The Dungeon Master is a short story by Sam Lipsyte. It was printed in The New Yorker in 2010.
Our nameless narrator says that the local Dungeon Master is The Killjoy Jerkass who invokes realism to kill the party members in various ways. He hears rumors that said Dungeon Master is a troublemaker and has been committed. Things come to a head when the Only Sane Man Brendan tries to be sensible for once and try to not get killed during a campaign.
Tropes for this include:
- Adults Are Useless: Dr. Varelli doesn't know how to be a parent to either of his boys. He lets the Dungeon Master swear at him, and just tells him to play nice with Marco. None of the boys respect him. It's shown most prominently when he hears the commotion and walks in to see Brendan rescuing the narrator from the Dungeon Master. His only response is to yell at them to play nice again before walking away.
- Batter Up!: There are rumors that the Dungeon Master smashed up another kid with an aluminum bat. He admits that it's one of the rumors about him that's true in the ending.
- Beige Prose: The text is deliberately clipped and brief. The only exceptions are during the rare occasions when the game is actually good, and the team's imagination is stimulated. And at the end, when the narrator pictures the Dungeon Master's suicide, Cherninsky's dad in jail and Cherninsky himself a desperate street kid with no future, and himself having to get a crappy summer job without any of the games he enjoys playing.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Brendan is the nicest member of the group and the only one who doesn't get into trouble. He bites the Dungeon Master to stop the latter from strangling the narrator, actually drawing blood.
- Big Brother Bully: The Dungeon Master is this to his little brother Marco and to an extent to their father.
- Big Brother Worship: Marco adores his older brother, at least when he's not the Dungeon Master. That doesn't last after the Dungeon Master nearly kills the narrator; from what we hear, they aren't getting along.
- Bully Magnet: It's heavily implied that the narrator is one. Unusually, it's not universal among the gamers we meet; Eric and Lucy are relatively respectable and are never mentioned as having trouble. Brandon's too mild to get good reactions out of (notably, the Dungeon Master also never picks on him), while Cherninsky's crazed energy is a bit too much for most of them. But it's also implied that the reason the Dungeon Master has the group he has is an inversion of this trope; his players are all younger teenagers (including his brother) that he can push around, and his own father is a victim of his abuse.
- The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Dr. Varelli is a child psychiatrist whose elder son is dangerously disturbed and whom he cannot control.
- Delinquents: Cherninsky is a standard example, in that he's a compulsive thief who likes to try to sneak around smoking weed or peeping on girls. In the end, the cops bust him for all the stuff he's stolen and his dad might go to jail. The Dungeon Master is aging out of it and has grown up to be a lot worse than that.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The group decides (against the narrator's wishes) to chicken out and run off with a few scoops of treasure rather than fight the dragon the Dungeon Master had clearly intended to be a big setpiece battle at the end of the adventure, and as they do Cherninsky wants to steal from the other party members since his character, like him, is a compulsive thief. The Dungeon Master responds by first instantly killing the narrator's ranger rather than letting him heroically fight the dragon single-handed to give the group a chance to escape (and saying his magic armor was a fraud all along in the process), then having a bunch of goats outside the dungeon turn out to be carnivorous shapeshifters who slaughter the group. Finally, one of the shapeshifters impersonates Cherninsky's real-life dead sister, and he shows No Sympathy when Cherninsky starts crying.
- The Ditherer: Brandon blows with the wind when there are arguments at the table. It's actually played positively; in a group full of stubborn assholes Brandon is the only diplomat who tries to see both sides of a thing.
- Downer Ending: The story ends on a dour note with the narrator refusing to play again with the Dungeon Master after nearly getting strangled and having to recover from a broken wrist. He loses interest in the school's only other group because no one thinks he's funny, the girl he had a crush on spends every game glaring at him and leaves his character to die, and he misses the thrill of having a Killer Game Master. His parents' financial situation's bad and degrading, and he and his sister may have to find work soon to keep the family afloat, and with his mediocre grades it'll probably be a crappy one. Meanwhile, Cherninsky's father might end up in jail for all the petty thievery his son's committed, which will probably ruin Cherninsky's life too, and the Dungeon Master says his father is kicking him out of the house when he turns eighteen, for Marco's safety. The Dungeon Master implies he could go to Canada, but may kill himself, and when he tries, in his clumsy way, to make up with the narrator, he can't do it without creepily threatening him, so the narrator cuts ties.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The Dungeon Master has only one regret: that he's not a good influence on Marco.
- Feigning Intelligence: The Dungeon Master likes to throw out pretentious quotes to make him seem smarter than he is and show off for his younger players, who aren't fooled but know better than to call him out.
- Free-Range Children: Cherninsky's parents are old and have stopped trying to raise him.
- Good Is Dumb: Brandon is singled out as the nice member of the team, and the narrator remarks that he seems dim. The Dungeon Master crows that he's having trouble with the new highly-technical wargames they've started playing in the ending.
- Hope Spot: During the last game the narrator ever plays with the group, the Dungeon Master, after going to a mysterious "appointment," is in rare form, and actually puts some effort into letting the group have fun rather than just killing them off for kicks, with cool monsters they never get to see and proper encounters that reward the players' creativity. He even says he wants to try to do a better job and let all of them enjoy themselves. But, when the group decides to grab a sensible amount of treasure and bolt instead of having a grand setpiece battle like he planned (against the narrator's objections), and when Cherninsky declares his intention to rob everyone else's share of the treasure with a note to the Dungeon Master, all his old venom comes pouring back, and he gets right to killing everyone, starting with having the narrator barbequed by the dragon when he tries to stay behind to slow it down while everyone else leaves (and declaring his magic armor was phony all along), then begins trying to psychologically torture Cherninsky with a shapeshifter that turns into his baby sister as his character's dying.
- Hypocrite: Cherninsky complains to the narrator outside the game that Marco takes constantly dying too personally and should remember that it's just a game, and that the thrill of death is part of the fun. Later, he refuses to risk fighting a dragon, and when the group gets attacked by shapeshifters on the way out, he starts crying when one of them turns into his dead sister.
- Insane Equals Violent: The Dungeon Master admits that he has been committed a few times, once attacked another child with a bat in his youth, and he nearly killed the narrator by strangling him if not for Brendan biting him.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: At first, the Dungeon Master suffers no punishment for nearly killing the narrator. Even his father doesn't reprimand him. Then it turns out after the narrator left, the group splintered, Marco has lost faith in him, and the Dungeon Master's father says he needs to get out of the house after graduation. The narrator also refuses to forgive the Dungeon Master for ruining his fun.
- Kick the Dog: The Dungeon Master makes Cherninsky cry by making a shapeshifter turn into his dead sister. He then has the gall to mock him about it. This is when the narrator hits his Rage Breaking Point and breaks the ancient taboo of tabletop games by knocking away the game master's screen, revealing the Dungeon Master's notes are covered in vaginas with angel wings, and calling him a "mental case".
- Killer Game Master: Exaggerated, and played negatively. The Dungeon Master isn't very interested in actually letting the group have fun; he's out to torture the players, and not necessarily even their characters. The narrator later reflects when playing in a less-intensely lethal game that a part of him does enjoy the thrill of death around every corner that comes from this trope, just not having to deal with one who's such a messed up person that his only enjoyment from the game comes from trying to hurt the players rather than have fun with them.
- The Killjoy: While the Dungeon Master is a bad GM, the story goes out of its way to show that the problem isn't that he's a Killer Game Master, but that he's an asshole who gets off on bullying his players and making sure they don't have any fun. The one time he actually tries, his adventure's still lethal and difficult, but the players have a blast surpassing well-crafted challenges.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Cherninsky's characters are always thieves with poor impulse control, mirroring their player's perpetual restless energy and sticky fingers in the real world.
- The Mentally Ill: Exactly what is wrong with the Dungeon Master is never explained. But it's clearly not just a mild disorder.
- The New Rock & Roll: Downplayed, but the main character's mother says she's read "articles" (which she clips, saves, and makes him read) and worries about him playing RPGs because she doesn't understand them. But she doesn't get too upset, and in her defense, worrying about your son hanging out with the Dungeon Master is a rational response.
- Nice Guy:
- Brandon is the only member of the group who doesn't seem to have glaring social problems beyond being a little dim, and when arguments break out he tries, somewhat clumsily, to play peacemaker. When the Dungeon Master and the narrator get in an actual fight, and the narrator's being strangled, Brandon's the one who saves him by biting the Dungeon Master's head and tearing him off.
- The narrator's friend Eric, while not quite willing to express solidarity with him and become a bully target and very dismissive of the rest of the group, keeps inviting the narrator to play with his group in the official club after school, and that Lucy, the girl he has a crush on, may actually like him. While the narrator eventually quits because he gets bored of the game and Lucy never warmed up, he admits it's what he needed at the time.
- "Not So Different" Remark: The narrator thinks to himself that the Dungeon Master and Cherninsky aren't so different deep down, both bad kids who've maladapted to their environments, and that that's probably why they hate each other so much.
- Once an Episode: Every single character Marco plays is a paladin named Valentine, and the Dungeon Master horribly kills them every session while screaming at his younger brother.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The Dungeon Master isn't called anything else. Eric, the narrator's friend from outside the group, even lampshades it.
- Only Sane Man: Brendan is the only one who knows that the Dungeon Master won't let them fight a dragon and win. He suggests they sensibly take a little bit of gold that the dragon won't miss and avoid a confrontation. The narrator thinks that's no fun. When Cherninsky accidentally riles up the dragon by attempting to steal from his party members, the narrator says he'll stay behind and buy them time to escape.
- Player Archetypes: Marco is an exaggerated Specialist, according to Laws's system, in that all his characters are paladins who are all named Valentine. Downplayed in that he's a younger player. Cherninsky is a straight take, in that his characters are all twitchy thieves who much resemble him in their poor impulse control and restless energy. All of them like a good scrap though, with Cherninsky and Brandon noted as liking to fight tactically with traps and spells while the narrator and Marco enjoy smashing face up close, but in the end the narrator is the only one who actually wants to fight the dragon rather than just grab some treasure and bolt.
- Rage Breaking Point: The narrator takes the Dungeon Master's sadistic killing of his character in stride, as well as his regression to old, bad habits when the group gets outside. But when the Dungeon Master has one of the shapeshifters turn into Cherninsky's dead sister just to torture him and actually makes him cry, the narrator's had enough, and starts a screaming match that quickly turns physical.
- Rejected Apology: The Dungeon Master attempts to make a peace offering by driving the narrator around in his car. Then he threatens to drive them both off a cliff and tries to play it off as a joke. Understandably, the narrator refuses to say "No hard feelings".
- Tempting Fate: The Dungeon Master runs on this trope. He says that if you steal from a bakery, the thief is likely to get killed. Ditto for taking on a dragon with a sword, and not being fireproof.
- Tsundere: Eric suggests Lucy's just cold to the narrator because she secretly likes him. The narrator is skeptical, and in the end leaves their group when her character abandons his to die in a collapsing wormhole.
- You Shall Not Pass!: The narrator pulls a Heroic Sacrifice to save his party from the dragon that Cherninsky accidentally angered, taking it on alone. Even with this nobility, the Dungeon Master doesn't let him enjoy it, saying it was stupid to believe he could defeat a dragon.
