The Director Welcomes You

The Ring Stealth Incident

#9040f4

Location

Miserable, Foggy Tuvalu

Time of Day

11:0

Extraction Point

105 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

8 Hours

Snoopers,
It seems "Sharp Hydra" has gone level 1. They have been broadcasting this message "A vagrant asks for money at the Ancient Fountain". We need you to eliminate them, Sympathetically. Their last known location was recorded at 14:19. You have a Clean Wrench as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Lucia Watkins

Alias

"Sharp Hydra"

Features

5' 4"

Blue eyes

Large deep scar / Right leg

Organization

The company of Common Music

Emotions

Aggravated

Personality

Sympathetically Jagged

Motive

Take over a country for scientific discovery

Bodyguard

John the "Edgy Kraken"

Physical Size

Adult

Story

Additional Locations

The Baked Lake

Polluted Castle

Grave Consequences Business

Random Events

Safe Strikes the church bell

Pine Branch Attempts to rob a bank

Ninja Is hurled at the adventurers

Carcass arrives in the mail

World

Stores

Beau's Credenza Wardrobe

Ray's Chair Couture

Sims's Medallion International

Klein's Goblet Cosmetics

Traps

Flooded Corridor

Insanity Mist Vapor of Stealth

Objects

Credenza with a False bottom

Medallion with a False bottom

Secret Chair

Hidden Pants

Newspaper of Stealth

Wand of Wonder

Any attempt to change shape will age the caster 1d10 years

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Melody Ray "Mad Scars" Merchant Gym Memberships Writers
Khloe Sims "Three Elbows" Mole Eggs Glass
Alina Spencer Paramedic Painting Squirrels
Beau Caldwell Meteorologist Dice Notes
Everett Klein Surgeon Slippers Rocks

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).