The Director Welcomes You

The Cleaver The Blackest Black Protocol

#d580eb

Location

Hot, Overcast Rwanda

Time of Day

20:23

Extraction Point

83 Miles E

Time to Complete

18 Hours

Sleuths,
It seems "Stiff Pegasus" has gone level 7. They have been broadcasting this message "A thick fog rolls in at the Great Shadow". We need you to eliminate them, Viciously. Their last known location was recorded at 17:12. You have a Polished Can Opener as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Isabelle Delgado

Alias

"Stiff Pegasus"

Features

6' 8"

Amber eyes

A second belly button / Left hand

Organization

The Fraternity of Mango Spa

Emotions

Panicked

Personality

Viciously Stocky

Motive

Disrupt the military for scientific discovery

Bodyguard

Al the "Sadistic Succubus"

Physical Size

Petty

Story

Additional Locations

The Bankrupt Peninsula

Pitch Black City

Weakness Port

Random Events

Crowd Calls menacingly

Storm Attempts to rob a bank

Woman Is being tortured

Transport arrives in the mail

World

Stores

Sophia's Clamp Threads

Moran's Easel Supermarket

White's Mounted Animal Cosmetics

Reyes's Loveseat Outlet

Traps

Ceiling Pendulum

Earthquake of The Blackest Black

Objects

Clamp made of heavy metal

Mounted Animal children's replica

Secret Easel

Hidden Credit Card

Chewing Gum of The Blackest Black

Wand of Wonder

Half of target’s body suffers from advanced leprosy

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Miles Moran "One Hot Dogs" Merchant Sun Glasses Chocolate
Grayson White "Short Muscles" Mole Lamps Syrup
Jasmine Neal Broker Limes Bells
Sophia Patton Surveyor Washing Machines Writers
William Reyes Cobbler Paperclips Jazz

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).