Over the weekend, my good friend Eric Maziade posted his Actual Play report of a game where I was a guest DM. He had invited me over last week to participate in his geek Birthday Party. We had decided that we would surprise his players with my D&D 4e/Bloodbowl mash up that I had created as a challenge for a quick 4e pick up game.
After having played the game twice, and since there’s no way that I’ll be able to publish this concept to sell because of the obvious mutually exclusive Intellectual Properties of D&D and , I decided that I’d share with you, over the next week, my thoughts on the whole Dungeon-Reality Show concept I created.I’ll also present how I applied it to create this one-shot Bloodbowl/4e game.
By the end of the week, I plan to have delivered everything you will need to play the same adventure (or at least let you hack it to your own taste).
Today I’ll give you the rundown of the implied setting behind the Mashup…
The Dungeon Reality Show!
Somewhere, in the countless worlds of the Astral Sea, resides a millennial Lich whose near limitless resources and intense dislike for boredom lead him to discover an alternate world where entertainment rules supreme and is broadcast over a wide range of non-magical energy frequencies. The citizen of this world capture, decode and enjoy these energy signals on various technological instruments, preferably sitting down in some plushy furniture and gorging themselves of various types of greasy foods and alcoholic beverages.
One type of entertainment caught the Lich’s attention in particular. It was a category of competitive events, often serialized, that the local version of ‘common’ called “Reality Shows”.
Thinking it over, the Lich decided that he could adapt the concept to his low-technology/high-magic corner of the Multiverse. The Astral Sea was awash with bored, powerful and, more importantly, mind-bogglingly rich Powers that would likely take to this new form of entertainment like fire does to dried kindling.
Harnessing its considerable power, the lich went and build a new plane in the Astral Sea and named it, quite simply enough, the Plane of Games. The Plane is filled with countless arenas, theaters, set-piece sets, dungeons and anything that the twisted minds of the multiverse could conceive with enough magic and the abundant cheap labour offered by the diabolic allies of the lich.
When his (very few) detractors challenged the lich by asking who would be crazy or desperate enough to participate in such games, it dismissed them non-nonchalantly, responding that the material world linked to the Astral Sea was awash with the best possible source of “willing” participants…
Adventurers…
The Infernal Contract
The easiest way to get a near limitless supply of participants for what was to become the insanely popular phenomenon called ‘The Dungeon Reality Show’ (DSR to the initiate) was to open a chain of taverns aimed at down on their luck adventurers on the material world.
In most civilized areas of the world, adventurers can now count on finding a welcome smile, a warm meal and a tankard of cool frothing ale at The Unsung Hero. All of this, free of charge, provided that down-on-their-luck adventurers spin an entertaining tale of their recent adventures and that they sign a bill attesting the exchange of food for ‘entertainment services’.
Said bill is in fact a contract with a LOT of tiny, hidden, magically encrypted script, yet it is still binding in most courts of Astral Laws. The Contract stipulates that the adventurers can be transported, at any point in their lives, and without prior notice, to the Plane of Games to participate in a series of deadly events that comprise one ‘episode’ of DSR.
Upon successful completion of the games, any living participants are discharged of any further participation unless they agree to continue to be ‘on the list’ or sign a new contract for a full ‘season’ of one of the many parallel shows that DSR has spawned such as ‘Can you Eat a Whole Troll Before You Explode?’ or “A visit to Wight Castle” (credit to pjstonson on Twitter for the idea).
It’s important to note that the rewards for successfully completing an episode of one of those shows largely make up for the risks one takes in participating in the first place. Plus the Lich offers some very affordable Life insurance policies that make participating in shows more lucrative (and survivable) than exploring lost ruins or following some insignificant quest for the local Needy Professional Consultant.
While many adventurers have decried the abusive nature of the contract and have tried to warn young, broke adventurers from going to the Unsung Hero, DSR is not going to run out of participants anytime soon, particularity since many of the most successful participants choose to stay ‘on the list’.
Designer Notes
I started playing with the idea of the Dungeon Reality Show when I prepped for a one session game set in the Dungeon Master Guide’s Kobold Hall for some of my friends who wanted to try D&D 4e. Being fresh off Gen Con, I wanted to practice doing silly voices and I wanted to show that D&D could be used to parody shows like American Gladiators, Fear Factor and the less ‘reality-based’ shows from WWE.
Borrowing from Goodman Games’ Xcrawl concept, but framing it 100% into a D&D’s default setting, the Dungeon Reality Show saw the light.
Isn’t awesome that as players/DM we can shamelessly borrow ideas from all over the place to create cool concepts?
The response of my players was so positive that I decided to keep the concept as a possibility whenever a one-shot game came up. While it leads to silly games, they are also intensely fun to play and helps players who are uncomfortable roleplaying in front of others embrace the silliness of a Reality Shows.
I think that the familiar elements of such shows help players identify with the setting and it helps loosen their tongue.
I’ll discuss this in more detail in the next post, where I’ll introduce the concept of Sponsored Magical Items and how they can be used to increase hilarity and make the challenges of the games easier on PCs. After that, I’ll use the Bloodbowl/4e mash up scenario as an example of creating a Dungeon Reality Show for your own group.
I hope you’ll find this series interesting!
How ’bout we start brainstorming for show ideas? Care to share your cool title or adventure concept you’d do to go with the DRS idea?Lets see what we can do with this nerd idea!
Image Credit: Darren Brown from the Show ‘Trick or Treat’… I think he makes for a mean Faustian Pact broker!
First post was sadly eaten… but I’ll summarize.
Basic Concept which could be entertaining here: Imagine this uberpowerful entity being the keeper of a sort of Island of Misfits. You know all of those evil sorcerers, dread warriors, and crafty aristocrats who have disappeared from a million games over the years?
Perhaps they’ve all been collected. This would be a really entertaining game for DMs (or worldbuilders) to be able to do. Imagine that wonderful villain in your setting being transported into a game of death against all of the great villains in the various mythic histories of our world and the thousand settings which exist right now. Let them bring those great villains that they’ve never had a chance to use to the table… to battle against other great villains who have been brought low by various chivalrous shiny-toothed all-do-wells who just had to stop their chances at global domination.
Slainte,
-Loonook.
Loonooks last blog post..Top 5 Unlikely Books You Need to Read For Good Gaming
Haha, this is insane! Which is good!
Definitely a dwarf-tossing competition; or bomb-bowling with goblins as pins. Also small fortresses or capture the flag (where the flag is an animated object that will attack you) would be nice. But also a real-life chess game would be kind of funny; only problem with that is that you’ll need a lot of supplementing (N)PC’s, making the rounds long and most likely boring. Or you could chain everyone together and force them through a gauntlet, which is fun because players will have to work together or see their effectivity limited by a number of corpses chained to them. Or climb-the-tarrasque, while numerous smaller creatures (a tarrasque-equivalent of fleas) attempt to thwart the PC’s from planting their flag on the head of the tarrasque (which would be the ultimate goal). Also never underestimate the fun of two ships attacking each other, with climbing the mast, tossing anchors, and boarding the other ship while yelling “arrr”!
Ooh! And for each smaller competition you win, you should be awarded one Retry. A retry should imply that if you come to die, you will be reanimated into a random creature/undead (with a CR up to your level at death) to continue participation. Which is awesome if you become a ghoul or an owlbear, and which sucks if you become a little gnomey.
What I like about this setting it’s like a modern concept meets the typical gladiator arena. You can have all kind of silliness like have a goblin, bearing a microphone like magical rod, do a 5 minute interview with the contestant in between sets(encounter). While in the mean time a bunch of kobold and giant remove the old set and put into place the new one.
All kind of other things can be done with the concept of show.
Have fan come on the arena/set to touch their idol.
Have crowd cheer or throw stuff.
Have a magical spotlight fall on the set.
You can borrow idea from so many place.
@Loonook: The concept of a “Villain’s Island” version of Survivor would make for a great one shot game where players can design their favorite bad guy and play it out as evil as they want.
I can already see the titles:
“Who want’s to be an Overlord?”
“Are you smarter than a 5-year old?”
“Deathtraps & Monologues”
“Before I kill you Mr. Bard”
Awesome!
@Flying Dutchman: I really like the idea of “pin the Horn on the Tarrasque’s head!” One of the challenges of creating such scenarios is that I would try to respect the fundamental design choices of D&D 4e and find obstacles that don’t kick a player out of a session for long periods of time.
One of the ideas I had (and a friend reminded me about it yesterday) was to borrow from Japanese TV shows where failure leads to humiliation. This concept could totally work in the description-rich environment of DRS.
@Yan: It really is a rich concept that can borrow from all over the entertainment sphere. It would probably not be good for a long term campaign as the silliness would likely become stale, but as one shots every so often (or Convention games) the concept is a clear winner.
I’m sold, i love the idea.
I seriously think i will build a small delve around this idea.
Kind of thinking Running Man for D&D
Mikes last blog post..Encounter: A Quick One
@Mike: I’m happy that you liked the idea. Let us know how your delve turns out! Running man is a great idea to borrow from! I still see the bladed hockey players from the movie and they would make a great “Can you outskate the Bladelings” game.
There is a wonderful manga/anime series called Kaiji which could give some great inspiration for this idea. It centers on a down-on-his-luck loser who is given the oppurtunity to absolve a pretty hefty debt through one night of gambling aboard a cruise ship. There is of course an evil old man behind it all who enjoys watching the participants try to leap through the hoops of whatever games he has constructed (which get pretty wild). It can be watched (legally) streaming on Joost (with subtitles) http://www.joost.com/search?q=kaiji#
Similiar is a manga by the same author called Gambling Emperor Zero, which has even weirder games in a competition for 3 trillion yen (this one follows two young prodigies as they compete). Zero is not legally available in english, though I’m sure you could find (and I might be willing to share) some slightly less legitimate means of obtaining it.
They’re both really enjoyable in a kind of camp and ridiculous way.
Hey Krill, welcome to the blog. I’ll try to give Kaiji a try soon. While I’m not a big anime fan, I know that Japanese shows must be a treasure trove of game show tropes just waiting to be mined!
The Getting out of Debt plot hook is great to catch some storytelling/psychodramatist PC into the whole thing, dragging the whole party behind him/her.
Good stuff!
@Chatty
I agree, preventing players to have to sit out a competition due to early elimination is desirable. So you could go with the respawn idea; which would mean having a cleric nearby that resurrects fallen characters, or for more fun: a druid to reincarnate fallen characters.
Humiliation is indeed also a good one; we all know for a fact that most PC’s get infuriated when an NPC rips on them, so the commentator could be a particularly vicious individual to ensure that this happens. In the cases of pin-the-horn-on-the tarrasque (love the name!) or capture the flag-golem, you could install some handicap, team-related or not, to ensure that fallen players get back in, but still suffer from their failure. In the end, however, I think the particularly vicious commentator, some laughter at the failing player’s expense, combined with a few snooty remarks and some mocking glances from the GM would be best way to go!
(Or you polymorph into a chicken or frog for a few rounds upon death, which might even be advantageous in some situations)
@Flying: Using the 4e ruleset, I’d most certainly turn the fallen PC into a Zombie Chicken (or the equivalent) until a saving throw was rolled.
Having experimented with derision as a price for failure, I can assure you that the desired effect of annoying the Player works. What’s even better is to watch that annoyance turn into smug satisfaction when the character finally succeeds in his task!
@Chatty:
One thing I loved in our session (and it happened a few more times than in my report) was the event organizer’s power to stop time.
One interesting “reality-show-like” way to use this would be to have the narrator stop the show for a few seconds and have him interrogate the player about how he is feeling at the moment.
I’m often wondering about shows like “Hell’s Kitchen” where the participants are commenting on what is happening right now as if they
weren’t aware of what’s coming next.
A rift in the time-space continuum would work.
Eric Maziades last blog post..Dungeon Reality Show
@Eric: I too like playing with time (see tomorrow’s post about that) and I totally buy the concept of having the game stop on everyone but one PC and ask him to bitch about his teammates like all good shows!
🙂