RPG Review: Dungeons & Dragons Vs. Rick and Morty

We’ve got a big review week this week! Tomorrow, we’ll be putting out the review of Eberron: Rising from the Last War, while today we have Dungeons & Dragons Vs. Rick and Morty!

D&DvR&M is a new starter set for D&D which serves as a jumping off point for Rick and Morty fans who have never played D&D before, D&D players who are also Rick and Morty fans, or D&D players who are looking for a weird bonkers new adventure. Most promisingly, my prediction is that this is a testing ground to see if the world’s ready for a Gamma World game based on 5e, or as a way to see if boxed set adventures are worth bringing back to D&D.

The box is a bit thinner than the Starter Box and the Essentials Kit, about 75% of the thickness. The quality of the box is the same, it’s just smaller dimensions. Inside, there are a few items of interest.

The box comes with a new set of dice (importantly, with 2d20 and 4d6) in very Rick and Morty-esque yellow and bright blue, along with a rulebook, adventure, premade character sheets and DM screen.

First off, the rulebook. The rulebook is your standard Basic Rulebook (and as such, very useful at a table with only a single PHB), but throughout, Rick has left notes throughout the book, providing elucidation. Tucked between commentary such as “LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP ARE B-B-*burp*-BIOLOGICAL BULLS**T” is actually some pretty good advice such as “YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY DICE, MORTY!” and “When a player announces they’re going to use “unarmed combat,” everyone at the game table retreats into the darkest part of their mind and starts praying for death. No one wants to watch you play through a 1 damage + Strength bonus per hit slapfest. It’s boring and stupid. Just use a damn weapon or a spell.” Amen, Rick. Amen.

He also has a few new tables, such as a Critical Fail Condition Table and Surprise table, which is just completely random happenings you can have take place. All in all, it’s fun to reread the core rules with someone commenting over your shoulder while you do it.

The adventure is called “The Lost Dungeon of Rickedness: Big Rick Energy”, and WotC hasn’t put out an adventure this weird yet. The adventure has no background, just telling you, “How did the characters get here? Who cares?! They’re here now, and that’s enough to deal with without dwelling on the past.” The overall map of the dungeon is blue on white like a classic 1e adventure. There really is no rhyme or reason to the dungeon, other than to be the weirdest dungeon you’ll find.

Some highlights for me were the Meeseeks room, which features rules for how to use a Meeseeks in your game (which could, in a regular D&D game make things very interesting), the Pickle Room which features shelves of jars full of lycanthropickles (like Pickle Rick), and a room featuring a Spectator who demands “SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!” to the players and wants them to perform a song for it before they can pass.

Not all the jokes in the dungeon are Rick and Morty references. There’s also just a lot of really weird stuff going on there. For myself, I would probably throw one or two of these rooms into a mad scientist dungeon, or use it as a bizarre level of the Dungeon of the Mad Mage. It’d be fun for a one-shot at a table full of Rick and Morty fans as well, but you’ll be lost if you aren’t a fan. I was also disappointed that things like the lycanthropickles are just reflavored twig blights, and the Meeseeks are all just Commoners. I wish we had new statblocks for some of the Rick and Morty creatures.

The DM’s screen has some really fantastic art featuring the cast of R&M as adventurers fighting classic monsters such as giant spiders, mimics, and hobgoblins. It’s the same thin cardboard as the DM screen from the Essentials Kit, and the art on the DM’s side is all Rick & Morty-fied, but features all the basic information with none of Rick’s commentary. 

Finally, we have the character sheets. The game has five character sheets, each based on a different member of Morty’s family (Summer, Jerry, Beth and Morty), as well as a huge beefy fighter named Meatface. They’re all pretty straightforward character sheets (with leveling up rules on the back), but it’s nice that they’re all in color.

All in all, the kit’s interesting. As I said before, the weird off-the-wall nature of the adventure gives me hope for a Gamma World bonkers boxed set, and them putting this out really makes me feel like they could put out some cool new boxed sets in the future. This is going up on my shelf to pull down if I need a strange encounter for an adventure, or if I ever end up with a table full of Rick and Morty fans to run a one-shot with.

WotC sent a copy of D&DvR&M to Dice Monkey for review.

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