The Director Welcomes You

Factory Royale

#0fad65

Location

Frigid, Miserable France

Time of Day

22:55

Extraction Point

88 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

42 Hours

Meddlers,
We need your help. Agent Jack Warren has gone missing and we believe "All Hobgoblin" is responsible. They were last seen in France at 09:20. The agent sent one final message – "A vagrant asks for food at the old bridge". Take this Clean Armchair - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Hunter Burgess

Alias

"All Hobgoblin"

Features

6' 5"

Heterochromia eyes

Large deep scar / Right eye

Organization

The Committee of Egregious Fly

Emotions

Concern

Personality

Greedily Crooked

Motive

Disrupt the military to become the best

Bodyguard

Alex the "Deafening Goblins"

Physical Size

Vast

Story

Additional Locations

The Surrogate Castle

Ancient Grove

Virtue Mansion

Random Events

Drunk emerges

Bag of Flour Is frozen into a block of ice

Diary Is being tortured

Bag of Lemons Crashes slowly

World

Stores

Anna's Hatrack Factory

Navarro's Fire poker set Chic Chåteau

Benson's Bench Factory

Warren's Bureau Bureau

Traps

Flooding Room

Acid Arrow of Destiny

Objects

Hatrack made of heavy metal

Bench that has been hollowed out

Secret Fire poker set

Hidden Guthook

Sticks of Destiny

Wand of Wonder

Nearest town erupts into riots and turf wars

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Lily Navarro "Sharp Eyes" Merchant Chocolate Paperclips
Samuel Benson "Two Elbows" Mole Rubber Bands Harmonica
Clara Shaw Pharmacist Sticks Technology
Anna Pham Stressed Water Sticks
Jack Warren Annoyed Stickers Attention

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).