The Director Welcomes You

Retaliation, Puddle, Existence, Spy.

#fd20ac

Location

Dry, Humid Egypt

Time of Day

13:15

Extraction Point

84 Miles NW

Time to Complete

41 Hours

Investigators,
As you can see you are trapped inside approach a Pitch Black Masquerade . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Big Cockatrice" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A roll of thunder at the Music Store". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Glowing Pair of Gloves hidden on you.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Amir Allen

Alias

"Big Cockatrice"

Features

4' 5"

Gray eyes

Small mole / Left leg

Organization

The Association of Short Existence

Emotions

Lust

Personality

Joyously Chilly

Motive

Make a lot of money to better Humanity

Bodyguard

Jessica the "Feisty Porpoises"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Glamorous Park

Polluted Sanctuary

Animosity Lake

Random Events

Bag of Flour emerges

Deadbeat gathers near a point of interest

German Trench Club runs over an infant

Delivery Guy explodes

World

Stores

Lauren's Coat Beauty Stop

Juarez's Sofa Discount

Palmer's Brass Replica Wardrobe

Duncan's Barrel Cosmetics

Traps

Portcullis

Chain Lightning of Mania

Objects

Coat with a False bottom

Brass Replica made of heavy metal

Secret Sofa

Hidden Boiled Leather

Brass Knuckles of Mania

Wand of Wonder

When target next spills blood, his allies think he’s dying

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Elise Juarez "One Spleens" Merchant Trucks Music
Micah Palmer "Right Tongues" Mole Robots Drinking
Giovanni Horton Optimistic Peanut Butter Essential Oils
Lauren Morales Butcher Sharks Rubber Stamps
Paisley Duncan Cobbler Technology Water

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).