Dungeons and Dragons vs Rick and Morty
Yep. That's the title. As if 5e and the show Rick and Morty are walking into a fucking cage match against each other.
In Character Annotations
So. I guess this is a thing 5e does in their supplements. I remember it in Xanthar's, and I think it might have been a thing in Mordenkainen's? Anyway, there are in-character annotations by Rick, because of course there are. With phonetic speech patterns. Because Rick's ...speech impediment? is totally a font of hilarity.
It's 1pm, and this is making me want to drink.
Oh cool! And one of those annotations is Rick talking about what a power trip being the GM is. Because that's totally not going to undo all the work 5e has done to create an equal and healthy relationship between players and GMs by feeding the absolute worst attitude in D&D directly to the kind of assholes who will buy this and need this kind of thought the fucking least.
Dungeons and Dragons vs Rick and Morty wrote:"UNEXPECTED" is the key word there, Morty. Your job as the DM is to mess with player expectations.
MESS THEM UP REAL GOOD.
Set 'em up and then tweak their nipples, Morty. You're not winning until someone cries. It's about the journey, not the destination.
ugh.
The Rick annotations go on to say that a player whose character is a loser, the GM is the winner of the game by default, and after that, it's down to whoever gets the most loot, experience and best rolls.
Look, yes, this is in character for Rick, and it's in keeping with Rick's "he is intelligent, and often factually correct, but he's also an asshole, who thinks human interaction is a contest" characterization. The problem is the same problem that exists in the show, in that a lot of fans of the show completely miss the fact that Rick is relateable, but not a
role model, and running with that here, especially without Morty's emotionally intelligent push back from later episodes, is going to create the same problem that has happened in the show fandom, namely that while there's plot points of value in the show, they are lost on the most toxic people within the fandom, who push out the people who actually catch those plot points.
The one absolute good thing about 5e is that it has brought a lot of people to the hobby that were previously turned off by the toxic elements of the player base. This is variously attributable to 5e's progressive social attitudes, and the fact that it's extremely light rules facilitate more social play that's closer to forum RP with a bare framework than incredibly granular hack and slash.
So why they would throw all of this out the fucking window and into the road for a shitty license cash grab... well, it's not beyond me. Hasbro wants cash, and they know that they can turn out the D&D brand like a two cent gutter slut to get it. They obviously do not care about the game, the hobby, the players, or even their fucking reputation, so long as they can slap the D&D logo on something and get more money than they spent to do so.
This is the point where I realize there are two things in this pdf- a Rulebook and the adventure.
So, the Rulebook is what I've looked at above. It's literally just the basic 5e rules, with a couple of optional things, namely a Critical Failure chart and "Shut Up Damage." Both presented as purely optional things, that are encouraged by Rick's annotations to further the GM-vs-Player feel.
The Lost Dungeon of Rickedness: Big Rick Energy
What if Rick Sanchez wrote a module based on his interdimensional dicking around?
There's an out-of-character narrative intro, but it says the adventure itself is written in character, by Rick.
I will say that the one vaguely redeeming thing in this book is the art. It uses the show characters, and depicts Morty as a fighter or monk, occasionally a rogue, Rick as a wizard or maybe a cleric (there's a pauldron in one pic, but I see no holy symbol, and he's just standing there berating Morty, so...) and Summer as a barbarian, ranger, etc.
I take that back. The one redeeming feature of these books is Summer as a ranger or barbarian. That's pretty cool.
I'm on page 9 of the adventure looking for anything notable, but beyond Rick writing in character and all the box text being written in his voice, meaning that it's extremely obnoxious and adversarial, it's just a level 1 adventure. It plops a few stirges on the players in room one after the box text says they're bats (which is fine, tbh. In an actual game, savvy players can ask to roll to identify them, and newbies get a lesson that sometimes their characters are ignorant novices without any real risk of serious harm. It's cool).
Like... the selling point here is literally just slapping Rick and Morty on a pretty standard, maybe somewhat difficult for 1st level characters, adventure.
That pic of Pickle Ricks is actually a less-than-a-quarter-page illo for a room in the dungeon, and those Pickle Ricks are
lycanthropickles. They're also 2 ft long.
After the pickle room is, and I'm serious here, The Butt Room. It's a room with a big stone butt and something shiny on the ceiling, and there's a trap that steals the triggering character's butt.
That's actually kinda funny, and I might steal it.
After that, is a room with six orcs stuffing things in sacks. The adventure sets this up as orc parents, like, "wrapping" gifts for their kids in the next room. In that next room is some kind of orc holiday dinner. There's another five orcs, and a couple of orc kids, and on the table is a bound and gagged goblin under a big dish cover. The players can talk their way out of this if they speak orc, but if they don't, the adult orcs know what adventurers are like and will attack to protect the kids. This is actually kinda cool, and again, I might steal this for a holiday adventure. If the adventurers save the goblin, he'll thank them and swear a blood oath and then follow them. He'll even put himself between the player that rescued him and any danger they encounter, trying to protect that character.
There's a room with a mage who has a giant spike wound they can try to heal, then a room with a tiny dungeon inside it with miniature scale adventurers going through it, and there are little monster figures the PCs can put in the dungeon, but otherwise.... it's just a dungeon in a dungeon the players can watch. If the mini-adventurers get destroyed, a chest in the mini-dungeon opens, and the PCs can loot a mini-scale wand of magic missile that works normally, but has a 50% chance of being lost whenever it's taken out or put away.
There's something you can do with this mini-dungeon that would be interesting, but I'd have to think about how to actually do that. As it is, it's a big nothing that presents no challenge or even much interest for the players, for a pretty small payoff. Being able to put a wand in a ring would actually be pretty cool, but that's not presented as an option, it's just what I'd do as a character who encountered this room.
There's a room with a bunch of buttless zombies standing around a ghoul tied to a chair, and the zombies think the ghoul ate their butts. This is the "payoff" to the butt room trap, and the players can go destroy the butt trap, which gives the zombies back their butts, who will then give the players the treasure for the room, a tiny wooden box that disintegrates into dust and then reforms into a ring of protection. Whatever.
It goes on like this. There's a genius bugbear with two butts who wants to destroy the butt trap. There's a beholder Rick (or whatever minor beholder has four eye stalks). There's a room with a bunch of doors. A room with three mimics (a chest, the pedestal its on, and part of the floor). I've done this in a dungeon, but better, where the room is normally furnished as a small studio room, and some stuff is mimics, other stuff is various other "ha ha, this thing is a monster!" monsters, and brown mold that looks like a bedroll. Another room has five nothics, named Beth, Jerry, Summer, Morty and Meatface.
Look, it's a fucking level one dungeon that assumes the characters will be third level by the end. It has the same mix of assholery, actually kinda funny, and "they think this is clever, don't they?" as the show. There's not really a lot of note here.
