The Director Welcomes You

Prison, Pool, Jail, Spy.

#71579b

Location

Mild, Warm Estonia

Time of Day

7:31

Extraction Point

174 Miles SE

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Eyeballs,
I have sent you to underneathe a Touristy Villa to look for a suspect by the name "Mad Bull". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to disable the bomb. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A thick fog rolls in at the Top of the carousel wheel".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Invisible Cigarette in your kit to help.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Adrian Cortez

Alias

"Mad Bull"

Features

6' 5"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Right leg

Organization

The Division of Chuffed Jail

Emotions

Rageful

Personality

Optimistically Jagged

Motive

Disrupt the military to cause catastrophe

Bodyguard

Donald the "Bewildered Siren"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Ripe Carnival

Expensive Grove

Indecision Festival

Random Events

Butter Shipment Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Box of Mice overflows

Potato strikes the ground

Vagrant Calls menacingly

World

Stores

Micah's Crate Technologies

Boyd's Spare brick Closet

Saunders's Portrait Collective

King's Urn International

Traps

Ray of Sickness

Flame Strike of Rage

Objects

Crate with a False bottom

Portrait children's replica

Secret Spare brick

Hidden Boiled Leather

Glasses of Rage

Wand of Wonder

Target exudes a scent that makes people ignore him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Miguel Boyd "Fast Ribs" Merchant Books Octopus
Chase Saunders "Mad Throats" Mole Contracts Books
Marcus Wilson Stressed Books Trucks
Micah Holland Cosmetologist Coffee Sailboats
Jasmine King Midwife Rocks Tissues

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).