The Director Welcomes You

The Bird Delirium Protocol

#442f91

Location

Cloudless, Sunny Equatorial Guinea

Time of Day

19:24

Extraction Point

165 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

24 Hours

Ambassadors,
It seems "Nice Gnome" has gone level 5. They have been broadcasting this message "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Serpents Nest". We need you to eliminate them, Quaintly. Their last known location was recorded at 05:03. You have a Colorful Coin as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Londyn Espinoza

Alias

"Nice Gnome"

Features

4' 3"

Blue eyes

Large moles / Right foot

Organization

The Guild of Shrilling Kiss

Emotions

Amazed

Personality

Quaintly Screeching

Motive

Take over a government to lust for power

Bodyguard

Al the "Strong gorgon"

Physical Size

Adult

Story

Additional Locations

The Stoned Isle

Rundown Reef

Casualties Port

Random Events

Mutant Salutes the adventurers

Leopard explodes

Building overflows

Bear Protests

World

Stores

Parker's Brass Replica Group

Morgan's Oil Lamp Brothers

Schwartz's Mounted Animal Worldwide

Dennis's Hat International

Traps

Fusillade of Darts

Javelin of Delirium

Objects

Brass Replica with a False bottom

Mounted Animal that has been hollowed out

Secret Oil Lamp

Hidden Medallion

Necklace of Delirium

Wand of Wonder

Target’s next 1d10 attacks don’t take effect for 1d10 rounds

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Grant Morgan "Indigo Hands" Merchant Cellphones Bells
Messiah Schwartz "Left Muscles" Mole Drinking Football
Maddox Andrews Shadow Flashlights Boxes
Parker Schneider Hotel Manager Bears Death
Esther Dennis Architect Football Boxes

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).