The Director Welcomes You

Who is Tony Development?

#b6f3d9

Location

Foggy, Gorgeous China

Time of Day

6:9

Extraction Point

13 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

16 Hours

Eyeballs,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Hat children's replica. Get to China at 15:14

Good Luck.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Graham George

Alias

"Green Kraken"

Features

5' 3"

Brown eyes

Large deep scar / Right middle finger

Organization

The Union of Jealous Greenhouse

Emotions

Aroused

Personality

Scarcely Aggressive

Motive

Take over a country for a love interest

Bodyguard

Tony the "Engorged Griffin"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Noisy Circus

Abandoned Carnival

Extermination Acropolis

Random Events

Goblet Calls menacingly

Milk Shipment overflows

Corncob arrives in the mail

Druid meets disaster

World

Stores

Jesse's Hat Solutions

Wolfe's Landscape Outlet

Walton's Picture Frame Cosmetics

Guerrero's Taxidermy animal Specialities

Traps

Bestow Curse

Built-to-Collapse Wall of Catastrophe

Objects

Hat children's replica

Picture Frame with a False bottom

Secret Landscape

Hidden Cutlass

File of Catastrophe

Wand of Wonder

Caster displays all the signs of full demonic possession

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mariah Wolfe "Little Lemons" Merchant Basketball Sticky Notes
Ellie Walton "Silver Legs" Mole Hamsters Oranges
Kevin Schmidt Sad Doves Singing
Jesse Potter Indifferent Houses Cats
Ethan Guerrero Librarian Bears Tissues

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).