The Director Welcomes You

The Tendency Freshness Incident

#f26ab2

Location

Icy, Frigid Lebanon

Time of Day

21:51

Extraction Point

61 Miles NE

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Snoopers,
As you can see you are trapped inside climb a Bustling Private Jet plane . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Quiet Basilisk" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A black cat runs past at the Eye of Heaven". Your mission was clandestine, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Mechanical Abascus hidden on you.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Graham Soto

Alias

"Quiet Basilisk"

Features

5' 1"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Right thumb

Organization

The Association of Cold Van

Emotions

Irritated

Personality

Sharply Melodic

Motive

Take over a government out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Philip the "Common Hobgoblin"

Physical Size

Big

Story

Additional Locations

The Magnificent Sanctuary

Deserted Acropolis

Violence Sanctuary

Random Events

Tramp Bounces oddly

Whore Is getting confiscated

Tramp approaches

Reindeer Is throwing a BBQ

World

Stores

Mia's Doorway Boutique

Allen's Brass Replica Couture

Harrington's Bottle Creative

Tate's Toolbox Cosmetics

Traps

Earthquake

Built-to-Collapse Wall of Freshness

Objects

Doorway that is glowing

Bottle that is glowing

Secret Brass Replica

Hidden Stave

Shoe of Freshness

Wand of Wonder

All weapons within 50 yards are piled at the target point

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Emma Allen "Quiet Heels" Merchant Soup Television
Cooper Harrington "White Pretzels" Mole Trees Toilets
Lauren Owen Flirty Fire Limes
Mia Mann Optimistic Christmas Balloons
Abigail Tate Shadow Television Video Games

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).