The Director Welcomes You

Labs Royale

#04592e

Location

Arid, Breezy United States

Time of Day

21:54

Extraction Point

62 Miles NE

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Sleuths,
I have sent you to the inside of a Hidden Lagoon to look for a suspect by the name "Short starfish". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to assassinate the target. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "Distant sounds of screaming at the ruined castle".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Polished Tape Measure in your kit to help.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jaxon Beck

Alias

"Short starfish"

Features

7' 10"

Gray eyes

Large deep scar / Right eye

Organization

The Council of Tertiary System

Emotions

Uncertain

Personality

Frantically Quick

Motive

Take over a country to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Al the "Elegant Sea Lion"

Physical Size

Tremendous

Story

Additional Locations

The Prehistoric Castle

Desolate Fortress

Oblivion Business

Random Events

Amulet Balances on a ledge

Reindeer Skips merrily

Panhandler Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Potato Is getting confiscated

World

Stores

Caroline's Taxidermy animal Labs

Maldonado's Music Box Market

Moran's Music Box Logistics

Hopkins's Tapestry Unlimited

Traps

Compacting Room

Incendiary Cloud of Purity

Objects

Taxidermy animal that has been hollowed out

Music Box with a False bottom

Secret Music Box

Hidden Spoon

Chastity Belt of Purity

Wand of Wonder

Target suffers from hysterical pregnancy

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Skylar Maldonado "Mad Dumplings" Merchant Mirrors Video Games
Carlos Moran "White Lox" Mole Harmonica Glass
Gael Newman Artist Ice Cubes Lamps
Caroline Wagner Restless Candles Rabbits
Isla Hopkins Veterinarian Trees Children's Stories

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).