The Director Welcomes You

The Cocky Waste Job

#f1c7d9

Location

Foggy, Rainy Barbados

Time of Day

18:52

Extraction Point

11 Miles NE

Time to Complete

11 Hours

Sleuths,
I have sent you to the outside of a Deserted Carnival to look for a suspect by the name "Meaty Mummy". This mission is black bag. 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 – "Distant sounds of screaming at the Three Fingers".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Clandestine Screwdriver in your kit to help.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elizabeth Thomas

Alias

"Meaty Mummy"

Features

7' 1"

Hazel eyes

Large deep scar / Right leg

Organization

The Board of Cooling Cake

Emotions

Exasperated

Personality

Absentmindedly Substantial

Motive

Take over a country in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Peter the "Tasteless Seal"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Cocky Grove

Rundown Manor

Well-being Suburbs

Random Events

Keg Salutes the adventurers

Majestic Painting grabs a lady's purse

German Trench Club Becomes wounded

Herd of Chicken Finds gold in the water

World

Stores

Avery's Wingback chair Unlimited

Davis's Bed Closet

Warren's Painting Arcade

Haynes's Shirt Outlet

Traps

Incendiary Cloud

Reverse Gravity of Doom

Objects

Wingback chair children's replica

Painting that is glowing

Secret Bed

Hidden Lipstick

Helmet of Doom

Wand of Wonder

Caster smells strongly burnt toast

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Nova Davis "Cheap Hot Dogs" Merchant Potatoes Soccer
Kaleb Warren "Little Tongues" Mole Bears Rocks
Angelina Malone Athlete Physics Photography
Avery Craig Hairdresser Plushies Balloons
Kimberly Haynes Blacksmith Coffee Notes

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).