The Director Welcomes You

The Many Ball Predicament

#44c833

Location

Cool, Gorgeous Chad

Time of Day

12:54

Extraction Point

32 Miles E

Time to Complete

29 Hours

Investigators,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Candlesticks with a False bottom. Get to Chad at 20:24

Good Luck.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aaliyah Chen

Alias

"Blue Dwarf"

Features

6' 2"

Red eyes

Stretch Marks / Left hand

Organization

The Guild of Curved Economics

Emotions

Regretful

Personality

Shrilly Swollen

Motive

Make a lot of money fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

Mitch the "Wet Dwarf"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Many Masquerade

Compact Isle

Bliss Suburbs

Random Events

Softball is being loudly arrested

Whore screams at the top of their lungs

Tramp catches on fire

Swarm of Bees Is being kidnapped

World

Stores

Bryce's Candlesticks Creative

Ramsey's Kitchen table Properties

Stewart's Drawers Market

Fuller's Marionette Du jour

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Collapsing Column of Dark

Objects

Candlesticks with a False bottom

Drawers that is glowing

Secret Kitchen table

Hidden Falchion

Watch of Dark

Wand of Wonder

The most valuable sword within 50 yards turns to mercury

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Grant Ramsey "Stiff Livers" Merchant Cooking Pillows
Luna Stewart "Four Pinky's" Mole Lions Cartography
Oliver Rojas Animator Harmonica Slippers
Bryce Martinez Exhilarated Horses Basketball
Alexa Fuller Journalist Washing Machines Rubber Bands

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).