My buddy, me too right this second.  For those of you who are not aware, that comment is buried somewhere in this recap of Book 7.

All right, so, like, here’s a basic breakdown of how it all goes down.

It starts with Jake’s big brother Tom, who, like, listen, his parents went “keep an eye on your younger brother after school on Fridays” and Tom went “that’s cruel” and his parents went “don’t be an ass” and Tom huffed like a teenage asshole and rolled his eyes and went “FINE.”  So he decides that if he’s going to be mandatory babysitter for like four hours on Friday afternoons he’s going to do something amusing with his time, and he asks Jake if he knows anything about DnD.  Jake goes “nope!” with good-natured interest because this is his big brother, and Tom’s like “GREAT we’re going to do that recruit your friends”.  And Marco’s in on the spot because he’s a fucking nerd who’s probably done reading on DnD even though he’s never been able to actually play a campaign, and Rachel agrees on behalf of herself and Cassie because she’s exasperated with Jake and Cassie and this is an opportunity to force them to spend multiple hours together.  (Cassie is unexpectedly the major sticking point here, but her parents are like “PLEASE HAVE FRIENDS AND A LIFE OUTSIDE THE BARN” so ultimately she ends up going.)

On the first day, as they’re leaving school, Rachel grabs Jake by the arm and points subtly over his shoulder.  “Hey,” she whispers, “isn’t that Tobias?”  It is, in fact, Tobias.  Actively in the process of maybe fighting a bully for his backpack–if Tobias loses his backpack, no way is his uncle buying him a new one, and he’s also going to be in a hell of a lot of trouble, so yeah he’s gonna fight for it.  Jake and Rachel don’t know this at the time, but listen, Berensons are Berensons in any universe.  Jake ambles over, all cheerfully broad shoulders and stocky build just starting to settle into ‘teen’ rather than ‘kid,’ and silently menaces the bullies into stepping down.  And then he kind of subtly kidnaps Tobias to go with them.

(Ax moves into town a month later.  He’s living with his much-older brother who used to be a soldier and now he’s done with that and working as a computer…person.  Full disclosure, I don’t know that much about Comp Sci, but Elfangor Shamtul is a programmer and he’s the rising star.  Ax is living with him because *waves hand* better schools maybe?  IDK.  That’s how Ax shows up, and they kind of adopt him because he’s new and he joins their campaign.)

Tom, because he’s kind of a dick, declares that he won’t tell them anything about the plot, except that they all have to dual-class as modified Druids.  

(I have added a cut because this got kind of long.)

So, right, all five of them show up and Tom is like “Okay, kiddos, let’s build some characters.”

Their character designs go like this.

• Jake: a very direct person in terms of combat, likes to balance strength and agility, most of his talents are in tactics and pragmatism rather than any flashy categories of fighting, so he is straight up a Fighter class in addition to the Druid thing.  He rolls acceptably well across the board, puts his highest stats into Strength and Wisdom, lowest stat into Intelligence, Tom has a field day.  At the beginning of the campaign, Jake is Neutral Good, but he slides increasingly toward Chaotic Neutral as the war progresses, despite attempts to remain True Neutral–the ultimate utilitarian alignment.

• Rachel: the tank, obviously, OBVIOUSLY, a Barbarian.  She rolls four high and two low stats.  The low stats go into Dexterity and Wisdom, she puts her highest stats into, unusually, Strength and Charisma.  This proves incredibly useful the first time they’re cornered by someone and Rachel and Marco save their asses with phenomenal Bluff rolls.  She’s Chaotic Neutral from start to finish and she loves it.

• Cassie: generally less combative and more interested in ensuring maximum survival of events, a healer in her free time, and an estreen, so she is a pure Druid.  She stacks her highest scores into Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma (Charisma is the lowest of her high scores because Priorities, Rachel), and her Constitution, Strength, and Dexterity are all average (like 13).  Bless her little heart, she’s the only reliably lawful character on this whole team, playing a Lawful Good character and frequently debating the moral points of affairs.

• Marco: a bit of an asshole, a talented liar and tactician, but more to the point the kind of person who knows weird obscure shit and likes to fuck with the DM, so he is a Beguiler.  He rolls a 20 and puts it into Charisma, and proceeds to minmax the shit out of his character.  Mostly this is fine except for his -1 Constitution modifier.  Tom gets a huge kick out of describing in elaborate detail the damage that Marco takes.  Marco vacillates between True Neutral and Chaotic Neutral depending on the situation.

• Tobias: the lookout, prefers a distance view so that he can see everyone at once, kind of a loner, and furthermore lives in the woods, OBVIOUSLY he is a Ranger.  His Con/Dex/Strength stats almost don’t matter because something goes horribly wrong during their first session–one of those ‘DM rolls dice behind books and stares at them in mild horror before guiltily looking up at player’ moments–and he gets stuck in the body of his animal companion, a red-tailed hawk.  His Intelligence is high, his Charisma is low, and Tom gives him an apology buff to make his Wisdom spectacular after the whole hawk thing.  Given that Tobias’ flexibility on a lot of issues is based on having a pretty solid grasp of his own moral code, I’m going to say Neutral Good trending toward Chaotic Good.

• Ax: kind of multipurpose but more to the point I really wanted him to have a blade-using class so that he can bastardize it to fit the weird blade-tailed alien Tom offers him the chance to play, so he is a Swordmaster courtesy of Marco’s interference and Tom agreeing to let him pull some nonsense.  His Charisma…oh, it’s Bad, and plus the dice hate him.  He has phenomenal Dexterity and Intelligence, mediocre Strength, passable Constitution and Wisdom, but his Charisma is like 8, making his modifier -1, and almost every time he tries to roll for Bluff he gets like a 3.  It’s kind of hysterical.  Tom, who has A Vision, tells Ax that he has to start out by trying to play the best Lawful Neutral he can manage.  He pulls it off for like a few sessions before he starts to visibly slip to Chaotic Good without pausing for any of the in-between steps.  More realistically, though, Ax’s alignment is Jake’s Alignment, full stop.
  

So basically the plot of the campaign is the plot of the War, with the additional bonus hazard of actual Space Magic.  Everyone (with the obvious exception of Ax, who arrived late and is therefore a Plot Piece as well as a PC) is human, playing their own selves, and no one gets the magic/animal companion bonuses of the Druid thing–basically they only dual class as Druids for morphing, because Tom’s kind of a dick like that.  

Regarding Villains

Tom loves hamming up Visser Three, especially since it makes his moments of genuine cunning and brilliance so much more shocking.  Sometimes Eva, who played some DnD as a kid herself, guest stars as The Big Boss, and she and Tom get a huge kick out of playing their characters off each other.  Chapman is still a dick, so Tom makes him a recurring villain, and he shamelessly self-inserts Tom Berenson, Jake’s brother, as a bad guy.  Tom has whole files of the various involved plotlines, about how the Yeerks are moving and the involvement of the Andalites in everything and the tragedy that is the Hork Bajir.  

ANYWAY

This would be good happy times where the major plot outside the game is the others realizing that Tobias’ family fucking sucks.  So Ax is like “Well, my brother and I have a guest room” and so Tobias crashes at Ax and Elfangor’s sometimes, and at Rachel’s other times.  And then Elfangor finds out about the situation and basically goes “Um, no” and pseudo-adopts Tobias, and then eventually stuff goes down and Elfangor goes to Rachel’s mom and just goes “What do I have to do to get legal custody” and then Tobias has a family and he and Rachel get to have a shy adorable relationship and it’s Good.