#70 : The Goblin's Guide to Courtship | A Date-Night Duet of Bad Goblin Advice, a Letter With Teeth, and One Catastrophic Confession — A 5e-Compatible One-Shot Adventure for Two Players

An entire date night in a book. One adventure, two players, no Game Master required.

When a half-elf bard and an elf cartographer reach for the same battered green book at a market stall, neither realizes they have just bought trouble. The book is a goblin's guide to romance, and the advice it contains is uniformly terrible. The night they spend following it will be the most dangerous, embarrassing, and revealing evening of either of their lives.

Read the Review: https://anvilnink.com/dd-date-night-goblins-guide-to-courtship/

Get the Paperback: https://amzn.to/4u4TlWa

The Goblin's Guide to Courtship is a complete 5e-compatible duet adventure designed for exactly two players sitting across a table from each other — one wine glass each, dice in the middle, no Game Master needed. The book itself runs the game. The players play themselves, follow the goblin's instructions against all reasonable judgment, and find out who they are when nobody is keeping score.

What's Inside:

• A self-contained two-hour adventure that needs no preparation — read the book, gather some dice, and play tonight
• Two pre-generated characters: Wren the half-elf bard with a broken lute string, and Sable the elf cartographer with ink-stained fingers
• Two original creatures with full stat blocks compatible with fifth edition rules
• The Interrupt Table — twenty entries of awful goblin wisdom, each one with a specific action the player must actually try at the table
• A printable Play Aid for tracking Affection, Courage, Trust, Mood, and Secret Insecurities through the evening
• Seven illustrated scene locations to ground the night in place
• Three possible endings, each one earned
• An original mechanical system that uses Charisma rolls but is built around speaking truthfully more than rolling well

Perfect For:

• Couples looking for a different kind of date night
• Two-player roleplaying groups who want a quick, complete experience without prep
• Anniversaries, Valentine's Day, engagement parties, bachelorette and bachelor nights, wedding showers, or a Saturday evening at home
• Anyone who has ever taken bad romantic advice from a small green book
• Players who want to laugh at themselves and each other in a low-stakes, intentionally vulnerable space
• Tabletop fans who already own every fifth edition rulebook and want something different

How It Works:

Two players sit across a table. One holds the goblin's book and reads its advice aloud as the night unfolds. The other plays the love interest. Both have dice. Both have characters. Both have something they have written down in secret that the other will eventually see. The book guides the conversation through four acts — the meet-cute, the dinner, the quiet wound, and the moment when one of you decides to throw the script away. Two hours. Funnier than a board game and braver than most nights out.

This is not a typical 5e adventure. There is no Game Master role, no monsters to defeat with optimal builds, no traps to disable. There are two cooperative encounters where the players face metaphorical creatures from inside their own heads — the Mimic Love Letter, who appears when one of you is afraid to say what you mean, and the Displacer of the Unmapped Valley, who shows up exactly when one of you tries to look too far ahead. The encounters are won not by rolling well but by finding the courage to be honest.

The Goblin's Guide to Courtship is the first book in the new Duet Adventures line from Anvil N Ink Publishing — a series of complete 5e-compatible one-shots for exactly two players, with no Game Master, no preparation, and no fifty-page rulebooks. Open the book. Roll the dice. Tell each other something true. The goblin will handle the rest.

Open the book. Follow the goblin. Burn it when it matters.

Anvil N Ink Publishing — small adventures for real people.