The Director Welcomes You

The Mango Pole Agent

#7d0ac4

Location

Chilly, Dry Mauritius

Time of Day

3:46

Extraction Point

74 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

41 Hours

Investigators,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Canopy Bed children's replica. Get to Mauritius at 18:02

Good Luck.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Madelyn Alexander

Alias

"Yellow Beholder"

Features

7' 2"

Heterochromia eyes

Large moles / Left middle finger

Organization

The Unit of Curious Thunder

Emotions

Jealous

Personality

Nearly Unsightly

Motive

Disrupt the military for sibling rivalry

Bodyguard

George the "Immense Elephants"

Physical Size

Soaring

Story

Additional Locations

The Mango Crypt

Touristy Maze

Bravery Festival

Random Events

Odor Salutes the adventurers

Nearby Gas Tank Is accused by the law

Crazy Man Spontaneously disintegrates

Pack of Wild Dogs Balances on a ledge

World

Stores

Owen's Canopy Bed Mall

Zimmerman's Trunk Consulting

Gonzalez's Tea Set Discount

Pham's Pair of Statues Warehouse

Traps

Rolling Rock

Crushing Room of Delirium

Objects

Canopy Bed children's replica

Tea Set that has been hollowed out

Secret Trunk

Hidden Stave

Fork of Delirium

Wand of Wonder

Target’s head is immune to extremes of pressure

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kai Zimmerman "Little Legs" Merchant Basketball Socks
Harrison Gonzalez "Sharp Forearms" Mole Slippers Socks
Payton Hoffman Zestful Eggs Dice
Owen Wheeler Soul Hammers Christmas
Rhett Pham Graphic Designer Writers Painting

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).