The Director Welcomes You

Literature, Insurance, Magic, Spy.

#5beb58

Location

Rainy, Windless Switzerland

Time of Day

2:10

Extraction Point

55 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Examiners,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Potted Plant children's replica. Get to Switzerland at 22:08

Good Luck.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Madeline Mason

Alias

"Chunky Worm"

Features

4' 9"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Left hand

Organization

The Authority of Sclerotic Magic

Emotions

Rejected

Personality

Cheerfully Sore

Motive

Disrupt the military for honor

Bodyguard

Juan the "Faint Kangaroos"

Physical Size

Toy

Story

Additional Locations

The Mannered Lake

Pitch Black Park

Happiness Forge

Random Events

Soup arrives in the mail

Box of Cigarette Bounces oddly

Pickpocket Is accused by the law

Wedding Cake gathers near a point of interest

World

Stores

Giovanni's Potted Plant Wardrobe

Patterson's Pedestal Atelier

Moss's crutch Mall

Wagner's Metal chair Technologies

Traps

Flame Strike

Object Smeared with Poison of Downfall

Objects

Potted Plant children's replica

crutch made of heavy metal

Secret Pedestal

Hidden Club

Staff of Downfall

Wand of Wonder

Tomorrow, caster can speak all languages until noon

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Madison Patterson "Four Matzo Balls" Merchant Balloons Soccer
Trinity Moss "Little Stomachs" Mole Chickens Physics
Elliot Boyd The Body Doors Jazz
Giovanni Schwartz Tailor Rubber Bands Rubber Stamps
Elise Wagner Chief Executive Officer Soda Bread

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).