The Director Welcomes You

The Elegant Vein Crisis

#1c50b9

Location

Sunny, Balmy Haiti

Time of Day

16:48

Extraction Point

199 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

25 Hours

Detectives,
As you can see you are trapped inside fly above a Compact Festival . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Tough potato" is responsible and they sent us this message - "Tracks of wolves can be seen at the Fallen King". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Polished Camera hidden on you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Sophia Mendez

Alias

"Tough potato"

Features

7' 9"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Left leg

Organization

The Board of Shrilling Ball

Emotions

Panicked

Personality

Separately Chipper

Motive

Disrupt the military fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

James the "Common Banshee"

Physical Size

Cramped

Story

Additional Locations

The Elegant Shelter

Pitch Black Carnival

Delirium Festival

Random Events

Drunk Attempts to rob a bank

Vegetable Finds gold in the water

Lactose Intolerance scurries by

Druid Evades the law

World

Stores

Peyton's Glass Jars Emporium

Barker's Picture Frame Outlet

Baker's Tea Set Du jour

Hamilton's Bed Properties

Traps

Fire

Fireball of Casualties

Objects

Glass Jars with a False bottom

Tea Set made of heavy metal

Secret Picture Frame

Hidden Pen

Sticks of Casualties

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s next Summoning yields a creature that attacks him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Eric Barker "Tough Lungs" Merchant Cartography Sticky Notes
Alice Baker "Mini Matzo Balls" Mole Pillows Notes
Josephine Potter Dead Tired Basketball Balloons
Peyton Barnett Frazzled Lipstick Dinosaurs
Jace Hamilton Old Man Coffee Water

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).