The Director Welcomes You

The Sphincter Imperfection Incident

#11d297

Location

Hot, Arid Serbia

Time of Day

9:43

Extraction Point

178 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

36 Hours

Sleuths,
I have sent you to be locked inside of a Polluted Lake to look for a suspect by the name "Small starfish". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to uncover their plans. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A shadow passes at the Boneyard".

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

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Benjamin Lee

Alias

"Small starfish"

Features

5' 2"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Neck

Organization

The Fraternity of Modern Brunch

Emotions

Absorbed

Personality

Jaggedly Obnoxious

Motive

Disrupt the military to lust for power

Bodyguard

James the "Famous Hyena"

Physical Size

Diminutive

Story

Additional Locations

The Short Carnival

Bustling Pond

Sanitation Tower

Random Events

Dozen Eggs Catches leprosy

Bard Strikes the church bell

Whore Is frozen into a block of ice

Wanderer scurries by

World

Stores

Carter's Skeletal Animal Properties

Martinez's Letter Opener Arcade

Dean's Bureau Specialities

Tate's Wingback chair Bazaar

Traps

Chain Lightning

Portcullis of Imperfection

Objects

Skeletal Animal that is glowing

Bureau that is glowing

Secret Letter Opener

Hidden Boomerang

Medallion of Imperfection

Wand of Wonder

1d6 people nearby are pulled into the target point and destroyed

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Paige Martinez "Nice Waffles" Merchant Basketball Trees
Xavier Dean "Right Ankles" Mole Baseball Flashlights
Easton Reyes Weakened Stickers Cooking
Carter Montgomery Sad Squirrels Attention
Lincoln Tate Drummer Dinosaurs Baseball

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).