The Director Welcomes You

Effigy, Turkey, Owl, Spy.

#c32afe

Location

Gloomy, Cloudless Sao Tome and Principe

Time of Day

18:33

Extraction Point

112 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Agents,
I have sent you to the top of a Deserted Barn Dance to look for a suspect by the name "Wild Mermaid". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to uncover their plans. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A pool of blood at the Field of Wildflowers".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Mechanical Abascus in your kit to help.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Candace Benson

Alias

"Wild Mermaid"

Features

4' 4"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Left middle finger

Organization

The Community of Shy Owl

Emotions

Eager

Personality

Equally Fluffy

Motive

Take over a government for a love interest

Bodyguard

Juan the "Girthy Turtle"

Physical Size

Narrow

Story

Additional Locations

The Miniature City

Polluted Port

Irritation City

Random Events

Wanderer Evades the law

Fairy Attempts to rob a bank

Soup strikes the ground

Crazy Man Skips merrily

World

Stores

Cecilia's Rubber Plant Closet

Lambert's Letter Opener Market

Schneider's Credenza Consulting

Gonzales's Trophy Boutique

Traps

Javelin

Ice lock of Competency

Objects

Rubber Plant that is glowing

Credenza made of heavy metal

Secret Letter Opener

Hidden Lance

Book of Competency

Wand of Wonder

Target ages plus or minus 1d10 years each hour

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ashton Lambert "Casual Throats" Merchant Honey Television
Josephine Schneider "Wild Forearms" Mole Notes Slippers
Kayla Myers Restless Lamps Tea
Cecilia Peters Cleaner Pillows Books
Robert Gonzales Envious Television Tea

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).