talk or something. And if you decide that you never want to see them again then they'll have literally no idea who you are and it will literally never come up again for the rest of your life. Also you'll be pretending to be an elf or something, which I find makes talking to new people way less stressful, honestly."

"...That still sounds terrifying but maybe like. Less terrifying? Than the other way of doing things?"

"I mean you don't have to, obviously. But I think you'd have fun. If you want I can show you all the rules and stuff beforehand so you know what you're doing? But like - only if you actually want to, if you were just being polite earlier then it's no problem."

"Uh. I uh. Know the rules. I've made characters before."

Oh this poor soul, that's simultaneously really adorable and really sad. She would hug him right now but she thinks Zana might respond by kicking her.

"Aww. They're really chill, promise."

"Okay. Do they know about. Uh." He gestures vaguely at the house.

"Nope! I mean they know we're housemates. I figured that this would not be a very good demonstration of 'Lev Aarons is a neat person who people would like playing D&D with' if it were confounded by the people in question knowing that you were Lev Aarons, because then when they like you you'll probably think they're only pretending to like you so that you'll pay for their - I don't even know what Z would want you to pay for, but you'd think of something. If I had told them. Which I have not."

"I feel very well-understood but I'm not sure whether I like it."

"I'll take that as a victory anyway. You can have first dibs on a character, I'll let Z and Cassie figure out how to keep the party something vaguely resembling balanced."

"I have a wizard, but I'm going to warn you, he's munchkined all to hell."

"Send me a link and I'll make sure you didn't do anything super illegal. And then I'll add you to the discord group so that you can see planning stuff."

"Are you done talking yet?" whispers Zana.

"Oh, have I been ignoring your instructions about where to go?"

"It's OK! But you should go THAT WAY now."

He does go that way!

He runs into a window instead, for variety's sake.

And so Karen sets up a discord server with channels for in-game discussion and out-of-game discussion and scheduling concerns and rules questions and worldbuilding materials and general-hopefully-friendship-producing-chatter.

She sends out three invitation links, posts a link to Roll20, and informs them that the party already has a wizard, so someone should probably specialize in hitting things if they don't want to all die at level one.

imrainai: hello friends

imrainai: have you guys thought about your character concepts at all or are we still in the spitballing phase