The Director Welcomes You

The Sludge Joy Incident

#74b21e

Location

Windless, Gloomy Lesotho

Time of Day

10:50

Extraction Point

13 Miles N

Time to Complete

35 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
We need your help. Agent Nolan Collins has gone missing and we believe "Tough Normal Guy" is responsible. They were last seen in Lesotho at 16:11. The agent sent one final message – "A pool of blood at the Boneyard". Take this Fluffy Baking Tray - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jasmine Barnes

Alias

"Tough Normal Guy"

Features

5' 6"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Right arm

Organization

The Committee of Some Burlesque

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Optimistically Mushy

Motive

Take over a country because of a betrayal

Bodyguard

Darnell the "Municipal Gremlin"

Physical Size

Giant

Story

Additional Locations

The Wonderful Palace

Pitch Black Jungle

Delirium Maze

Random Events

Crazy Man Integrates silently into the group

Drunk Is being kidnapped

Hound scurries by

Keg drops from the sky

World

Stores

Serenity's Metal chair Cosmetics

Casey's Urn Warehouse

Gregory's Watch Beauty Stop

Collins's Vase Beauty Stop

Traps

Dropping Ceiling

Fireball of Joy

Objects

Metal chair made of heavy metal

Watch with a False bottom

Secret Urn

Hidden Bow

Lighter of Joy

Wand of Wonder

Someone nearby sprouts hideous, non-functional bat wings

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jace Casey "Black Matzo Balls" Merchant Stickers Comic Books
Luis Gregory "Little Elbows" Mole Syrup Baseball
August Norman Optimistic Tissues Tigers
Serenity Goodman Soul Harmonica Lipstick
Nolan Collins Broker Dinosaurs Octopus

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).