Descent into the Depths of the NIGHT of ADVENTURE!

Two casting directors, a producer, an actor, a stand-up comic, a video game geek, and a philosophy professor go into a conference room...

...to play Dungeons & Dragons.

Yeah, the punchline practically writes itself.

It's not just a joke, it's a NIGHT of ADVENTURE!

• It turns out the guys we fought to a stalemate last session were level 16. LEVEL 16! We're only level FIVE!
• Pusses.
• Apparently the only reason they decided not to unleash their 16 levels of massive destruction on us was because we were perilously close to killing their pet minotaur.
• Sixteen levels of unbridled carnage defeated by two levels of sentimentality.
• Kind of surprising, given that the two guys are cold-blooded assassins for hire.
• Sentimentality: Should have made it their dump stat.
• Hey, you know -- everybody loves a puppy. Even if that puppy is a bloodthirsty minotaur with a two-handed waraxe.
• One of the sentimental assassins had a Circlet of Mental Onslaught. Why do all the magic items in 4E sound like they were named by marketing rejects who got fired from the WWE?
• Sunday, SUNDAY, SUUUNDAYYY!! It's Triple-H versus THE UNDERTAKER in a CIRCLET OF MENTAL ONSLAUUUGHHHT!!! DON'T MISS this THREE ROUND duel of ENCOUNTER POWERS!!! WHO will go home with the +3 ROD OF FIRST BLOOD!?!
• People who say D&D is totally fake are a bunch of humorless prigs who don't understand the game.
• Flaming staff - magical weapon or horrible infection?
• We cast remove disease just in case.
• As part of our parley with the cuddly assassins, they hand over a list of crime lords who want to kill the mayor.
• Surprisingly, our names are not on the list.
• Yet.
• Their cover blown, the assassins grab their travel bag, put a plastic cone on their minotaur so he doesn't lick his stitches, and teleport away.
• We now find ourselves in possession of a 16th-level assassin's hideout.
• We immediately run to IKEA and fill the place with cheap furniture.
• 16th level hideout, 5th level tastes.
• We spend the next 1d6 hours assembling a bookcase.
• We then spend the next 2d8 hours wondering where these extra pieces are supposed to go.
• In the morning we consider going to the "smoke shop" for some awesome blacklight posters and a special water-cooled "tobacco pipe" but decide to follow the DM's plot instead.
• This will ultimately prove to be our undoing.
• Responsibility: Should have made it our dump stat.
• The first name on the crime lord list is one Twitchy Peeples, notorious bookie in the Theatre District.
• You'd be notorious too if your name was Twitchy Peeples.
• 10am on a Tuesday morning in the Theatre District and this bar is filled with orcs.
• Apparently orcs make the best stagehands.
• I've probably just offended a third of my readership.
• Wouldn't be the first time.
• Twitchy Peeples is a gnome who operates out of the bar's back room, which is guarded by a large door and an even larger orc.
• Fortunately we have a pretty big orc that we keep onhand for situations just like THIS.
• The two orcs sniff each other like a couple of pit bulls at the dog park and in short order we get an invite for two of us to slip into the back room to see Twitchy.
• My thief confidently strolls into the crime lord's den of operations, orc barbarian in tow. After all, I have a +13 Bluff. The rest of the party stays in the bar full of orcish stagehands. What could possibly go wrong?
• Three sentences into our negotiations with Twitchy the Crime Lord, the warden character sneak attacks the orc behind the bar.
• Sometimes your +13 Bluff is foiled by the warden's 3 Intelligence.
• The warden trades furious blows with the bartender. The rest of the party pretends that we do not know him.
• Gotta use that +13 Bluff for something.
• If you're an elven ranger and don't have 13 ranks in Bluff, you can make up for it by shooting the warden in the face with arrows. Partly to show the bar full of raging orcish stagehands that you're not allies, and partly because he deserves it.
• Twitchy lives up to his namesake. He points his grubby gnome fingers at us and says "Nobody move!"
• Actually, he says "Gnobody move!"
• Sorry. Just trying to use the proper... gnomenclature.
• Gnomes, like puns, are the lowest form of humor.
• Little known fact: Puns were not a playable race until the release of PHB II.
• The humor in this situation (if there really was any to begin with) runs out about the time Twitchy drops an entropic arc on us.
• Off the top rope, Cena drops an entropic arc on Umaga! The ref's distracted by an Avernian Eruption! Look out, there's a foreign implement in the ring! Umaga uses his Orb of Indisputable Gravity! Cena is knocked backward into the turnbuckle! Thuuuuuuunderlance!
• Actually, the ensuing combat really is a lot like Smackdown vs. RAW: Furniture gets smashed, the ref gets abused, the contestants beat each other with blunt objects, and at the end -- we shoot off fireworks.
• The only notable difference: After a real WWE match, the announcers don't sit around for 15 minutes and debate how long it would take a twitchy, hog-tied gnome to suffocate inside a bag of holding.
• That's how you know wrestling is totally fake.

-Tom, 5th level humorless prig.