The Director Welcomes You

The Solemnly Depressed Agent

#9389ea

Location

Gloomy, Arid Guatemala

Time of Day

8:12

Extraction Point

196 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

36 Hours

Ambassadors,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Paperweight that is glowing. Get to Guatemala at 09:11

Good Luck.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elena Bush

Alias

"Two Abominable Snowman"

Features

7' 9"

Green eyes

Faint curved scar / Neck

Organization

The Sorority of Sticky Shiv

Emotions

Afraid

Personality

Solemnly Fulsome

Motive

Take over a government out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Donald the "Obedient Cockatrice"

Physical Size

Big

Story

Additional Locations

The Depressed Grove

Hidden Fortress

Annihilation Circus

Random Events

Bag of Flour Skips merrily

Diary Is hurled at the adventurers

Crowd stop the party and asks questions

Cookie is heard screaming

World

Stores

Alice's Paperweight Ventures

Cooper's Bicycle Brothers

Dixon's Mirror Du jour

Rodgers's Paperweight Logistics

Traps

Acid Arrow

Lightning Bolt of The Blackest Black

Objects

Paperweight that is glowing

Mirror made of heavy metal

Secret Bicycle

Hidden Chewing Gum

Wrench of The Blackest Black

Wand of Wonder

When injured, target is 5% likely to fly into a berserker rage

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Bennett Cooper "Cramped Elbows" Merchant Butterflies Oranges
Isabella Dixon "Cheap Thumbs" Mole Coffee Singing
Eloise Garner Cheerful Teeth Dolphins
Alice Avila Librarian Washing Machines Plushies
Braxton Rodgers Annoyed Contracts Butterflies

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).