The Director Welcomes You

Market Royale

#241384

Location

Warm, Dry Kazakhstan

Time of Day

15:15

Extraction Point

169 Miles W

Time to Complete

29 Hours

Snoopers,
It seems "Five Orcs" has gone level 2. They have been broadcasting this message "The earth shakes briefly at the Underwater cave". We need you to eliminate them, Sedately. Their last known location was recorded at 06:23. You have a Light Wrench as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Nathan Brown

Alias

"Five Orcs"

Features

6' 1"

Red eyes

Faint curved scar / Right leg

Organization

The Authority of Wither Crush

Emotions

Powerless

Personality

Sedately Ugly

Motive

Make a lot of money to please their master

Bodyguard

Tony the "Sticky Gnome"

Physical Size

Minute

Story

Additional Locations

The Sturdy Citadel

Ancient Lagoon

Fire Suburbs

Random Events

Panhandler Crashes slowly

Crow Spontaneously disintegrates

Chicken Is accused by the law

Nomad emerges

World

Stores

Alexander's Bell Market

Acosta's Large book Brothers

Wolf's Statuette Consulting

Valdez's Medallion Labs

Traps

Rolling Rock

Lightning Bolt of Euphoria

Objects

Bell children's replica

Statuette made of heavy metal

Secret Large book

Hidden Throwing Dart

Katana of Euphoria

Wand of Wonder

Target reacts violently to anyone who mentions his martial skill

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mia Acosta "Five Scars" Merchant Jigsaw Puzzles Oranges
Lily Wolf "Mini Forearms" Mole Squirrels Clocks
Hailey Graves Drunken Writers Lions
Alexander Webster Cosmetologist Balloons Hamsters
Grace Valdez Cheerful Broccoli Lipstick

Cipher



                

                
 
                

                

                

                

                

                

The Fuck Is This?

After years of playing Dungeons & Dragons, I decided to make a variation where everything is improv. The DM knows as much as the players and you tell a story together - sitcom style. We use this site as a quest starter, think of some characters, and see how much we can make each other laugh.

It's designed to be simple, portable, and dependent on being creative & inventive. I wanted a framework to guide the plot forward but let us find the story. This page is just a guide to help the stories become too redundant - take as much as you want, ignore as much as you need. If you want to follow along with our adventures or read some examples, check out my personal story notes.

This concept and site was crafted by Andrew Maruska with linguistic help from Evan Stark

But how?

The Most Important Rule

Be Silly. The goal is to laugh not to have a normal adventure. Someone wants to go to the moon? Fuck yeah they do and we're going to do it with medieval technology.

Set Up

Give the players a home base, a year they want to play in, and some general ownership of the setup. It's more successful when everyone has helped create the world because when a player makes suggestions it's easier to integrate them without feeling too precious. It helps to have a figurehead that assigns the quest to authoritatively start.

Characters

90% of creating a character here is a funny voice you're forced to talk in for 3 hours. I typically have people pick one trait they want to be good at and give them a slight advantage when using that - and the same for a negative trait. Don't overcomplicate it. They wanna be a skateboarder who can't feel love? perfect. +2 to cool & -2 to social acceptance.

Rolling

This can be whatever you want but as a general rule I use d20's as a graded scale. Sometimes, I craft the roll to mimic the action i.e. if they are walking a tight rope then might need to roll a 10 because 20 & 1 make them fall to one side or the other. Rolling in D&D got boring so make it fun again.

Dungeon Master

Your goal is to say 'Yes and...' but realistically it's 'Yes and roll to see if you can actually do that triple backflip down the cliff to mount the attacking phoenix...' - It's okay to make them fail, just don't tell them no. This guide is to help you be 1 step ahead of the players but it can't know the vibe of the room, have some empathy and play to the crowd.

Ending

No one can tell you this. The guide is to help you get 1/3 of the adventure set up and the rest will be created by the adventuring party. Have fun with it and try to tie up some loose ends at the end (or don't and bring them back for another adventure).