The Director Welcomes You

Park, Idea, Quilt, Spy.

#165b6b

Location

Cloudless, Humid Guinea

Time of Day

5:59

Extraction Point

197 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

30 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
As you can see you are trapped inside be locked inside of a Archaic Island . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Cramped Eel" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A shadow passes at the Fallen King". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Soft Binocular hidden on you.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Londyn Ross

Alias

"Cramped Eel"

Features

6' 6"

Amber eyes

Stretch Marks / Left middle finger

Organization

The Order of Surly Quilt

Emotions

Confused

Personality

Deeply Surrogate

Motive

Take over a government in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Charles the "Broad Koalas"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Turbulent Carousal

Underground Mansion

Bitterness Acropolis

Random Events

Milk Shipment gathers near a point of interest

Horse Carriage is being loudly arrested

Diary Skips merrily

Prostitute Adopts a nearby child

World

Stores

Isla's Hanging Birdcage Department store

Lowe's Quill and Ink Technologies

Kennedy's Music Box Properties

Ramirez's Canopy Bed International

Traps

Arrow

Extended Bane of Doom

Objects

Hanging Birdcage made of heavy metal

Music Box made of heavy metal

Secret Quill and Ink

Hidden Lipstick

Watch of Doom

Wand of Wonder

When caster next enters his home, it’s encircled by a deep moat

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ximena Lowe "King Lemons" Merchant Contracts Bracelets
Ethan Kennedy "Gross Falafels" Mole Balloons Gym Memberships
Charlie Watts Cleaner Mirrors Slippers
Isla Wang Professional Cuddler Candles Coffee
Nicole Ramirez Vision Technology Hamsters

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).