The Director Welcomes You

Technologies Royale

#33030a

Location

Foggy, Calm Mexico

Time of Day

4:6

Extraction Point

171 Miles E

Time to Complete

38 Hours

Scrutinizers,
I have sent you to the outside of a Desolate Park to look for a suspect by the name "Two Orcs". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to deactivate their resources. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "An out of place door appears at the Beast's Maze".

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

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elliott Tran

Alias

"Two Orcs"

Features

7' 3"

Heterochromia eyes

Large moles / Right middle finger

Organization

The Company of Fit Pancake

Emotions

Scared

Personality

Ferociously Egregious

Motive

Make a lot of money for sibling rivalry

Bodyguard

Philip the "Melodic Sprite"

Physical Size

Trifling

Story

Additional Locations

The Unkempt Port

Rundown Maze

Demise Port

Random Events

Bag of Lemons grabs a lady's purse

Pack of Wild Dogs Is frozen into a block of ice

Horse Carriage is robbed

Swarm of Bees is heard screaming

World

Stores

Melody's Pan Technologies

Henry's Pan Mall

Howell's Painting Couture

Gregory's Basket Du jour

Traps

Javelin

Tripping Chain of Well-being

Objects

Pan made of heavy metal

Painting made of heavy metal

Secret Pan

Hidden Stave

Diary of Well-being

Wand of Wonder

Next blade to cut the caster will never rust or go dull

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Nova Henry "Right Kidneys" Merchant Dice Lipstick
Lilly Howell "Left Falafels" Mole Soap Chocolate
Brody McKinney Acupuncturist Broccoli Shirts
Melody Martin Intoxicated Flowers Balloons
Mila Gregory Plumber Bread Money

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).