The Director Welcomes You

Technologies Royale

#381096

Location

Foul, Stormy Portugal

Time of Day

1:46

Extraction Point

134 Miles SW

Time to Complete

20 Hours

Operatives,
It seems "Slow Porpoises" has gone level 2. They have been broadcasting this message "A pool of blood at the Tempest". We need you to eliminate them, Triumphantly. Their last known location was recorded at 17:19. You have a Angry Tape Measure as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Logan Wolfe

Alias

"Slow Porpoises"

Features

4' 9"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Right foot

Organization

The Gang of Infantile Change

Emotions

Rejected

Personality

Triumphantly Dubious

Motive

Make a lot of money to control the Children

Bodyguard

Crystal the "Rainy ghost"

Physical Size

Huge

Story

Additional Locations

The Clever Manor

Ancient Port

Fury Maze

Random Events

Procession Is under a curse

Box of Cigarette skins a cat with his teeth

Skeleton Salutes the adventurers

Odor Lunges at the group

World

Stores

Adalyn's Armoir Technologies

Doyle's Spice shelf Market

Kelley's Toolbox Couture

Hall's Kitchen table Bazaar

Traps

Poison Needle

Flooded Corridor of Ruin

Objects

Armoir that has been hollowed out

Toolbox made of heavy metal

Secret Spice shelf

Hidden Bracelet

Knife of Ruin

Wand of Wonder

Target thinks that he’s thoroughly soaked with lamp oil

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Isaiah Doyle "One Knuckles" Merchant Batteries Rubber Stamps
Dylan Kelley "Dull Elbows" Mole Tigers Attention
Vivian Gomez Butcher Squirrels Chalk
Adalyn Schneider Animator Octopus Paper
Mckenzie Hall Drummer Painting Acorns

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).