The Director Welcomes You

The Cruelly Prickly Agent

#4a5ebd

Location

Cool, Cloudy Thailand

Time of Day

12:51

Extraction Point

66 Miles NE

Time to Complete

24 Hours

Investigators,
As you can see you are trapped inside within earshot of a Expensive Crypt . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Red Unicorn" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A white horse dashes past at the Three Fingers". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Bulbous Flute hidden on you.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Nova Duran

Alias

"Red Unicorn"

Features

5' 9"

Hazel eyes

Large deep scar / Left leg

Organization

The Gang of Noisy Investment

Emotions

Inferior

Personality

Cruelly Nervous

Motive

Make a lot of money because of grief and loss

Bodyguard

Anthony the "Clumsy Minotaur"

Physical Size

Colossal

Story

Additional Locations

The Prickly Maze

Underwater Lake

Casualties Circus

Random Events

Transport Glistens gently

Sewer explodes

Corncob Strikes the church bell

Bag of Lemons screams at the top of their lungs

World

Stores

Hazel's Plaster Bust Ventures

Watson's Wardrobe Arcade

Bishop's Stairwell Group

Sharp's Stamp Set Specialities

Traps

Fireball

Crushing Room of Euthanasia

Objects

Plaster Bust children's replica

Stairwell that is glowing

Secret Wardrobe

Hidden Staff

Boiled Leather of Euthanasia

Wand of Wonder

Caster feels incredible hostility toward other magic users

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Camden Watson "Tough Ankles" Merchant Trees Television
Genevieve Bishop "Tough Tongues" Mole Chocolate Video Games
Elena Caldwell Engineer Sharks Sharks
Hazel Washington Technician Chalk Sticks
Dean Sharp Engineer Soda Clocks

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).