#but I've unintentionally made all the NPCs into 'the adult I wish had helped me when I was seventeen and going through some things'

[thedeadhandofseldon]

Okay, I promised @a-dabblr the Tale of the Semi-Intentional Beach Therapy Session from my D&D campaign, and for the first night in a while I have the will to actually tell it, hwæt:

Our beloved half-elf bard-fighter is a pirate and revolutionary; her immediate backstory is that her captain and the rest of the crew were all murdered and their boat sunk by shadowy attackers in the midst of a massive storm and she was the sole survivor, cast adrift. This canonically occurred exactly a week and a half ago at this point, and she’s been Repressing All The Feelings.  Now the party is at this ancient archdruid NPC’s secret house in a tiny cove, and our pirate follows the archdruid when she slips away from the breakfast table into a shrine that turned out to be a memorial to the archdruid’s party, who all died in a terrible war they lost a thousand years ago. So those two got to have a long conversation about grief, and how sometimes there’s no way to make sense of the loss and all you can do is take the next small step in front of you, and keep your head above water and try not to drown, and how eventually you’ll get to a place where you don’t feel overwhelmed by the loss all the time. And then they had an argument about trying to overthrow the evil empire, because that’s what the archdruid’s party died attempting and failing at, and these characters have very different responses to “what is that next small step in front of me when all my friends have been murdered?” But the pirate actually acknowledged her feelings and started to deal with them! It was great! (Also the player told me I made her cry afterwards, but like... in a good way. So we’re living up to one of main reasons our party plays D&D, honestly).

Our dwarf rogue should have all sorts of issues, since he’s a mess and his player very much did make part his story about the discrimination the player faces in real life, but the player doesn’t like going there with RP. So instead he learned to swim, wandered off into the woods for a bit, discovered his psychic powers by cutting open a coconut, and declared himself the Fruit Ninja. But the eternal loner is actually talking to the rest of the party and making friends now, so there’s that.

Our grung druid has been having an ongoing crisis of faith since he ran away from his druidic fungus-worshipping monastery to join the party. So he got to get hauled up a cliff by the archdruid, who is herself a giant in his religion, and taught some minor druidic magic. And also got the personal support of his equivalent of the pope basically saying “nature isn’t bound up in the specific little rituals you feel like you’ve abandoned, it’s all around you in the world, and you’re on the right path towards being at peace with nature even if your particular religious elders are assholes about it.”

And of course the tale isn’t complete without discussing the nonsense that our dragonborn warlock idiot pulled. I’m torn between awarding inspiration and smacking the player in question with my copy of the DMG. This warlock was formerly a barbarian warlord chieftain whose crimes were many, various, and vile; then he was nearly-assassinated, deposed, and accidentally staggered into the Feywild to make a deal with an entity he cannot remember. He spent the first three sessions of the campaign glamored as a female elf, and only lost that when the old archdruid showed up and yanked it right off his scaly self. He also can’t swim, and this is a nautical campaign, so uhhhh anyway. He explained that he didn’t think they’d trust him as he was (despite the rest of the party not knowing anything of his backstory), and got dragged into the water for swimming lessons along with the dwarf, nearly drowned when his pseudodragon familiar divebombed his head, and eventually started using his tail to swim “like an iguana.” (Can iguanas swim? I wouldn’t know). So that was all very funny and light and a good time. Then, he noticed our pirate looking upset on the beach and came to comfort her.

Which is how my players, without any input from me, got into a conversation about their backstories and also cannibalism. Because this awkward dad dragonborn used to be an awful person, and now he’s trying to be better and find a place to belong in the world. So he’ll absolutely let this 20-something half-elf pour out her insecurities about what she’s doing, but then he’ll try to relate by telling her about when he thought he was doing the right thing, and finding your path in life. And THAT is a story that revolves around terrorizing the countryside with senseless violence and culminates in eating halflings. And the dragonborn doesn’t really understand why the entire party is now acting like he’s mildly dangerous and insane, after all it was par for the course in his culture and he doesn’t do it anymore!

So. Yeah. That happened. The general shock-and-disgust wound up being played for “what the **** is wrong with you?” laughs instead of horror, but it was a lot.

And at that point I made them go fight some sea spawn and blunder into the elvish version of Congress, because I decided we’d had enough deep and revealing discussions for one session.