After being your game’s narrator for an interminable era, your players have bulldozed through every molecule of your carefully concocted lore. Blood and treasure is all they seek. It is time to present them with the ultimate prize, then burn it slowly before their eyes.

Oh hey everyone, Dungeon Humorist Dan Telfer here and pardon me, I was working out a little revenge fantasy and I didn’t see you there. This article is a little shout out to all you beleaguered dungeon masters out there. Very, very silly revenge* to be released on destructive players that you can adapt into your own game. Change character names, setting, whatever you need to do. But this template is for you, the abused narrator. No longer must you toil from the heavens, providing fodder for fury.

Does the following add anything to your narrative? Maybe not. Will you laugh at yourself as you punish your players? I hope so. But I don’t want to start a trend called “Telfering” that consists of psychological abuse. Use discretion, okay? All I ask that you imagine the hubris that could hypothetically unfurl, and who doesn't like a good hypothetical unfurling? I sure do.

*Warning: Revenge is only for bad people and silly people pretending to be bad. By actively participating in this revenge plot, you agree to take 100% of the blame should it cause further friction and resentment in your game. "What is wrong with this guy," they will say in the comments, "this isn't funny, this is just evil!" This article is meant to bring an amusing crescendo to silly fantasy tension, not cause actual tension to linger. Perhaps the author has simply led a charmed life, and has not played with adult players whose lives would be affected by such goofy revenge. If at any point your players look upon you, glassy-eyed, and beg you to stop, may I suggest you do the adult thing? Unlike every authority figure in the real world, the likes of which never admit their mistakes, say, “Whoops, sorry.” Value and salvage your friendships before turning them into the subject of future parody. If anything in this piece horrifies anyone, allow me to sincerely share in that apology. Sorry.

The Scene of the Crime

Time to set the unassuming scene. You need a seemingly helpful NPC to get indoors, then go into utter panic mode. Who knows, you might do this once, and your party will be scarred for life and every time they hear you describe a shopkeeper they will flinch, a fire burning in the backs of their eyes, like The Hound when he saw fire, on that TV show that had dragons once a season.

For the sake of this exercise, I am going to create a halfling named Sam. You can rename Sam something like Sizzlbaum or Stinkpommel, whatever you like. But Sam is your generic, unassuming, local antique shop owner, and you can make it an archmage’s keep or a sewer draining room if you really want to. But Sam should pique curiosity, not demand it, so as to not tip your hand that there might be something useful in here. Make this character and their shop seem curious but mundane.

I'm gonna give Sam a huge inventory full of ancient wonder, and you can set that in slightly different place. It won't be a "place" for long.

If players immediately try to steal from Sam, shove Sam, or be creeps to Sam, feel free to skip ahead. Not so subtle of your party!

This whole thing should only take a few seconds in-world, there’s no harm in skipping to the good stuff to maximize the silly horror. Just try to maintain control. If this proves to be a failure, and somehow they raid the shop despite my outlining how that shouldn't happen, and they laugh in your face, I hear there are a variety of therapists who will see groups. 

The Pledge

Once the group is inside the shop, open your gambit with a perception roll. Maybe they all have ridiculous passive perception rolls. Maybe they all roll terribly. It doesn’t really matter, for this is not about skill, it is about a reckoning. This is about real-life psychic damage, an elaborate tease meant to live outside the meaningful narrative you talented dungeon masters have hit the pause button on. If they roll low, say:

“You notice the shop is full of ancient odds and ends. Your eyes glaze over as fortunes from a thousand lands overwhelm you.”

Add something about how the glaze on their eyes is Krispy-Kreme-thick if they protest. If they get a high result on their roll, say:

“You notice many uncommon items that you are not likely to find elsewhere. Everything is dusty, and has a story to tell. Sam walks backward, your fingers twitching as you long for a moment when Sam's eye does not seem so pinned to your movements and you can caress one of these rarified, glistening trinkets with them.”

Again may I suggest describing a really good donut if you want something that glistens. You’re just ratcheting up the tension of being here. Feel free to add dashes from your current campaign, which frankly could use more donuts. Maybe there are spare parts for a weapon they wish they had, a hint of a mostly-folded map to a place they’ve dreamt of going. They see it on a shelf crying out to them, like a foreign investor in an email spam folder.

Another quick check in- if they're already filling their pockets or berating the NPC, first of all holy mackerel your group is thirsty, second you can skip this next line. If they want any kind of insight check against Sam’s character, simply tell them that Sam reads as good-hearted but seems shaken by the evils of this world. Otherwise have Sam say:

“You know, I’ve heard of you all. And... I won’t let you bring your wanton destruction to my doorstep!”

Uh oh! That's right. He saw or heard about something your group did, now let him spill tea! 

Then immediately let them know that Sam has been clutching a small bead in his hand since the group entered the shop, and the second their eyes land on it, Sam chucks it at the ceiling.

There may be some arguing from players that, “My character would have noticed and would be casting web,” etcetera. You know how players are, always stopping time and walking it backwards. But no, tell them they are only now realizing the bead is more than a part of what you thought was harmless jewelry.

 Now, and only now, have everyone roll a required insight check, and reward the high-roller with:

“You piece together that Sam was wearing a fireball bead necklace, and the bead is about to collide with the ceiling and create a fireball in 3… 2…”

 
No matter what, the bead is less than an inch from impact before they know what happens. No matter what they may do to stop it, ratchet the DC into the 30’s. But maybe don’t tell them a number at all, this is your birthday. Enjoy your donut. This is your time to take control. This is not about chance, or choice. This isn’t just revenge. It is revenge theater.

The Turn

It is time to punish the party. Have them roll perception checks and read from the following results as appropriate. Assign as many of these as you like to individual players and mess with the numbers all you like. This is your moment to be a jerk, bend the rolls and the physics to your liking. Eat the donut slowly, while making eye contact with them.

Perception 0-5: You believe if you flee now you may escape with your lives, but this shop will burn nearly to the ground within the next 60 seconds. Sam is already fleeing out of a back door. You see glass potion bottles shattering in the heat, each containing pearled and shimmering concoctions that could have helped you in your quest. Could they make you invisible, and let you cheat at lawn darts? Perhaps the potions could allow you to conjure a magic puppy that would be your friend and forgive you for that time you stabbed a sleeping kobold. It's too late now, these spells sizzle and splash, boiling away like tears in a volcano. Your passive knowledge of magic is enough to know that there is also a smoldering magic carpet on the back wall. You dream of the vacation you will never take with that carpet, as rapid-fire popping noises from magical scrolls bursting in their tubes bangs in your ears, and you fall wheezing into the gutter outside.

Perception 6-9: As the rafters shriek and splinter, you see a map for a trade route burst, framed in fine glass and set on the wall prominently. It know vaporizes instantly into flame, your eyes dancing across phrases like “Guild’s Last Stand,” “Gem Hoard of the Last Age,” and “Armory of Forgotten Kings” disappear into bursts of ash and ember. You attempt to recall the shape and the contour of the paths the map traced, but your brain stings as the fire robs it of its necessary oxygen. You stagger towards the doorway as the wooden walls around it howl and bend in the heat, the skulls of long dead sentient species popping like corn kernels on a shelf by the door, a fragment of extinct cheekbone landing hot in your mouth as you gasp for breath.

Perception 10-14: The moment the bead collides with the roof, the roof itself explodes upward into the infinite sky, the horrifying KA-KRANG alerting anyone within miles of the doomed shop that blazes with bleak, unforgiving whiteness all around you. Before your hands can leave your sides you see a spellbook titled “Gravity and How to Defy It” become torn from its spine by hungry flame. One hand goes to pull your shirt over your mouth so you do not suffocate instantly, and with your other hand you instinctively grab at another spellbook and manage to read its title, “The Lost Art of Time Travel,” but then you realize its back cover was already burning, the book now exploding into yellow and orange as you take one point of fire damage. Your head swimming with the lost arcana being devoured, you stagger to the door, just in time to see a really fancy bottle of wine roll off a shelf, land intact on the ground with a precarious KLACK, then roll into the street, where it gets clomped on and crushed by a nervous horse.

Perception 15-20: As the building’s support beams begin to shudder and the many arcane artifacts around you meet instant ruin, you spy in the corner the desiccated, mummified bodies of long-dead kings, made up to look like unassuming novelties to the average sneering tourist, but bearing runic marks upon their foreheads that hint that they may yet hold the spirits of demi-gods that once sat upon thrones of fallen civilizations. And just like that they are gone, so dry are they that they are sucked into the thick air like heavy dust, and amongst it you see gray-green wisps of the spirits within the husks arc into the suddenly exposed night sky. For a moment you think you hear a whisper in a mysterious language, but before you can place the hard and soft sounds together you snap to and must sprint to the door. You narrowly dodge a tall potted plant bearing exotic fruit as it slams to the ground, already burning and hissing at your feet.

Perception 20+: All of the above, but they notice their own non-metal gear is already burning. Unlike a party that rolls under 20, they get advantage when they roll a Dexterity saving throw to dive directly into the muddy gutter outside, so they have a much better chance to save their supplies.

There Is No Prestige

All is lost. They cannot save it. Sam is gone, run away into the hills to marry a flumph and start his life over, his shop annihilated in a desperate and impulsive play by his own hand. If they insist there must be something left, rifle through your notes or squint hard at this page one more time, then announce, “Oh yes, one more thing, it says LOL.”

Dan Telfer is the Dungeons Humorist aka Comedy Archmage for D&D Beyond (a fun way they are letting him say "writer"), dungeon master for the Nerd Poker podcast, a stand-up comedian, a TV writer who also helped win some Emmys over at Comedy Central, and a former editor of MAD Magazine and The Onion. He can be found riding his bike around Los Angeles from gig to gig to gaming store, though the best way to find out what he's up to is to follow him on Twitter via @dantelfer.