The Director Welcomes You

Du jour Royale

#3720b7

Location

Dry, Warm Tuvalu

Time of Day

24:46

Extraction Point

182 Miles E

Time to Complete

8 Hours

Scrutinizers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Platter with a False bottom. Get to Tuvalu at 21:05

Good Luck.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Brandon Hodges

Alias

"Heavy Merfolk"

Features

4' 6"

Green eyes

Large moles / Left middle finger

Organization

The Community of Hungry Rum

Emotions

Alarmed

Personality

Poorly Dubious

Motive

Take over a country for fear of the heroes

Bodyguard

Peter the "Faint Mongoose"

Physical Size

Baby

Story

Additional Locations

The Damaged Barn Dance

Crowded Palace

Doom Park

Random Events

Swarm of Bees Balances on a ledge

Princess skins a cat with his teeth

Bag of Lemons strikes the ground

Donkey Adopts a nearby child

World

Stores

Sophie's Platter Du jour

Chavez's Portrait Department store

Beck's Lounge Chair Creative

Alvarado's Shirt Little shop

Traps

Ghoul Touch

Ice lock of Ice

Objects

Platter with a False bottom

Lounge Chair that is glowing

Secret Portrait

Hidden Boiled Leather

Greaves of Ice

Wand of Wonder

Target exudes a scent that is strongly enticing to undead

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Karter Chavez "Plump Hot Dogs" Merchant Candy Chickens
Genevieve Beck "Four Heels" Mole Doors Deodorant
Bennett Richardson Art Therapist Scarves Hammers
Sophie Marshall Talent agent Death Ice Cubes
Catherine Alvarado Geologist Horses Boxes

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).