The Director Welcomes You

Consulting Royale

#8d7f65

Location

Foul, Dull Tanzania

Time of Day

7:6

Extraction Point

184 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

46 Hours

Investigators,
As you can see you are trapped inside the inside of a Archaic Fortress . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "One The Grim Reaper" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the dancing-trees". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Light Bicycle hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Michelle Patterson

Alias

"One The Grim Reaper"

Features

5' 6"

Brown eyes

Small mole / Left leg

Organization

The Committee of High Crime

Emotions

Frustrated

Personality

Scarcely Tart

Motive

Disrupt the military because they straight up craycray

Bodyguard

Randy the "Tasteless Zombie"

Physical Size

Trifling

Story

Additional Locations

The Witty Peninsula

Ancient Crypt

Enjoyment Lake

Random Events

Chunk of Beef emerges

Hound Spontaneously disintegrates

Horse Carriage Ignites violently

Husband Is being tortured

World

Stores

Abel's Vanity Consulting

Taylor's Creeping Vines Industries

Patterson's Flower in Vase Discount

Simpson's Crate Threads

Traps

Tripping Chain

Poison Needle of Amnesia

Objects

Vanity made of heavy metal

Flower in Vase children's replica

Secret Creeping Vines

Hidden Longsword

Sling of Amnesia

Wand of Wonder

Some major race dies out in the next 2d4 years

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Julian Taylor "Meaty Throats" Merchant Trucks Pillows
Claire Patterson "White Matzo Balls" Mole Cellphones Drinking
Savannah Parsons Headhunter Ice Cubes Christmas
Abel Contreras Plumber Bells Tigers
Presley Simpson Envious Video Games Rabbits

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).