The Director Welcomes You

Postoffice, Craigslist, Squirrel, Spy.

#8147c2

Location

Icy, Dull Angola

Time of Day

20:56

Extraction Point

194 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

21 Hours

Sleuths,
It seems "Short Centaur" has gone level 3. They have been broadcasting this message "Distant sounds of screaming at the Skull shaped island". We need you to eliminate them, Boastfully. Their last known location was recorded at 05:14. You have a Clandestine Ballpoint Pen as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Alaina Yates

Alias

"Short Centaur"

Features

4' 7"

Gray eyes

Stretch Marks / Right foot

Organization

The Community of Thorough Squirrel

Emotions

Delighted

Personality

Boastfully Ubiquitous

Motive

Disrupt the military out of desperation

Bodyguard

Randy the "Shitty Succubus"

Physical Size

Toy

Story

Additional Locations

The Prehistoric Masquerade

Abandoned Festival

Good Spirits Villa

Random Events

Crow catches on fire

Biscuit Strikes the church bell

Toilet Crashes slowly

Musical Finds gold in the water

World

Stores

Mattie's Creeping Vines Hole

Ortiz's Spare brick Du jour

McGee's Easel Department store

Burton's Footlocker Discount

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Ghoul Touch of Sanitation

Objects

Creeping Vines that is glowing

Easel made of heavy metal

Secret Spare brick

Hidden Scimitar

Bow of Sanitation

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s pockets are fireproof

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Owen Ortiz "Chunky Tongues" Merchant Clocks Soccer
Silas McGee "Quiet Boy" Mole Socks Rock n' Roll
Maya Mack Sad Books Fire
Mattie Munoz Surgeon Rabbits Bread
Arianna Burton Broker Sun Glasses Stickers

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).