The Director Welcomes You

The System Violence Incident

#ef894e

Location

Gorgeous, Cool Belize

Time of Day

14:2

Extraction Point

174 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Crate children's replica. Get to Belize at 02:07

Good Luck.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Violet Steele

Alias

"One Serpent"

Features

7' 2"

Brown eyes

Small mole / Left middle finger

Organization

The Agency of Eager Tennisracket

Emotions

Brave

Personality

Gently Shallow

Motive

Make a lot of money to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Nicky the "Famous Whale"

Physical Size

Insignificant

Story

Additional Locations

The Sweet Tower

Expensive Jungle

Exuberance Citadel

Random Events

Tramp Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Bum skins a cat with his teeth

Corncob Balances on a ledge

Whore grabs a lady's purse

World

Stores

Ryleigh's Crate Convenience store

Shelton's Letter Opener Hole

Luna's Footlocker Couture

Jacobs's Hat Properties

Traps

Poison Wall Spikes

Wall Blade of Violence

Objects

Crate children's replica

Footlocker made of heavy metal

Secret Letter Opener

Hidden Sabre

Shield of Violence

Wand of Wonder

Caster can’t speak unless he’s carrying at least one gold coin

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Elizabeth Shelton "All Hearts" Merchant Batteries Quartz Crystals
Adaline Luna "Indigo Matzo Balls" Mole Soccer Money
Nicole Johnson Lawyer Washing Machines Lipstick
Ryleigh Byrd Police Officer Broccoli Death
Natalia Jacobs Teacher Acorns Pillows

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).