The Director Welcomes You

The Handle Bravery Incident

#3ce1b3

Location

Mild, Windless Tanzania

Time of Day

9:32

Extraction Point

63 Miles S

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Agents,
It seems "Gross Hobgoblin" has gone level 7. They have been broadcasting this message "A pool of blood at the giants footsteps". We need you to eliminate them, Fully. Their last known location was recorded at 19:08. You have a Bulbous Audio Cassette as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Faith Baker

Alias

"Gross Hobgoblin"

Features

5' 3"

Hazel eyes

Large moles / Left foot

Organization

The Brotherhood of Sour Reindeer

Emotions

Disliked

Personality

Fully Puckish

Motive

Take over a government for revenge

Bodyguard

Harold the "Rapid Horse"

Physical Size

Cramped

Story

Additional Locations

The Rotten Maze

Crowded Acropolis

Cheer Port

Random Events

Musical Protests

Fairy Gets their hand chopped off

Corncob catches on fire

Dozen Eggs drops from the sky

World

Stores

Lucia's Globe Warehouse

Quinn's Pipe Beauty Stop

Daniel's Staircase Bureau

Moss's Paperweight Properties

Traps

Hail of Needles

Burning Hands of Bravery

Objects

Globe with a False bottom

Staircase made of heavy metal

Secret Pipe

Hidden Watch

Boiled Leather of Bravery

Wand of Wonder

Caster falls madly in love with someone who’s never existed

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Carlos Quinn "Green Hearts" Merchant Trucks Quartz Crystals
Daniel Daniel "Heavy Hearts" Mole Rubber Stamps Singing
Autumn Peters Drunken Glass Paper
Lucia Todd Old Man Mirrors Rock n' Roll
Emmanuel Moss Veterinarian Jazz Syrup

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).