The Director Welcomes You

Who is George Arithmetic?

#575f5f

Location

Overcast, Mild Iran

Time of Day

11:22

Extraction Point

110 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

33 Hours

Scrutinizers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Clamp with a False bottom. Get to Iran at 12:12

Good Luck.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Easton Benson

Alias

"Obese Sea Lion"

Features

6' 8"

Brown eyes

Large deep scar / Left leg

Organization

The Union of Petulant Ashtray

Emotions

Absorbed

Personality

Sympathetically Hot

Motive

Take over a government to please their master

Bodyguard

George the "Brutish Troll"

Physical Size

Full-grown

Story

Additional Locations

The Long Barn Dance

Pitch Black Port

Delight Palace

Random Events

VAT of Broth Protests

Goblet stop the party and asks questions

Cookie Bounces oddly

Biscuit strikes the ground

World

Stores

Richard's Clamp Threads

Clark's Painting Solutions

Shaw's Creeping Vines Group

Soto's Portrait Unlimited

Traps

Compacting Room

Hail of Needles of Stealth

Objects

Clamp with a False bottom

Creeping Vines that has been hollowed out

Secret Painting

Hidden Coif

Mace of Stealth

Wand of Wonder

Target’s weapon is perfectly balanced for a non-magical +2 ToHit

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Penelope Clark "Green Ankles" Merchant Paperclips Bells
Ashley Shaw "Quiet Lemons" Mole Peanut Butter Dinosaurs
Penelope Obrien Professional Bridesmaid Bread Glass
Richard Burns Paramedic Flowers Soap
Amelia Soto Librarian Sticky Notes Hamsters

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).