The Director Welcomes You

Ventures Royale

#08921d

Location

Cool, Wet Somalia

Time of Day

3:30

Extraction Point

99 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

41 Hours

Ambassadors,
We need your help. Agent Leo Harvey has gone missing and we believe "Obese Siren" is responsible. They were last seen in Somalia at 01:09. The agent sent one final message – "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Ancient Fountain". Take this Heavy Lipstick - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Beau Todd

Alias

"Obese Siren"

Features

6' 7"

Blue eyes

Stretch Marks / Right thumb

Organization

The Society of Braised Oatmeal

Emotions

Grumpy

Personality

Selfishly Weak

Motive

Take over a country because of grief and loss

Bodyguard

Joseph the "Consensual Gargoyle"

Physical Size

Full-grown

Story

Additional Locations

The Surly Maze

Rundown Creek

Purity House

Random Events

Safe Is being tortured

Water Vessel Gets their hand chopped off

Bag of Lemons Is being tortured

Softball arrives in the mail

World

Stores

Wyatt's Letter Opener Ventures

Nguyen's Loveseat Chic Chåteau

Watkins's Basket Closet

Harvey's Doorway Little shop

Traps

Fusillade of Darts

Poisoned Arrow of Vulnerability

Objects

Letter Opener that is glowing

Basket children's replica

Secret Loveseat

Hidden Sabre

Lighter of Vulnerability

Wand of Wonder

If caster is wearing a magic ring, he hates to use it indoors

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jasper Nguyen "The Falafels" Merchant Harmonica Boxes
Hazel Watkins "Indigo Brains" Mole Eggs Clocks
Ella Palmer Headhunter Video Games Sticks
Wyatt Ortega Headhunter Octopus Flowers
Leo Harvey Stressed Drinking Bread

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).