The Director Welcomes You

Orange, Yak, Reading, Spy.

#53474f

Location

Overcast, Humid Lesotho

Time of Day

0:54

Extraction Point

118 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

15 Hours

Shadows,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Fire poker set that has been hollowed out. Get to Lesotho at 09:10

Good Luck.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Valerie Juarez

Alias

"Blue Sea Lion"

Features

5' 4"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Right foot

Organization

The Union of Fried Reading

Emotions

Comfortable

Personality

Briefly Salmon

Motive

Take over a country to be left alone

Bodyguard

Randy the "Uptight Sphinx"

Physical Size

Full-grown

Story

Additional Locations

The Limpid Suburbs

Ancient Festival

Animosity Peninsula

Random Events

Cauldron Is under a curse

Procession Lunges at the group

Dracula Is throwing a protest

Squirrel screams at the top of their lungs

World

Stores

Jonathan's Fire poker set Logistics

Bell's Plaster Bust International

Mann's Credenza Specialities

Wade's Crock Outlet

Traps

Insanity Mist Vapor

Collapsing Column of Animosity

Objects

Fire poker set that has been hollowed out

Credenza that has been hollowed out

Secret Plaster Bust

Hidden Whip

Crossbow of Animosity

Wand of Wonder

Bits of flesh fall from caster’s body until he’s a bare skeleton

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Nova Bell "Stiff Eyes" Merchant Soda Technology
Sara Mann "Cheap Parmigianas" Mole Hamsters Dice
Eleanor Mclaughlin Soul Cellphones Glitter
Jonathan Williamson Plumber Bracelets Butterflies
Logan Wade Farmer Cooking Soap

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).