The Director Welcomes You

The Hope Oblivion Protocol

#108868

Location

Humid, Cloudless Turkmenistan

Time of Day

5:13

Extraction Point

37 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Sleuths,
As you can see you are trapped inside fly above a Bustling Lodge . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Two all-seeing eye" is responsible and they sent us this message - "An out of place door appears at the dancing-trees". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Beautiful Bandana hidden on you.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Abel Lambert

Alias

"Two all-seeing eye"

Features

6' 6"

Green eyes

A second belly button / Left middle finger

Organization

The Task Force of Thoughtless Balcony

Emotions

Optimistic

Personality

Deliberately Fugly

Motive

Take over a country to escape their destiny

Bodyguard

Tiffany the "Hot Demon"

Physical Size

Gigantic

Story

Additional Locations

The Fried Lagoon

Crowded Grove

Power Lake

Random Events

Gunshot meets disaster

Transport Catches leprosy

Bottle of Soy Sauce approaches

Feminist Is being kidnapped

World

Stores

Alan's Window Boutique

Newman's Spice shelf Couture

Benson's Tea Pot Cosmetics

Crawford's Taxidermy animal Cosmetics

Traps

Ceiling Pendulum

Burning Hands of Oblivion

Objects

Window made of heavy metal

Tea Pot children's replica

Secret Spice shelf

Hidden Stave

Collar of Oblivion

Wand of Wonder

Rats and similar vermin are drawn to this area in great numbers

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Max Newman "Green Dumplings" Merchant Limes Money
Michelle Benson "Cheap Spleens" Mole Money Gym Memberships
John Todd Depressed Acorns Notes
Alan Manning Physician Snowglobes Essential Oils
Paige Crawford Headhunter Toilets Doves

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).