The Director Welcomes You

Closet Royale

#f57e4f

Location

Sunny, Cloudless Mozambique

Time of Day

3:35

Extraction Point

110 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

18 Hours

Snoopers,
I have sent you to the bottom of a Hidden Forge to look for a suspect by the name "All Normal Guy". This mission is black ops. 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 – "The group finds a random cow at the Apple Orchard".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Emmanuel Fitzgerald

Alias

"All Normal Guy"

Features

7' 11"

Amber eyes

Faint curved scar / Left foot

Organization

The Firm of Faithful Plumwine

Emotions

Hopeful

Personality

Truthfully Arid

Motive

Disrupt the military out of greed

Bodyguard

Harold the "Smelly Golem"

Physical Size

Cramped

Story

Additional Locations

The Portly Suburbs

Polluted Isle

Reservation Chateau

Random Events

Odor Gets their hand chopped off

Bunny arrives in the mail

Bunny grabs a lady's purse

Diary Is throwing a BBQ

World

Stores

Lucas's Shirt Closet

Gregory's Candlesticks Boutique

Walters's Candelabra Consulting

Lane's Certificate Wardrobe

Traps

Fusillade of Darts

Lightning Bolt of Oblivion

Objects

Shirt children's replica

Candelabra that has been hollowed out

Secret Candlesticks

Hidden Cat

Dagger of Oblivion

Wand of Wonder

Any metal object carried by caster is 90% transparent

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jayce Gregory "Obese Elbows" Merchant Sticks Trucks
Damian Walters "All Scars" Mole Plushies Rubber Stamps
Emilia Davis Dentist Acorns Cellphones
Lucas Santiago Barber Pillows Broccoli
Colton Lane Annoyed Chickens Paper

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).