The Director Welcomes You

Change, Troll, Jail, Spy.

#e9373c

Location

Dull, Windy Barbados

Time of Day

2:8

Extraction Point

126 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

22 Hours

Shadows,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Doorway children's replica. Get to Barbados at 24:12

Good Luck.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aliyah White

Alias

"Mad Ogre"

Features

5' 11"

Blue eyes

Faint curved scar / Right thumb

Organization

The Club of Slimey Jail

Emotions

Preoccupied

Personality

Smoothly Oafish

Motive

Take over a government for revenge

Bodyguard

Tim the "Mossy Mermaid"

Physical Size

Full-grown

Story

Additional Locations

The Clever Sanctuary

Bustling Tower

Excitement Spring

Random Events

Buccaneer is being loudly arrested

Cookie Is accused by the law

Rhapsody Is getting confiscated

Pack of Wild Dogs catches on fire

World

Stores

Leah's Doorway Emporium

Cannon's Crate Industries

Barnett's Fireplace Solutions

Wolf's Counter International

Traps

Portcullis

Chain Lightning of Well-being

Objects

Doorway children's replica

Fireplace with a False bottom

Secret Crate

Hidden Notebook

Sword of Well-being

Wand of Wonder

Next person wounded by target must Save or be stricken mute

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jordan Cannon "Right Hot Dogs" Merchant Glass Doves
Isaac Barnett "Two Elbows" Mole Video Games Snowglobes
Andrea Becker Stressed Soccer Horses
Leah Cortez Frazzled Contracts Stickers
Samantha Wolf Hairdresser Television Doves

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).