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“With one last axe to the throat,” Mike says, dramatically splaying his hands across the table, holding the party's rapt attention, “Lord Vecna is vanquished.”
The party, who had been following along rather dutifully up to this point, collectively sighs. Will sinks into his seat, vaguely disappointed.
“That’s it?” Dustin’s the first to pipe up, and Mike immediately furrows his eyebrows, offended.
“What do you mean, that’s it? This was a five-year campaign-”
“With the worst ending I’ve ever seen!” Dustin knocks his binder against the table, and Lucas chuckles in agreement. “What was that? So, what, that’s how it ends? I thought Lord Vecna was bulletproof-”
“He is bulletproof-”
“Then why did an axe kill him?” Dustin finishes. “That final battle took, like, ten minutes!”
“I made it easy, because you guys complained!” Mike sputters. Will can’t help but feel a little let down — not to mention, extremely confused — by how Mike’s longest campaign has panned out. Mike’s creative, sure, but at many instances, his campaign veered so far off the rails that Will thought to question if they were still playing D&D after all. Like, he’s talking Russian subplots and way too much time spent on his little sister Holly and her classmates. Way, way too much time. “And then the mage destroyed the Upside Down for good, and we all celebrate! What’s not to like?”
“Okay,” Will interjects, sitting up a bit straighter. “So, what was all that for? Why was Will the Wise able to control Vecna? I feel like you hardly did anything with that. For two, what ever happened to Patty? The ending just feels… random.”
“Underwhelming,” Lucas agrees. “I appreciated you giving me a girlfriend, though. But why’d she get sidelined at the end? Does she even know the mage restarted her heart? They didn’t even interact at the end!”
One of Mike’s original characters — a redheaded zoomer named Mad Max had reluctantly become the love interest to Lucas’ ranger, and an overall badass until Mike got mad at Lucas and decided to put her in a coma for several months of the campaign. This reminds Will of a more pertinent issue with the campaign, though, and he shuts his binder.
“I have a more important question,” Will says. “Um, why did the cleric have to be in love with the paladin?”
All eyes fall on Mike, the dungeon master.
“That’s a- that’s a-” Mike shakes his head, flustered. “That’s a- no. That was integral to the plot.”
Will raises an eyebrow. “Literally how? And the paladin just, what, never found out about that? Or about the mural my character painted for him? He still thinks it’s from the mage?”
“That happened off-screen,” Mike says simply. “Like, not in the game. I dunno, guys, just make something up!”
“This whole campaign could’ve been way shorter if you cut out the Russian stuff, too,” Dustin says. “It insisted upon itself.”
For a solid three months of gameplay, Mike was dead set on a storyline of their town’s literal police chief being sent to a Russian prison — also happening to have a romance with Will’s mother, which didn’t sit right with him at all. Right around that third year, Mike’s campaign truly began losing the plot. He’d introduced a new lesbian warlock named Robin who scooped ice cream, and that was the main highlight.
Will also didn’t really appreciate the paladin remarking that it shan’t be his fault Will the Wise dost not like maidens, but. Whatever.
“Hey, why does my character spend all his time with Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington?” Dustin asks. A good amount of the bard’s plot had consisted of hijinks with a character Will’s pretty convinced was based off of Nancy’s high school boyfriend. “Have we ever talked to him? Even once?”
“And why was it hinted in the last few minutes that Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington was kind of into my brother?”
“That character wasn’t even remotely based off of Jonathan,” Mike snarks back. “It’s a- I take inspiration from real life, guys! Sue me!”
“And what inspired you to make your mom almost cheat on your dad with the zoomer’s, like, extremely racist brother?”
“Billy was a mini-boss we had to defeat before Vecna,” Mike explains. “He had to be hateable!”
“Dude, is your parents’ marriage okay?”
“I just still don’t get the Russian stuff.”
“Did blue ever meet yellow in the west? Was that important, or am I just insane?”
“What happened to Doc Owens, the alchemist? I liked him.”
“Why did you keep introducing new NPCs just to kill them off?” Dustin interjects. It’s a good question — Will still feels pretty bad for the honorable knight Bob, who had been mauled by a demogorgon, along with the druid Edward who had been exiled for crimes he didn’t commit, only to be killed in a heroic battle with demobats. Actually, now that Will thinks about it, they never saw those demobats again.
“Shock value,” Mike says. “Did you guys really not like it?”
“It’s not shocking when you introduce characters just to kill them off! And hey, Michael, any reason why the paladin got two love interests?”
“Because I’m the dungeon master, and I said so.”
“Okay, and the paladin treated them both kinda badly.”
“Yeah, I miss the mage,” Lucas says, and Will nods in agreement. “Her ending doesn’t feel right to me. At all, man. So, what, she just, like, exploded? What the hell was the reason?”
Mike winces. “I’m not really sure.”
“Of course you’re not,” Lucas murmurs.
“Not to get back to me,” Will says, “but why on Earth did the paladin not hug the cleric when he arrived on the sword coast? You literally said you had traveled far and wide. How did that serve the plot at all?”
“Yeah, man,” Dustin agrees. “The sword coast storyline was dragging. Kinda thought you were setting something up there, like, for the paladin and the cleric. Otherwise - what was the point?”
“Up to interpretation,” Mike answers, and crosses his arms.
Dustin’s mouth hangs slightly ajar. “Up to- Mike, the paladin didn’t have any arc at all! I was rooting for you guys! I thought the cleric and the paladin were going crazy together?”
“Crazy good best friends, yeah,” Mike says, smiling across the table at Will. Will fights the urge to hit him over the head with a folding chair.
“I hate this,” Lucas mumbles. “Literally, I hate this. That final fight was totally lame. And,” he says, throwing a glance Will’s way, “Will the Wise really took the brunt of it all. I mean, the possession? Not to mention he didn’t even play for all of the beginning!”
“Will rolled a six, so he got sent to the Upside Down,” Mike explains calmly. With a shudder, Will remembers tossing popcorn at the ceiling, bored out of his mind, asking, can I get found yet? only to receive a frown in return from Mike, saying something about raising the stakes for Will the Wise’s rescue. Mike must’ve felt kind of bad, though, because the following portion focused quite a bit on the cleric’s connection to the terrifying Mind Flayer.
But, wait — what ever came of that connection?
Will doesn’t know, but he’s kind of tired, and it’s a school night.
“I think the campaign got too big for its britches, man,” Lucas says, and gives a sympathetic pat to Mike’s shoulder. “Should’ve quit while you were ahead, y’know?”
“The ending was perfect. I told you guys, I wasn’t going to hold back this go around.”
“You held back on everything,” Dustin groans. “So many characters didn’t even interact!”
“Yeah, like the zoomer and the mage!” Will says. “How did the zoomer know the chief was alive when she came out of that coma?”
“That conversation also happened off-screen,” Mike says, and the party erupts into rampant complaints. “You know what? Screw you guys. I liked this campaign. And think of the spin off material!”
“Spin off?” Dustin’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, hell no. You’re not spinning off anything. I vote to overthrow you as DM.”
“Agreed,” Lucas nods. “Dude, you had some serious juice at the beginning, and, like, lost it right after Will turned sorcerer.”
“Yeah, Will as a sorcerer was badass.”
“That part was really good,” Will supplies, and Mike splits into a fraction of a smile. “Kinda think my powers would’ve helped more in the final battle though, right? Like, in Dimension X. Feel like I could’ve done more. Instead I was just, like, with my mom the whole time. And why, exactly, was she there, again?”
“You should’ve rolled higher,” Mike replies. “Then you would’ve gotten to use your powers again.”
Will sighs. Arguing with Mike over his campaigns was always a losing battle. He kind of wants to ask why Will the Wise traveled across distant lands to visit Robin — Mike’s aforementioned lesbian, ice cream slinger-turned radio jockey-turned elf NPC — to talk about signals and avalanches only for that to never pan out, but drops it. Besides, there are far more pressing plot holes woven into Mike’s campaign.
“Melvald's doesn’t even sell milkshakes, Mike,” he says, since it’s the first thing that comes to mind. Would’ve been kinda cool, he thinks, if that had been the intrepid Lord Vecna possessing Will the Wise during that moment, which led to the slip up. But turns out, that was just another one of Mike’s odd writing choices. “And, like, you didn’t have to incorporate me being gay into the middle of the game, either. At least not that way.”
Mike frowns. “I thought I was being supportive.”
“Our fiercest ally,” Lucas mumbles with an eyeroll. Mike defiantly flicks a pretzel at him, and misses. “Whatever. We still whooped you. Good game, man.”
“Yeah, yeah. Good game. I’ll just forever be wondering why everyone forgot Will the Wise’s birthday.”
Will’s eyebrows scrunch. He remembers Mike announcing that the paladin, mage and cleric had been on the sword coast on March 22nd; they’d been sitting around the D&D table dressed in streamers, and Will had just opened gifts from his friends who did, assuredly, not forget his birthday, but apparently all their characters needed to. Mike assured him it would pay off in a major plot twist. It did not.
“Just ignore that,” Mike says. “Like, seriously. Wh- why is everyone grilling me?”
“Cause it’s fun,” Lucas chuckles. He’s the first to sort papers into his binder and fold it shut. Lucas rises to set his book on the shelf as Mike folds the board, carefully placing their character pieces back into the box.
“Stay for a movie?” Mike asks as Will passes behind him.
“Course I will,” Will responds.
Lucas and Dustin shrug their coats on, already enraptured in a round of bickering, the infuriating plotholes of Mike’s campaign moving further from their minds. They bid their goodbyes to their friends, and the basement is quiet again.
Mike sits on the couch with a huff, and Will shuts off the lights. The opening credits of John Carpenter’s The Thing crawl across the screen, of course, because Will’s pretty sure Mike can recite this movie.
“I really did like it,” Will assures him with a nudge to the arm. Mike shrugs in response, passing him the bowl of pretzels. “Honestly! It was pretty good. Just long.”
“I thought it was perfect.”
Will rolls his eyes. “Of course you did.”
Mike smiles, stretching an arm over Will’s shoulders, and Will leans into him. The movie drones on.
“You know,” Will says after a moment, chewing on a pretzel, “I kinda liked how you left it open-ended for the paladin and the cleric.”
“Sorcerer,” Mike corrects, still transfixed on the movie, but a blush crawls across his cheeks.
“Don’t be annoying. It’s my character.”
“I’m literally the DM.”
“Not for long,” Will says. “You’re about to be overthrown, haven’t you heard?”
Mike scoffs. “Dustin’s campaigns are worse than mine.”
“But, really,” Will goes on, resting his cheek against Mike’s shoulder, “why the hell did you make my character in love with yours? You’re bizarre.”
“I thought it was sweet.”
Will lifts his head, bewildered. Mike’s mind is a weird and fascinating place — god knows he’s been trying to understand it for years now. “And why didn’t the paladin feel the same?”
“Don’t worry,” Mike says, and leans in to press a kiss to Will’s lips. “He does.”