The Director Welcomes You

Atelier Royale

#fd583b

Location

Frigid, Gloomy Monaco

Time of Day

16:11

Extraction Point

12 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

15 Hours

Snoopers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Staircase that has been hollowed out. Get to Monaco at 12:19

Good Luck.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Luke Kramer

Alias

"Yellow Elephant"

Features

6' 8"

Gray eyes

Small mole / Left foot

Organization

The Firm of Hissing Mint

Emotions

Disturbed

Personality

Rapidly Girthy

Motive

Disrupt the military because of a betrayal

Bodyguard

Tony the "Chunky Golem"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Facetious Castle

Bustling Citadel

Secrecy Acropolis

Random Events

Renaissance Faire Is throwing a protest

Toilet Is being tortured

German Trench Club is heard screaming

Water Vessel meets disaster

World

Stores

Hailey's Staircase Atelier

Montgomery's Large book Properties

Riley's File Labs

Griffith's Taxidermy animal Ventures

Traps

Falling Block

Wall Blade of Influence

Objects

Staircase that has been hollowed out

File made of heavy metal

Secret Large book

Hidden Handcuffs

Pen of Influence

Wand of Wonder

Caster teleports to the spot where he last ate

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ariel Montgomery "Quiet Forearms" Merchant Gym Memberships Easter
Braxton Riley "Little Feet" Mole Water Squirrels
Londyn Robbins Professional Cuddler Physics Christmas
Hailey McCormick Physician Sharks Water
Bryce Griffith Cranky Houses Robots

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).