“Eric, YOU’RE FIRED!”, or The Dungeon Master’s Apprentice

=

Think about it: a bunch of hapless chancers, likeable to varying and questionable degrees, find themselves trapped in an arcane world, strange and unfamiliar to wholesome ordinary folk, with its own arbitrary rules. They are made to jump through a series of hoops by an odd, often grumpy little man who has the power to send them home on a whim… Theoretically they are working for him and there is some kind of higher purpose, but really he’s just toying with them like a capricious child.