Concept: Digimon Adventure Series but it’s actually just a d&d-style tabletop rpg campaign run by Gennai.

aka the reason why Gennai became evil in tri. Being a dm is watching all your plans fall apart at the hands of monkeys and anyone who does it a lot is a broken person. I could only imagine the horrors of being an old old man and having to run a campaign with a party of kids. Under the cut because this got a lot longer than I expected.

-”Hikari couldn’t make it today ‘cause she got sick, sorry guys”



-”You start off at summer camp” “Ok”

-”It starts snowing” “…What”

-”A waterfall rises from the ground and pulls you into a vortex of data” “Gennai what the heck”

-Taichi loves tabletop rpgs but he’s really bad at playing strategically

-Sora just really love tabletops.

-Yamato was bribed into this.

-Koushiro bought all of the game’s lore books and focuses far more on reading them and trying to predict the plot than actually playing



-”What do I see in this room?” “A weird gear in the corner and that’s about it” “I investigate the gear.”

-”You find nothing” “I investigate it more”

-Neither Mimi, Jou or Takeru have ever played a tabletop rpg before and they’re so confused, what’s happening

-The “everyone gets seperated” segment is absolute mayhem to control

-”Ok, Jou and Sora, you guys are about to be eaten alive. Yamato, you’re freezing to death in a blizzard. Taichi, you are in a different blizzard, also you aren’t wearing clothes.”

-Takeru starts actually crying when Angemon-the-NPC dies and demands that they hold another session because he hates that ending, that sucks

-Gennai freaks out because Takeru I know you’re upset but I wasn’t really planning on having another session, I don’t really have a plot- Yamato please stop glaring daggers into my skull

-They end up holding another session and Gennai doesn’t know what to do

-Ok fuck this island, he needs a new setting.

-And some McGuffins.

-Hey Gennai what are these crest things and why have you not brought them up before now if they’re so important.

-Shut up Koushiro.



-Taichi gets his first and immediately starts trying to use it but god dammit it’s not time yet this isn’t what Gennai was planning why couldn’t the plot go the way he wanted it to for once

-Gennai gets so pissed off at Taichi that he turns Agumon into an awful monster and almost wipes out the party out of pure spite.

-He also makes the villain an elvis monkey. Because fuck, what the hell else is he supposed to do?

-Koushiro eventually figures out through reading the manuals and not actually playing that their digital world bodies aren’t their real bodies.

-He tells everyone this despite the fact that there’s really no reason that his character should have access to that information Koushiro why are you like this

-Taichi takes this information completely the wrong way, as usual.

-Gennai is overjoyed at this misconception because he’s deadset on murdering Taichi’s character at this point

-Koushiro ruins it all by finding some actual logical lore reason that the dark network wouldn’t actually kill him.

-But Gennai still refuses to address Taichi’s character for the rest of the session

-It’s not because the time change is an actual thing he just doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to do with Taichi’s character.

-And he splits everyone up again so that it’s really confusing to keep track of

-He reveals the time switch next session as though it was part of his master plan all along

-And then Taichi has a reveal of his own

-Hikari is better and will be joining them next session

-Gennai nearly throws himself out a window.

-How the fuck is he supposed to incorporate her???????

-Fucking Yagamis

-Ok fine he needs a new villain anyways he can just throw her partner into that somehow.

-He’s not sure how Mimi managed to enslave a castle full of digimon and he has no idea what to do about it

-Sora gets so invested in her character’s arc with Piyomon that she actually starts crying and has to go leave and call her mom and tell her that she loves her.

-Gennai is very proud of himself for the Venomvamdemon twist

-”Angemon and Angewomon need to shoot arrows at Taichi and Yamato’s characters.” “Koushiro for the last time, stop looking through the lore books”

-They save the day by kicking a building like a soccer ball and Gennai finds this very annoying

-Why do these kids want to keep going with this he’s running out of ideas

-Gennai goes through a phase of trying to kill Takeru off

-Taichi finally decides to develop his backstory a little more.

-He goes for the trauma route, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone

-”I hit him” “Why would you hit me!?” “PLOT PURPOSES KOUSHIRO”

-Everyone decides to do some developing, actually

-And after Gennai spent so much goddamn time developing this arc

-Nope. He’s not standing for this. They wanted plot. They’re getting plot.

-Gennai feels a weird satisfaction as he kills of the party members one my one.

-Then Takeru ruins it at the last minute by bringing everyone back with the power of love or whatever.

-Wait fuck he didn’t plan for this what the hell is he supposed to do now

-Gennai comes up with the dumbest, edgiest idea for the final boss but he doesn’t care because it’s not his fault he keeps getting asked to come up with more ideas for what was supposed to be a single-session campaign

02

-Three years later. Takeru suggests a wonderful idea. Digimon Adventure 02

-Gennai would rather die

-And so Koushiro decides to step up and be DM

-Takeru and Hikari, now more experienced in tabletops and raring to go, plot out the aftereffects of their first adventure and how it would’ve probably traumatized them a lot.

-Miyako has always wanted to play a tabletop rpg, and upon hearing that her new neighbor was going to be part of one hosted by Koushiro-senpai, she jumps at the opportunity

-Iori doesn’t know what a tabletop rpg even is. He doesn’t know what a rpg even is. Miyako can he leave now?

-Taichi loved their first campaign to death and told Daisuke about it excessively. Daisuke has no idea what a tabletop rpg is but this digital world place sounds fun! And so when it’s announced that they’ll be doing a new campaign, Taichi recommends Daisuke.

-Daisuke told his friend Ken about the campaign, and he was very interested, but he’s reaaaally busy and he’d miss the first few sessions, is it still ok for him to join if it’s really late?

-Unwilling to make the same mistake as his predecessor, Koushiro arranges a private meet up with Ken and they do some serious plotting together

-There’s a day where it ends up being just Takeru and Hikari who are able to show up. Koushiro improvises.

-He just finished a Call of Cthulu campaign, ok?

-Daisuke thinks nothing of it whenever Koushiro mentions Ken’s character

-He thinks nothing of it when Koushiro arranges for him to have a soccer match against Ken’s character. In fact, he’s rather excited. This probably means that Ken’s going to be joining them soon, right?

-Daisuke goes from being very enraged about the plot twist to being incredibly proud upon finding out that it’d been Ken’s idea. Wow that was so tricky!

-Takeru gets very pumped up when his character gets his scene with Ken

-Finally, he gets to work on his character’s emotional issues and develop his character more. He wasted most of his first campaign but no more!

-Koushiro indulges him for about five minutes.

-This continues to happen pretty much any time that Takeru thinks he might get a shot at developing his character

-Ok, the plot that Ken came up with was really good but Koushiro’s not sure how he feels about the design Ken gave him for this monster.

-And he’s not sure how Ken’s going to pick up the character after Koushiro already put him through an arc.

-Iori is very determined to upholding the morals of his ingame character, and Daisuke and Miyako quickly become annoyed because dammit Iori it’s getting in the way of the plot just have him make up with Ken already

-Ken actually loves this development. He isn’t sure why it’s so fun to torment his own character like this.

-He also finds out about the tentacle monster one-off and decides to incorporate it into his backstory because reasons. Koushiro is both horrified and annoyed because he wanted to forget about that dumb plot thread dammit.

-And besides, he already had a plan for Ken’s backstory so what was he supposed to do with that now!? Oh well, he’ll just keep the dark spore arc in anyways and hope it works

-While Iori’s still not quite sure if he’s enjoying this, he’s having a lot of fun drawing the characters. He comes up with designs for Arachnemon and Mummymon’s human forms, as well as for Oikawa.

-He’s the only one who really cares about the new villains, honestly. Koushiro’s kinda disappointed.

-Oh well, as long as Iori is interested in them, he might as well refocus their plot around him

-He’s written a new set of villains too and- oh. Ok. They murdered them all already. Great. God dammit.

-Everyone’s really happy about the mini-arcs they get to give their characters though.

-Mimi comes home for winter vacation and demands that they hold a session with all the old gang to celebrate.

-Gennai is bribed into it

-And in true Gennai style, he sends everyone all over the goddamn place and runs a million different storylines at once.

-And provides little to no explanation as to why anything is happening

-Koushiro tries to wrap it up logically in the next session but it doesn’t really work so they just try not to think about it.

-The Belialvamdemon reveal happens and everyone breaks character to congratulate Koushiro on that dope-ass plot twist.

-The ending is kind of cheesy but everyone loves it

-The group ends up being so in love with their characters that they decide to start doing CD dramas one-off campaigns with alternating dms to develop their characters more.

-Takeru writes an epilogue but everyone hates it and tells him it’s trash.

Tri.

-Mimi moves back to Japan with a new friend and a bad idea

-They call up Gennai

-He says yes, but only on the condition that he’s allowed to bring in some folks from his normal roleplaying group

-He’s going to drag these kids kicking and screaming through the bowels of hell.

-Meimei doesn’t know shit about tabletop rpgs but she’s trying her best ok

-Maki is just here because she heard that children were going to cry but now she’s getting really worked up about this backstory fuck she’s actually getting into this.

-Daigo is tired of having his donuts stolen, and his character’s donuts stolen. And he’s ready for Yagami to die

-Taichi decides to present his character’s viewpoints and values from a new perspective and Yamato hates it.

-Sora wishes she could have one, just one campaign where the boys aren’t rivals. It’s getting old.

-Jou doesn’t have time for this, he needs to be studying. He doesn’t have time to be playing games anymore- wait fuck that’d make a good plotline for his character! Shit now he’s really invested in this.

-Koushiro for the last goddamn time stop reading the manuals.

-Luckily Gennai designed this plot to make no sense and disregard the manuals entirely and now Koushiro can’t have all the answers five seconds after the big reveal so HAH

-Takeru almost cries with joy when he finally gets some development time.

-Gennai actually likes where the kid went with that. Huh. He’ll have to kill him last, just to be appreciative.

-”I attempt to call Iori” “You fail” “I try again” “You fail”

-Did we just murder Daisuke and Ken’s partners oh my god they’re going to be so pissed when we send them the session recap

-”Ken turns into Gennai” “…What” “He licks you” “Gennai whAT THE FUCK”

-”Maki, you are now in the dark ocean” “The what now?”

-Koushiro just wants people to stop bringing that stupid thing back up for the love of god please.

-”I sacrifice myself to save them”

-…He did it.

-He finally killed Yagami

-Gennai almost cries with happiness

-Hikari suddenly thinks of the best idea

-Koushiro is really tired of people bringing up the dark ocean please stop

-”Hikari what the fuck” “It’s character development”

-”You find the corpses of Daisuke, Miyako, Iori and Ken” “Well that explains why he wasn’t picking up”

-Ok, Takeru is ok with killing off characters but he’s starting to get concerned about Gennai’s maniacal laughter

-”You die” “What the fuck Gennai”

-Everybody dies

-”Still better than Takeru’s epilogue” “Fuck you Hikari”