Dirty 20

The Sopranos meets Dungeons & Dragons when the son of a crime boss accidentally becomes a crowdfunding superstar and disrupts business on the streets with his RPG. A crime fiction novel that will make you finally get that THACO LIFE abs tattoo. A unique book for fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl and Harlan Coben. Tommy Fugue never cared for the family business. But when his father—aka Big Al, aka King of the Denver Streets—assigns him the “summer job” of laundering money online, Tommy figures he can list some fake projects on FunFunder, pledge them with zombie accounts, and clean a dirty $20,000 in time for college in the fall. Unfortunately for Tommy, he’s more creative than he thought. Just as he’s about to give his father’s capos a progress report, he sees that a roleplaying game he mocked up using his mom’s old artwork has been funded to the tune of $650,000… and counting. The only thing scarier than an angry Big Al is a Big Al that smells cash and family bonding time. Voluntold by their mercurial boss to assist, various criminals and killers help playtest and produce Tommy’s 1,000 Blades of Tergivers RPG in the hopes they can truly turn a dirty twenty into legit millions. At first Tommy sees game sessions with brothel owners, hit women, and a street captain with OCD as yet another example of why he needs to get out from under his father. But when Tommy realizes that being game master might help him uncover what these criminals know about his mother’s disappearance, it’s Game On. Playing a game while making a game is tricky—especially when elements of the fantasy world keep blending into the players’ real lives. And when the streets declare the Family Fugue slipping, Big Al starts playing a new game, with rules only he knows. Tropes: D&D / Mafia / Nerd culture / TTRPGs / betrayal / LitRPG (lite) / dark comedy / family drama / dungeon crawls / turf war / the Don / imagined worlds