The Director Welcomes You

The Surprisingly Wet Agent

#9941a5

Location

Arid, Rainy Australia

Time of Day

21:50

Extraction Point

85 Miles NE

Time to Complete

3 Hours

Spy Deputies,
As you can see you are trapped inside the bottom of a Desolate Mansion . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Italian Vampires" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Dragon's Sea". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Colorful Armchair hidden on you.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Cora Fischer

Alias

"Italian Vampires"

Features

5' 2"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Right foot

Organization

The Office of Tasteless Ball

Emotions

Frustrated

Personality

Surprisingly Recessive

Motive

Take over a country for pure destruction

Bodyguard

Jerry the "Dusty Horse"

Physical Size

Miniature

Story

Additional Locations

The Wet Lagoon

Pitch Black House

Sanitation City

Random Events

Spectator screams at the top of their lungs

Beggar Calls menacingly

Rhapsody grabs a lady's purse

Spectator Is frozen into a block of ice

World

Stores

Josephine's Fireplace Consulting

Fernandez's Cabinet Supermarket

Cook's Wardrobe Market

Guzman's Wingback chair Threads

Traps

Box of Brown Mold

Phantasmal Killer of Vulnerability

Objects

Fireplace made of heavy metal

Wardrobe that is glowing

Secret Cabinet

Hidden Key

Blowgun of Vulnerability

Wand of Wonder

All within 50 yards have the exact same voice

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Edward Fernandez "All Ribs" Merchant Limes Batteries
Andrea Cook "Tough Matzo Balls" Mole Music Rabbits
Joshua Pope Midwife Tea Hammers
Josephine Fox Frustrated Candy Rabbits
Mary Guzman Intoxicated Cartography Oranges

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).