D&D 5e / The Wild Beyond the Offsite / Jiyugaoka RPG Day III

The old-timers say Waterdeep's adventuring scene has changed.

But as a young aspiring hero, obviously you paid them no mind. You’ve never bothered with the city quest board - instead you landed a position in one of the city's hottest VC (adVenture Capital) firms! Founded by a wealthy old retired warlock, the company employs you and other young adventurers to slay dragons and loot dungeons on its behalf - in exchange for a very competitive revenue share agreement.

You've been working for OpenLootSystems for two years now, and it's going great. You haven't technically been to any dungeons yet - the company finds it more efficient to outsource the actual plundering, while you handle threat assessments and TPK insurance. But through diligent administrative work, you've risen to rank L5 on the org chart.

Then a sudden stroke of luck - you and some colleagues were sent off to a rustic mansion, for a cushy team-building offsite to learn about recent advancements in AI (arcane intellect). But the very night you arrived, somebody turned up DEAD! What happened? Who will be next? And can you escape with your employee evaluation intact?

System:
This game will use regular D&D 5e/SRD (PDF), but will be very light on rules. It’s fine if you’re not familiar with 5e spells and abilities - in fact it’s encouraged, since your character isn’t very familiar with them either!

Characters:
Your character in this game has no actual “adventuring” experience. But you’ve spent several years enabling others to adventure, and thanks to a byzantine interpretation of the XP rules you’ve somehow reached level 5 in your chosen class. You have all the stats and abilities of a 5th-level character, but how that happened is up to you - e.g. if you’re a wizard, perhaps you learned the Fireball spell in a training seminar but you haven’t had a reason to cast it yet.

So if you’ve ever thought of an odd 5e character idea that wouldn’t work in a “real” campaign, now is your chance! If you’d like to bring a character, roll your ability scores by any usual method (or roll them when we begin), and feel free to use any character options from any published SRD or D&D rules, or homebrew within reason. You’ll start at level 5, with any non-magical equipment you think is appropriate (you’re paid quite well!). Message me if you have any questions.

I’ll also bring pregen characters with stats and abilities. But please bring your own backstory!

Theme:
How the adventure progresses thematically is up to you. Maybe when death is imminent your party will get serious and discover their inner heroic nature… or perhaps you’ll blunder about in a comedy of errors.
Either way, content-wise the game will be inclusive and appropriate for anyone of any age.