Chris Prynoski Talks Drunkards, Druggies, and Delinquents; How A 4/20 Joke Became A TTRPG

TItmouse, the production company behind a variety of popular adult animation shows such as The Legend of Vox Machina, Venture Bros, and Big Head is launching a low-stakes TTRPG with a focus on drinking, smoking, and… whatever else you choose to partake in. The game – Drunkards, Druggies, and Delinquents – is live now on BackerKit looking forward to a 2025 release.

Hearing this, and already being a fan of games like Red Dragon Inn that merge deckbuilding and drinking, we were excited to sit down with Chris Pyrnoski, founder of Titmouse to learn where this idea came from and what it's like to play the game.

From Yearly Client Gift To Fully Fledged TTRPG

"I've always been a gamer," Prynoski began, after being asked about the inception of Drunkards, Druggies, and Delinquents, "I've always played Tabletop roleplaying games. We do this thing at the studio where we generally send out a client gift once a year. We usually do it around the holidays like Christmas, and New Year time, but we'd always miss it."

From an intended holiday season gift this slipping deadline would turn their gift into a valentines gift, or whatever holiday is past that. "Then we kinda settled on 4/20 as a time to mail stuff out because it's fun and we could do interesting stuff. The last few years we've done drug paraphernalia but this one I wanted to do a Dungeon Master screen."

Pyrnoski mentioned artists like Skinner and Heather Mahler who helped to create artwork for a DM screen that went out to their clients. "We sent that screen out as a 4/20 gift but we knew we had to put something on the inside. We wrote it in a Gygaxian style, we want this to read like an AD&D book and make it hard to understand."

What started as a gift, became a joke (labeled Advanced Titmouse & Titmouse at the time), and then Luke Gygax had a chance to play it and reached out to encourage Pyrnoski and Titmouse to create it as a full game. Listing out those who were part of the playtest process Pyrnoski dropped the names of Luke Gygax again, Travis Willingham, Jason Charles Miller, and many more.

"...and then we built it out into a real game. It's meant to be for a one-shot, and basically the game ends when any one or more players tap out but one of the things we've learned in the playtesting [...] is that we made a card for every class, a card for every monster, multiple cards for items, equipment, and characters. That way they're real big, you can see them when you're drunk, and everyone who wants one can have one as opposed to passing around this screen."

Pyrnoski stated that even at this time with the Backerkit live they're still working on the game and refining it further. "We're using [Backerkit] as a chance to put out polls and ask questions."

Some of the Stretch Goals available on the Backerkit aren't just in reference to the mechanics of the game either as goals for blacklight reactive ink and a printed Drunken Master guide zine that will show the Drunken Master what to do and prompt them with ideas.

"As we unlock these goals we'll keep evolving the game"

How Drunkards, Druggies, and Delinquents Plays

"Initially it was meant to be a really easy game for anybody, if you have RPG experience great but if you have zero experience that's fine."

Pyrnoski went on to explain that each character will have a Character Sheet, that will show artwork of their character, a punny name, and the character's abilities as well as an Adventure Log.

The game is played with a single D12. "When you first start you start with an automatic encounter to learn. You fight the drugbear monster and then if you clear the board of monsters you do a cheers. The screen gets passed over, you roll for a new monster/s and there's a little bit of choice because there's 19 monsters but only a twelve-sided dice."

This can lead to situations where depending on what you roll you can pick between a few options of what you want to have attacked the party, alternatively, there are other monsters that will pull more monsters from the deck onto the field.

Initially, the players HP and Armor Class were the same and the difference between your HP/AC and what number was on the dice would determine how much damage you took, or the player could take that many drinks. This evolved during playtesting because "no one would die, they would just drink. Now it's just the way that you die is that you declare you're drunk enough and you tap out of the game."

The role of DM, or Dunken Master, isn't one that a single player takes on but instead rotates between the players as the game continues. This is inspired from Prynoski's first experiences playing Dungeons & Dragons where he and his friends didn't know that only one player was meant to be the DM so they would take it in turns reading slightly ahead and running the games for one another. As a player "you would be discovering as the Dungeon Master does."

After every round of combat the DM screen gets shifted around the table. This way everyone gets a chance to run the monsters. "My initial concept for the game was basically for it to be a combat system. A murder hobo kind of game. You're just in some kinda dungeon, you introduce your characters, and you immediately start getting attacked."

When in playtesting for Drunkards, Druggies, and Delinquents Prynoski was surprised when players instinctively took it further though. "I was surprised by how much roleplay people injected into it. It was a lot of fun to play not only from a combat side, but from the roleplay side."

This unexpected roleplay has also led to the creation of "mini modules, mini story concepts to get you off to the start of your roleplaying. Instead of a dungeon here's a basic scenario, they'll be short. Something like one page to prompt your RP."

Combat Scaling

As the game carries on, and players drink and smoke more, they'll also be facing more and more monsters at a time. This leads to a variety of situations where different monster effects will work together to create a more challenging experience, leading to faster drinking.

Each of the monsters included in Drunkards, Druggies, and Delinquents is a classic monster that will be familiar to fans of high-fantasy and fantasy TTRPGs each with a pun name referencing alcohol or drugs.

Asking how they balanced a game when a key component is a players ability to handle themselves while drinking/smoking Prynoski explained that they did try to test it with varying numbers of people but as they added more it got too complicated and they wanted to make sure that the game was still fun, especially when comprehending complicated rules might be difficult.

Backer Rewards And Alternate Ways To Play

In the basic set you've got to roll up your own character, if you opt for the deluxe set it comes with 24 pre-rolled characters to lower the barrier of entry into playing to nothing.

"It's a drinking and smoking game because we released it on 4/20 initially, we wanted to incorporate if you wanted to have an edible or puff on a [joint] we've also incorporated a sober mechanic

Some of the sober options that the game suggests are push-ups or jumping jacks. "You don't have to be a drunk to play this game"

A Distinct Art Style

A key aspect that drew me to diving deeper into Drunkards, Druggies, and Delinquents was the incredible art. I asked if this was something they intended, or that they happened upon during development.

"Well that's our core strength I think. We work with so many amazing artists and so many people in animation and illustration that it was a no brainer to bring on as many cool artists as possible. I think there's more we can do, especially since we've launched it. I'm fairly certain there will be expansion packs in the future for people who are interested, and we are talking about for Garycon next year to have a to-be-determined Garycon exclusive card, either a monster or a character class."

Part of one of the Delinquent level, the backer level before it "gets ridiculous', comes with a poster that Pyrnoski wanted to make sure to highlight to potential backers. It comes with a blacklight poster of the art used for the DM screen and "you just can't get the sense from the picture of how cool that is. It will be somewhere between 1.5-2x larger than the DM screen but it just looks phenomenal"

"If there's a person who just likes crazy blacklight poster art and they know who the artist Skinner is just know that that poster looks so much cooler that it just doesn't come across when you're looking at a thumbnail."