Was not expecting to tear up so early on a Monday, but here we are.
While doing our morning creep of D&D news, we came across this Twitter thread all about a D&D playing grandma that we knew we had to share.
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It was originally posted way back in the summer of 2019 so we’re sure that some of you have already gone down this particularly touching path, but it’s definitely worth the read for those of you who haven’t.
The story tells of a DM’s grandma who decided to join the adventuring party, her forest gnome druid, and… well, I’ll let Antoine H. (@AntnHz) tell it:
She started very late, at 75, only a little over a year ago. One day I simply asked her if she’d like to try, and, like always when presented with something new, she said “Of course!”. So we grabbed my PHB and built up a character together.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
(Also when we went through the character traits, I asked her: “Do you want to be a boy or a girl?”, and she answered right away “I’ve been a girl my whole life, it’d be fun to try being a boy for once”.)
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
That night, she does something that even I never expected: she goes on the Internet and reads every piece of lore she can find about gnomes. She barely knew how to Google, and yet here she was, browsing Wikipedia articles and D&D fansites.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
Thing is, she didn’t know about the Terminator (although she probably heard the name somewhere and it came back subconsciously). She doesn’t speak English, so she has no idea about the connotation.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
So we start playing. It’s a new campaign starting at 1st level, and I decided to approach it like a series of one-shots, so that players could come and go without having to bend the story when a character’s absent. Essentially, they’re adventurers sent on missions by their guild.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
They explore the house a bit, and in the night, get attacked by the kitchen table, who turned out to be a mimic. My grandmother’s genuinely scared by the (light) horror movie vibes, but she’s smiling through it all.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
Unwilling to get too close to the mimic, she casts for the first time a cantrip that would become her signature spell: Thorn Whip. From then on, she would use Thorn Whip any time she could, or when she didn’t know what to do. She loved that spell.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
Thus Terminatur was born. The party ended up establishing this house as their home base, and she made it a home; over the sessions, she used druidcraft to literally grow a new kitchen table where the mimic had been, and planted a vegetable garden where she invented a new fruit.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
I invited Terminatur to be part of this group by sending him a letter IRL to my grandma’s address. She was ecstatic, and she answered in the same way by sending me a letter written entirely in-character. She covered it with old stamps representing trees and dragons. pic.twitter.com/i4iNPRecJk
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
The colours of Terminatur’s outfit were inspired by the comic book character Bécassine, that she had loved since she was a kid. “Bécassine” is a national treasure and one of the most recognizable character in France, even though she’s virtually unknown outside of her homeland. pic.twitter.com/R8Teqclv5r
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
I almost forgot to mention: my grandmother’s also the one who came up with the party’s name. In this campaign, my players all wear real necklaces with little trinkets that they found in their adventures and that I hand out to them to reward them: medals, rings, monster teeth… pic.twitter.com/TQC3PN35OV
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
Less than a month ago, the cancer took over her whole body. She was hospitalized and stayed there until her passing, on Wednesday morning. The last thing she told me was “Never change, never loose your family spirit, and keep on playing Dungeons & Dragons”.
— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
So the BF will go on, without their druid. And in all my future campaigns, players will hear of a legendary planar-traveler gnome with a goose on his head that gives out strange fruit, cracks his whip and disappears.
Here’s to the best grandma in the world. I miss her already. pic.twitter.com/nY16ly9tOJ— Antoine H. (@AntnHz) August 23, 2019
Okay. I gotta go call my grandma.
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