The Director Welcomes You

The Artist Skill Incident

#317096

Location

Balmy, Bright Bhutan

Time of Day

4:47

Extraction Point

2 Miles SW

Time to Complete

13 Hours

Informants,
As you can see you are trapped inside within a Underwater Peninsula . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Big Pheonix" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A shadow passes at the Boneyard". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Beautiful Abascus hidden on you.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Harmony Barber

Alias

"Big Pheonix"

Features

5' 7"

Heterochromia eyes

A second belly button / Left leg

Organization

The Club of Fast Ski Lodge

Emotions

Confused

Personality

Oddly Bankrupt

Motive

Make a lot of money to be left alone

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Tragic Pig"

Physical Size

Baby

Story

Additional Locations

The Tropical Suburbs

Desolate Port

Dark Crypt

Random Events

Buccaneer Glistens gently

Chauvinist Lunges at the group

Beggar is loose

Toilet catches on fire

World

Stores

Reagan's Kitchen table Productions

Hamilton's Potted Plant Ventures

May's Cutting board Logistics

Harvey's Pair of Statues Chic Chåteau

Traps

Flooded Corridor

Moving Executioner Statue of Skill

Objects

Kitchen table children's replica

Cutting board that is glowing

Secret Potted Plant

Hidden Bangle

Pants of Skill

Wand of Wonder

If caster kills anyone in the next turn, he also perishes

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jason Hamilton "Fat Ankles" Merchant Deodorant Broccoli
Maverick May "Nice Arms" Mole Sharp Things Paperclips
Jeremy Griffin Frazzled Oranges Music
Reagan Parsons Actor Tea Shirts
George Harvey Graphic Designer Sun Glasses 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).