The Director Welcomes You

The Alcoholic Dark Protocol

#5f027f

Location

Cool, Foggy Chad

Time of Day

24:1

Extraction Point

55 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

13 Hours

Eyeballs,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Diary with a False bottom. Get to Chad at 13:00

Good Luck.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Adam Scott

Alias

"Sharp Kaiju"

Features

5' 2"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Right foot

Organization

The Office of Encrusted Whistle

Emotions

Humiliated

Personality

Gleefully Cerulean

Motive

Disrupt the military for pure destruction

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Irrelevant Bigfoot"

Physical Size

Minute

Story

Additional Locations

The Jocular Reef

Touristy Forest

Violence Creek

Random Events

Water Vessel Finds gold in the water

Robber Bursts loudly

Crazy Man runs over an infant

Hound Spontaneously disintegrates

World

Stores

Jaxson's Diary Emporium

Barrett's Tapestry Group

Riley's Fireplace Labs

Gregory's Workbench Group

Traps

Hail of Needles

Rolling Rock of Dark

Objects

Diary with a False bottom

Fireplace that has been hollowed out

Secret Tapestry

Hidden Hammers

Dagger of Dark

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s pockets are fireproof

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Blake Barrett "Dull Heels" Merchant Money Socks
Autumn Riley "Stiff Elbows" Mole Attention Photography
Miguel Jennings Plumber Bears Christmas
Jaxson Ramsey Cranky Slippers Hammers
Christopher Gregory Shadow Drinking Flowers

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).