The Director Welcomes You

The Brief Poison Cliffhanger

#674676

Location

Gorgeous, Cloudless Mauritius

Time of Day

19:14

Extraction Point

68 Miles S

Time to Complete

25 Hours

Scrutinizers,
As you can see you are trapped inside be locked inside of a Underground Shelter . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Cramped Doppelganger" is responsible and they sent us this message - "An object nearby starts bleeding at the Eye of Heaven". Your mission was clandestine, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Light Calculator hidden on you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elizabeth Dunn

Alias

"Cramped Doppelganger"

Features

5' 9"

Green eyes

Faint curved scar / Right leg

Organization

The Office of Defeated Rings

Emotions

Rejected

Personality

Intently Raspy

Motive

Disrupt the military to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

James the "Elegant ghost"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Brief Lagoon

Expensive Lodge

Death Island

Random Events

Vegetable Bounces oddly

Deadbeat drops from the sky

Cookie Is being kidnapped

Pine Branch approaches

World

Stores

Sofia's Basket Beauty Stop

Alvarez's Bonsai Market

Newton's Statue Industries

Ramsey's Iron stove Emporium

Traps

Fire

Beehive of Pleasure

Objects

Basket that is glowing

Statue children's replica

Secret Bonsai

Hidden Key

Diary of Pleasure

Wand of Wonder

Anyone nearby who’s carrying open flame is terrified of the dark

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mariah Alvarez "Five Legs" Merchant Lamps Candles
Maria Newton "Nice Elbows" Mole Deodorant Video Games
Finn Jensen Professional Cuddler Rubber Stamps Sticky Notes
Sofia Ray Cobbler Drinking Potatoes
Elena Ramsey Plumber Quartz Crystals Water

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).