Minions for Hire: A Dark Comedy D&D One-Shot for 2 Players

Minions for Hire is a dark comedy D&D one-shot for 2 players designed to run in two to three hours with zero prep required. Built for small groups at levels 2 to 3, this 64-page adventure flips the traditional D&D premise: your players are not the heroes. They are the hired help. Two scoundrels sign on with Underdark Staffing Solutions, a temp agency that places minions with mid-tier evil employers, and accept a four-shift placement helping a necromancer named Ozrick Vellum complete his “personal project” — an undead giant designed to crush the surrounding lands. The catch is geometry. The temple gate is twelve feet wide. The giant is eighteen feet tall. Minions for Hire is the latest entry in the Ready Adventure Series, and the only D&D one-shot for 2 players where the apocalypse is averted by a building code.

An Evil D&D One-Shot for 2 Players: You Are the Hired Help

Most D&D one-shots assume the players are heroes. Minions for Hire assumes they are not. Your characters are scoundrels short on coin who signed a contract because the agency was the only one hiring. They did not arrive at the temple to stop the necromancer. They arrived to help him.

This structural inversion is the engine of the entire adventure. Act One puts the players in the temple as paid staff, harvesting components from a charnel pit for the necromancer’s assembly project. Act Two sends them on a retrieval job at a hangman’s cairn, where they meet a rival contractor crew also placed by the agency — both crews recognise each other as colleagues before the fight begins. Act Three brings the Lantern Vigil, a hero party tracking the missing villagers, who arrive at the temple expecting to find a single necromancer and his thralls. They find your players instead. The fight is structured as a boss encounter, but the bosses are the heroes.

This is the rare D&D adventure for evil characters that does not flinch from the premise. Your players are not redeemed at the end. They are paid.

A Workplace Comedy with Teeth

Minions for Hire is built around a specific comedic register: workplace satire transplanted into a dark fantasy setting. The agency has a senior account liaison named Hesper Trune who appears at the end of every act with paperwork — timesheets in Act One, a mid-contract performance review in Act Two, workers’ compensation claims in Act Three, and the final invoice in Act Four. She is unfailingly polite, completely indifferent to consequences, and the structural anchor of the comedy. She is also the most distinctive recurring NPC in any one-shot Anvil N Ink has published.

The joke is that evil is mostly logistics. The necromancer has cosmic ambition and a mediocre planning capacity. The giant has impressive bones and no awareness of building codes. The heroes have moral clarity and the wrong door. The agency has the only thing that actually matters: the forms in triplicate. Each act ends with Hesper handling a different piece of paperwork, and each piece of paperwork is the structural beat that closes the act.

The closing image is the punchline. The ritual completes. The giant rises. The necromancer climbs onto its shoulder to deliver his triumphant monologue. The giant takes one step forward and wedges itself in the temple gate, shoulders jammed against the archway, skull pressed against the keystone above, one foot raised in mid-stride. The apocalypse is averted not by heroism but by a twelve-foot doorway. The players collect their stipend, walk past the screaming wizard, and clock out.

Designed for 2-3 Players from the Ground Up

This is not a five-player adventure scaled down. Minions for Hire was designed from the first draft for two or three players at levels two or three, with combat encounter math, terrain features, and scene pacing calibrated specifically for small groups. The fight against the rival Pyre Crew is built around three named NPC opponents whose tactics match a small party’s options. The hero party in Act Three is calibrated through Sir Bevan’s paladin oath — non-lethal force on the contractors, no death saving throws — so a small group cannot be wiped even by what is nominally a deadly encounter.

The runtime is two to three hours. Combat happens in every act, but combat is not the only content. The agency framing means roleplay scenes carry significant weight, and the Hesper interactions at each act break are deliberately short and structured for two or three players to engage with directly. The book includes scaling notes for parties of two, three, or four, but the defaults are tuned for the duet and small-group experience the Ready Adventure Series is built around.

What’s Inside the Book

Minions for Hire is a complete 64-page adventure delivered in standard 6-by-9 paperback format from Amazon and as a downloadable PDF through Payhip. The book includes:

• A four-act adventure with combat in every act, calibrated for levels 2-3
• Three battle maps for the key scenes — the Witherrow charnel pit, the Ashen Stones cairn ring, and the Assembly Chamber where the final ritual completes
• Ten fully-statted creatures and NPCs in the appendix, including the entire Pyre Crew rival contractor team and the Lantern Vigil hero party
• Four ready-to-play pregenerated characters at level two — Halja the half-orc fighter, Pip the halfling rogue, Veska the tiefling warlock, and Lorr the human cleric
• Six alternate opening hooks for any party background or campaign integration
• Eight What If scenarios covering the most likely off-script player choices
• Four campaign continuation hooks for follow-on sessions, including the demolition sequel placement and Mistress Valea Korr as a recurring long-arc antagonist

Everything you need to run the adventure is in the book. No additional sourcebooks are required beyond the standard D&D 5e rules and the SRD.

Perfect For

Minions for Hire was designed for specific kinds of tables:

• Duet and small-group tables running with two or three players, where most published adventures feel scaled up to the wrong group size
• Busy Dungeon Masters who need a one-shot they can run tonight without three hours of prep
• Players who want to be the villains for a single session without the campaign commitment of an evil-aligned ongoing game
• Tables that appreciate dark humor and workplace satire alongside their fantasy combat
• DMs running a campaign break who want a standalone session with bite
• Groups exploring morally complex play without the heaviness of grimdark horror

If your table has been wanting to try a session where the party are not the heroes, Minions for Hire is built for exactly that.

The Ready Adventure Series

Minions for Hire is the newest entry in the Ready Adventure Series. Every title in the series is designed for 2-3 players at level 2-3, runs in 2-3 hours, and drops cleanly into any D&D 5e campaign. Zero prep. Maximum impact. Built for the table you actually have time to run. Other Ready Adventure Series titles cover holiday one-shots, dark fantasy themes, and standalone scenarios that work as one-off sessions or as one-shot night between longer campaigns.

Ready to Clock In?

Hesper Trune of Underdark Staffing Solutions has a four-shift placement at a starting rate considerably above market. The client is reputable. The work is not respectable. The agency does not place contractors who require respectability. Are you in?

Minions for Hire is available now in paperback from Amazon and as a PDF from Payhip. The adventure works as a complete one-shot or as the opening of an ongoing villain-aligned campaign — see the closing hooks appendix for follow-on session ideas.

A D&D one-shot for 2 players where the apocalypse is averted by paperwork.