The Director Welcomes You

The Uptight Daughter Cliffhanger

#60564d

Location

Bright, Breezy Tajikistan

Time of Day

2:25

Extraction Point

127 Miles NE

Time to Complete

43 Hours

Sleuths,
As you can see you are trapped inside enter a Ancient Carnival . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "White Aardvark" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A shadow passes at the Devil's barrow". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Light Guitar hidden on you.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Camden Yates

Alias

"White Aardvark"

Features

4' 5"

Red eyes

Stretch Marks / Left eye

Organization

The Sisterhood of Gentle Paper Bag

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Wrongly Orange

Motive

Disrupt the military to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

Chuckie the "Rainy Abominable Snowman"

Physical Size

Baby

Story

Additional Locations

The Uptight Forge

Overpopulated Peninsula

Bitterness Maze

Random Events

Building meets disaster

Dancer gathers near a point of interest

Chunk of Beef Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Beggar Gets their hand chopped off

World

Stores

Connor's Bookcase Mall

Leonard's Window Worldwide

Garner's Coat Properties

Brown's Wardrobe Arcade

Traps

Dropping Ceiling

Ray of Sickness of Bitterness

Objects

Bookcase children's replica

Coat children's replica

Secret Window

Hidden Gauntlet

Soy Sauce Packet of Bitterness

Wand of Wonder

Next puddle stepped in by target throws him 3d10 yards in the air

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Natalie Leonard "Chunky Spleens" Merchant Dolphins Harmonica
George Garner "Right Pastrami's" Mole Doves Cats
Ethan Garza Talent agent Boxes Cookies
Connor Willis Railroad Conductor Cellphones Limes
Natalie Brown Tailor Gym Memberships Robots

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).