Web Video / Oxventure

From top left, clockwise: Corazón, Dob, Prudence, Merilwen, Egbert the Careless. Artwork by Bendix.

Andy: My name is Corazón de Ballena, and if anyone saw a pirate ship outside, that's mine...
Luke: I am Dob, the half-orc bard. Hello.
Ellen: Hello. I am Merilwen, the wood elf druid.
Mike: I am Egbert, the dragonborn paladin.
Jane: I am Prudence, the tiefling warlock.
Johnny: And I'm literally everyone else in the world.

— "An Orcward Encounter"

Oxventure is a roleplaying Actual Play channel on Youtube. It is a spin-off from the video game journalism channel Outside Xbox. It features the hosts of Outside Xbox and sister show Outside Xtra — Mike Channell, Jane Douglas, Andy Farrant, Ellen Rose and Luke Westaway — with guests.

In 2017, as part of the celebrations for Outside Xbox achieving two million subscribers, Outside Xbox and Outside Xtra joined together to play a Dungeons & Dragons game, as frequently requested by subscribers, with then-Eurogamer contributor Johnny Chiodini acting as the Dungeon Master. This proved very popular with the viewers and became a recurring feature, with new installments still being made. The campaign revolves around the misadventures of a party of adventurers known as the "Oxventurers", who are usually searching for nothing more than a nice little holiday but instead end up becoming embroiled in a series of quests resulting in curses, treasure and a terrifyingly high amount of bloodshed. The "Oxventurers" are:

• Corazón (Andy): A rather smug pirate with a fondness for stealing anything that isn't nailed down who doesn't have a mysterious veiled past, seriously, stop asking him about it;
• Prudence (Jane): A tiefling warlock whose interests mainly centre around worshipping Cthulthu, horribly murdering her enemies by blasting them in the face with dark eldritch magic, combatting the scourge of anti-tiefling racism (mainly by attacking anyone who rubs her the wrong way with said dark eldritch magic) and making snide comments about everyone;
• Merilwen (Ellen): A wood-elf druid with an affinity for nature and a special bond with animals, which often manifests in frustratingly self-righteous lectures about her affinity for nature and her special bond with animals;
• Dob (Luke): A half-orc bard with some sick music-based abilities and a music catalog suspiciously similar to that of the 1990s Eurodance act the Vengaboys, who is searching for his long-lost sister;
• Egbert the Careless (Mike): A wandering dragon-born paladin who is keen on his search for atonement, is particularly keen on spreading the good news about his paladin order to everyone he comes across, and is especially keen on solving problems in as explosive, firey and non-OHSA-compliant a fashion as possible.

The Oxventurers released a charity single in the Christmas season of 2019, with proceeds going to the mental health charity Mind. You can watch the video here, and donate to the cause here, if you're so inclined. The Oxventure takes place in the Kingdom of G'eth, much like the Eurogamer campaign Break Quest Club, leading to speculation of a shared universe.

In 2021, the Oxventure expanded into Oxventure Presents Blades in the Dark, with Luke in the GM seat and the other five as players. The campaign is set in G'eth, but a few centuries in the future and with a Darker and Edgier feel (though still plenty of humour).

In 2022, following the conclusion of Oxventure Presents Blades in the Dark, a new series was launched: Oxventure Presents One-Shot Wonders, featuring shorter adventures in a variety of other RPG systems, and with more frequent guest stars. Recurring guests include Johnny Chiodini, Liv Kennedy (from sister channel Dicebreaker and podcast Three Black Halflings), and Jasper Cartwright (also from Three Black Halflings).

In 2023, they began a Deadlands campaign, with Andy as Marshall (Game Master, for the unaware).

Oxventure episodes were originally split between the two Outside Xbox and Outside Xtra channels until 2022, when its own dedicated channel was created, with all old episodes being migrated to the new channel.

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Tropes:

Dungeons and Dragons

• Abusive Parents: Corazón's dad, Lord Milquetoast, is perfectly fine with having his son killed for embarrassing the family name.
  Prudence: Corazón, your father's kind of a dick.
  Corazón: Yeah, tell me about it! That's why I live as a pirate now.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: The characters only have graphics for one facing, so in the occasional animated scenes, features like Corazón's eyepatch and Merilwen's scar switch sides when they turn around.
• Amusing Injuries: Tag-along character Bizmuth takes a nasty fall during "Rolling in the Deep," and her legs telescope into her torso. Johnny notes that she has a pair of "worrying" bumps poking out of her shoulders.
  Octo-Merilwen: That's the problem with having bones!
• Angrish: When Dob asks what the point is of money in "Ship Happens", Corazón starts to sound like he's grabbing bits of words out of a hat and saying them in a random order.
• A Rare Sentence: Or the TTRPG equivalent: when Prudence declares in Squid Pro Quo that she's told Egbert to make a non-Euclidean Wicker Man, Johnny comments that they've never asked anyone to make a roll for that before. They settle on Intelligence (Arcana) for Prudence directing, and Strength (Athletics) for Egbert constructing.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Egbert believes in gods, undead and higher powers, but refuses to believe in ghosts.
• Arrow Catch: Egbert pulls off several of these after he rolls a 20 on his saving throw against a trap wall that shoots arrows.
• Attack Pattern Alpha: Dob and Merilwen have created the "Bear Down Protocol." Dob picks up a cat-form Merilwen, using his Dexterity to accurate aim her, and her small size for a huge velocity. While she is in flight, Merilwen Wild Shapes into a bear, not losing her momentum.
• Author Avatar: Played for laughs; each of the characters shares certain notable similarities with the person who role-plays him or her:
  • Merilwen is a huge animal lover with a particular fondness for cats, as Ellen is;
  • Prudence is an Ax-Crazy lunatic with a fondness for killing people in creatively horrible ways, in keeping with both Jane's video game play-style (she can be very creatively ruthless) and her Memetic Mutation persona as an evil Mad Scientist type who enjoys coming up with creatively horrible experiments on her co-workers;
  • Egbert is a well-meaning but clumsy fellow who's various contributions to proceedings tend to be rather direct, explosive and firey in nature, as Mike's play-throughs of games such as Hitman tend to end up being;
  • Corazón is a sneaky roguish pirate who tends to prefer using the stealth route as much as possible, as Andy does in his video game playthroughs, and Andy has a fondness for pirates;
  • Dob is an amiable type with a musical streak, as is Luke (he plays the "Show of the Weekend" theme). He's also a bard, and tends to draw on stories; many of Luke's quizzes for Ellen on "Show of the Weekend" involve taking her through a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story that he's devised.
• Bad Boss:
  • The Chuul in "Fishmas Carol" isn't overly concerned about its underlings wellbeing.
  • Liliana is in the running for "worst employer in the Kingdom of G'eth", shown when she has an underling prepared for Organ Theft for bringing her a message. She then murders a load of brawling minions, rather than make any attempt at talking them down.
• Bears Are Bad News: On leveling up, Merilwen's new animal form turns out to be a massive bear. This comes as rather an unpleasant surprise to both the cultists who discover this trope first hand and Corazón, who is next to Merilwen when she suddenly transforms and freaks out at having a massive violent bear suddenly materialize next to him in place of a wood-elf.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The loophole skeletons first introduced in "Stop Hammer Time" run on this trope. Johnny planned for them to fulfill wishes of their owner horribly. In follow-up commentary, Johnny discusses the usage of the trope in storytelling.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While Dob, Egbert, and Merilwen are mostly kind-hearted people, when push comes to shove, they're capable of fighting as evidenced in their fight with Corazón's former pirate crew.
  • Merilwen in particular is this incarnate, being a cute, kindhearted druid who, over the course of the "Quiet Riot" session, proved to be a scarily effective killer. Ellen's had to remind everyone that despite being nice, she's actually a neutral character not strictly good.
• Black Comedy: Prudence's whole schtick, but an impressive number of jokes manages to come out of the "loophole skeletons", who, when given a wish to reconstruct "an orphanage filled with orphans", make the orphanage using the orphans as the building mortar.
  Dob: Let's fix this before something bad happens.
  Merilwen: We sort of already did that. Can we get them out of the building.
  Dob: I think we'll need a sponge.
• Blood for Mortar: In one campaign titled Hammer Time, Luke's character Dob instructs a group of skeletons to build an orphanage, which they do - by using the orphans as the mortar.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Not so much in a literal sense (although her relationship with Cthulhu has some echoes of this), but in personality; despite being a phenomenonally powerful tiefling warlock, Prudence frequently acts with the personality of a stroppy teenager.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Dob offers to use a disguise kit on Corazón, and offers him the choice of Spiderman, a tiger, or a spidertiger.
• Bullying the Dragon: The Oxventurers except Merilwen get very snarky with the wizard Binbag, as he only ever appears after they dealt with the situation and doesn't seem to actually do any magic. Then he releases all the locked animals at once.
• Burn the Witch!: A young girl in "Hunter Pressure" looks like this, about to be burned at the stake. It's actually a trap to lure in unsuspecting do-gooder adventurers.
• Busman's Holiday: It is quite common for the Oxventurer's to plan some sort of relaxing thing only to be dragged into an adventure. "Wild Wild Woods" happens during a planned picnic, "A Spot of Bother", "An Orc-ward Encounter", "A Fishmas Carol", "Bad Chair Day", "Spell Check", and "Rolling in the Deeps" begin during a night of drinking, avoiding You All Meet in an Inn.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Merilwen tends to get picked on by Corazón and Prudence because of her love of nature and animals.
  • In the second live show, Alfred the quest giver accompanies the team on the quest, but they mostly forget he's there except when they're making jokes about sending him in first to test for traps.
• Call-Back: Invoked when, after Egbert becomes well enough to travel again, Prudence offers him an umbrella filled with bees. Not only does this reference an earlier episode when balloons are simply pig's bladders full of bees (Jane simply said umbrella by accident), but much later, when Egbert fights Katie Pearlhead he picks up the umbrella and jams it up her pearlhead.
• Carry a Big Stick: Egbert carries a mace that he prefers to wield like a baseball bat. One time he is able to whack a goblin so hard its head comes off, and the second time, he hits a bomb into the gob of a giant beetle monster.
• Cartoon Bomb: The prop bomb Mike uses is a black sphere with a string fuse coming out the top and BOMB painted on the side.
• Cerebus Rollercoaster: Suffice it to say the tone can shift from comedic to tragic and dramatic, then back again with very little warning.
• Character Derailment: Complained about by Johnny in-universe^*As in-universe as a GM can be, at any rate. Alfred the Archaeologist was meant to be a prideful and hyperactive academic but the Oxventurers ended up making him more like an infant.
• Church Militant: Even by the standards of paladins, Egbert; apparently his entire religious order is based very heavily around making things explode. This, naturally, results in tension with the "shushy" silence-worshipping Order of Keep It Down.
• Clone by Conversion: In "Sect Appeal" this turns out to be the cultist's plan; rather than grow Egbert clones from scratch, they're going to inject townsfolk with a serum to transform them into them.
• Comically Missing the Point: Merilwen notices something unsettling about the forest they've chosen to picnic in. Her fellow Oxventurers are somewhat less perceptive.
  Merilwen: I think there's something terribly horribly wrong, guys.
  Corazón: Oh my God, she's right. There's no cheese for the sandwiches!
  Egbert: No one's cut the crusts off mine!
  Prudence: This potato salad has pineapple in it!
• Compelling Voice:
  • Merilwen can command animals (and speak with them using a class feature). She often uses this ability for violence.
  • Prudence, as a tiefling, knows the thaumaturgy cantrip, which gives her a Voice of the Legion (and glowing eyes, to boot) terrifying enough to usually scare people into doing what she asks.
  • Egbert can command people to do what he wants. He uses this ability in both helpful ways (Making a guard shout in "Quiet Riot!" and break the rules of his own religion) and ways that are just...well, bizarre.
  Egbert: I'm gonna command [the retreating enemies] all to vomit.
• Crossover: The Oxventurers' Dungeon Master; Johnny Chiodini, starred in a list video on Xtra titled: 7 Ways D&D Players Destroy Their DM's Plans, a first for the channels' as nobody but Andy, Luke, Jane, Mike or Ellen host list videos. The video has Johnny voice their many frustrations at the Oxventurers that they have endured as their DM, such as taking unrelated tangents, picking up on clues too early, and being asked hyper-specific questions you cannot reasonably answer, among other things.
• Critical Failure: Johnny tends to use the "automatic failure" rolls of a 1 to come up with some pretty spectacular fails. In a random sampling:
  • Egbert is trying to perceive something in a dense fog, and finds a a cartwheeling turtle wearing a mask. Egbert chases it and tackles a barrel...that's full of urine.
  • Dob rolls a critical fail trying to explain to Amelia her adoptive father's treachery. She immediately stands up and rings an alarm bell.
  • Dob observes his fantastically constructed orphanage and beams with pride...missing the fact that it's covered in blood from all the orphans that were turned into the mortar to build it.
  • Prudence attempts to scry a group of odd cultists going out for a bachelor party...And immediately starts ominously chanting along with them.
  • Both Egbert and Dob roll a critical failure when trying to stay warm while climbing a mountain. This leads Dob to cast Heat Metal on Egbert's breastplate while he is wearing it.
  • Corazón investigates some footprints...and smacks right into a tree.
  • Prudence misses with her Eldritch Blast so badly it destroys the roof of the building she's in at the time, and wakes up the dragon sleeping at the top of the mountain they're on.
  • Octopus!Merilwen and a raider both rolling critical fails on an opposed check in a fight... so Johnny resolves that as the two of them suddenly having a romantic moment.
• Critical Hit: Likewise, Johnny tends to use the "automatic success" rolls of 20 to get some pretty epic successes, even beyond a normal critical hit. Some involve:
  • Dob rams the Final Boss on the pirate ship, causing him to slip, fall over the railing, and get eaten by a whale.
  • Corazón evading a wall trap by jumping from wall to wall while playing a hurdy gurdy at the same time, and Egbert using Arrow Catch to get the arrows mid-flight.
  • Egbert attempts to intimidate and/or incapacitate a guard by slamming him against the iron bars of a jail cell. Instead, somehow, Egbert pulls him through the bars.
  • Prudence practically turns into liquid shadow to eavesdrop on some thieves.
  • Prudence finds a rare book she was looking for in a haunted library, only for her to realize dice roll she thought was an 8 was actually a 20. Instead of finding one book, she finds two. And they are dog-like.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The Oxventurers are quite good at inflicting these. It's accidental about half the time (except for Prudence).
  • Subverted with the pirates, since they are cursed to come back to life in two years, but they were defeated quite messily. To wit, Prudence horribly disembowels one after blasting him twice with Eldritch Blast, one was eaten by sharks^note described as being fed into a shredder and another molested by a squid ordered by Merilwen, Dob electrocutes two and then juliennes another one, and Egbert burned two with his dragon breath.
  • The unfortunate silence cultists who investigate the noise the Oxventurers make inside the church in "Quiet Riot!". Thanks to a grease-slippery floor and a cantrip involving magic spikes, they end up being what can only be described as minced.
  • The enemies fought in "Plunder Siege" mostly die before they can even get a shot off, but M. Channail gets the worst of it: Dob curses him to laugh uncontrollably with Hideous Laughter, Prudence adds crying to the mix with a Vicious Mockery, and Egbert incinerates him via divine smite and fire breath.
  • In "Peak Performance", Vex suffers a nasty (if well-deserved) Rasputinian Death: He's smacked, set on fire, tied up in a burning building, impaled through the foot with a red-hot rapier, and finally frozen and shattered by a white dragon.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The Oxventurers generally prefer to think their way out of conflicts (see Off the Rails). But when they actually do fight anyone, it tends to be over within a round or two. This is due to a combination of the group's talent for lateral thinking, the fact that Johnny's NPCs have generally had bad luck with dice rolls (the pirates at the boathouse in A Spot of Bother had it so bad that Johnny decided they were all drunk), and the fact that the group has a fondness for Area of Effect attacks. Johnny tends to get caught a bit flat-footed by how quickly the foes get dispatched. During the Christmas charity special, Johnny's notes reveal that they need to come up with a boss that lasts for longer than one round.
• Dark and Troubled Past: None of the Oxventurers had what you would call a happy life. Dob's parents weren't around so he was left to be raised by her sister who then disappeared after she went to look for help when Dob contracted rabies. Prudence was a foundling child who ended up being adopted by a warlock and was exposed to Fantastic Racism as a teenager. Corazón's childhood is sparse on details but evidently his dad was a bit of a dick. Merilwen bonded and subsequently outlived a cat. Egbert is implied to have a rough life before he joined a Paladin order, from which he was subsequently expelled.
• Deadpan Snarker: The fact that the Oxventurers Guild is composed of some very sarcastic members has been noted by several NPCs.
• Did Not Think This Through: The characters tend to have a bit of a blind-spot in thinking through the consequences of their actions, to the extent that the motto of their guild is "Everyone Should Have Thought About Everything".
• Double Meaning: During "Hog Wild", Dob, thanks to a terrible roll, ends up losing his lute and all of his clothes. Corazón invokes this by saving the G-string: which is both a skimpy item of clothing and an actual string used for a lute. He plays with those meanings through the adventure.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first session, "The Spicy Rat Caper" looks very different than the following campaigns: The players weren't in costume, the still arts were significantly cruder and not created by an artist, and the adventure was not named. They were also missing a member^note Mike had a prior engagement. The following caper, "A Spot of Bother" named the adventure and when the videos came to the Oxventure established channel, it was properly renamed.
• Epic Fail:
  • In-Universe, Merilwen is considered to have one when she trips every trip wire in a trapped hallway while as a cat.
  • Egbert throwing a bomb into the sea also gets him a fair amount of ribbing.
• Escort Mission: Snarked by Luke when Johnny mentions an archaeologist who wants to go with the party to a crypt.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Corazón might be a ruthless pirate, but even he's taken aback by Prudence's bloodthirsty willingness to use Eldritch Blast at every given opportunity. He's also not a bigot; in "Elf Hazard" he burns down an elf elder's home for displaying Fantastic Racism pointed at Prudence.
  • Prudence herself is taken aback by what a bastard Corazón's father is.
  • In "Unreal Estate", Prudence is the one who sarcastically points out that Corazón's plan for selling the Haunted House is basically to feed people into the meat grinder until they find one who lives long enough to hand over the money.
  • Lamias are Chaotic Evil, but they always pick up their share of a tab.
• Evil Twin: In the second live show, the climactic battle is against an evil duplicate of Dob the bard, the first party member to touch the MacGuffin, who has all the original's stats and abilities, with significantly more hit points.
• Exact Words: Egbert discusses this in the "Out of Order" campaign when using his Command spell on Jacques Darkfall. He remarks that he wants to assist the party but not kill Darkfall, so if he says something like "disarm", Jacques might disarm one of the Oxventurers. And so, he picks "disrobe" because it can't be twisted, and it will lower Jacques's armor class. Both Merilwen and Corazón remark that he could just say "surrender", but then Egbert responds by saying he did that in another adventure so he's sticking with disrobe.
• Face Palm: Corazón's hands seem permanently glued to his face during their "battle" with the Owlbear.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • Egbert, due to his negative Wisdom modifier, tends to miss important details, much to Johnny's delight.
  • In "Mind Your Manors", Corazón indulges in several rich delights including drinking fine wine and smoking cigars in the mansion the Guild must stay in for the night. Unbeknownst to him, the things he's interacting with are disgusting and horrific, i.e., drinking slime instead of wine and smoking on a finger instead of a cigar. This also happens to Merilwen, who resides in a hammock made of guts and ribs, and Egbert, who just ends up eating really poor quality meat.
• Fantastic Racism: Prudence is very touchy about Tiefling racism and stereotyping about demon-women. The fact that she nevertheless lives up to most of these stereotypes is less of a concern to her.
• Feed It a Bomb: In the second live show, Egbert's attempt to deal with the final monster is to force a bomb down its throat. Its belly bulges cartoonishly from the explosion.
• Felony Misdemeanor: Invoked by an audience member during "Plunder Siege". After the Oxventurers slaughtered a group of thieves, the final two ran away, in enough time for Egbert's initiative.
  Johnny: It's your move, Egbert, but they're running away so if you want to do something heinous.
  Audience Member: Hand out pamphlets!
• Forced Transformation:
  • In the first episode, M. Channail sells potions that turn unsuspecting people into animals, claiming that they're a miraculous cure-all.
  • In Plunder Siege, Dob turns a brigand into a goblin by slipping a Tome of Eldritch Lore into said brigand's stew.
  • In "Exhibition Impossible", Egbert acquires a cursed mace that has a chance of turning anyone it hits into an animal. Egbert's first attempt to use it is on its previous owner and spends an indeterminate amount of time prodding the man with the mace until he turns into a seal.
• Friend to All Living Things: Merilwen grew up in the woods and has a special connection with animals. Which is something that she rarely misses an opportunity to point out to the others, much to their frustration.
• Friendship Moment:
  • When a goblin injures and mocks Merilwen, Dob urges Egbert to "punch him so hard his head comes off." Egbert is happy to oblige (with the added flourish of swinging his mace like a baseball bat to knock the goblin's head from his shoulders) which earns him a hug from Merilwen in thanks for defending her.
  • Corazon lights the house of the racist and fanatical Wood Elf elder on fire because he thought it’d make Prudence happy, which it does.
  • In "Unreal Estate", Prudence (of all people) asks how Corazón is feeling.
• Gentle Giant: Egbert is a very pleasant and cheerful paladin who also happens to be a seven-foot dragon-man with fire breath and a lot of bombs.
• GMPC: In addition to being "literally everyone else in the world", Johnny often sets up and depicts an outside character who tags along with the Oxventurers on their quest, although this character usually doesn't do much outside of being Mr. Exposition and futzing around in the background. Typically, the idea seems to be someone being around to keep the inexperienced (and easily-distracted) Oxventurers on track while simultaneously allowing them to be the focus of the narrative. Some notable examples include:
  • The wizard Binbag in "Wild Wild Woods!", who sends the Oxventurers on their quest and keeps popping up every so often to give them advice. Curiously, this ends up inverting the typical complaint about GMPCs, as the Oxventurers get very snarky about how Binbag doesn't seem to do much magic for an all-powerful wizard and keeps conveniently showing up after the Oxventurers have cleaned up all the threats in the vicinity.
  • Alfred Strangetide, who hires the Oxventurers in "An Orcward Encounter". He's supposed to be a rather dashing and intelligent (if naive and inexperienced) professional archaeologist, but much to Johnny's mortification once the Oxventurers get ahold of him he's turned into a literal baby. Note that this is not due to some spell, or cosmic retcon, but simply came to be due to the Oxventurers relentlessly being patronizing to the NPC in question, until even Johnny started playing along.
  Johnny: What have you done to my lovely NPC?! He was meant to be, like, the "I know everything about everything, I'm going to study this, oh this is fascinating!" Now he's just a babby!
  • Flannery, the irritating and incredibly useless mime-jester in "Quiet Riot!" who quickly inspires Corazón's undying loathing.
  • Rust-On-The-Harbor, the Cat Folk pirate, from "The Corn Ultimatium." He is actually much more capable than other NPCs, and serves a use for the battle. He's built like an assassin.
  • Averted with Hengist, their dwarf cleric, since Johnny isn't the GM for that story.
• Gone Horribly Right: In "Quiet Riot!", the team set a trap for a bunch of cultists involving a slippery floor, and to make things a bit easier Merilwen sets up a cantrip involving spikes to weaken them a bit. Thanks to being unprepared for the nature of the spikes (specifically, that they'd keep on growing) and some unfortunate rolls, several of them end up minced to death — and they're the lucky ones. Even our heroes, no strangers to bloodlust, are utterly horrified (except for Prudence, of course).
• Granola Girl: Merilwen, much to the annoyance of Corazón and Prudence in particular.
• Greed: Corazón likes to steal. A lot. He's even happy when he steals a goblin's rotten squirrel lunch.
• Guest-Star Party Member: While a sixth member is sometimes available, Johnny takes control of the character. However, Rust-On-The-Harbor, the Tabaxi, has Johnny allows the Oxventurers to use his talents in their plan. Johnny also controls Hengist in "Watch Out", which has Luke as a Guest Star Dungeon Master.
• Guile Hero: Merilwen tends to use her wits more often than the other characters. In particular, she tricks a shady shopkeep selling a "cure-all" that polymorphs people into animals by feigning to drink it than invoking her Wild Shape to turn into a cat, so his operation would be exposed without her coming to harm.
• Haunted House: The mansion in Necropolis-on-Sea is extremely ghost-infested and more than a little malevolent. This causes trouble when they attempt to sell it.
• Hero with an F in Good: Poor Egbert. He's not going to find much atonement adventuring with Prudence and Corazón.
  Egbert: I feel like I lose atonement points every time [Prudence killing someone with Eldritch Blast] happens.
  • Aside from Prudence, the Oxventurers in general suffer from this; they mean well and usually try to do the right or heroic thing, but their adventures tend to collate a massive body count nevertheless.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: The "Heist Society" adventure has this as the premise: Attend a party and mingle while trying to figure out the truth regarding an innocent man's Frame-Up. Later commentary from Andy referred to it as a "social stealth" type mission.
• Hurricane of Puns: After Merilwen turns into a bear, the group proceeds to indulge in this. Ellen starts out enjoying them but grows sick of them when they interrupt her, much to the group's surprise.
  Johnny: Bearilwen.
  Andy: Why the big paws?
  Luke: You're giving me claws for concern.
  Johnny: We're all feeling pretty impatient; we just gotta grin and bear it.
  Andy: It's ursine of the times.
  Johnny: Sorry, feeling a bit grizzly.
  Andy: That was a real Kodiak moment.
  Mike: That one was top koala-ty.
  Ellen: They're not bears.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: The plot of "Hunter Pressure" The guild subverts it by breaking out and slaughtering the hunters before the hunt begins.
• I'm Standing Right Here: The Oxventurers (particularly Corazón) tend to discuss backstabbing, stealing from or otherwise screwing over the NPCs they encounter while forgetting that the NPCs are standing in close hearing range.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Prudence adopts two possessed books that she treats as dogs. She then adopts them and takes them along with her on their adventures.
• Indy Ploy: The duelling plans to deal with two of the Guild arch-nemesises is come up with during a dinner meeting. One of them had some foreshadowing^note It was stated before that trickster Vocatus could be done in by appetites, so throwing magic wine at him had some hinting, but the other was pure Call-Back fuel.
• In Harmony with Nature: Merilwen lives like this. While there are several bits of fanart that claim she is a vegan, Merilwen mentions in her backstory that she does eat meat, although she never takes more than she needs and does not waste any of it. She also tries, and fails, to convince the others of the merits of this.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Briefly, between Egbert the Dragonborn and Adhrel the Wood Elf. Though it’s not specified what they get up to after going off alone together, Adhrel was clearly smitten with Egbert’s handsome face and muscular build.
  • The sun elf barbarian from "Hunter Pressure" has a huge crush on Corazón.
  • Egbert immediately falls in love with Cecelia Dubois in "Unreal Estate", although she lets him down gently - surprisingly so, given that immediately before Egbert asks her out she had made the offer "let me leave peacefully and I won't tell anyone you're here".
  • The True Heroes of G'eth had human Curore be in a relationship with dwarf Bogheck. But they're no longer in a relationship, and it's hinted the reason was because Curore is a bookworm whereas Bogheck is the life of the party.
  • Merilwen has a moment with a sailor while in octopus form. Jokes aside, Merilwen insists any actual romance is only going to happen in elf-form.
• It's Personal: Initially, Merilwen is simply offended by Vex the trapper’s lazy and wasteful use of necromancy. Things take a turn when it’s revealed that Vex laid the trap she once rescued Simon from, and is now wearing Simon’s pelt as a hat. In a meta sense, Ellen is uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the episode.
• Jumping Out of a Cake: When kidnapped to be the "entertainment" at a party, Dob immediately offers the trope.
• Kansas City Shuffle:
  • During "Ship Happens", a group of cultists hires the Oxventurers as a pleasure cruise, to reach an island and entertain them along the way with activities such as fireworks, magic shows, whale watching and tons of drinking. During the voyage, the guild suspects the cultists are up to something sinister because there is evil occult magic occurring at night. At the end of the voyage, it was revealed that the occult magic was actually nothing, and the entertainment during the day actually summoned an evil imprisoned stag god from beneath the sea.
  • During "Bone to Pick", the loophole skeletons get the Oxventurers to bind themselves to the hammer, forcing them to sneak back into Bumble to renew the curse on the hammer lest it destroy them.
• Kick the Dog: Prudence summarily executes a bound goblin just to scare his squadmate into talking.
• Killed Off for Real: M. Channail gets incinerated at the end of Plunder Siege.
• Killed Offscreen: When approached by Binbag after defeating M.Channail's mechanical beetle, the wizard remarks that the bear who talked like Zippy was killed by the only thing deadlier than a bear: Two bears on top of each other.
• Knight of Cerebus:
  • Lady Liliana notably dampens most if not all the comedy whenever she appears, with stakes getting more dramatic.
  • A smaller-scale one with Vex, who doesn't last long but notably kills the comedy singlehandedly and causes the guild to take an extended break away from adventuring.
  • Things usually get notably less funny when Corazón's father, Lord Milquetoast, shows up.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Threatened during "Rolling in the Deep," shortly after Prudence baits Corazon into opening a treasure chest full of spiders. When opening a different chest triggers a trap that makes the floor fall away, Corazon threatens to cast Feather Fall on everyone except Prudence (although he does relent).
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • At the beginning of the 2018 EGX Rezzed live show, Johnny mentions that the tavern they're in has a large sign on the wall saying "EGX Rezzed", which is presumed to be the name of the tavern owner, and is full of enthusiastic people (the crowd cheers).
  • Johnny's description of the utterly silent town in "Quiet Riot!" keeps being interrupted by what sounds like some fire engines passing outside, prompting them to concede that the silence is broken by "the occasional siren".
  • Towards the end of the EGX 2018 live show, the announcer warns everyone that EGX will be closing soon. Said announcer is immediately identified as Cthulhu.
• Lost in Character: The team can find themselves dealing with this in a meta-sense. In one example, in "Quiet Riot!" the characters find themselves in a town suffering from an enforced vow of silence, prompting the group and Johnny to start whispering everything they say and do, even when they're discussing character actions. When Jane consequently says something in a normal tone of voice, everyone reacts as if there actually is some kind of enforced silence going on, to which she (slightly impatiently) responds that it can be taken as granted that her character is whispering, but Jane herself feels no need to do so as an actual person. Everyone consequently acknowledges that this is a more practical approach to take (though they do start slipping back into it later in the episode).
• Lotus-Eater Machine: "Mind your Manors" has the haunted mansion do this to the people who stay inside it:
  • Corazón sees a penthouse suite with fine luxuries such as bottles of Claret and silver-inlaid walnut tables.
  • Merilwen sees a forest glade with croaking frogs and a bubbling brook.
  • Dob sees a a writing nook and a large room for the group to hang out.
  • Prudence sees a brimstone hellpit with an ensuite bathroom covered in blood accessible by hellportal.
  • While Egbert never got to see his room in the actual adventure, Johnny later confirmed it would have looked like a quiet cell to pray in.
• Meat-O-Vision: Discussed in party banter but ultimately parodied. When the Quest Giver Horatio mentions that he was framed for stealing a priceless gem, Corazón just keeps hearing the word "gem", and hallucinates that Horatio is just a talking gem. The other party members discuss the trope.
• Mercy Kill: Prudence invokes this by saying she will mercy kill a pirate who is "not dead, but probably wants to" since he was reduced to one hit point by two Eldritch Blasts. But both she, and Johnny, know that Prudence doesn't know the meaning of the word.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Corazón's song at the end of "Peak Performance" has the line "and Egbert" at the end of its refrain.
• Narration Echo:
  • Johnny: Merilwen, you immediately sense that something is terribly, horribly wrong.
    Merilwen: I think there's something terribly, horribly wrong, guys.
  • After Luke declares that his character, Dob the half-orc, is going to lick a piece of evidence:
    Johnny: It tastes like... [pauses for thought]
    Dob: Guys, it tastes like... [Luke gestures "go on"]
    Johnny: Grease...
    Dob: It tastes like grease.
    Johnny: And wood smoke...
    Dob: Wood smoke...
    Johnny: And—
    Dob: And wait, there's something else.
    Johnny: Tin.
    Dob: And — sorry, what?
    Johnny: Metal.
    Dob: And metal as well.
  • Johnny: You are pretty certain that there are no traps in this room.
    Corazón: Guys, I'm pretty certain there's no traps in this room.
  • Johnny: (after Andy fails a perception check) They thieves, they bad men.
    Corazón: Guys, guys, guys! They thieves, they bad men.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Prudence, naturally.
• Night of the Living Mooks: The boss battle of "Peak Performance" had the necromancer trapper Vex raise a dead bear in order to fight with him. The Oxventurers, and the arrival of a dragon, prevent him from making more.
• Noob: The team freely acknowledge (and derive much Self-Deprecation from) the fact that they are clearly inexperienced at Dungeons & Dragons in general terms, and the sessions tend to be played more for their entertainment value than for a strict adherence to the rules and gameplay. This is lampshaded in the first session when Johnny, noting that despite their experience with tabletop roleplay gaming in general they haven't played much D&D specifically, asks any hardcore D&D players in the audience to "be kind" with respect to their DMing:
  Luke: Johnny, you're not going to be the one annoying the hardcore D&D fans.
  Andy: That's fair to say.
  Jane: [Miming throwing a handful of dice in the air] Dice! Weee! Dice!
  Andy: Have you seen these dice? They've got so many sides!
  Luke: [Picking up a dice at random] I think I'll stick to the six-sided ones...
  Johnny: You're holding a d12.
  [Everyone cracks up]
• No-Sell:
  • Dob's Thunderwave allows a saving throw to completely ignore the effects. Dob and Merilwen do it during the Orcward Encounter event.
  • Both Prudence and Egbert are fireproof, which is rather useful given the latter's weapon of choice.^note Strictly speaking, they're both only resistant to fire so they should take half damage, but Johnny is pretty lenient on the subject.
• Not So Above It All: Merilwen might have been horrified at the results of "Merilwen's Meatgrinder", but she's pleased when the T-shirt Corazón made of it sells out at the Thief's Market in Tanner's Folly.
• Obviously Evil: Jane's Dungeons & Dragons character, Prudence, is a Tiefling warlock with rust red skin who made a pact with Cthulhu. Her team views this as an advantage because they know at least she isn't trustworthy.
• Off the Rails: Something of a Running Gag in the games, especially when it comes to boss battles. On multiple occasions, Johnny has admitted that they had planned an epic battle royale against the villain for the Oxventurers to have to struggle against, only for the Oxventurers to inadvertently derail their plans and end up winning easily by coming up with an approach they didn't anticipate:
  • In the first game, a combination of the Oxventurers' unexpected skill at stealth, coupled with Johnny's in-hindsight poorly-planned decision to make the bad guy a gnome, lead them to defeat him without really needing to fight.
  • In the second, the boss fight against an entire pirate ship is thwarted when the Oxventurers use a mind-influenced whale to ram the ship, meaning that most of the crew have to deal with stopping the ship from sinking.
  • Not quite a derailing, since the fight goes ahead anyway, but a downplayed example occurs in the third game. Johnny's battle for the Oxventurers against a giant mechanical beetle was delivered a curve ball when Mike hit upon the idea of using Egbert's mace to hit one of his bombs into the beetle's mouth. The in-game rules, mechanics and logistics utterly broke Johnny's brain until they eventually gave up and ordered Mike to beat a twenty-roll to allow it... which Mike did.
  Johnny: It's almost like this party just has form in annihilating bosses.
  • In more of a character-derailing moment, in the fourth game Johnny expresses frustration that the Oxventurers take their NPC, who was supposed to be an erudite intellectual archaeologist, and gleefully turn him into a petulant baby.
  • When Johnny set them up against an Owlbear, Merilwen was able to use Speak with Animals to calm it down and convince it to leave peacefully before the fight even started^note Johnny points out that this is technically not allowed, since an Owlbear is a monstrosity and not a beast, but Johnny thought the idea was too good.
  • Johnny has remarked at the end of "Bad Chair Day" that they'd never been derailed so hard, specifically because a minor detail blew up into a half-hour mess that accomplished nothing except to burn time and ruin a local business - particularly given that it was a convention live show and they had a time limit!
  • "Tower Rangers" had Johnny set up a tower full of enemies similar to the Bruce Lee film Game of Death. However, Prudence's Spider Climb coupled with every adventurer having 50 feet of hempen rope allowed her to scale the tower and bypass the whole thing.
  Johnny: And that's the story of how you went up the outside of the tower, because I'll never learn.
  • "Heir Superiority" quickly became derailed. Johnny accepted responsibility for this one, as "depose some twat who became a king" doesn't actually take very long.
  • "Silent Knight" derails for a few minutes when Mike casually mentions that Egbert possess Misty Step, a short-range teleport spell, causing everyone else to devolve into fits of laughter interspersed with realizations of how many times teleporting might have been able to help the Guild.
  • After Andy and Luke begin putting on bee costumes during "Tome Sweet Tome", an audience member asks Johnny if this was worse, or better, than "Bad Chair Day." It was worse.
  • During "Dine Harder", Johnny invokes TvTropes itself to suggest the boss battle being placed under the trope, as not only was the boss Bush Ranger defeated by dropping him down an elevator shaft, the group also fought the head chef of the restaurant instead, the one person Johnny didn't stat up because it was never intended for the chef to be in combat.
  • During "Carpe Idiom", it was agreed that Luke buying hard drugs from an owl was the point the story came off the rails.
• Off with His Head!: Egbert clobbers a goblin with his mace so hard, the goblin's head comes off. Corazón attempts to bicycle kick the head, but falls on his face.
• Oh, Crap!: Luke has several during the adventurers:
  • When Luke realises that the group had forgot to secure the horse and cart after they let M. Channail run free.
  • Then again in the same adventure after Prudence blows up the crypt without warning Channail's guards/workers.
  • Luke has an extremely visible "oh crap" moment after attacking a gigantic monster with the Thunderwave spell, when Johnny starts muttering calculations about the monster's size and Luke realizes that Merilwen's attack, in which she leapt onto the monster's head, means she's also within range of the spell.
    • In this case, Ellen gets there way before Luke does.
  • Several people have this reaction when Egbert stuffs a bomb into Evil Dob's mouth and is more concerned with the fuse length than the blast radius. Luke in particular makes some very exaggerated hand gestures.
• Pals with Jesus: Great C'thulhu himself, Prudence's warlock patron, actually takes an active role in the well being of his thrall and her entourage. When he sends them on quests, he also gives them a packed lunch. That being said, he's also a strict dad and thinks Prudence doesn't contact him enough, and immediately tells her "what time do you call this" when she doesn't contact him for a few days.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": When the team are in a crypt trying to cross a floor where the flagstones are marked with runes and must be stepped on in an order that spells a particular (unknown) word, one of the players starts referring to the "password", and Dob asks if there are the right runes to spell "password1".
• Person as Verb: To be a "Dob" is to recklessly endanger a fellow party member. When Luke protests about this, the audience shouts that it is, indeed, a thing. By the fifth session, it's spread within the in-game world to the point where Corazón apparently has a nifty little side-line selling clothes with the phrase "Don't Be A Dob" embroidered onto them.
• Pet the Dog: By the third session, Prudence is thoughtful enough to tell Merilwen to look away so she won't have to see the results of a particularly gruesome Eldritch Blast.
• Phrase Catcher:
  • That damned Channail!
• Playing with Fire: As a golden dragon-hybrid, Egbert has fire breath that he uses, although he doesn't claim to enjoy it. He also uses bombs.
• Plot Tailored to the Party: The stag lads provided an entertainment list that was completely tailored to the Oxventurer's stats: Karaoke (Dob), Magic Show (Prudence), Whale Watching (Merilwen), Dinner and Fireworks (Egbert), and Pirate Training (Corazón). Realizing this gave Ellen a fit of giggles.
• The Power of Rock: Dob practices the "vaguely medieval fantasy realm" equivalent thereof in his combat and magical practices.
• Precision F-Strike: Invoked by Prudence when she smites Evil Dob.
  Prudence: Evil Dob, you son of a bitch.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: The Oxventure Guild's motto is Omnia omnibus cogitari debuit ("Everyone should have thought of everything").
• Railroading: Invoked at times, particularly towards the end of "Plunder Siege!", when Prudence licking a grimoire somehow activates a secret passageway that takes the Oxventurers to the final confrontation straight away. Justified in this particular case as it was a live event and the venue was closing, meaning the group had to get to the final confrontation sharpish. Justified in general as the group are inexperienced at D&D and prone to tangents and distractions, meaning that Johnny has to keep them on track somehow. They're also recording the D&D campaigns for a live and/or online audience rather than just playing them purely for their own amusement, meaning that too many tangents and narratives that don't go anywhere could cause the audience to switch off.
• Rule of Cool: Invoked by Johnny with regards to Merilwen and her cat-shapeshifting abilities; in the first episode they admit that according to the rules she shouldn't actually be able to use that ability as such a low level character, but they decided to allow it because it'd make the game more fun.
• Running Gag:
  • In the earliest adventures, there were lots of references to the Vengabus. In general, Dob's catalogue of ballads seems to contain a surprising amount of electropop.
  • Dob nearly always ends up overly attached to the NPC companion accompanying the team on their latest adventure, outright trying to adopt some of them.
  • Eldritch Blast! Eldritch Blast!
  • "Crit! Crit! Crit! Crit! Crit!" (at any time someone rolls the maximum, whether or not it's actually a critical hit)
  • Egbert and his -1 Wisdom modifier. Due to the humor of this making natural 1s into 0s, Johnny tends to make Egbert's critical fails outlandishly bad.
  • Following levelling up to level 5, Corazón's Uncanny Dodge frequently comes into play, and Johnny forgets about it every time it happens.
  • A later one: Egbert never using his paladin abilities, due to to Mike rarely remembering them, which eventually morphed into "Egbert uses a paladin power he's had the whole time." It hit its peak in "Silent Knight" where he suddenly remembers he's been able to teleport for over a dozen adventures (described as "unbelievably useful"), at which point it became a regular joke.
  • Moonbeam (one of Merilwen's signature spells) supposedly being the easiest spell to use, generally at Merilwen's expense. This came out of the previous joke, as it started with Egbert randomly revealing that he could cast it, followed by the rest of the cast (and the occasional NPC) contriving ways to "prove" it's not that hard to do.
• Schmuck Bait: Often invoked. Whenever the group is presented with an obvious trap or clearly bad choice, one of the group (usually Mike or Andy) will typically have their character try to walk straight into it for laughs - usually follows by an “I tackle them to the ground” from one of the others. This also includes Dramatic Irony situations: if half the group finds out that they shouldn’t do something but the other half doesn’t know in-universe, their players will typically intentionally go all in on doing the said thing, as characters don’t know about.
• Self-Deprecation: Ellen's reflection after the "Orc-ward Encounter"
  Commenter: Johnny: The DM everyone wants, but no one deserves.
  Ellen: Hey, we're deserve...oh wait, no we don't.
• Shaped Like Itself: The pub in Tanner's Folly is described as "pubby".
• Shout-Out:
  • A running joke is Luke, as Dob the bard, throwing in pop culture references casually handwaved as in-universe legends or ballads.
  • The second live show, in which the team are recruited by an archaeologist to help recover a magical chalice, features multiple shout-outs to the Indiana Jones franchise in general and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in particular, both from the GM and from the players.
  • Unintentionally. When Johnny remarks that the boss of the animals in the forest is a giant mechanical stag beetle, Mike immediately assumes it's one to Wild Wild West.
    Egbert: [after the beetle is defeated] Is Kenneth Branagh inside?
    Johnny: Everyone, I'm so sorry, I didn't see this coming.
• Signature Move: Prudence's is Eldritch Blast. Dob's is Thunderwave. Egbert's is his fire breath. Corazón's is hiding.
  Prudence: [whenever asked what's she's going to do] I warm up the Eldritch Blast!
• Small Name, Big Ego: Corazón is this, according to Andy.
  Andy: He's basically a stupid pirate who hangs around with druids and dragonborn and thinks he's the coolest of the bunch because he's got a nice hat and coat.
• So Proud of You: Prudence is very proud of all the murdering the group has done in "Quiet Riot!"
• Soapbox Sadie: Merilwen can get very self-righteous when it comes to messing with nature and animals and the like, much to everyone else's frustration.
• Spanner in the Works: Luke and especially Mike tend to troll their teammates by having their characters unexpectedly take actions that the others aren't prepared for or just doing outright foolish things, meaning that everyone has to work around the nonsensical chaos they leave in their wake. Luke, for instance, spent one game trolling Andy by having Dob actively waste and throw away as much of their gold as possible.
• Starter Villain: The villain of the first session, M. Channail the Relatively Poor Druid, thinks he's (and was possibly intended to be) the group's Arch-Enemy, seeking revenge on them for foiling his enterprises in the Spicy Rat Caper and Wild Wild Woods. In Plunder Siege, Prudence begs to differ. The fact that he gets Killed Off for Real a few seconds later cements him as this.
  Prudence: (using vicious mockery): You're ''basic'', M. Channail.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: From "Elf-Fulfilling Prophecy":
  Johnny: Unless there's any other business...
  Mike/Egbert: I would like to individually high-five every bat.^note The bats have human hands in the middle of their torsos. Don't ask.
  Ellen/Merilwen: [invokedCorpsing] I was literally just about to say that!
• Surfer Dude: The "bro-st" (bro ghost), who talks exactly like one.
• Surrender Backfire: In "Bad Altitude", Dreadbert's troops surrender to the Oxventurers and agree to leave in peace, but Merilwen refuses to risk them reporting back to Lady Liliana and fries them with Moonbeam as they leave.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Corazón's introduction to the rest of the team can basically be summed up as him saying "I'm an amazing pirate who doesn't have a mysterious past that will come back to haunt him, stop asking about it."
  • A couple sessions later, he introduces himself to the audience as "a legitimate aquatic businessman—why, what have you heard?"
• Theme Naming: Bismuth, Bromine, and Astatine are all named after chemical elements.
• Took a Level in Badass: It’s a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, so it happens quite literally.
  • It’s noted by Johnny at the start of "Quiet Riot!" that they had accidentally neglected to level the party up previously, so they wind up jumping from Level 1 to Level 3 - meaning everyone got to decide on archetypal features for their classes.
    • Corazón becomes an Arcane Trickster, gaining access to Enchantment & Illusion magic.
    • Dob joined the College of Valor, becoming more proficient in martial combat & being able to inspire his allies in combat. He also gains access to Level-2 spells.
    • Egbert takes the Oath of the Ancients, gaining access to more nature themed spells & abilities.
    • Merilwen joined the Circle of the Moon, allowing her to turn into more powerful animals & do so as a bonus action rather than an action. She also gained her first Level-2 spells.
    • Prudence gains a Book of Shadows thanks to her Pact of the Tome, giving her additional cantrips. She also gained her first Eldritch Invocations, and her pact magic increased to Level-2 spells.
  • Happens again after the events of "Spell Check", when they jump from level 3 to level 5, resulting in stat increases and new spells for everyone.
  • Upon returning from hiatus in 2021, the Oxventurers went from level 7 to 8.
• Take That!:
  • "Out of Order" takes a jab at search results having sponsored ads that are not relevant to what one is searching for.
  • It's no coincidence that the "Bone to Pick" arc had Johnny direct the Guild towards a series of flumphs, their least favourite creature in D&D by a considerable margin.
• Team Pet: Dob tends to treat the people he puts into his papoose as a pet. But in "Mind your Manors" the team gets two demonic books bound in human hide that act like dogs. Unsurprisingly, they are Prudence's familiars.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Dob is called "Deathwish Dob" and often undertakes a variety of crazy endeavors, such as sleeping in a crow's nest without a safety harness, or strapping a one-man band act to himself while adventuring to a place with a slumbering evil that no one should wake.
  • Drumsticks, the guard in "Epic Jail", really should have picked a better cellmate to beat up than a cannibal who murdered sixty prisoners.
• To the Pain: Prudence gets very descriptive with her Agonizing Blast:
  Prudence: I look at him in the eyes for a brief split second before the pilot light in my hands goes up [...] and I join hands and becomes a ball lightning but a scary ball lightning like blue and purple. It has a suggestion of a Cthulhu's face. And then I hurl it like a Hadouken, like an arcane Hadouken across the room. And it engulfs him and you can see just for a second the infinite pain before his blood just boils and his flesh melts from his bones. And then he atomises like that bit in Terminator 2: Judgment Day where she's holding on the fence and the nuclear blast. Is he dead?
  Andy: Is he dead? No, his skeleton gets up and walks away.
• Token Evil Teammate: Prudence is the only teammate who is truly evil; Dob and Egbert are good, whereas Corazón and Merilwen are more neutral.
• Token Religious Teammate: Egbert, as a Paladin, is very excited about the good news. Unfortunately, he's with Dob, Corazón, and Prudence.
  Merilwen: Look, I've been trying to work them on the nature thing, and even that's difficult.
• Trail of Bread Crumbs: When navigating a maze that's laced with mines, Merilwen, in octopus form, leaves a trail of ink for the Joyful Damnation to follow.
• The Unfettered: Johnny, the DM, who has to put up with the crazy antics of the group.
• Verbal Tic: Cat-Merilwen has a habit of punctuating her dialogue with the occasional "maow" (sic), to establish "still here, still a cat."
• Violation of Common Sense: Corazón disguising himself as a fictional creature, Egbert hitting a lit hand grenade like a baseball, Dob slipping a Tome of Eldritch Lore into an opponent's stew... this is pretty much their M.O. Part of why Johnny keeps getting confounded by the Oxventurers is that they keep successfully doing things that shouldn't be able to work.
  • Lampshaded in one instance by Corazón where Dob states throwing Merilwen as a cat to a first-story window with a rope attached to her wouldn't make sense...as opposed to his plan of throwing Merilwen as a cat to a first story window so she could fire a rope arrow back to them.
• Wall Jump: Corazón's method of escaping the pit and arrow traps. Bonus points for playing a hurdy gurdy while he does it.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…:
  • Prudence's answer to every problem is violence. Either (usually) Eldritch Blast, or with a stiletto knife. When a tied-up goblin stammers that two of his friends were killed, Prudence kills a third just to show she means business.
    Prudence: What are you doing, Corazón? Just kill him and be done with it.
  • Egbert is only better in the sense that he has three solutions of violence rather than Prudence's two: Smash something with his mace, breathe fire on it, or explode it with a bomb. However, he has taken to using his bombs in ways that shouldn't even work, such as using a bomb to propel himself over a wall rather than just blowing the wall up with said bomb.
  • In a less explosive/messy sense, Merilwen's go-to question for every problem the Oxventurers are faced with seems to be "will me turning into a cat help solve this?"
• With Friends Like These...: The group works together, but they're more than willing to let others take the fall for their amusement.
  • Prudence reads an infernal trap on a treasure chest that tells her: "Full of spiders, do not open." She then promptly tells Corazón it's full of treasure. He opens it and gets covered in spiders.
• Wretched Hive: The town of Otherway, as visited in "Court in the Act", is so named because the law is inclined to look the other way when crime is committed. Though some public officials claim to be tough on crime, they're happy to be seen that way while really doing little to improve the situation. It's not uncommon for show trials to take place framing innocent people in place of established criminals, and if said trial might look like it's about to go wrong, the local mafia are more than happy to murder the judge in broad daylight and threaten the jury with the same.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Played for Laughs when discussed by Johnny during "Spell Check." Egbert's flame breath allows for a Dexterity saving throw to avoid its effect. When using it on prison bars, Johnny resolves that they don't get this throw, since if the prison bars could avoid something, they wouldn't be doing their job.
• You All Meet in an Inn: The second live show begins with the team going for a drink in a tavern and noticing that one of the other patrons has a sign advertising for adventurers. Andy lampshades that they could just ignore him, but that then the rest of the show would probably be very dull and uneventful.

Blades in the Dark

• Affably Evil:
  • Kasimir Jones is a career criminal, but also very personable to the gang and most strangers.
  • Bazso Baz is a crime lord who admits he's murdered many people and revels in being a criminal, but he also dearly loves his daughter and her new wife.
• Affectionate Nickname:
  • As Barnaby begins to prove himself, Kasimir goes from calling him insulting nicknames to addressing him by the more familiar “Barney.”
  • Edvard calls Kasimir “old man,” and calls Lilith “old girl” when reassuring her that he won’t tell anyone about her demonic heritage.
• Artificial Human: Edvard is making a wonderful mechanical man that, at least at first blush, looks similar to Edvard himself. However, it can only beg for death, which is treated as a mild annoyance.
• At the Opera Tonight: The episode "The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh" is mainly set at a performance of the eponymous opera, where the team are attempting to heist a valuable necklace being worn by the prima donna.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Barnaby is the first of the party to kill anyone, albeit by accident.
• Brick Joke: In "The Death of Cornelius Bagshot", the team have two possible strategies for achieving their goal, and pick the more ethically dubious option because they don't want the bother of obtaining a specific item that's required to make the other strategy work. The episode ends with them coming across a market stall selling nothing but that exact item at a massively discount price.
• The Caper: Act II is treated as one of these, in which one of Kasimir's contacts want the gang to break into the Dimmer Sister's vault. Episodes beforehand deal with getting the blueprints to the custom made lock, dealing with a demon enthralled by the sisters, researching an escape plan, enlisting the aid of a distraction, and finally, preventing a rival gang who stole all of the plans.
• Collective Identity: In "The Wardens of Bellweather Crematorium", the leader of the Wardens is never seen except when wearing a fully-concealing robe and mask. It's suggested as a possibility, and subsequently confirmed, that the name and role are shared by multiple people.
• Critical Hit: Per the rules, two 6's in a dice pool represent one (leading to some sort of bonus beyond what the player wanted to do). Edvard manages to find two lethal confetti cannons while on a caper at the University, and Luke allows them to be used as a distraction with no penalty due to the high dice roll involved in finding them. In the same session, the engagement roll's three dice pool resulted in a 666, causing Luke to basically skip ahead.
• Critical Failure: Blades in the Dark mechanically doesn't allow for critical failure like D&D does. However, Luke allows them for storytelling. For instance, Barnaby tries to throw a rope to Zillah while she's hanging from a parapet...then throws himself onto the roof and crashes through the ceiling. The rope falls on top of him.
• Comically Missing the Point: In the Christmas Special, three ghosts attempt to teach an old miser the error of his ways, but he repeatedly fails to learn the correct lessons from the examples he's shown. Even when confronted with the vision of his lonely and unattended grave, he's pleased, because that's exactly what he wants: a large headstone and regular maintenance would be foolish extravagance.
• Darker and Edgier: Though there is still plenty of humour, the overall tone is more grim than the standard Oxventure.
• Dissimile: In the episode featuring crime boss Bazso Baz, Luke narrates that Baz's reputation paints him as a kind of Robin Hood figure, if Robin Hood occasionally did really horrible things... and robbed from the poor as well as the rich... and kept all the money himself... so, basically, like Robin Hood but without any of Robin Hood's actual defining features.
• Earpiece Conversation: In "The Death of Cornelius Bagshot", Zillah instructs their client to repeat what she says to the waiting crowd. Kasimir jokes about making him say something embarrassingly self-deprecating, but resists the temptation to actually do it.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: In "The Horrors of Castle Wisenshire", one of the early signs that something really bad is going on at Castle Wisenshire is that when Barnaby and Zillah are taking a carriage there, the goats pulling it stop dead and refuse to go any closer.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: With Crimsnight being a Christmas analogue, Lilith mentioning her family celebrates it 12 days later implies she's from the equivalent of Eastern Europe, as some parts of the Orthodox Church do indeed celebrate Christmas on January 6 (AKA Epiphany), 12 days after Western Christian Christmas.
• Future Imperfect: The original Oxventures are sometimes referenced as in-universe historical events, but with clear inaccuracies. Most notably, the opera "The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh" gives the inept paladin Chauncey a Historical Hero Upgrade while the honourable Captain Shattershield gets a Historical Villain Upgrade. While it turns out in the Oxventure proper that, as in the opera, Shattershield and Chauncey did indeed compete for Lady Fyengeh's hand to a degree, with Chauncey winning out and Shattershield being quite bitter about it, Shattershield did not die as the opera would have it. Still, this may be put down to the needs of a dramatic adaptation of the story.
• Gargle Blaster:
  • Edvard's drink of choice while at university was a snakebite and black^note equal parts lager and cider in a pint glass with a dash of blackcurrant cordial with an Aftershock depth charge^note a shot of spiced berry whiskey dropped in the lager/cider cocktail.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Barnaby finds a bottle of what he's told is gin. After he drinks it, he finds out it was actually a "djinn."
• Gas Leak Cover Up: In "To the Depths", Amadeus Astor implodes an entire building to cover up some incriminating documents. The "gas leak" excuse does double duty as a reason to evacuate the building before the implosion and an official explanation for the implosion itself.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: In-universe, the opera "The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh" depicts Chauncey as a humble underdog hero who fixes Lady Fyengeh's carriage. While the original Chauncey wasn't a bad person, he was a bumbling klutz who never accomplished anything of note (other than somehow marrying Lady Fyengeh), and it was the Oxventurers who actually fixed the carriage.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In-universe, the opera "The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh" portrays the honourable paladin Captain Shattershield as an entitled rich scumbag willing to murder Chauncey so he can have Lady Fyengeh for himself.
• Indirect Kiss: In "The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh", when Barnaby is attempting a romantic rendezvous with the prima donna of the eponymous opera, she takes the pipe she's smoking out of her mouth and puts in Barnaby's as a seductive move.
• Interclass Friendship: Lilith is a foreign noblewoman, Barnaby is an upperclass gentleman, Edvard's family were prosperous merchants, Zillah is a working-class prizefighter, and Kasimir is a career criminal.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Dimmer Sisters noticeably drain comedy (albeit not entirely) and up the horror elements considerably, even before they kidnap and torture Barnaby and some other people.
• Lightbulb Joke: In "The Horrors of Castle Wisenshire", Upper-Class Twit Barnaby is put on the spot to tell a joke at an upper-crust party. The joke he tells goes like this:
  Q: How many paupers does it take to change an oil lamp?
  A: Three — one to change the lamp, and two to put out the resulting fire because poor people aren't very smart.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: In the Christmas Special, the miserly Evan "The Geezer" Screws frequently asserts that "a fool and his [noun] are soon [consequence]".
• Once per Episode: In every episode Barnaby takes place in, his coat is ruined in some fashion. From being dipped in sewage to being covered in leviathan distillate, and more.
• Pushed in Front of the Audience: In "The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh", Kasimir and Zillah are lurking backstage during the eponymous opera when Zillah inadvertantly trips a passing man who is knocked unconscious. To defuse the situation, Kasimir volunteers to take his place, which results in him carrying a prop onstage without the slightest idea what's supposed to happen next. He manages to pass it off as a comic turn, to the delight of the audience — which is not necessarily a good thing for a man in the middle of a cunning theft, because it means a lot of people will now remember he was there.
• Running Gag: Johnny abusing the game mechanic that allows characters to produce a tool just when they need it in order to make sure that Kasimir has alcohol with him whenever he needs a freaking drink.
• Scotty Time: Lampshaded and exaggerated in "The Wardens of Bellweather Crematorium". A gang leader to whom Kasimir owes a favor gives him a difficult job to do and then asks how long he needs to get it done:
  Gang leader: Bear in mind — whatever you say, I will dramatically halve it.
  Kasimir: ...Four weeks.
  Gang leader: You have 24 hours.
• Triumphant Reprise: "We Made it to Morning", a slower, major-key version of the iconic action theme "Daggers Drawn", plays at the end of "Magic, Ghosts, Danger & Death" when the team ends the Brighteners' calamity and restores magic to G'eth.
• With Friends Like These...: Barnaby is not popular with the others, to say the least. This changes a little bit as he works with the others.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Invoked and lampshaded in "The Death of Cornelius Bagshot". The team reluctantly come to the conclusion that they're going to have to kill somebody to make their plan work, and repeatedly stress that they're deliberately avoiding learning their intended victim's name, whether he has any family, or anything else that would force them to see him as a person. In the event, the plan has to be changed and that character gets to live. As soon as it's established that he's going to survive, Luke makes a point of telling the team his name and how many children he has.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Blades tends to emphasize this, as experience is gained by the character solving problems in a particular way.
  • Zillah's solution to all of her problems is punching and other violence. When sneaking into Amadeus Astor's factory, she asks if there's a punching department.
  Zillah: Cut back to me, I'm choking out a guard with my thighs.
• When the Clock Strikes Twelve: In the Christmas Special, the clock strikes twelve just as the first ghost arrives — and again when the second ghost arrives, and again when the third ghost arrives. Lampshaded by Luke, who notes that it was already well past midnight the first time.
• Wretched Hive: Volisport is possibly worse than Otherway, with corrupt and brutal law enforcement, multiple abusive industrial heads, gangs running rife and, to make matters worse, the added complication of ghosts running rampant.
• Yet Another Christmas Carol: In the Christmas Special, Lilith and Edvard are hired by Evan "The Geezer" Screws to protect him from three ghosts who are coming on Crimsnight Eve to show him the error of his ways. The familiarity of the plot is lampshaded multiple times, including in a running gag of each ghost mentioning that they have several other misers to get through before the night is over.
• You Mean "Xmas": According to the Christmas Special, the big solstice festival in Volisport is Crimsnight, in which families gather together and exchange presents as an evolution of an older festival in which burglary was rampant and families huddled together to defend their homes.

Deadlands

• Blasting It Out of Their Hands: During the quick draw event in "Dead Man's Watch, Part 1", gunslinger Rosa immediately does this to conscripted prisoner Bill, who was clearly in the competition against his will. Rex, a gunslinger cowboy, says he will do this to Delacy during their duel. Delacy responds by shooting him right through the throat.
• Critical Failure: In Deadlands, rolling two or more 1's on a dice roll with no successes is considered one of these. Rerolls with a benny are not allowed in this case.
• Critical Hit: Deadlands's method of dice rolling allows for multiple rolls if the dice rolled is the highest possible face (so a d4 does this on a 4, a d6 does for a 6, and so on). This can grant a "raise", which gives additional effects. These raises can stack for some spectacular methods. Garnet, for instance, gets a result of 27 when fighting a sasquatch, which turns the thing into Ludicrous Gibs.
• Darker and Edgier: While Oxventure has never shied from violence, Deadlands is more similar to Blades in the Dark with tons of gruesome violence, including exploding a sasquatch with a magical flamethrower and shooting out a man's kneecaps in the first episode. The second includes Token Evil Teammate Delacy shooting a guy in the throat during a duel and the corpse immediately being stripped of his suit and boots. The sessions also feature uncensored swearing, which is normally bleeped out in other episodes except for one Precision F-Strike at the finale. The humour is still there, but the horror and high-stakes are the main focus.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Bison Bill Thicket, played by Jasper Cartwright, shows up for one episode to help out at the World's Fair. Robert, a man healed in Daisy Ducrow's sanitorium, helps out in a fight as well, although Robert was controlled by Marshal Andy.
• Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The main villains of the story are themed deliberately after the four horsemen:
  • War is a man who relishes in combat and destruction, forcing people into duels.
  • Pestilence is a woman who forcibly transfers diseases into unwitting participants.
  • Death is a judge who kills for even minor offenses.
  • Hunger is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who makes food that turns people who eat it into ravenous emaciated monsters
  • Conquest, the original interpretation of one horseman before being switched to Pestilence, is treated as a fifth horseman, forgotten about. She goes by a Latin name, Victoria.
• The Gunslinger: True to its Wild West roots, there is plenty of gunplay among the party. Silas and Delacy are both incredible shots, and Edie uses a derringer. Garnet uses a rifle, but with her magical powers, she can also conjure a magical flamethrower. Nate uses a shotgun instead
• Insistent Terminology: Finding "spell" to not fit the genre, Garnet, with assistance from Johnny, considers her abilities a "hex".
• Let's You and Him Fight: In the final battle, Victoria gets Nate's manitou to take control and fight Delacey, and then uses an illusion to make Edie attack Garnet. Neither is a completely straight example, however, as Delacey opts to talk Victoria and the manitou out of it rather than fight, while Garnet is left paralysed and helpless against Edie rather than being allowed to fight back (either because it would disrupt the illusion to have the monster suddenly cast Burst, or just out of cruelty).
• Phlebotinum-Induced Steampunk: Deadlands uses this through the form of "Ghost Rock", which powers technology that would normally be more in-place in the 1920s and 1930s.
• Quick Draw: The focal point of "Dead Man's Worth, Part 1" is a elimination bracket tournament of duels with eight participants, including two of the party and the bad guy they are fighting. This Showdown at High Noon is explicitly a quick draw competition. Killing the opponent is not required, as one woman refuses to kill a prisoner conscripted to fight after beating him. But it can happen, as Delacy shoots a cowboy actor through the throat, a frontierswoman is shot through the head, and Nate is fatally wounded.
• Train Job: The focus of introductory episode "Running Them Down" which involves raiding a train full of museum artifacts and stealing one to showcase the group's skills. It is successful, although unlike most train robberies, this one involved a violent sasquatch.
• The Wild West: Deadlands is set in a Wild West adjacent universe complete with one horse towns, saloons, duels at high noon, and more.

One-Shot Wonders

Hallowstream 2022: Dread

Brad the jock (Mike), Madison the emo chick (Ellen), and Killian the hipster (Andy) are three college students whose camping trip in the Grand Canyon goes horribly wrong after something attacks and almost kills their guide in the middle of the night. (GM: Luke)

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• Accidental Misnaming: Both the characters and the GM accidentally address or refer to Brad as "Gregg" on several occasions, even after he explains that it says "Gregg" on his letter jacket because that's the name of his university.
• Alpha and Beta Wolves: The characters are menaced by a wolf pack under control of a werewolf that has taken over as the pack's alpha, and after Brad finally succeeds in defeating the werewolf, the pack starts following him instead. Ellen points out the Artistic Licence – Biology involved in an out-of-character aside.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Enforced by Luke, who specifies in the scene-setting that the camping trip is part of an 'electronic detox' experience, and nobody was allowed to bring any phones or other electronic devices.
• Darker and Edgier: Most comedy here is Black Comedy, and there's a lot of terror to boot. Unlike the main Oxventure, two player characters die when the situation turns foul, and this is the first story that almost ends in a Total Party Wipe.
• Genre Savvy: Madison recognizes the werewolf for what it is almost as soon as it reveals itself, mentioning that she's drawing on horror films she's seen in the past, and plans her subsequent actions accordingly.
• Jerk Jock: Brad is a star college footballer who acts like the world revolves around him.
• Lost in Transmission: Madison manages to briefly get in contact with search-and-rescue on the radio before it dies, but most of the conversation is lost in static. The last thing that comes through is "...whatever you do ... moving. It is imperative ... stay put ...", leading to a discussion about whether it was more likely to be "keep moving, don't stay put" or "don't keep moving, stay put".
• Malicious Misnaming: Some of the times that Killian calls Brad "Gregg", he's clearly doing it deliberately to express his annoyance with Brad.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: Due to the way Dread is played, any toppling of the tower results in death, and therefore the party is extremely fragile.
• Silver Has Mystic Powers: The characters eventually realize that the reason the werewolf didn't finish off Eric the guide on the first night was that Eric happened to be wearing a silver medallion around his neck. The medallion is then used as a weapon in the final confrontation with the werewolf.
• Uncertain Doom: At the beginning of the story, the campers split into two groups, with the story following the group consisting of the player characters. It's never confirmed whether the other group also had werewolf trouble or how they fared, but given the eventual revelation that the werewolf who attacks the player characters is the other group's guide their odds are not good.
• You Watch Too Much X: Brad and Killian's initial reaction when Madison suggests they're up against a werewolf is to say that she's watched too many movies and the situation is bad enough without getting fiction confused with reality.

You Awaken In A Strange Place (YASP)

Lord Hortingly the naval veteran desperately looking for love (Luke), Beatrice Poppy the career-seeking Queen whose rule is being contested who also wears large hats (Liv), Gad Ticklebottom the forest-dwelling former noble nudist (Jasper) awaken in a strange place, a timid period drama set entirely within a nightclub favored by the Queen. In a world that is always too hot and makeup gives magical powers. (GM: Johnny)

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• The Alcoholic: Luke's character drinks "in moderation", Jasper's drinks "to excess"
• Bizarro Episode: Invoked by the nature of You Awaken In A Strange Place, which crazy laws invoked by the players become reality, or get twisted horribly if the players roll poorly. For instance, Jasper's character is randomly bad at burrowing, and each person is deathly allergic to something (Lord Hortingly is allergic to canvas, Gad is allergic to bricks, Beatrice is allergic to rubber)
• Black Comedy: The setting features people exploding other people with their minds, and a blood sport where people fight to the death for the chance to spend one week as a nightclub DJ. The gory details of the various deaths, and the traumatic results on the widows and children of the deceased, are all played for laughs.
• Dramatic Drop: The first time somebody gets exploded during the big fight, there's a stunned silence broken by somebody dropping their glass in shock.
• Drunken Master: Gad Ticklebottom deliberately drinks to excess before the big fight because he fights better while drunk.
• Improbable Infant Survival: Played with. When Liv realizes that her character is getting a small orphan child involved in the big fight, she gives the child a chapstick of invulnerability, ensuring that it survives to the end of the adventure despite being in close proximity to the subsequent violence. However, all the other orphans that also came to watch the event wind up getting messily exploded.
• Lighter and Softer: There's a lot of violence, but the game is less horrific than the Dread playthrough.
• Psychic Nosebleed: When Gad Ticklebottom discovers that he can also explode people with his mind, he gets a nosebleed the first time he successfully does it.
• Repression Never Ends Well: Lord Hortingly's ability to explode people with his mind is specified to be an outlet for his rigorously repressed emotions. He's initially not consciously aware that he's the one exploding people, and is horrified when he realizes.
• The Scrappy: Invoked when Johnny read the rules and described low-rolling player Alan's horrible rolls.
  Johnny: Alan, if you're out there...you suck.
• Textual Celebrity Resemblance: While introducing his character, love-crossed naval hero Lord Hortingly, Luke specifies that he looks exactly like Captain Wentworth as played by Ciarán Hinds in Persuasion.
• Thunderbolt Iron: Lord Hortingly enters the melee armed with a pair of katanas purported to be forged from meteoric iron.
• Twice Shy: Hortingly and his lost love Bella are both still in love with each other, but due to living in a society characterized by timidity and emotional repression, neither can bring themself to make the first move.
• Verbal Backspace: Liv suggests that Queen Beatrice could be on the judging panel for the DJ contest, and Johnny says enthusiastically that it's a great suggestion and the Queen is surely on judging panels all the time. Then Liv fails the die roll required by the rules to make the suggestion true in-universe, and Johnny says with equal enthusiasm that it was silly suggestion and of course the Queen would never be on a judging panel for a contest.
• What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?: Beatrice considers the concept of "republic" to be punishable by guillotine.
• Your Head Asplode: Lord Hortingly can blow people up with his mind. Although Luke makes a point of specifying that it's the entire body that explodes, not just the head.

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

In a scenario from the the newly-released Dragonlance sourcebook for D&D 5E, a group of adventurers (Luke, Ellen, and guests Jess King, Drak, Josh Strife Hayes, Val Price) visit the fishing village of Vogler on the day of its annual Kingfisher Festival. The day's program includes a prestigious fishing contest and a re-enactment of a famous local battle, and of course it all goes off without a hitch. (GM: Johnny)

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• Aerith and Bob: The adventurers' names are Rage, Anitari, Celena, Strife, Corvus, ...and Harold.
  Johnny: I cannot wait for a potentially violent situation to get derailed by someone called Harold.
• Call-Back: While describing the prizes available in the fishing contest, Johnny fumbles the pronunciation of one, a blue knit cap, then decides to run with it and say that the Mayor's cat is also one of the prizes that the winner may choose from, but the Mayor will be devastated if anybody actually chooses it. The eventual winner of the contest chooses the cat as their prize.
• The Catfish: Part of the lore of the fishing contest is the legend of Bennebog the Line Breaker, an eight-foot-long fish that nobody has ever successfully caught and not everybody believes actually exists.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: Strife and Corvus's attempts to cheat in the fishing contest constantly fail or backfire. While they do catch Bennebog the Line-Breaker, it only gets them to second place, while Rage ends up winning first prize through fair play and consistent good catches.
• The Comically Serious: Harold, as a professional bodyguard, makes a point of remaining calm and professional at all times, regardless of how wacky the situation gets.
• Head Pet: Anitari the artificer is accompanied everywhere by Tiny, a robot kitten that usually sits on his head or shoulder.
• The Hilarity of Hats: Strife the bard wears an enormous floppy red hat with fur trim, and treats the prospect of losing it as Serious Business.
• Ironic Name: Anitari's steel defender, a robot sidekick in the form of a saber-toothed cat larger than he is, is named Small.
• The Münchausen: Strife the bard is an inveterate teller of tall tales about his own accomplishments and the alleged accomplishments of alleged family members, to the point of claiming that his great-grandfather played a key role in the founding of Vogler while talking to Vogler's own mayor.
  Josh: [summing up his character] I am the greatest at anything in the world, provided you don't ask me to prove it, because I can't.
• Pedestrian Crushes Car: In a fantasy variant, Rage the barbarian is charged at by a soldier on a horse, but her attack on the horse brings it to a dead stop that flips the soldier off over her head.
• Punny Name: Josh's character, the bard Troublen Strife.
• Super Gullible: The innkeeper believes all the tall tales that Strife tells him, including the one about Strife being his own long-lost nephew — even though, he admits, he doesn't remember ever having had a nephew or indeed any siblings.
• You Owe Me: As a price for giving Strife back his cool hat, which they'd extorted as the price of an earlier favor, Corvus stipulates that Strife now owes them a favor to be specified at a later date. (Although, they add, given that this is a one-shot, perhaps not that much later.)

Adventure Skeletons

Lionel Spinel (Mike), Dr. S. Kelly (Jasper), Boney Emily (Liv), and Cursed Skeleton No.18 (Johnny) are magically-animated skeletons who have spent centuries guarding a small out-of-the-way dungeon that no adventurers ever bother to plunder. Their colleague Benny left a while ago in search of adventure and excitement and never returned, so they resolve to venture out into the wider world to find out what became of him. Along the way they get a taste of the simple farming life, which gets significantly less simple when skeletons are involved. (GM: Luke)

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• Amplified Animal Aptitude: When Dr. S. Kelly accepts the task of obtaining milk from a cow, Luke's attempts to mime the cow's reaction lead Jasper to conclude that the cow is unexpectedly intelligent and can understand what S. Kelly says. Luke decides to run with it, resulting in the cow desperately trying to mime instructions to S. Kelly about how to extract milk from a cow without injuring it.
• Boring Return Journey: Discussed when the skeletons are deciding to leave the dungeon. Cursed Skeleton No.18 points out that the dungeon is designed such that the path inward from the entrance to the central chamber is long and hazardous, but it's much simpler to get out.
• Bowel-Breaking Bricks: Lionel's approach to collecting eggs from the farm's hens is to scare them in the hope they'll drop an egg in fright. He's so successful that he frightens eggs out of all the hens and the rooster. It subsequently turns out to work on humans, too.
• The Dead Have Eyes: The skeletons explicitly do not have eyes or ears or any other squishy bits, but can still see and hear as if they did. Played with when Lionel steals the eyeballs from a fresh corpse and sets them in his eye sockets (apparently just for the aesthetic; they don't appear to make any difference to his sight).
• Different World, Different Movies: In the opening scene, Lionel complains that he's bored because they've spent so much time waiting around he's watched every last thing on Netflix. Subsequent discussion establishes that the shows available on skeleton streaming services include The Queen's Gambit But It's Skeletons and The Americans But It's Skeletons.
• Do Wrong, Right: Cursed Skeleton No.18 objects strongly to the way Benny is treating the victims of his scam, but mainly on the basis that if they all die of malnutrition there'll be nobody left to take advantage of.
• Everyone Has Standards: The skeletons are in general very casual about whether the humans they encounter get damaged, but Cursed Skeleton No.18 gets very angry at a farmer who skives off to town and leaves his young son to do all the work on the farm. The skeletons also immediately step up to stop the death cult summoning the Great Evil for whom they've mistaken Benny, if only because if they don't there's a chance they'll have to stop having fun and go back to work.
• God Guise: When the skeletons catch up with Benny, he's tricked an entire village into worshipping him as The Grim Reaper.
• Motor Mouth: Boney Emily has a tendency to speak quickly in run-on sentences.
• Mythology Gag: Johnny gives Cursed Skeleton No.18 very similar vocal mannerisms to the cursed skeletons encountered by the Oxventurers in the main Oxventure.
• Punny Name: The skeletons' names include "Lionel Spinel" and "S. Kelly".
• Running Gag: Cursed Skeleton No.18 trying to repress the fact that when he was alive he was an elf with an elaborately whimsical name and a tendency to skip around singing.
• Stock Animal Diet: The farm dogs love to eat bones, which proves awkward for the skeletal protagonists. Bony Emily ends up feeding them three of her own limbs.
• Talking Weapon: Cursed Skeleton No.18 has a magical singing sword which hums to itself all the time, to the annoyance of his colleagues.

Teatime Adventures

In the cosy town of Oakenbend, Posy Clackett the pufferwing florist (Jane), James T. Cosy the deerkin cricket team captain (Mike), and Tabitha Templeton, the robust snootling investigator (guest Grant Howitt) stay at a milk bar/inn during the March Feast of Flourish potluck. (GM: Ellen)

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• Carnivore Confusion: The game's handbook attempts to avoid this by establishing that the town's butcher shop sells only vegetarian meat-substitutes, but the players put it back on the menu by noticing that the handbook also mentions that the island has sapient plantlife and introducing the idea that this includes some of the plants that supply the butcher shop.
• Door Dumb: At one point, Mike fails a skill roll to travel quickly between two buildings, which manifests as James being unable to even leave the first building because he's trying to push a door that needs to be pulled open.
• Fetch Quest: To complete their main quest and create a meal to contribute to the potluck, the protagonists need to buy things from several of the town's shops. Each of the shopkeepers explains that they're run off their feet with their own preparations for the festival and ask the protagonists to go and fetch an important ingredient for them. Lampshaded by both Mike and Grant, who at different points in the episode remark that the town seems to be having serious supply-chain problems.
• Funny Animal: Oakenbend is populated by several species of humanoid creatures that resemble animals, including pufferwings (which resemble birds), snootlings (which resemble crocodiles), and hoptops (which resemble frogs).
• Incompatible Orientation: Tabitha gets an immediate crush on the proprietor of the Sage Sausage, but when she tries flirting with him he explains that he's alloromantic asexual and only loves his work.
• Late to the Punchline: Grant doesn't react to the pun in James T. Cosy's name when he first introduces himself, but remarks "oh, I get it" when Ellen later addresses him as "T. Cosy".
• Lighter and Softer: Teatime Adventures is deliberately designed for cosy, low-stakes quests such as, in this case, making a nice meal for the festival potluck, only to accidentally destroy the dishes and make replacements. As such, there is significantly less violence and trauma than is usually the case in an Oxventure.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping:
  • Grant attempts a Southern Belle accent, but the consistency and quality vary. When an NPC remarks that Tabitha has a charming accent, Grant replies that she has several charming accents.
  • Ellen's accent as NPC gardener Madge starts somewhere in the West Country and ends up in Wales, which she lampshades.
• Punny Name: A plot point involves a type of candy called "Cleverlies", which from their description resemble Smarties. To say nothing of the names such as Oakenbend. Given that the GM of the adventure is notorious Pungeon Master Ellen, completely unsurprising.
• Shout-Out: Mike's character is named Captain James T. Cosy.
• Southern Belle: Tabitha is a Southern belle recently arrived in town from her home in the bayou.
• Sugar Bowl: The adventure takes place in a bright, cheery world populated by cute fairies and animal-people, where everyone is friendly and the only thing at stake is how good the potluck will be.
• Trampled Underfoot: While visiting the cottage gardens, Posy fails a spot check and doesn't notice a rare and valuable flower. Ellen teases the possibility that she inadvertently tramples it, before revealing that she passes it safely — and then that James does trample it a moment later.

Blade Runner: Electric Dreams

In the seedy side of Los Angeles, Blade Runners Margot Worth the hardboiled detective (Jane), JLA2-7.80, also known as Purvis the overeager forensic analyst who secretly hopes to get into a brawl (Andy), STK-04.38, also known as Static, the Nexus-9 archetype negotiator that was only created in the past year (guest Aoife Wilson from Eurogamer), search for a replicant involved in a lethal incident at a disreputable club. (GM: Mike)

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• The Alcoholic: Margot drinks and passes out, and when she wakes up Purvis remarks she reeks of booze.
• Artificial Human: Replicants, just like in the original source material.
• Cannot Tell a Lie: Static is incapable of lying, even by omission.
• Cyberpunk: All the elements are there: City Noir setting 20 Minutes into the Future in Los Angeles.
• Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: It rains the whole adventure.
• Darker and Edgier: Not since Dread has a One-Shot Wonder been that violent and brutal. The Black Comedy is lessened when compared to Oxventure, as much of the violence is shown to be painful: Margot shoots off a woman's leg and Purvis is beaten up so badly he has trouble moving. The violence isn't just physical too: Leah the villain is borderline insane because she keeps experiencing traumatic memories on a loop.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Purvis attacks the head of a Wallace Corp contractor lab with the freshly-severed leg of a replicant.
  Margot: Are you hitting her with the wet end or the dry end?
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Mike's NPCs and Jane's PC, Margot, are American but skip the accent.
• Ramen Slurp: There is discussion of slurping noodles: Static even ends up with some on her face, and Purvis is perfecting his noodle-eating technique.
• Super-Reflexes: Styles, a Replicant, is in combat with Static, but he manages to catch a pipe Purvis throws at him without even looking.
• Took a Level in Badass: Purvis's whole motivation is to prove he's got the chops to be a Blade Runner. He's not too bad at interrogation. But when it comes to violence he is... terrible. He eventually gets to show off slightly by whacking Lilith with a leg.