The Director Welcomes You

The Luminous Space Hunt

#d685b3

Location

Windless, Icy Iceland

Time of Day

24:39

Extraction Point

60 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

14 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to circle a Underground Forge to look for a suspect by the name "Heavy Owl". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to slow them down. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A lone flower growing at the Painted Sands".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Light Ballpoint Pen in your kit to help.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Carson Avila

Alias

"Heavy Owl"

Features

7' 2"

Blue eyes

Large deep scar / Neck

Organization

The Firm of Numerous Soiree

Emotions

Grumpy

Personality

Quizzically Loud

Motive

Make a lot of money out of desperation

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Colossal Mummy"

Physical Size

Puny

Story

Additional Locations

The Luminous Arcade

Bustling Jungle

Competency House

Random Events

Swarm of Bees Is getting confiscated

Crowd Is throwing a BBQ

Spice Box Is being kidnapped

Bellhop Attempts to rob a bank

World

Stores

Caleb's Coat of Arms Beauty Stop

White's Mural Ventures

Alvarez's Sculpture Technologies

Daniels's Trinket International

Traps

Javelin

Flooding Room of Instability

Objects

Coat of Arms with a False bottom

Sculpture that has been hollowed out

Secret Mural

Hidden Falchion

Notebook of Instability

Wand of Wonder

Target is killed outright if he wounds himself with a sword

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Maria White "Five Boy" Merchant Glitter Octopus
Claire Alvarez "Right Legs" Mole Octopus Peanut Butter
Ariana Holt Consultant Flashlights Drinking
Caleb Walton Graphic Designer Glitter Singing
Isabel Daniels Dead Tired Ice Cubes Cooking

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).