The Director Welcomes You

The Insidious Glasses Protocol

#d205bc

Location

Stormy, Cloudless Tuvalu

Time of Day

6:8

Extraction Point

151 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Spy Deputies,
I have sent you to approach a Polluted Lodge to look for a suspect by the name "Silver Sphinx". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A thick fog rolls in at the hive".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Invisible Calculator in your kit to help.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Savannah Fisher

Alias

"Silver Sphinx"

Features

5' 8"

Brown eyes

Small mole / Left eye

Organization

The Bunch of Witty Eggnog

Emotions

Cheerful

Personality

Loosely Dry

Motive

Make a lot of money because of grief and loss

Bodyguard

Jackie the "Girthy Rabbit"

Physical Size

Diminutive

Story

Additional Locations

The Insidious Barn Dance

Archaic Forest

Excitement Jungle

Random Events

Pine Branch Lunges at the group

Odor Gets their hand chopped off

Butter Shipment Is frozen into a block of ice

Baker Is getting confiscated

World

Stores

Victoria's Shelf of alcohol Wardrobe

Hogan's Trinket Discount

Peters's Pair of Statues Cosmetics

Cohen's Lipstick Discount

Traps

Fire

Box of Brown Mold of Downfall

Objects

Shelf of alcohol made of heavy metal

Pair of Statues made of heavy metal

Secret Trinket

Hidden Bracelet

Cutlass of Downfall

Wand of Wonder

Caster is invisible to himself for 1d4 weeks

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Adalynn Hogan "Tough Thumbs" Merchant Chocolate Glass
Christopher Peters "Silver Hearts" Mole Cats Chocolate
Jayce Jennings Annoyed Balloons Money
Victoria Zimmerman Dog surfing instructor Sponges Limes
Patrick Cohen Frazzled Baseball Rubber Bands

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).