Video Game / Tennis Dungeons Mod Special

Tennis Dungeons Mod Special (often abbreviated to just Tennis) is a collaborative mod for Dicey Dungeons released in September 2022. Like the official Reunion DLC, it features 6 new episodes (one per character - except Jester, who is most certainly not in this mod), a vast range of new equipment, and a new design for each enemy. It has been recommended on Twitter by Dicey Dungeons developer Terry Cavanagh.

Examples (brought to you by Paulding):

• Actually, I Am Him:
  • The Witch says she doesn't want to wish for something with a wide-scale effect, as she doesn't find it natural to interfere with "the powers that be." Lady Luck mentions that she is one of said powers.
  • This exchange:
  Lady Luck: Oh, how unfortunate! I guess luck wasn't on your side today.
  Contestant: But is it going to be on my side eventually?
  Lady Luck: I'll think about it. No.
• Audience Participation Failure: Lady Luck's first attempt to shill out Paulding tennis rackets gets no response from the audience. Then she demands them to applaud or be escorted from the studio, and everyone applauds.
• Bad "Bad Acting": One of Lady Luck's attempts to shill the show's sponsor.
  Lady Luck: And now we have the Paulding Wheel! Oops, I mean the prize wheel. It's just that a Paulding racket is such a good prize that it is all I can think about. Ha, ha, ha.
• Bait-and-Switch Character Intro: Jester's introduction starts out with them talking about how excited they are to be back on the show. Then it turns out they broke into the studio and aren't actually slated to appear this season.
• Battering Ram: This card (from the original game) doesn't appear anywhere in the mod itself, but was apparently preserved by the Jester from one of their episodes where they had it, and used to break into the game show.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When Lady Luck introduces the new prize wheel:
  Lady Luck: We're talking all new prize spaces you've never even seen! Sure, you might walk home empty-handed, but you might also... Get to make a second wish, double your gold earnings, face eternal torment, or, my favorite... Win an all new, fresh-off-the-factory, Paulding tennis racket!
  Contestant: What was the one before that?
• Character Blog: "AUDIBLEAVIAN" (Loud Bird) uploaded a disguised work-in-progress build of Tennis named "MY AWESOME MOD" before its official release, and was sometimes present in the Modding Hub Discord server, acting in an egotistical manner and recalling time they spent with the other enemies.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Kraken's after-combat quote, in which they cuss you off repeatedly, with each swear being censored. Their last dialogue box is just "FUCK!".
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Bully became the CEO of an excavation company while he was outside the dungeons, and asks the player contestant if they can pose as "a satisfied customer of my new rock delivery service" (after throwing rocks at them).
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: In the normal ending, it's revealed the Dicey Dungeons game show exists because it's a good way for Lady Luck to get money through legitimate-seeming methods. Lady Luck decides to quit the game show once Jester takes over and try playing the stock market.
• Damned by Faint Praise: Lady Luck boasts that the Paulding-brand tennis rackets being offered as prizes have "a value of over one thousand cents!"
• A Day in the Limelight: The Thief's opening cutscene actually features Keymaster, who interrupts the introduction to inform Lady Luck that the Thief stole his belongings. The gimmick of Thief's episode then turns out to be that you have to play with Keymaster's "locked equipment" mechanic.
  • In a secret ending, Keymaster also becomes the new game show host & owner.
• Double Subversion: When the Jester describes how they entered the studio despite not being invited.
  Lady Luck: How did you get in here?
  Jester: Remember that one episode where you gave me a Battering Ram? Anyway, I just flashed my ID. But that didn't work, so I broke down the double doors.
• Either/Or Title: The mod's full title features two ors.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Lady Luck can't be brought to give the Robot's wish an ironic twist, since it's been through enough already, and it outright wished for something that would just make its episode more difficult to begin with.
• Excuse Me While I Multitask: When you face Audrey, she's in the middle of a workout, and decides to fight you while working out.
• Foe Romance Subtext: Invoked by Lady Luck in the Thief's repeat intro.
  Will the Thief and the Keymaster learn to set aside their differences? Beneath all that bickering, could there be something... SPECIAL? There's not, but you'll all believe us if we imply there is.
• Foreshadowing:
  • To the secret ending. In Thief's opening cutscene, Keymaster briefly mentions he does PlayStation let's plays, which alludes to his identity as Paul.
  • Jester's proper introduction cutscene, and the 5th floor of their episode, uses the same backdrop as the final episode in vanilla Dicey Dungeons. And like the final episode, you fight Lady Luck herself on the last floor.
• The Gadfly: The Jester breaks into the game show just to provide sarcastic praise for it and pop up as the final boss of Robot's episode.
• Gainax Ending: The secret ending, where Paul from Petscop and Keymaster are somehow the same person, and he now owns the game show due to having defeated Lady Luck under a special contract made by the Jester.
• Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Internally, Kraken's "What the $?%@!" equipment is named "What the [h][e][c][k]!".
• Gratuitous Laboratory Flasks: Despite claiming to be more of a "mad engineer", the Inventor claims to "balance test tubes" when she's trying to sound generic and archetypical.
  Inventor: For my wish, I want a personal assistant who can lend me a hand in the lab! I spend so much time balancing, uh, test tubes, and wrenches. and... blackboards?
• Hidden Depths: Keymaster turns out to have legal expertise, which he demonstrates when the Thief steals his locks and keys.
  Lady Luck: I thought you were about keys.
  Keymaster: Oh, I'm about a lot of things. Keys, legal disputes, PlayStation let's plays.
• Hipster: Parodied. Yeti says his "ironic hipster" deal is, itself, ironic, and that he listens to industrial pop (name-dropping Pretty Hate Machine) "ironically, IRONICALLY."
• Instant Sedation: The Thief can get a Silencing equipment named "Does This Rag Smell Weird?".
• Just Toying with Them: Lady Luck explicitly tells the Jester she's not using her full power, because she doesn't take them seriously. This turns out to be her downfall, as a "joke contract" between Lady Luck and the Jester meant that if they defeated her in combat that she didn't take seriously, they would get full ownership of the show.
• Kayfabe: Discussed as the reason Lady Luck can veto a wish on air purely because she's too lazy to grant it, and why people care to sit through a prize wheel that always loses.
  Lady Luck: People don't care if the show is a sham! Do you think they just never noticed the wheel?
• Long Song, Short Scene: Parodied with the music on the floor where you fight Lady Luck. If you wait 30 seconds, it says "I don't know what to record; I don't know what to put in the song anymore. So here's audio of me saying I don't know what to put in the song anymore," and then incorporates that phrase as an actual sample.
• Look Behind You: Jester escapes from Lady Luck by saying "is that guy behind you from the Better Business Bureau?" and running onto the set (complete with the "flee" sound effect).
• Lovable Rogue: Lady Luck introduces the Thief as "everyone's favorite unlovable rogue."
• Manipulative Editing: Parodied. Lady Luck mentions that the Warrior and the Inventor might have a sack race next season, with romantic subtext shoehorned in via musical cues and pointed questions.
• Multiple Endings: The normal ending involves Jester defeating Lady Luck and taking back the game show. It's possible to get a second ending if the final blow made to Lady Luck is from the Paul for Backup card, wherein Keymaster turns out to have been Paul, and becomes the new host and owner of the game show.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The Jester namedrops several song titles from the Dicey Dungeons soundtrack in their introduction.
  • Warrior's wish is for the dungeons to be like they were in "the old days", and so his episode is built around scrapped mechanics from the early alpha versions of Dicey Dungeons.
  • Rat King's equipment layout is based on an old version of his layout (of which there were many) in vanilla Dicey Dungeons. His after-combat quote even blames the show producers for changing his equipment so often.
  • Sneezy mentions how "all these spikes popping out has me feeling like a blowfish sometimes". They were originally designed as a replacement for the "Blowfish" enemy in early versions of Dicey Dungeons.
  • Robobot's after combat dialogue is based on the function called to get the translated version of a string internally. It also uses "[;]" in place of a normal comma, to reference how entering commas works in the game's comma-separated value spreadsheets.
• Noodle Incident: The "Spanner Incident", mentioned in the Warrior's introduction cutscene, apparently factored into the Jester being excluded from Season 3.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Tennis takes place in Season 3 of the Dicey Dungeons game show. Season 2, as recounted by the Warrior, apparently had a "giant laser robot" and pyrotechnics. (The itch.io page implies that Season 2 was MegaQuest, an older Dicey Dungeons mod that billed itself as a second season.)
• Overly Long Gag: Lady Luck really draws out the joke about the Witch's episode having a "spin" to it (since her equipment spins around a central skillcard in this episode), and spends half of the Witch's intro cutscene saying phrases with "spin" in them as the Witch wonders what she's going on about.
• Parody Product Placement:
  • The game show is now blatantly plugging "Paulding" tennis rackets, a parody of the Spalding brand of sports gear.
  • One new gadget is "Fast Food Endorsement", which gives you 2 gold in exchange for losing 6 health, once per battle.
• Philosopher's Stone: Inverted - the Alchemist holds a Misosopher's Stone, which they say can convert valuable things to junk. In combat, they use it to convert your gold into lead.
• [Popular Saying], But...: Aurora's post-combat quote twists a New England aphorism: "If you don't like the weather around here... then there's not much I can do about that, since all the weather here is fake. We're miles underground."
• Recoil Boost: One of the Robot's new starting items is named "Machine Gun Jetpack". It's a damage-dealing countdown with 4 uses per turn, and gives you Dodge on its final use.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Witch mentions she doesn't want to make a wish that would directly better society, as she doesn't find it worth "artificially altering the course of history" and "defying the plans set by the powers that be", but Inventor does... and Lady Luck refuses to grant it, because coordinating a massive wish like that to come true would take too much time out of her day.
• Running Gagged: During the short intro to the Witch's episode (on repeat plays), Lady Luck can finally get sick of the "spin" joke.
  Say howdy to the Witch! She wanted a spin on things, so... Oh, wow, that joke actually got old.
• Sequel Snark:
  • The very end of the credits page says "TENNIS 2 COMING NEVER".
  • The full title also mentions "More Fluff 2", More Fluff being a popular equipment-oriented mod for Dicey Dungeons.
• Shout-Out:
  • The "Complicated Sword" is intended to be used with a manual (included in the mod download) resembling Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes material.
  • The names of cards that show up when you take the "Bonus Deck" as Jester largely reference Cabaret Voltaire's discography.
  • Fiend from the The Binding of Isaac mod Fiend Folio appears as a new enemy.
  • Paul for Backup depicts Paul from Petscop, and "Better Call Paul" and "Paul Gone" (the button text for the normal and weakened forms of the item, respectively) are a reference to Better Call Saul. Some of the cards you find after taking it are Petscop references as well.
• Skeleton Key: Keymaster mentions to Lady Luck he wants an "ultra master key that opens everything in the universe ever" if he wins. She ignores this.
• Slices, Dices, and Makes Julienne Fries: When Lady Luck first promotes Paulding tennis rackets, she mentions you can "Play tennis! Play ping pong! Make french fries! I don't care! I'm just the one shilling out for them!"
• Some Call Me "Tim": The full title mentions that you can just call it "Tennis".
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Lady Luck threatens to force Jester to work one for all eternity for breaking into the studio and making a prominent appearance in Robot's episode.
• Stylistic Suck: Loud Bird's equipment. They have two Bumps and a poorly-written card named "Wacky Hammer". Upon using Wacky Hammer with a 6, they inflict "Wacky Status" on you, which is a rambling mess of several different effects and conditions incoherently chained together (e.g. "Upon every other equipment use, if the equipment was used with an even dice or had a 'g' in its name, recieve 2 poison.") The status description itself takes up 4 lines and uses icons in nonsensical spots, including a special "3" icon made just to accompany the word "three". Their after-combat dialogue even says "I just found Modgeons [the official modding tool] and help what is happening".
• Suspiciously Specific Denial:
  • The itch.io page mentions there are "No appearances from Jester. None. Nil. Zero."
  • After Keymaster says he can help the Thief reacquire his lockpick (if it happens to be missing; just a hunch) in exchange for giving Keymaster his stuff back, he explicitly claims that "None of my prior statements, nor this one, can be used to incriminate me of any reciprocal theft."
• Symbol Swearing: Kraken wields an equipment named "What the $?%@!" that applies a unique status. The Cluster Bleep-Bomb in their after-combat dialogue is also composed of symbols.
• Throw It In!: invoked In-universe. After Keymaster informs Lady Luck off-air that he stole the Thief's lockpick in retribution for the Thief stealing his locks and keys, Lady Luck presents this as an ironic twist she pulled on the Thief so he could learn what it's like walking in Keymaster's shoes.
• Time Abyss: Lady Luck mentions to the Witch that despite this being "Season 3", there have been millions of seasons of Dicey Dungeons, most of which predate the concept of seasons, and they didn't start keeping track until recently. As revealed in the normal ending, Jester and Lady Luck apparently predate life itself, and Dicey Dungeons was created by the Jester to distract Lady Luck from a series of coincidences that lead to life developing.
• Translation Convention: Loud Bird's dialogue.
  CAW CAW CAW CAAW CAAAW!
  [Translation: I just found Modgeons and help what is happening]
• Trick Dialogue: In Jester's intro cutscene, it appears as though they've been invited back on the show and are thanking Lady Luck for having them back on. It then turns out that Lady Luck hasn't noticed them, and tells them they're not supposed to be here.
• Turn Off the Camera: In the Thief's introduction, Lady Luck says to "cut the damn camera" when Keymaster interrupts her.
• Who You Gonna Call?: Inverted by the Wisp, a ghost who insists humans are real and hunts them down as their day job.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: Lady Luck's control over chance is emphasized compared to in Dicey Dungeons. She offers Inventor to popularize the term "mad engineer" with an advertising campaign that just so happens to catch on, and originally took control of the show by having "one-off gamma rays" rearrange every document confirming Jester's ownership of it to say she owns it instead.
• Worthless Treasure Twist: Defied. The show's sponsorship agreement with Paulding includes having to actually fulfill the contestants' wishes instead of relying on "the magic of trust and friendship."