The Director Welcomes You

The Pump Catastrophe Protocol

#fd7f37

Location

Arid, Dry Comoros

Time of Day

15:31

Extraction Point

176 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

2 Hours

Snoopers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Ceramic Crock made of heavy metal. Get to Comoros at 05:07

Good Luck.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elliot Shaw

Alias

"Small Bigfoot"

Features

5' 3"

Gray eyes

Stretch Marks / Left leg

Organization

The Society of Small Dartboard

Emotions

Ambivalent

Personality

Sleepily Fast

Motive

Disrupt the military to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

Penelope the "Fugly Demon"

Physical Size

Great

Story

Additional Locations

The Glamorous Acropolis

Compact Sanctuary

Delight Park

Random Events

Skeleton emerges

Bunny scurries by

Skeleton scurries by

Nearby Gas Tank approaches

World

Stores

Elijah's Ceramic Crock Factory

Peterson's Ring Bazaar

Davidson's Shelf of alcohol Unlimited

Hawkins's Canopy Bed Closet

Traps

Water-Filled Room

Swinging Block of Catastrophe

Objects

Ceramic Crock made of heavy metal

Shelf of alcohol with a False bottom

Secret Ring

Hidden Dagger

Boiled Leather of Catastrophe

Wand of Wonder

One of target’s limbs appears to be made of diamond

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Angelina Peterson "Nice Waffles" Merchant Rocks Boxes
Chase Davidson "Fat Hearts" Mole Sharp Things Bracelets
Taylor Price Midwife Bread Pillows
Elijah Richardson Indifferent Syrup Pillows
Arya Hawkins Cranky Cats Cats

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).