Category: Humour

Categories
DM Resources Humour Player Resources

The D&D Teen Comedy

Lately I’ve been watching a lot of 80s teen comedies. Revenge of the Nerds, Real Genius, Summer School and of course the greats by John Hughes – Weird Science, the Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (to name just a few of my personal favourites). While watching these again recently, I started thinking about how the formula for a teen comedy could be used to create an interesting D&D campaign. The easiest way to accomplish this is to have kids in their mid to late teens get into all kinds of fun and frivolity when they are left unsupervised.

In the world of D&D most adventures begin their career in their late teens or early twenties. Other fantasy races are older, but their social, physical and mental maturity is roughly in the same place as a human reaching the age of majority. But what if we looked at heroes who were even younger? A bit less refined and a lot more naive. Level 1 adventurers already look at the world through rose-coloured glasses, but if they were a few years younger how much more would this outlook change?

Continue reading “The D&D Teen Comedy”
Categories
DM Resources Humour

118 Tavern Names

How many campaigns have you played where the DM started the campaign by stating “The party is in a tavern and an old man walks up to you with a job offer.”

Now my normal response is “What’s the name of the tavern?”

To which most DMs respond it doesn’t matter.

The problem is it does. Call me a stickler, but I like names for locations and I really like tavern names. They are amongst the most interesting locations in D&D to name and the very name can mean any number of things. A good tavern name adds atmosphere to the game and can become a place of fond memories for the players.

On the way home today I passed a van advertising a local restaurant, The Mermaid and the Oyster. My immediate thought was that I need to have a pint there.

Continue reading “118 Tavern Names”
Categories
Humour

1 d100 and 2 d4s

The Dungeon’s Master team took the dice quiz at DicePool.com and learned a lot about the old guard and our latest contributor in the process. Both Ameron and Wimwick came up as the devious d4. Neither the result nor the fact that we scored the same outcome came as a real surprise to us. What did open our eyes was Bauxtehude’s result. It turns out that he’s as loony as a d100.

Continue reading “1 d100 and 2 d4s”
Categories
DM Resources Editorial Humour

2010 Olympic Mascots

The 2010 Winter Olympics began on Friday. The mascots for the Vancouver games are cute, cuddly and culturally significant. At least that’s what most people see when they look at Sumi, Quatchi and Miga. I, on the other hand, see three creatures that I want to include in my next D&D adventure.

Using the information provided on the official Vancouver 2010 Olympics website, I’ve created three creatures based on the mascots that you can use in your next heroic teir adventure.

Continue reading “2010 Olympic Mascots”
Categories
Humour Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge: Holiday Shopping

‘Tis the season for giving and receiving gifts. Regardless of your personal or religious reasons for celebrating during the holiday season, everyone likes getting gifts. This is no secret to retail merchants. They know that you’ll be shopping for everyone on your list at this time of year and they want you to spend, spend, spend.

Shopping for Christmas presents can be a lot of hard, grueling work. It’s the part of the holidays that I like the least. So I decided to look at a challenging, real life situation through my D&D coloured glasses (as I so often do). A few months ago we put together a skill challenge called Battle for the Remote. It’s in that same vein that I present a holiday themed, real life skill challenge called Holiday Shopping.

Don’t forget to enter the Dungeon’s Master Design a Holiday Dungeon Content. This skill challenge is a little bit outside the box, but it would still qualify (if I wasn’t one of the judges). Enter today.

Continue reading “Skill Challenge: Holiday Shopping”
Categories
Humour Player Resources

Survive a Zombie Attack by Using the Zombie Survival Flowchart

Are you prepared for a zombie attack? Would you be one of the poor schlubs who gets eaten in the first hours of the zombie apocalypse or are you one of those fanatics who is ready for this unlikely, worst-case-scenario? If you’re anything like the team at Dungeon’s Master then you’re probably not going to survive very long if zombies ever rise up and attack humanity.

In case of a zombie attack, be it in your next D&D adventure or in real life, we want you to survive. To ensure that the human race stands strong when the undead rise, we’ve created a flowchart outlining what you can do to survive a zombie attack. Things will no doubt be chaotic when the zombies come for you, so the flow chart only covers the absolute essentials. Good luck!

Continue reading “Survive a Zombie Attack by Using the Zombie Survival Flowchart”
Categories
Humour Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge: Battle for the Remote

How often do you think of real-life situations in game terms? A recent “discussion” in my household inspired me to put together this skill challenge. It’s played from the male point of view. I’ve discovered that in real life whenever my wife needs to make a skill check she uses her at-will, wife paragon path ability to re-roll checks until she gets a result that she feels is favourable.

Background

You’ve worked hard all week and now all you want to do is kick back and enjoy the game. But your significant other has other plans. Her favourite show is on at the same time and she plans to watch it on the flatscreen TV. If you haveany chance of watching the game you’d better act quickly and whatever you do, don’t give up the remote.

Setup

You want to watch sports; she wants to watch something else (not sports). You’re already on the couch with the remote in hand. The game is already on and the kick-off, first pitch, tip-off or puck drop is happening in the next few minutes.

Continue reading “Skill Challenge: Battle for the Remote”
Categories
Humour

Respect Your Faithful Servant Or Else…

Although your faithful servant isn’t invisible he might as well be. He’s overlooked and often forgotten. Whenever you stop for an extended rest, the faithful servant is the one who sets up camp. He tends to your armor, weapons and other equipment. He sees that your horse is fed and groomed. He makes dinner and cleans up afterwards. Without the faithful servant you’d be lost. Yet you barely acknowledge him or even address him.

Continue reading “Respect Your Faithful Servant Or Else…”
Categories
Adventure Hooks DM Resources Humour

The Hangover: The Movie That Begs to Be a D&D Adventure

As a DM, I often draw inspiration for my D&D games from the most unexpected places. This weekend I saw the movie The Hangover and afterwards I realized that the way the story is structured would work beautifully as a D&D game. For those readers who haven’t seen the movie, I won’t present anything in this article that will ruin it for you. The high points that I’m going to cover are all revealed in the trailer.

Continue reading “The Hangover: The Movie That Begs to Be a D&D Adventure”
Categories
Humour Skill Challenges

Skill Challenge: The Princess Bride

Movies and television serve to inspire DMs as we dream up new ideas to run our players through. The Princess Bride is a movie that, on top of providing great drama, incorporates humour into its narrative. The movie will never get old, remaining fresh and entertaining. So, as I reminisced about the Cliffs of Insanity, the Fire Swamp and true love I pondered… could this be turned into a skill challenge?

Of course, the answer is yes, and so I present in all its down and dirty glory The Princess Bride (only the good parts) via skill challenge.

Continue reading “Skill Challenge: The Princess Bride”