A Guide to Torturing Players You Love: Rick and Morty Style

Hey there adventurers, and Wubba-lubba-you-get-it-this-catchphrase-is-a-few-years-old-now! 

You may have noticed I've written a couple pieces about the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons vs. Rick and Morty boxed set, and at this point I've even gotten to run it as a Dungeon Master. I think fans of both brands are going to love it, and hopefully it will be as in-demand as a certain discontinued McNuggets sauce.

But as I Dungeon Mastered, one thing occurred to me in particular. While I have run lots of fun games of D&D, and we have joked about whether I am an antagonistic omnipotent force in the game, Rick Sanchez is an unquestionably hostile, near-omnipotent force that hauls his family through a series of quite literal hells. So adding that tone to a game means things are gonna get real antagonistic up in here.

So in the interests of all you fellow nerds out there having the best possible time taunting your real-life loved ones, I've decided to share some SPOILER-FREE tips on how to keep your evil Rick tendencies manageable. I shall, if you will, show you what I got.

The Goodness That Lies Beneath

You'll have some pretty obvious opportunities as Dungeon Master to drag, taunt, and demean your loved ones. The obvious choice is to play an evil god, looking down upon these heroes as naïve pawns for whom you have endless disdain. 

But let's remember that Rick Sanchez is something of a co-protagonist with Morty, and despite his having seen suffering and nothingness spread across an infinite expanse of time and space, he must occasionally be "relatable" and therefore have human frailty. In other words, the otherworldly god-like force guiding these characters has empathy for them, and is at their core a good force.

This is not an example taken directly from the adventure, but as a hypothetical let's imagine that a character who strongly resembles on-again, off-again son-in-law Jerry is impaled on a steel spike and is begging for help. The obvious choice, if one is assuming the Dungeon Master is indeed the direct voice of Rick, is to make fun of Jerry and how much he resembled a simpering naked mole-rat squealing in the noon sun.

However, Rick also pities Jerry, and would not so much mock him when he is in pain as deliver him a grim soliloquy about the consequences of his choices.

Also, an omnipresent, incorporeal Rick wouldn't even speak to Jerry directly unless he made a DC 10 Intelligence (Religion) check, so make sure Jerry humbles himself at your altar a little too, so to speak.

Here's That Horror I Protected You From

There are also likely to be visages of doom and foul portents that someone like Rick would feel unthreatened and unsurprised by, but would likely be upsetting to a vulnerable adventurer. This is an excellent time for a Dungeon Master to improvise a little, because from Rick's point of view this was a horror lurking on the periphery of these characters their entire lives, and fate was simply too kind and forgiving towards them up until now to reveal this hubris, if not the protective hand of Rick directly.

So as traps and monsters loom large, their gnashing violent portents promising the end the lives of those Rick loves, it might be nice of Rick to counter their fears and concerns with all the ways the character saw this coming. They went down a dark staircase to come into this dungeon, after all, what did they expect?

I mean, when did a dark staircase ever end in anything fun anyway? Everyone knows the Christmas presents are hidden in the ack-ERRRK-attic not the basement. Downstairs there's nothing but predatory arthropods and shattered dreams. Time to face that reality directly and grow a little spine. 

A Rick-fueled Dungeon Master would not delight in describing these horrors. He would detail the metaphor playing out before them, the bad choices made manifest, the unwise trip to a public water park resulting in many an abandoned, diseased band-aid suddenly attaching itself to their thigh mid-water-slide like a lifeless, undead remora.

Death: A Teachable Moment

This is Dungeons and Dragons, after all, and whatever bond these heroes may develop there is a high probability that the math of hit points will stop favoring them and one of them will have to be brought back to life, or just reappear somehow through the ancient school of "we want you to keep playing with us so here's a new similar character" magic. 

A cruel and indifferent god might mock situation, but dear Dungeon Master, do not think of this as a chance to wish death upon your friend. These deaths are a chance to reflect on a life poorly spent in front of the scrying window, watching pointless stories unfold on planes that don't matter, when they could have instead made a plan to roll an Intelligence (Investigation) check on that trapped door before grabbing at it desperately like it is a harmless alien teat.

Because when they die, they will meet their maker, and the maker of this game is not literally in this room, so you're the closest thing they get. And you can get into some pretty silly meta-gaming here and remind them of this literal fact in your best gravelly, Ricktastic voice. It's up to you whether they spawn in the next room, back to life like Super Mario only missing an arm this time, or virtually identical but now with a more humiliating name. And reminding them that these choices are in your hands is in its own way empathetic. 

Just direct your toxic god-belches away from them as best you can. Those things smell bad. 


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 podcasta 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.

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