Parody
There’s an unwritten rule in my group. Every session must contain at least on Lord of the Rings reference and one Monty Python reference. If we’re approaching the end of the night and neither giant eagles nor Trojan rabbits have put in an appearance, my players begin to eye one another nervously. They begin wondering when the unladen swallows and the po-ta-toes and the series’ respective bridge tenders will rear their hoary heads. We actually touched on the subject of movie references way back when, so let’s not retread the topic too badly. Instead, I’d like to use Mr. The Frog’s cameo in today’s comic to talk about a specific kind of movie reference. And in case the destruction of Plotsville wasn’t a dead giveaway, I’m talking about the fightin’ type.
Parody monsters can be tough to nail down. In my experience they’re most often encountered around the holidays, usually in one-shot scenarios that no one will take too seriously anyway. The critters in question might reference a specific IP or represent a whole campaign setting, but I think there are two important points to keep in mind before you deploy your ostensibly-hilarious creations.
- Make sure everyone knows the reference. Nothing makes a joke fall flat quite like, “It’s a what now? Oh, I’m sorry. I’ve never seen that show.” There’s a reason that we chose an instantly-recognizable character for today’s comic. Give your players the same courtesy.
- Read the room. As Wizard so ably demonstrates, not everybody wants pop culture references lunging out of the darkness to attack. These sorts of monster can be great for lightening the mood around the table, but if you’re not careful you risk breaking immersion rather than providing comic relief.
And so, in the interest of learning how-to-do-it-right, what do you say we share our experiences with comedy critters? What was the encounter like? Was it funny? Did your group kill Scooby-Gnoll by mistake? Tell us all the best and worst of your parody monsters down in the comments!
ARE YOU A ROLL20 ADDICT? Are you tired of googling endlessly for the perfect tokens? Then have we got a Patreon tier for you! As a card-carrying Familiar, you’ll receive a weekly downloadable Roll20 Token to use in your own online games, as well as access to all of our previously posted Tokens. It’s like your own personal NPC codex!
General rule of thumb when I make a parody monster is that I make it a monster first and foremost: it has to seem threatening alone even before I drop hints as to what it’s parodying. It also helps me figure out what it’s capable of when I’m porting a noncombat character into a creature for the party to fight.
I think my most successful parody monster was back when Duolingo memes were fresh off the web and everyone was making jokes about how missing your Celestial lesions will result in a green owl breaking your knees. So naturally I turned that sucker into an Owlbear who basically does the whole Sphinx riddle gig to random people in the forest. It starts off easy at first, usually a riddle in a common language like dwarven or elvish, but progressively they start asking questions in things like Deep Speech or Botheli (the Urthgardt language). When the players fail that’s when they roll init and the battle begins. Part of the Duolingo Owlbear gimmick was that his attacks and damage is higher if you know less languages, so by default he’s hitting for +12 attack and doing 1d8+12 damage. As most people knew around two languages, this is decreased to +10 or even less. Spells like comprehend languages effectively causes him to hit and damage you for +0, though he was still tanky and had other ways to harm you aside from his claws and bites. It was a pretty fun fight for my party.
One parody monster that I tried which didn’t really get much traction was when I tried to run a horror theme quest where the enemy was basically Chucky and his girlfriend, as I had just watched the movies and felt inspired. Turns out much to my surprise not a lot of people in my age group has ever seen Chucky, so as far as they knew I just threw a haunted doll weilding a knife at them. Probs didn’t help there was a Pally in the party who was just itching to smite my haunted murder doll back to hell, so the battle itself only lasted like three turns.
Is the goal to sucker them in before they realize what it is and groan? Sort of the GMing version of a bad pun?
Yeah more or less. The surprise factor adds part of the humor and horror. Nothing funny about a creature with Multiattack 3 hitting for +12 doing an average of 20 damage an attacks. But when the first thing that comes out of its mouth after initiating combat is “Looks like you’ve skipped your Abyssal lessons. You know what happens next!” Thats when I get to see their faces go through multiple stages of emotions.
You sick bastard… Teach me your ways.
When I DM’d a Pathfinder one-shot module, the very first encounters the PCs had to face was a pack of starved and hostile wolve/coyotes.
I decided that one of the canines would be a Moon-Moon reference.
https://i.imgflip.com/2s62vz.jpg
I gave it a unique, derpy-looking token, altered its stats to be especially non-threatening to the PCs and called attention to it when the encounter started:
“A pack of starved-looking canines is lurking near [the dungeon entrance]. They all look starving and emaciated, four of which look fierce and are growling threateningly. The fifth… is not.”
I expected the players to try to tame/spare the derpy-looking canine, or give them all some food to avoid the encounter. I can’t recall if they did either of those anymore, though.
If I DM future games, I’ll make sure at least one canine in a pack of canines would have a Doge token.
I hope he drops doge coins as treasure.
I’d never do a parody monster in a long-term campaign, but I did have an evil alien shapeshifter taking the form of Santa, Krampus and an angel showing up in one Call of Cthulhu one-shot. I’ll be honest… it was better whilst it was just Krampus. The mood shifted dramatically from the second to the third part, and although end its dark portal to another dimension in the middle of New York were destroyed (at the cost of almost everybody’s lives, no less) and everybody had fun, I still suspect that one or two players were a tad disappointed by the lightness (or levity, at least – Santa hypnotizing thousands of children into murdering their parents in order to provide a ritual sacrifice was perhaps not exactly light) towards the end.
Yeah. Establishing a horror tone is tough in general.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/creepy-ghost
I imagine that getting on the same page with your players for horror comedy is even harder.
So if Kermit is a noodle-armed eldritch abomination in the Handbook-verse, does that mean all the noodle-armed characters in the strip are harboring a form of eldritch corruption / origin / ancestry?
Also, would Kermit count as a fey, infernal or eldritch warlock patron?
Are Kermit’s noodle arms a hint towards the identity of that creature with way too many templates?
I believe that all the characters have noodle arms.
And I should think this would be obvious, but Kermit is a Muppet patron, with all the standard Muppet otherworldly patron features you know and love.
Most of my parody encounters and combat encounters are kept separate, though my PCs are about to encounter a deathly pale vampire and her seven dwarvish minions.
But in an older campaign, I did have a somewhat unhinged transmuter’s infinitely configurable mansion get possessed by demons and go full Aperture Science Testing Facility. It helps when the source material was menacing to begin with.
GLaDoS isn’t just menacing; she’s menacing despite being ridiculous, even in her own context. Someone like Sephiroth is also menacing, but the inherently lighthearted nature of pop culture references detracts from his menace. GLaDoS’s menace is already designed to withstand being a lighthearted character.
Does that make any sense?
The guys I write for over at Adventure a Week get a lot of mileage out of this campaign:
https://adventureaweek.com/shop/pathfinder/snow-white-products/snow-white/
I sometimes wonder what the line is between parody and allusion.
Does the vampire use song to activate its ability to summon wolves and bats? Because that sounds like it would synergize well with an idea I had for a parody Disney princess who goes through a goth phase and now when she sings a song in the forest instead of being approached bunnies and songbirds, she attracts rats and carrion birds instead, but she still reacts as if they were bunnies and song birds.
I once brought a badass, played straight samurai complete with the armor, bow, and swords to a oneshot that turned out to be a dungeon crawl fighting monsters based on breakfast cereal mascots.
He was named Seijuro, so I was able to improvise his ambition to create a cereal called Seijur-Os.
Did you have a catchy jingle or catchphrase?
In a D20 Superhero campaign I ran, each session opened with small potential plot-hooks for the PCs to investigate (or not) individually or in small groups while we waited for everyone to arrive. Some would lead into the main plot of the evening, some were hints at the big bads of later sessions, and some were one-off mundane crimes or accidents.
One recurring mission (since no one ever chose it) was a school crossing guard who reported an animate snowman that would show up at when school let out each day and ignored traffic signals. (The mission would result in the discovery of a teen superhero and had the potential to pick up a winter-themed sidekick.)
When one player did finally face off against the snowman who who only paused a moment for traffic cops, it was the only person in the room (heck, within the friend group of a dozen or so players) who didn’t know any of the words to “Frosty the Snowman” and so didn’t understand the joke.
I want to try framing Frosty’s “I’ll be back again someday!” line as a threat to return and wreak vengeance on these meddling kids, but the line before it is “Don’t you cry,” so that’s probably a nonstarter if I don’t change any words. And that would defeat the point.
You see? X-mas themed characters are ripe for parody!
I’ve always wanted to do an 80’s metal campaign where each session was themed around specific song lyrics. My plan was to let ’em guess during the session, then play the song-of-the-day at the end. As fun as the idea of encounters based on Rock You Like a Hurricane or Holy Diver lyrics could be, I’m beginning to rethink the wisdom of the notion. Sure it would be cool to hand my players the soundtrack at the end of the campaign, but it would suck if they never got any of the references.
I’m two days late but I had to chime in here – I threw my Pathfinder players for a loop with a one-shot miniboss fight against a Band of Orcs in the middle of our Giantslayer campaign. Four orc bards, each with a different archetype: soundstriker on vocals, arrowsong minstrel with a tuned bowstring on bass, dervish dancer with a “shredding axe” on guitar, and frequently escaping villain Kagak of the Rolling Thunder the skald on drums. They also had a pet roc. It was a roc band.
We were on roll20 cause COVID, and I spent a couple hours putting together 5-8 second snippets of 80s-ish music to use for different spell effects. Rock You Like a Hurricane for hurricane blast, Highway to Hell for dirge of the victorious knights, We Will Rock You for resonating word, etc. They almost TPK’d but still thought it was hilarious.
No shame getting TPK’s to 80s metal. 😀
I remember one character I played in my group’s Dungeons of the Mad Mage campaign (which nobody, especially the DM, was taking seriously). He was a fireball-happy sorcerer who was supposed to be a play on Megumin, which failed for two reasons. One, I flubbed the character introduction and never recovered. Two, I was the only member of the group who’d actually seen Konosuba. (I expected some of them to not get the reference, but I also knew at least some of the other people in the group were anime fans!)
Anyways, the two things the character is most well-remembered for are fireballing the party (himself included) and a misunderstanding where he thought half the party had murdered the other half for their loot.
I thought your misspelled Mega Man.
Game conventions are usually where I encounter the parody one shots. Some of my favorites have allowed me to play characters transposed into a Call of Cthulhu setting. This includes Scooby-Doo and Gilligan.
Most recently I played in a Deadlands: Hell on Earth homage to the movie “Aliens”, which was awesome.
I remember hearing the Happy Jacks RPG Podcast guys talking about “Ghostbusters vs. Cthulhu” at a con. I always wanted that to be a thing….
Okay, I wasn’t really onboard with the Mystery LLC thing until I got to “Oath of Traps Paladin” for Fred and went “YEEEEESSSSSSS!!!!!!”.
As it happens, I am currently plotting a Scooby-Doo style oneshot in Pathfinder 2e (though the players won’t know that at first, since it’s more fun if they start thinking the monster is real, and not a combination of costumes, an eidolon and the spell Illusory Creature). It’s a fine balance, given the proclivity of PCs to try and solve everything with direct combat, but with how 2e’s balancing works it’s pretty easy to have a foe that is clearly out of their league but backs off after a round or two of combat (possibly flattening but not killing a PC in the process). The eidolon can’t heal, so they can whittle it down over several encounters if they don’t come up with a brilliant trap idea or something.
The rise of Great Old One Kermit reminds me of one of my sillier non-RPG settings, which featured a terrifying abomination known only as “The Pink One.” The Pink One is a furry, constantly smiling cat-like creature from outside of normal time and space, and because it doesn’t quite fit in our reality, it causes ‘cracks’ in the world around it that make it extraordinarily dangerous. In fact, it is considered in-universe to be about the most dangerous of the world’s many ludicrous monsters (to the chronic frustration of another monster, the Shadow Man, who keeps trying to intimidate people only to find that they are already panicked about the Pink One). My starting theory was “well, the Lovecraftian entities beyond mortal comprehension don’t HAVE to be all eyes and tentacles, do they? Why couldn’t they be pink and fluffy?”. For the record, my go-to monster to summarize that setting is Stan the Baking Soda Man, a Spider-man Sandman-like entity who is very dangerous and hard to kill but also inherently funny.
I can see how baking soda could relate to Sandman, but how do you get spider powers out of that?
I meant that as “the character Sandman from the Spider-man franchise.” As opposed to other uses of it, like Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics.
lol. I thought you meant a combination of Sandman (from the spider-verse) and Spider-Man himself. I could not for the life of me figure out how you were shooting webs with baking soda, lol.
“Ha! Am knowing what you think. ‘Did she wire six bypass circuits, or only five?’ Well, for telling truth, in excitement I lose track myself. But being this is Arclight Industries eight-kilotesla field inconveniencer, most powerful weapon I make so far this morning, and in honest I am having no idea what it does…you are having to ask yourself question: ‘Do I feel like beta tester?'”
“Well, DO you, monk?”
Is this a TF2 thing? It sounds like a TF2 thing.
I generally go for more serious games, so I don’t think I’ve ever done a parody monster, but I do mine literature and games for content. I recently created a whole range of Rosharan wildlife stats for pathfinder, pulled straight from the Stormlight Archives. One of the other GMs ran a sort of joke encounter on Thanksgiving though, where the gladiators had to fight a giant turkey a stuffing golem, and some mashed potato oozes. Rewarded them with some fun holiday-themed items, too. I find those sorts of matches entertaining, but I can’t switch gears in my brain like that.
Sanderson is popular for this sort of thing:
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Mistborn_(5e_Class)
Good god, that’s a class and a half. Ambitious of them to tackle ‘Mistborn’ instead of ‘Misting’ first, but I admire their determination. I just added templates to existing animals and changed some damage types around.
I also made some player companion stuff, though I had to rename Chulls to Stoneclaws because Chuls are already a thing in pathfinder, and they are very different.
Pathfinder, you say? Here. Have the 3.5 version then:
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Mistborn_(3.5e_Class)
HOMEBREW’D!
In my head, this is now what Pathfinder’s Froghemoth looks like.
With a bonus ping pong ball eye.
Not so much a monster encounter, but I did have a running gag of the party bumping into either Franklin, Phineas or Fat Freddy whenever the Halfling Druid’s (a 60’s ‘flower child’ character)supply of ‘pipeweed’ started to run low 😉
The lines their characters came up with, particularly the Paladin and the Druid, were priceless…
https://files1.comics.org/img/gcd/covers_by_id/795/w400/795872.jpg
Dead link. 🙁
I might have to look up the animated version though…
any duckduckgo image search for the ‘fabulous furry freak brothers’ should more than suffice…and until now, I never knew there was an animated version…there goes the rest of the day, thanks 🙂
I just looked it up, that cartoon is great
Well, in a KAP (King Arthur Pendragon) scenario that I did, they came across this really fast bird, which made that really loud and annoying noise. And they did find some sort of wolf-like creature trying to catch that bird. Also, as this is a KAP scenario, there were knights involved somewhere. The players loved it, but as this was many moons ago, I, for the life of me, can’t recall what happened during the scenario. Just that everyone indeed got the reference, and played along.
Is the Roadrunner just a North American questing beast?
That would have been a perfect explanation! And very true in a way. However mister Coyote does not strike me as the apparent paragon of Knighthood that Pellinore was said to be. Mind you: paragon of Knighthood is something very different from paragon of Virtue.
“However mister Coyote does not strike me as the apparent paragon of Knighthood that Pellinore was said to be.”
Maybe that’s why he can never catch it?
Sorry, but i don’t get it. From where is that thing? Adventure Time? I mean with that noddle arms sure it’s but i don’t remember what episode 🙁
As for parodies and references, we don’t make that much. I think, no offense, that is more like a thing from the US. You make a reference to something an people hurrays it, if they understand it. In my group if we make references they are either examples. “Yeah, like that time in that movie were they did that, remember?” Or outright copies of jokes. It’s fun to have make the papar cut scene of Dracula dead and loving it on Vampire. More than Monthy Python or Gandalf things. If in our table someone shouts: “You shall not pass!!!” it’s a guard about to take a soulsteel sword on his chest. It’s more difficult to do that kind of references when the people on the table hasn’t watch Monthy Python at all. Also Les Luthiers are funnier but we will not include a bad punctuated script into every game. As i said, i think it’s more f a US cultural thing 🙂
You don’t remember this episode of Adventure Time? Better re-watch the series.
Yeah, i got as far as the begin of eight season. Maybe i lost that episode after that. I don’t remember to have seen that frog in the previous season 🙁
He’s a big deal in that arc with the vaudeville theater and the puppets.
I’m surprised you don’t remember him. He’s pretty prominent in the opening theme song.
Well, that isn’t adventure time 🙁
Never heard of that The Muppet Show. On the other hand it’s a show of four decades ago. Only the child by then would remember that 🙁
What? It’s always an adventure with the Muppets!
For real though, it’s a long-running franchise. The last movie was 2014:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Muppets_productions
I’d have honestly thought that Kermit the Frog was one of the most recognizable characters in the world. Up there with Mickey Mouse and Hello Kitty.
…
Actually, it looks like he’s #49: https://definitivedose.com/the-100-most-iconic-fictional-characters/
I counted like 17 character i didn’t recognized by name, and like 5 i don’t know even after reading who the are. That is the problem with references and another reason why we don’t use them that much. People may not get them even if they are famous. That frog may be 49 on the list, but i, for one, never knew it until now. And several of other entries on that list are complete unheard of outside US. References are tricky for being cultural dependant. Some may be famous but unless, and even if, name dropped they may be unrecognized by someone. You are for the US, you may have heard of Maradona, even if you don’t follow fútbol. Now try to say you know who Tato Bores was. Yet, down here you anyone will know them if only by name 🙂
Creature is Kermit Frog. He is been around since my grandparents have been around. There is no character that is 100% recognizable the world over. No to worry if you can’t name all world popular characters. Even out here in my country Kermit is known.
I do not know Adventure Time. I did internet search and it is like what we call American goofball cartoon that is made to be weird just to be weird. I do not understand American goofball cartoon humor but I do not tell them they can’t like what they like. I don’t get cartoon. It is fine nobody has to get all things and others can be happy with their things that they like.
Handbook of heroes is great! We can all agree to that! 😀
Well, sorry but i can’t agree with that. Handbook of Heroes is great and awesome. And i wish you a good day if you think otherwise. I too wish you a good day if you think like that 😀
Aw shucks.
I can only guess where you’re from, but I will have you know that I read this phrase in the most Russian possible accent.
So what? I too would sound like that saying that out loud 🙂
On the other hand i already got a Russian accent 😀
As a long-time webcomics fan (in general), it is required of me to ask if this is a sequel to a certain Shortpacked! strip;
https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/the-muppets
Negative. I am ignorant of all cultural artifacts outside of the monster manual and 90s Nickelodeon.
A bit off topic, but on the subject of Scryphones, how common are they? Are there differing types based on the same principle? What is their price?
I’ll refer you to this explanatory video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac7G7xOG2Ag
But the Party/the Anti Party/Quest giver aren’t exactly government agents, nor do they seem rich enough to afford 750000000 per unit.
I haven’t got a chance to use these yet, due to being between groups for the past decade, but I’ve statted up a party of rival adventurers based to the main characters from Aqua Teen Hunger Force
https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=24352598&postcount=17
Well now. The theme song is immediately looping in my head. Hadn’t expected that after all these years.
Hmmm, well it’s probably happened to me but I just don’t remember it. It’s more common for me to encounter a GM throwing out a monster that’s just a silly joke because it’s obviously silly and weird rather than a specific reference to a thing.
I do plan to sort of make a reference monster in a game I’m going to run. But it’s a reference to a joke someone made in Pathfinder 2e game I’m watching on a certain youtube channel.
They were mocking how weird the ooze enemies the module was throwing around and made a crack about an ooze centaur. Since they were also fighting an invisible stalker in that episode I’ve decide I’ll go one further and have my players confront an invisible ooze centaur.
Admittedly to be fair the campaign won’t be particularly serious and will also feature Were-Sharks hosting what I imagine the Shark Tank show to be like (I’ve never seen a single episode or even a commercial for it and I don’t want to ruin my hilarious lack of knowledge of something I’ll be parodying at this point just to be more accurate.) and a whole long running Iron Chef inspired B-plot. (Can you call something a B-plot in a game that doesn’t even really have an A-plot? shrug)
So long as your players know the joke, I think it’ll play. And even if they don’t, invisible centaur ooze seems like something that could exist.
As for the were sharks, I hope you bring in some Street Sharks catch phrases. Ya know, for that sweet double-reference action.
https://www.retrojunk.com/content/child/quote/page/40104/street-sharks
Holy cow, I forgot that show existed!
I tend to be “that guy who doesn’t recognise the thing” since I don’t engage much with popular culture. I just don’t enjoy it: even as a kid I never found much to interest me there. So I have a very deep knowledge of a very few medias that I did enjoy and none of anything else. If it wasn’t in Discworld, Tom & Jerry, The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, or Garfield, I’m probably not going to have a clue.
This isn’t just an issue with one-shot parody monsters, but also with other players’ reference characters and their well-intentioned but way over my head “how about making something like X from Y”.
Yes, this does cause mood deflation and awkwardness, but I don’t really see what can be done about it.
One of the texts I’m working with in my academic life is this business:
https://www.amazon.com/Fantasy-Role-Playing-Game-New-Performing/dp/0786408154
The big contribution is the concept of “imaginary entertainment environments.” According to the author, these a mutually-constructed fantasy settings formed from “strips of culture” gleaned from a larger society. In other words, he’s arguing that fantasy RPG settings are nothing but pop culture references mortared together. Kind of makes you wonder how people from very different cultures could play together.
I’ll keep it shorter and say I have an unusually broad perspective of pop and classical culture. Musician parents.
I don’t do outright parody, such as putting Mr. The Frog on center stage in a fiasco straight out of the first Ghost Busters, but where I wouldn’t make him ‘the monster,’ I might make shoggoths appear as various muppets, with the entire cult directed by a maniacal, lonely child putting on a play with their dolls and reading lines from that creepy old book in Uncle Obediah’s attic.
And when you do that, the parody elements tend to become elements of pure horror, so what I do… isn’t this.
Reminds me of the Charlie the Choo-Choo publicity stunt:
https://nerdist.com/article/stephen-king-dark-tower-childrens-book/
I remember reading how some people got freaked out when they discovered story world leaking into their airport bookshops and such.
I see Gozer is at it again. Sigh. Why can’t people think of a large and moving torb, or a giant sloar, like in the good old days? Why do they have to think of silly harmless-looking things?
I know, right? It just makes your utter destruction embarrassing as well as horrifying.
Again, I haven;t used these, but my RPG notebook is filled with notes like the following, all of which are references or puns or satire or gags or the like:
*the sort of goblin that looks like David Bowie
*the Great Sage Equal With Parsley Rosemary and Thyme
*gay human torch. “Flame on!”
*Campbell’s Condensed Matter
*Elf hipsters with magic tattoos
*Bunkers & Bedlam
*The Pharoah Menses
*Sealab as a “Paranoia” sector. Sparks, CPU, Y, Free Enterprise; Quinn, R&D, O, Corpore Metal; Black Debbie, HPDMC, O, Romantics; Virjay, G, Psion, Toxic metabolism; Murphy, Armed Forces, B, Communists; Shanks, HPDMC, I, Ordo Neptuni; White Debbie, O, humanists; Frenchy, IR, Sierria Club; Hesh, Power Services, R?IR?; Stormy, Power Services?R&D?, R?O?, Mystics; Prescott, CPU, V, Psion?
*portal in statue of goatse
*the city/fortress of Balls Deep
*death’s counterpart, the grim accountant, personification of taxes
*not lares but larrys
*Xerox (Xeorx?), the god of dwarf and gnome knockoffs
*black diamond item conjures a snowy mountain
*nympho afterlife goddess who weighs the penises of the deceased to determine if they will join her in paradise
*sibriex demon is Wizard of Oz
*the wizard of ozzfest
*the local dildowright
*the minotard [sic]
*tiny lightsaber wielded like a switchblade
*terminator-esque warforged working at incongruous job
*the bone saber of zuma kalis mentioned on ATHF
*undead slugs against which a circle of salt is doubly effective
*Abyssal layer 7734 is hell upside down
*Uncle Sammael
*yozis as “Inside-Out”
*”unfamiliar servant” spell. fon’t know what it should do, just like the name
*air plane hanger – jimmying a door opennwith this hanger causes it to open into the elemental plane of air
*”Photobomb” sunburst grenade
*electric lead pipe
*the Buddy Box is a completely different product from the Companion Cube. The Companion Cube will never threaten to stab you whereas the Buddy Box plays the music of Insane Clown Posse
*which one because there’s two michael myerses, two joe hills, three shaggys
*This was part of a GPT-2 output on Ecub the Grim, but it sounds more like a pseudo-epic ATHF episode “Evidently EVILEATS on the plains of Oreida took host to the feast of a drunkard such as Willard, for he had been to the seas tailless, forged into proud and vast steel. on his black horse came Fat Marty and hurled himself to the dice full of wine silly-looking red flint drifts.” note the Evileats, the Plains of Oreida, and Fat Marty
*Reverse version of They Live (or large scale version of Slightly Damned). Psychic control field stops orcs from being crazy rageaholics. Normal orcs have a constant feeling of a knife twisting in the skull
*White Zinfidel [sic]
*elemental planes are california w/ its fires, quakes, and oceans n’ beaches
*agate-taters
*heaven portal is given the unfortunate name “The Glory Hole”
*portable gloryhole
*peak nightmare fuel
*naturon demonto actually means “nature dismantling” in esparanto. do something with that
*incantation to gain temporary [earth] subtype by getting so dirty that the soil gets into your soul
*book of thoughts and prayers – allows politicians to level into Divine Mind class
*figurine of wondrous power pink panther
*abacus of abracadabra (???)
*CAH themed deck of illusions
*seeds of an idea
*sword of superb seppuku – bane property against the specific person who wields it
*ioun stomne melted gi joe action figure
*ioun stone brass ball(s)
*vlad the impaler as a shrike
*vlad the impaler as an impala
*the rotting prince of bel air
*prophet to the marginalized
*truculent orbuculum
*RHPS medusa and de-medusa devices
*sumo occultists (inspired by bad OCR on C of C rulebook)
*mark zuckerberg as a call of cthulhu villain. Facebook is clearly named after the Necronomicon.
*tempest in a teacup
*secret highest caste of rilmani- the Aluminati (illuminati + aluminum)
*glove that spawns (or possibly sounds?) musical horns made out of demon/devil horns when you make the sign of the horns
*keytar calliope
*dimension door based portal gun
*zagyg’s on coke like gygax
*use of those bardcore versions of gangsta’s paradise and real slim shady in a game
*zi burz mosnat zabrat kil; burzum sulmog agh draut mat; voskor zemar voskor vras; nazg mag doram zuzar vil – approximate translation of the black lantern oath into the dark speech of mordor – black dark midnight descends the sky; Darkness attacks and [day]light dies; lust for hearts lust for killing ; ring on hand ghouls spew
*bong whose smoke converts itself into hemp rope and possibly casts rope trick
*holodeck mishap, except shadow magic
*stone bong symbolizing the four elements (stone, plus the fire for the hemp, plus the water in the chamber plus the smoke)
*artist guarded by “happy treants” (as referwnce to Bob Ross’ happy trees)
*Eight-legged wolves with bat wings. Possibly rat tails as well
*haunted or novelty clock displays 6:66 instead of 7:06
*the Alefather [sic]
*Yog-Sothebys
*combination of jacob’s ladder the electrical doodad with jacob’s ladder the biblical incident
*project purity from fallout 3 except the output is holy water and it’s accomplished via a mythal anchored to a massive silver pipe thing the size of a building
*the demon lord who first taught people to solve problems with violence
*plan ruining blzckguard Major Force (a pun on “force majeure”)
*crippled deity rolling wheelchair on water; “seat of the xxshiningxx sacred one”
*tooth fairy’s tooth ship
*father time’s ship with sails made from the fallen out hair of old men
*The Hammer of Time- head shaped like hourgalss, can age or de-age, casts time stop with the command word “now hammer, stop time”
*wise spellcasters request their one word answers to be given in german (because of the long concatenations of affixes and jamming a sentence’s worth of words into one word)
*a pen that is a tiny squid
*languages like german with long concatenations of affixes useful for spells with one word commands or one word answers
*Cheeseus Crust, the god of stuft/stuffed crust pizza
*MIRV magic missile; multiple sets of five projectiles each
*64 hour duration, fresh bodies only, no skeletons, Lesser Animate Dead/”Advanced Weekend At Bernie’s” spell
*the big rock candy mountain, a mountain made from the body of an ancient baatoran lord who created mortality and starvation (and thus the need to work) who was defeated at this place in Asgard in ancient times, which is why peopl in asgard respawn, he wasn;t able to finish sabltaging that plane
*fairies named things like “Birdie” “Whiffleball” and “Pelota” as a parody of “Puck” from A Mis]dsummer Night’s Dream (and obliquely inspired by the three demons Uno, Yachtzee, and Boggle from ATHF)
*deck of mini things
*a flipbook that kills you after seven days
*vampires vs lichens[sic]
*liar liar pants on fire literally due to cursed truth enforcing pants
*anti-symapthetic-magic comb (it unentangles, get it)
*Cupid’s shotgun
*tiny aspects of deities that are osmosis-jones/cells-at-work style sentient cells from their bodies
*Weapons of Massachusetts
*Plaguesus (instead of pegasus)
*Ridonkules
*Corleovah, a gangster deity running a salvation racket
*blade-server blade
*giant mayoral ribbon cutting scissors as a weapon
*Class that focuses on the most ridiculous weapons from anime and kung-fu movies (flying guillotines, impractically large swords, etc)
*Bigdickules
*apple tree of awakening
*”Exalted” inspired “Toon” setting called “Demented. Features things like the Elemental Pole of Anvils (cf. Elemental Pole of Earth and Elemental Pole of Metal), the feared “Paint Drinking Technique” (cf. Ghost Eating Technique) and the sinister “Diznis” (cf. “Yozis” and “Disney”)
*illusion(/enchantment?) enhancing poultice made of bullshit
*earth element template animal companion, an actual pet rock
*The axe of the apostles
*Hologram Chapman
*magnet powerup talisman for haversack and bag of holding
*god of wizards, rogues, and shady knowledge like how to make meth and run scams and pick locks and make a bong out of an apple and stuff
*let’s get centaurded
*….he crafted a flute from skins and said ‘use this to summon an heir’….
*wall of cheese spell
*An-Wei the elven goddess of ennui
*sun is giant space ameoba
*literal healbot is mindless golem but can cast cleric spells if charged up by a real cleric
*similar to above an ur-priest bot. And with enhanced magic stealing power backing up its spell-immunity
*the DMV was cursed with slowness to suppress its awesome true power
*The Warforged/robot stoner THC-420
*The warforged cop Robot Peele
*Fifth Element parody in Temple of Elemental evil
*wayne the mangler
*intercontinental ballistic missal [sic]
*icecream necronomicone
*half-elf werebear with mark of storms and the personality of Grumpy Bear
*a god whose drinking blackouts alter the past
*computana the digital whore
*prophecy written in the sky is probkematically large, people can’t see the ends of it
*prayer dynamo
*mustache rider
*throne made out of plowshares
*tornatoes – either tomatoes that cause mini-tornados/dust-devils if thrown at someone, or else tiny tornados made out of/filled with tomato
*Holla’ peño
*literal healbot
*small miracle spell
*man turned into an animated toilet/outhouse by Zagyg
*extracting ghosts via a horn/cone rammed/placed into the anus
*nightmare curse pillow cover “pain sham”
*J’zzalshrak (demon princess of blood war campaigns) delivers a parody of patton’s speech to the third army. Complete w/ giant flag. but in that case a black flag with the star of chaos drawn in blood
*the great deity WHO-DAT (or ‘Hu-Daat’?)
*Monk orders with names like “the ancient contemplative order of ass-kickers” or “the enlightened dick punchers” (cf. The Neck Kickers from the computer game “Chaos Overlords”)
*gangsta pirates
*vampire junkies mainlining blood
*Warforged paladin named “Rolex” (instead of Roland, get it)
*Deity writes prophecy in enormous letters in the sky. Unfortunately, its so big that everyone can only see part of it, either because its too low and much of it is at an angle off in the distance, or else its too high and parts of it are covered by a cloud. Anyway, different areas get different parts
*Fancy’s, a fancy restaurant in Hell used to test baatezu soul collectors’ abilities by seeing if they can convince someone that the experience was good. incl. deeper darkness, offal called a ‘delicacy’ uncomfortable chairs the victim is chained to, and the wailing of damned souls seated next to them
*cigarett-topia
*Time, the Miller
*Deity who pooped out the world (“Fiberous”?)
*Location: The Blood Shed
*Prester Golias the Ass, Lord of Misrule (combo of Lord of Misrule, Bishop Golias, Feast of the Ass, and Alexamenos graffito)
*Bard/Chaos Monk called Ol Dirty Master
*Metal Health- feat for spontaneous divine curing as an evil cleric/bard
*fiendish torture device combining catherine wheel, human centipede, whirligig, and chinese water torture,
*Rune-atic?
*heart of stone or black heart fiendish graft
*Stark Fist of Removal- As Bigby’s Grasping Hand but can planeshift a grappled target to a location of the caster’s choice.
*Stark Fist of Retrieval- As Stark fist of retrieval, above, but can appear and grapple a target anywhere and planeshift them to the caster provided that the caster has a large chunk of the target’s body to
*Binary adder snake
*mechanan spherical cows
*Mediocrates, a lv 23 commoner
*Arctic region carried around in enormous icecream truck
*drain of dryness- the opposite of a decanter of endless water
*aminita musk-a-rat-a – Part muskrat part fly agaric
*ship in a bottle
*torno allen
*”Flame retardant” thrown potion that casts “feeblemind” on fire elememtals
*Mediocritor, LE god of pop music
*Cygnet [sic] Ring
*Hellish Island – parody of ellis island where people arrive in hell
*beePod- a mimir made from a bee’s head that plays songs
*Gerrymander dragon- shapeshifter, space warper, and spell sculptor
*Aqua Teen expys Gorn Lord (Shake), Mimic (Meatwad), and Warlock (Frylock)
*device that allows you to literally throw shade
*Paladin with ghost-rider-esque replacement for mount ability; special mount powers go into and posess a vehicle
*Creator deity named Anu gets split to pieces that all re-form imto copies of the original. Story tods as a means and an excuse to type “Anus” over and over again
*Exorcist of Beelzebub prc
*Abyssal layer ruled by giant demonic sun (think angry sun plus screaming sun plus shouting heavy metal singer)
*Volcano that is a drunk earth god vomiting
*The fortress of Butthold
*Kholer-Ra
*Juncture of Eternity
*Buddhabrot buddha
*Ancient baatoran hellcat god. Rival/enemy/kismesis of Yeenoghou. Is in many ways a LE parody of Aslan; Difficulty killing him permanently plus ancient dawn of time type stuff echo aslan. Sacrificial rituals performed where he eats followers who offer themselves (a parodic combination of christians being thrown to the lions and narnia having a christian lion)
*Rusticus- God of places devoid of wildlife abut not significantly populated by intelligent life; rules mostly over farmland and places that have been overhunted by orcs. True Neutral with chaotic evil tendencies. Rural death god.
*Tha dark forrtress Strangle Hold
*CG goddess of pornography and plenty
*The Great Cold Ones- primordial beer deities (base physical description on Gorn Lord Shake???)
*Snake watch symbiont/watchsnake
*Obnoxious semi-intelligent everfull mug based on Master Shake
*Sound burst firing church bell
*datamining diplomacy/bluff buff divination. Massive buff and extracts information from past habits, friends’ knowledge, local lore, etc, so even mind blank doesn’t foil the information gathwring
*Puppy Dog Eyes graft
*Kleptokouatl, the sticky fingered serpent
*Goddess of the moon and other useless rocks
*creature with both wheels for hands and big old hands for feet
*LE god of (human) fertility and ponzi schemes
*Mustakrakish summoning spell
*”Prophetic” Zagyg idol that dispenses fortune cookie advice
*yugoloth with an icecream truck that sells “murder for hire” instead of icecream.
*Lamec, the god of smoking
*headshot as in heads fired out of a cannon
*figurines o wondrous power
–stone fox
–silver fox
–china man
–jade harley
*Stairway to Heaven
*Hooloovoo paint
*Golden Hammer
*MurderCon
*domains for the Invisible Hand: Commerce, Envy, Greed, Trade
*gaul stone
*cracker kraken
*the 2-dimensional world of hypospace
*Onajor the god of donkey shows
*bacchus’ newly hired attendants Molly and Mary Jane
*”by the power of numbskull” He-Man/She-Ra based toon adventure
*boots of ass kicking that add some initiator moves
*’the house that jack built’ but about plague (‘…the rats that carried the fleas that carried the germ…’)
*platform game and anime protagonist fighting styles. the former incl. head jumping and multi jump and midair direction change. the latter incl. converting a blow into energy that sends you flying instead of damaging you
*knights of the round belly
*Kali-Entei
*not theosophy but theosophistry (which theosophy rreally acrua;ly is if you think about it)
*Shub-Nekorath
I feel like each and every one of these comes from that moment where you’re thinking of D&D, can’t fall asleep, and come up with some random shit that you won’t remember in the morning. Except you kept a dream journal for those moments. XD
Oh, by the way, is there any way for me to set my text to collapse down like some forums do with their spoiler boxes? I realized after I posted that last thing that my wall of text kind of messed up the flow of your comments section. Sorry about that.
(and I didn’t even get to my idea for combining the plots of “Pinnochio” and “Big Trouble In Little China” so that Pinnochio has to marry a woman and then kill her in order to become flesh and blood)
If you took the trouble to write an essay, the least I can do is display it in all its glory.
And also no, there’s isn’t a way to collapse it anyway. 😛
Oh, also, I noticed something in the official material that may or may noy be a reference. Here’s a passage from the adventure “The Rod of Seven Parts”:
“The queen’s lower body is a mass of 10 mauve tentacles, like a giant squid’s. The tentacles are always shiny with slime, and a network of red and purple veins shows beneath the skin. Her upper body is humanoid, female, and grossly fat. The skin is bluish, lighter at the corpulent belly and darker in back. The queen’s eyes and hair are green; the locks hang in drooping curls. When standing upright on her tentacles she is about 25 feet tall, but she measures more than 90 feet from the top of her head to the tips of her longest tentacles.
The queen carries a huge trident attached to one wrist with a coil of spyder-fiend silk rope. She wears a coronet of bones decorated with black pearls and a sahuagin skull.”
Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but that sounds a hell of a lot like Ursula the Sea Witch from the Disney adaptation of The Little Mermaid. Note the large size, the lower body of an octopus and the upper body of a fat lady, the blue-purple skin, the trident, etc.
(Also, on a similar note, I think Sibriex demons (Fiendish Codex I) may be based on the wizard’s hologram from “The Wizard of Oz”. They’re enormous floating heads that traffick in organs)
I think perhaps there’s a Disney fan at TSR-that-was.
The best types of parodies don’t require strict knowledge of the source material but understanding the source material helps.
Have you got an example?