The Director Welcomes You

The Generously Uptight Agent

#83e68c

Location

Chilly, Cool Mongolia

Time of Day

20:8

Extraction Point

27 Miles SW

Time to Complete

33 Hours

Spy Deputies,
It seems "Nice Owl" has gone level 8. They have been broadcasting this message "A vagrant asks for food at the Three Fingers". We need you to eliminate them, Generously. Their last known location was recorded at 12:03. You have a Evil Banana as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Natalie Hubbard

Alias

"Nice Owl"

Features

5' 1"

Heterochromia eyes

Faint curved scar / Left middle finger

Organization

The Department of Short Hive

Emotions

Grief-stricken

Personality

Generously Bruised

Motive

Take over a country for a love interest

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Mecha Mermaid"

Physical Size

Massive

Story

Additional Locations

The Uptight Tower

Desolate Business

Grave Consequences Maze

Random Events

German Trench Club Is under a curse

Midwife emerges

Chunk of Beef Is throwing a BBQ

Nomad strikes the ground

World

Stores

Antonio's Urn Bureau

Hamilton's Key Ventures

Deleon's Bureau Industries

Vargas's Staircase Bureau

Traps

Wall Blade

Box of Brown Mold of Grave Consequences

Objects

Urn with a False bottom

Bureau that is glowing

Secret Key

Hidden Soy Sauce Packet

Throwing Dart of Grave Consequences

Wand of Wonder

Next enemy wounded by caster is Healed

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Tricia Hamilton "Italian Lemons" Merchant Squirrels Soup
Tucker Deleon "Stiff Kidneys" Mole Essential Oils Sharp Things
Catherine Ward Frustrated Rocks Christmas
Antonio Thornton Judge Technology Slippers
Jacob Vargas Frustrated Coffee Money

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).