The Director Welcomes You

Emporium Royale

#49c90f

Location

Bright, Gorgeous El Salvador

Time of Day

17:15

Extraction Point

36 Miles W

Time to Complete

27 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
As you can see you are trapped inside enter a Ancient Port . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Cheap Horse" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A vagrant asks for money at the Painted Sands". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Clandestine Brush hidden on you.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Gael Chan

Alias

"Cheap Horse"

Features

4' 2"

Brown eyes

Stretch Marks / Left foot

Organization

The Unit of Intelligent Toes

Emotions

Uncertain

Personality

Carelessly Modern

Motive

Disrupt the military to become famous

Bodyguard

Donald the "Moist Bear"

Physical Size

Modest

Story

Additional Locations

The Plain Fortress

Bustling Sanctuary

Virtue Park

Random Events

Husband Skips merrily

Cauldron Spontaneously disintegrates

Bellhop Glistens gently

Robber Bounces oddly

World

Stores

Rachel's Credenza Emporium

Ramirez's Pocket watch Mall

Brewer's Globe International

Webster's Figurine Logistics

Traps

Poison Needle

Blade Barrier of Optimism

Objects

Credenza that has been hollowed out

Globe with a False bottom

Secret Pocket watch

Hidden Key

Boomerang of Optimism

Wand of Wonder

Target is healed of all damage, but his clothes and gear vanish

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Nora Ramirez "Green Bagels" Merchant Slippers Basketball
Bella Brewer "Italian Ankles" Mole Tigers Cookies
Adalynn Love Paramedic Contracts Tissues
Rachel Daniel Ghost Rubber Bands Candy
Edward Webster Envious Bears Pillows

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).