Dungeons & Dragons Turned Hansel and Gretel Into a Near-Perfect Adventure

Most of the published adventures for Dungeons & Dragons focus on epic fantasy, tasking players with fighting ancient necromancers, rampaging demons, or invading armies in order to prevent some great calamity. But the stakes don’t have to be so high to have a great session, and a bit of whimsy can prove just as memorable as a dramatic battle. That’s why one of my favorite adventures from Wizards of the Coast is a silly fairy tale inspired by Hansel and Gretel. “Baker’s Doesn’t” was published in 2024 as part of Dragon Delves, a collection of 10 dragon-themed adventures for the new 2024 ruleset. Most of the book’s adventures are the standard heroic fare, with players rooting out Orcus-worshiping cultists or facing a powerful white dragon while dealing with feuding frost giants. But in “Baker’s Doesn’t,” you’re trying to rescue a rambunctious wyrmling named Briochebane who’s been captured by a hag. The adventure can be dropped into pretty much any settlement near the woods and kicks off with a fire in a candy store. The confectioner Edith Applegarth suspects her rival, the baker Fill Flourforge, is guilty of arson. But Fill reveals the culprit was his young ward and assistant baker Briochebane, who has since disappeared. Following Briochebane’s trail leads the players to a candy cottage where they face a wide variety of goofy threats. If they don’t wipe their feet on the doormat made of fruit leather, it will try to smother them. There are chocotrices – cockatrices whose bite will turn enemies into chocolate statues. Bugbears make saltwater taffy and will try to entangle heroes in their equipment. Image: Wizards of the Coast There are also multiple opportunities for characters to be transformed into candy creatures. This has no meaningful mechanical effect. It’s just an excuse to tell your players they’ve been flattened into a cookie by stumbling into a rolling pin trap. Everything about this adventure is adorable, from the names, to the art, to the negotiation opportunities. Its most fearsome monster, a construct that wields a lollipop like a greatclub, can be bribed by gathering candy from other sources. This favors some clever plots, like distracting the chocotrices to steal their eggs or having a druid charm the dryads, who will only give their candied apples to children and animals. The final boss is the hag Uncle Nibblecheek, who has charmed Briochebane. Luckily players can bribe the young dragon with Fill’s cinnamon buns to avoid getting breath weaponed. How to run Baker’s Doesn’t Image: Wizards of the Coast I can’t recommend this adventure enough. It’s designed for level three characters and can be easily run in just a few hours, making it perfect for a meetup or an introductory session. It encourages creativity, not just combat tactics. It also has a pretty twisted conclusion. Edith is in league with Uncle Nibblecheek. She gave him her own brother, Asger, as a captive in exchange for a constant supply of candy to use at her shop. But a few key changes can make the adventure even more fun. In the adventure, Briochebane is a gold dragon and Fill is a former brigand who stole the egg he hatched from. The book mentions Fill is afraid that the townspeople would try to slay her, so he’s been keeping her presence a secret. Instead I took a page from the cozy fantasy book Legends & Lattes and made Fill a former adventurer and dragon slayer who was trying to raise a baby red dragon to be good. Bizarrely, the book suggests that if you confront Edith about selling her brother for candy, she’ll repent and take care of him going forward. How could you trust her? I decided to make her a more classically wicked fairy-tale villain who doesn’t repent and has to be arrested or run out of town while Fill adopts Asger into his odd found family. Another issue is the gingerbread people guarding Asger. I love the idea of them, but the stat block the adventure suggests using are just piles of hit points without any particularly fun or scary abilities. It makes the fight against them into a slog. Feel free to choose a more tricky humanoid to turn into a cookie, or candify your favorite low-level monster. Then pick up a bag of candy to reward players for completing encounters and prepare to treat them to a deliciously silly adventure.