OOC

@Jabes.plays.RPG Take it easy brother. We’re not really rolling yet anyway. Plenty of time.

Recover. We're nowhere near starting yet.

Would, if possible, everyone share a bit of their grown up situations? I have listed below everything that has been revealed so far and added Sheila's.

Sheila becomes a tortured artist of some renown rendering images from her experiences in the Realms. She's single and has come out to all her friends.

Bobby has become a chef

Eric works in finance. He is married with two children

Presto lives in the Realms with Varla and has become a powerful magician

Diana Won Olympic gold. Became an MMA fighter and then, with the influence of Kosar, found a path to enlightenment. Single.

Hank Went on to become a teacher and then a guidance councelor

I wasn't necessarily going to hit everyone with the wall of text that I created for Diana's backstory, but since it's already written...

TL;DR - Olympic medalist -> sense of emptiness -> MMA fighter -> emotional struggles -> found a better path

Diana's story
Diana was excited to return to the real world. She got to rejoin her larger friend circle and return to competitive gymnastics. Between her already incredible talent, and the skills she developed in the Realm, she succeeded at becoming a member of the U.S. gymnastics team, eventually winning multiple gold medals at the 1988 summer olympics in Seoul. It was the highlight of her life.

Which was a curse as much as a blessing. At 19, she had achieved the greatest success that a gymnast could expect to achieve in their life. Already somewhat "old" for a female olympic gymnast, Diana looked out at the rest of her life and wondered… what now? Was it all downhill now?

Where once she had little desire to return to the Realm, now she began to yearn for return trips. In the Realm, she was still a great warrior. Her skills could continue to grow. And she felt important.

In her early twenties, Diana became more focused on being a fighter. She trained relentlessly, and occasionally made solo trips to the Realm just to fight. She would always help those in need - the Realm never has a shortage of people in need - but she helped those people as much for the thrill of fight as for seeking to do good. In the real world, Diana began struggling to maintain her life. She couldn’t hold down a regular job, and she let her friendships wither.

As fighting became the singular focus of her life, Diana turned to combat sport as her real world career. Diana became a mixed martial arts prize fighter. As a former olympian, Diana attracted a lot of attention, becoming a popular favorite. As a former adventurer of the Realm, she was also quite good, never losing a fight. Diana was seemingly on top of the world again, but inside she felt hollow.

Diana had no close relationships, and her life was consumed by training and fighting. She kept in touch with the old "dungeons and dragons" gang and joined them when Presto called them back to the Realm. But the once optimistic, friendly acrobat was gone, replaced by a somewhat grim combatant always itching for a fight. It put distance between her and her old friends. Diana recognized this, but couldn’t find a way back to who she used to be.

As Diana approached 30, the MMA fandom began to lose interest in her. Although her age wasn’t slowing her down, she was still viewed as an "old timer". New bright stars were rising, and the promoters just weren’t interested in having her potentially defeat these up-and-coming money makers. Despair began to creep around the edges of Diana’s thoughts.

Not long after Diana’s 30th birthday, Diana witnessed a massive shooting star. Mere moments after that, Presto summoned her to the Realm - alone. The event Diana had witnessed had occurred simultaneously in the real world and the Realm, and it was no ordinary meteorite. It was the return of - Diana’s potential soulmate that she met during the party’s initial time in the realm.

Kosar had become a being of spirit and energy, living a life mostly in the celestial realm where he helped maintain balance in the universe. But he had sensed Diana’s sadness. He had returned specifically to help her. Kosar helped Diana tap into her spiritual side, guiding her onto a new path. With Kosar’s help, Diana began following a path towards enlightenment. She began developing her body, mind, and spirit together. She finally began to find her center.

Over the past few years, Diana has changed her life. In the real world, she is now an instructor of martial arts - both the physical and spiritual aspects. She works specifically with underprivileged youth, helping them navigate the obstacles society puts in front of them. She also regularly returns to the Realm - not to fight, but to commune with the mystical energies there. She doesn’t see Kosar much anymore, as he is forever burdened with his celestial duties, but she is able to communicate with him. Although not romantically involved, Diana and Kosar are platonic soulmates, sharing a bond few can understand.

Looking forward, Diana now hopes to find an emotional partner in the real world with which to share her life. She has conquered her fears of growing old and weak, now seeing that it is merely part of the grand cycle. Someday soon, she hopes to find someone to walk that path with her.

And, of course, if the Realm needs her to fight for it again, she is ready. Not for the thrill, but because it needs to be done.

Thanks for sharing Tim. Very well done.

I think Diana and Sheila have similar hopes for the future, as neither are in a satisfying emotional and physical relationship.

I need to write up something for Presto, but trying to decide what 20 levels of spells look like is giving me a headache. The best kind of headache, what kind of toys you want to play with!

He's a difficult character because he doesn't have a "real world" experience and he doesn't have a traditional career. I think I'll stick with his canon "trip around the planes" that he was supposed to have taken, but I need to decide what happened after that, or possibly because of that.

@Ezz.
I can imagine. 40+ spells and that's only if he gets the minimum for each level and doesn't research or acquire more.

Hank's always felt a more responsible than the others for the prediacement they had found themselves in. Not that he could remember who suggested they take the ride in the first place or whether it was a collective decision, but still, the eldest brother role was not something he ignored easily, ingrained as it was into his psyche. That was pretty much how he lived his life after they returned from the realms. With Diana pursuing her sporting dreams, Hank contemplated going to archery, second-nature as that had become to him, but he didn't possess the single-minded competitive edge she did, and eventually gave up on that to go to teacher college, and subsequent to that, after some years in the classroom, found even more purpose as a guidance counselor.

He faithfully kept in touch with the others over the years, even with Presto, whom he would visit to bring over all the mundane things of earth he imagined Presto would want. Sheila and Bobby, over whom he felt particularly more protective towards he tried to keep most in touch with, both over the phone and with visits where term break vacations permitted, and had offered to support them financially in their earlier years. Eric, who had stated a family of his own, he visited every Thanksgiving/Christmas season. Diana's career and fame he followed with much enthusiasm. Even the Dungeon Master was in his radius, except that his elusiveness meant Hank didn't manage to find him as much as he would've liked to.

I've finished with Presto's sheet but for some reason I can't apply to the game with it. The dropdown menu with the characters doesn't have a scroll bar on the side so I can only see 5 characters. I renamed Presto as a workaround, but it didn't work.

It's odd, it's the only game like that, if I hop into a different 5e game I see the scroll bar.

EDIT: Maybe if I leave and then re-join the game it'll unglitch itself. I'll bother Annex with it once they're fully healthy again.

He is here, merely taking things very easy.
Did you make Presto with a regular 5e sheet or one of the custom ones?

It was a custom one. Do you think that's the issue? It's the first time I've used one.

It's odd since I've allowed both Custom and regular 5e sheets since game creation.
Which one are you using?
Just create and submit a regular 5e Presto placeholder for now while we figure out what's wrong.

*sigh* I figured it out after bowlofspinach posted in my bug thread. Turns out it was user error. I never actually CREATED a 5e sheet based on Presto, I was caught up on not being able to see other 5e sheets that I knew were in my profile. Turns out once a character is "claimed" by a game, they can't be claimed by another one, so the 5 characters I see on that list were ones that I either never used or I left the game for one reason or another.

Dang, that's embarrassing as heck! In any case, I've applied with a 5e sheet of Presto. I'll go back and throw the whole buttload of spells on there. It won't take long, just some copy/paste work, but there's no way I'm putting all the spell descriptions on there.

Also, I just finished the series for the first time. I'm firmly in the Hank/Sheila lovebirds camp. I was kind of thinking it could go either way, but this bit when Sheila finds Hank after thinking he was dead in episode 27 doesn't look terribly platonic.

I think we can put the Shank relationship to rest for the context of our game. ;)

Presto approved. No need for all the spell descriptors, just those you've prepared for the day maybe. I made sure Custom sheets are also acceptable.

Whatever. Ship all you like. It's not happening in this incarnation.

Nor would I expect it to, I was just chatting in the context of the show. I've always felt weird about playing characters in relationships with other PCs. I couldn't predict if my wife would be annoyed or cringe her way into our divorce.

Granted. If we were to take screen captures of various moments of the show, it would imply that Sheila gets around a lot. We would have shots of Hank and Sheila being close and even holding hands, Sheila and Diana hugging and kissing Eric at the same time, Sheila all over Ramoud (aka the man without pants), Sheila and Karena holding hands and being very close, and there's even shippers out there who have created fanfic of Sheila having a relationship with Venger.

Agreed, internet shippers and fanfic creators can create a mountain out of a grain of sand. I get where they're coming from, though. It lets them interact with a story and its characters a lot more than the original media allowed. It stretches their engagement and enjoyment of it.

It can go too far sometimes, of course. I've heard of some truly bonkers fanfic stuff that makes you wonder if they shouldn't be seeking counseling instead of public validation of their fics.

I think we're all getting ready to write collaborative fanfic...