The Director Welcomes You

The Zoo Fury Protocol

#d991fb

Location

Balmy, Balmy East Timor

Time of Day

23:27

Extraction Point

1 Miles E

Time to Complete

5 Hours

Spy Deputies,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Portrait made of heavy metal. Get to East Timor at 20:04

Good Luck.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Rylee Vasquez

Alias

"Two Beholder"

Features

7' 1"

Gray eyes

Stretch Marks / Left arm

Organization

The Gang of Thankful Fireman

Emotions

Hopeful

Personality

Loftily Drab

Motive

Disrupt the military in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Obtuse Elves"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Sparse City

Archaic Reef

Well-being Lagoon

Random Events

Dracula meets disaster

Tramp screams at the top of their lungs

Soup Is throwing a protest

Donkey Catches leprosy

World

Stores

Riley's Portrait Chic Chåteau

McCoy's Spice shelf Arcade

Norris's Bell Logistics

Hansen's Letter Opener Bazaar

Traps

Incendiary Cloud

Ice lock of Fury

Objects

Portrait made of heavy metal

Bell with a False bottom

Secret Spice shelf

Hidden Staff

Hatchet of Fury

Wand of Wonder

Everyone within 50 yards is holding a wooden cup full of wine

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Gael McCoy "Mad Ribs" Merchant Painting Pillows
Daniela Norris "Obese Fingers" Mole Lions Attention
Alan Carpenter Exhilarated Technology Painting
Riley Ramsey Sad Writers Water
Alexa Hansen Dead Tired Sticks Technology

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).