The Director Welcomes You

Who is Jackie Existence?

#eda70f

Location

Cloudless, Windless Dominican Republic

Time of Day

10:8

Extraction Point

69 Miles NW

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Ambassadors,
As you can see you are trapped inside be locked inside of a Underwater Mansion . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Stiff Owl" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A shadow passes at the Seven Dead". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Dull Toothbrush hidden on you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elliott Santiago

Alias

"Stiff Owl"

Features

7' 6"

Heterochromia eyes

Large deep scar / Left eye

Organization

The Bunch of Salty Espresso

Emotions

Curious

Personality

Uselessly Chubby

Motive

Take over a government out of greed

Bodyguard

Jackie the "Bewildered Dolphin"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Dazzling Arcade

Expensive Jungle

Skill Suburbs

Random Events

Chicken Is hurled at the adventurers

Bear Integrates silently into the group

Gypsy scurries by

Rustler Is frozen into a block of ice

World

Stores

Zachary's Crock International

Wheeler's Spice shelf Bureau

Walker's Bonsai Worldwide

Robinson's Creeping Vines Brothers

Traps

Large Net

Beehive of Fire

Objects

Crock children's replica

Bonsai children's replica

Secret Spice shelf

Hidden Sling

Goblet of Fire

Wand of Wonder

Caster thinks that the target’s death will cause the apocalypse

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kayla Wheeler "Right Hands" Merchant Cousins Photography
Samuel Walker "Silver Tongues" Mole Bracelets Baseball
Jasmine Juarez Professional Cuddler Tea Money
Zachary Harvey Exhilarated Sticky Notes Sun Glasses
Stella Robinson Soul Comic Books Lions

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).