The Director Welcomes You

Technologies Royale

#0a1870

Location

Warm, Cloudless Belgium

Time of Day

0:36

Extraction Point

86 Miles S

Time to Complete

35 Hours

Shadows,
It seems "Meaty Mermaid" has gone level 4. They have been broadcasting this message "An out of place door appears at the graveyard". We need you to eliminate them, Readily. Their last known location was recorded at 17:23. You have a Vicious Toothbrush as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Arya Dunn

Alias

"Meaty Mermaid"

Features

5' 9"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Right foot

Organization

The Bureau of Future Nerve

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Readily Extended

Motive

Make a lot of money out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Larry the "Huge Mermaid"

Physical Size

Big

Story

Additional Locations

The Shallow Business

Bustling Tower

Disaster City

Random Events

Chanting Cult meets disaster

Softball catches on fire

Pine Branch strikes the ground

Crazy Man is being loudly arrested

World

Stores

Easton's Mounted Animal Technologies

Lloyd's Iron stove Collective

Frank's Goblet International

Harmon's Crate Little shop

Traps

Burning Hands

Flame Strike of Censorship

Objects

Mounted Animal that has been hollowed out

Goblet made of heavy metal

Secret Iron stove

Hidden Book

Button of Censorship

Wand of Wonder

Any missile weapons now carried by target have his name on them

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Evelyn Lloyd "Junior Kidneys" Merchant Football Lamps
Jeremy Frank "Green Eyes" Mole Squirrels Sticks
Evan Bauer Optimistic Toilets Cellphones
Easton Walton Judge Scarves Cats
Carson Harmon Chief Executive Officer Soap 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).