The Director Welcomes You

The Regal Cocktail Quest

#336086

Location

Arid, Windless Nicaragua

Time of Day

10:13

Extraction Point

154 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

2 Hours

Examiners,
I have sent you to be locked inside of a Pitch Black Casino to look for a suspect by the name "All Cockatrice". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a random cow at the Big Momma".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Bulbous Nuts and Bolts in your kit to help.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Eloise Bailey

Alias

"All Cockatrice"

Features

6' 8"

Gray eyes

Large moles / Right middle finger

Organization

The Division of Rare Corn

Emotions

Hostile

Personality

Queasily Limited

Motive

Make a lot of money to please their master

Bodyguard

James the "Oafish Wraith"

Physical Size

Diminutive

Story

Additional Locations

The Regal Acropolis

Bustling Park

Rage City

Random Events

Biscuit Crashes slowly

Keg Skips merrily

Leopard grabs a lady's purse

Wanderer Is getting confiscated

World

Stores

Adaline's Shirt Du jour

Sutton's Mantle Productions

Horton's Bench Group

Todd's Certificate Labs

Traps

Earthquake

Portcullis of Fury

Objects

Shirt made of heavy metal

Bench that has been hollowed out

Secret Mantle

Hidden Chewing Gum

Sling of Fury

Wand of Wonder

If caster is wearing gloves, he requires no sleep for 1d4 weeks

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ella Sutton "Fat Noses" Merchant Acorns Paper
Noah Horton "Small Parmigianas" Mole Lions Cellphones
Fiona McBride Midwife Clocks Clocks
Adaline Gonzalez Zestful Tissues Scarves
Clara Todd Waiter Chalk Batteries

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).