The Director Welcomes You

International Royale

#282c12

Location

Rainy, Windy Ireland

Time of Day

4:24

Extraction Point

13 Miles W

Time to Complete

7 Hours

Operatives,
As you can see you are trapped inside be locked inside of a Bustling Lagoon . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Black Centaur" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A vagrant asks for money at the Big Momma". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Colorful Clock hidden on you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Daniel Howard

Alias

"Black Centaur"

Features

5' 5"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Left leg

Organization

The Fraternity of Petite Week

Emotions

Hesitant

Personality

Vastly Cocky

Motive

Take over a government to corrupt everyone

Bodyguard

Donald the "Stoned Sprite"

Physical Size

Hefty

Story

Additional Locations

The Garrulous Forge

Compact Jungle

Rage Isle

Random Events

Bag of Flour is heard screaming

Keg emerges

Woman grabs a lady's purse

Crow Balances on a ledge

World

Stores

Lorenzo's Mantle International

Lambert's Marionette Warehouse

Figueroa's Vanity Warehouse

Larson's Diary Atelier

Traps

Tripping Chain

Earthquake of Mania

Objects

Mantle children's replica

Vanity that has been hollowed out

Secret Marionette

Hidden Mace

Blindfold of Mania

Wand of Wonder

Target’s explodes if any attempt is made at resurrection

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Iris Lambert "Golden Toes" Merchant Teeth Clocks
Austin Figueroa "Bullet Hot Dogs" Mole Hamsters Christmas
Arianna Gilbert Hotel Manager Flashlights Water
Lorenzo Alvarez Physician Flashlights Christmas
Anna Larson Graphic Designer Tea Clocks

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).