The Director Welcomes You

Stepmother, Bucket, Control, Spy.

#7cfb7a

Location

Dry, Windy Jordan

Time of Day

7:18

Extraction Point

78 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Eyeballs,
I have sent you to approach a Underwater Citadel to look for a suspect by the name "King Demon". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to deactivate their resources. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a random cow at the Tempest".

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

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Bentley Acosta

Alias

"King Demon"

Features

5' 9"

Gray eyes

A second belly button / Right arm

Organization

The Society of Gorgeous Control

Emotions

Powerless

Personality

Wetly Uneven

Motive

Take over a government to become rich

Bodyguard

Nick the "Dank ghost"

Physical Size

Shrimpy

Story

Additional Locations

The Holy Pond

Overpopulated Chateau

Happiness Sanctuary

Random Events

Whore meets disaster

Majestic Painting overflows

Robber stop the party and asks questions

Cat screams at the top of their lungs

World

Stores

Judy's Footlocker Little shop

Neal's Satchel Factory

Pena's Counter Bazaar

Thornton's Pocket watch Arcade

Traps

Poison Dart

Portcullis of Vulnerability

Objects

Footlocker with a False bottom

Counter made of heavy metal

Secret Satchel

Hidden Handcuffs

Notebook of Vulnerability

Wand of Wonder

Next potion imbibed by caster makes him invisible for 1d6 turns

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Genevieve Neal "Four Livers" Merchant Lions Technology
Richard Pena "Stiff Churros" Mole Chalk Jazz
Juan Wang Angry Doves Notes
Judy Kennedy Pharmacist Technology Cellphones
Cooper Thornton Spirit Chalk Singing

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).