The Director Welcomes You

Earrings, Clam, Postoffice, Spy.

#cd8d21

Location

Gloomy, Dry Belize

Time of Day

21:53

Extraction Point

133 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

27 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
It seems "Short Vampires" has gone level 7. They have been broadcasting this message "The earth shakes briefly at the Eye of Heaven". We need you to eliminate them, Joyously. Their last known location was recorded at 15:10. You have a Robotic Hot Glue Gun as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Samantha Ingram

Alias

"Short Vampires"

Features

4' 7"

Red eyes

Stretch Marks / Right middle finger

Organization

The Gang of Modern Postoffice

Emotions

Embarrassed

Personality

Joyously Sturdy

Motive

Make a lot of money to cause catastrophe

Bodyguard

Billy the "Constipated Ogre"

Physical Size

Slight

Story

Additional Locations

The Chewy Port

Overpopulated Grove

Obliteration Sanctuary

Random Events

Crowd emerges

Cookie is being loudly arrested

Buccaneer chase a suspect

Cat stop the party and asks questions

World

Stores

Miguel's Tea Pot Mall

Cunningham's Shirt Little shop

Delgado's Mural Collective

Watts's Grandfather Clock Consulting

Traps

Incendiary Cloud

Fusillade of Darts of Downfall

Objects

Tea Pot that has been hollowed out

Mural with a False bottom

Secret Shirt

Hidden Glasses

Key of Downfall

Wand of Wonder

Target sprouts a torch sconce between his shoulder blades

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Preston Cunningham "Orange Pastrami's" Merchant Gym Memberships Comic Books
Matteo Delgado "Junior Noses" Mole Baseball Sticky Notes
Andrea Warner The Body Singing Soda
Miguel Morgan Accountant Trees Water
Arianna Watts Fortune Cookie Writer Sticks Rubber Bands

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).