The Director Welcomes You

Splint, Fireman, Sawdust, Spy.

#5c984f

Location

Breezy, Cool Andorra

Time of Day

6:30

Extraction Point

182 Miles S

Time to Complete

47 Hours

Snoopers,
It seems "Four Bull" has gone level 4. They have been broadcasting this message "A vagrant asks for money at the Boneyard". We need you to eliminate them, Angrily. Their last known location was recorded at 09:22. You have a Polished Screwdriver as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ruby Ortiz

Alias

"Four Bull"

Features

7' 7"

Green eyes

Large deep scar / Right foot

Organization

The Council of Careful Sawdust

Emotions

Love

Personality

Angrily Thankful

Motive

Take over a country to lust for power

Bodyguard

Charles the "Elegant Fairy"

Physical Size

Tall

Story

Additional Locations

The Ancient Arcade

Compact Mansion

Bliss Maze

Random Events

Bottle of Soy Sauce screams at the top of their lungs

Mutant Gets their hand chopped off

Midwife Protests

Sewer is being loudly arrested

World

Stores

Rowan's Taxidermy animal Du jour

Reeves's Bell Solutions

Hamilton's Staircase Ventures

Day's Window Properties

Traps

Swinging Block

Reverse Gravity of Ice

Objects

Taxidermy animal made of heavy metal

Staircase that is glowing

Secret Bell

Hidden Cutlass

Bottle of Ice

Wand of Wonder

Tomorrow, caster meets someone whom he owes a lot of money

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Scarlett Reeves "Big Lemons" Merchant Water Fire
Xander Hamilton "All Dumplings" Mole Money Bells
Ivan Green Animator Dolphins Easter
Rowan Figueroa Barber Bells Sharks
Leilani Day Secretary Children's Stories Sticks

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).