The Director Welcomes You

The Week Violence Incident

#7c6a93

Location

Warm, Dark Malaysia

Time of Day

13:3

Extraction Point

172 Miles N

Time to Complete

21 Hours

Shadows,
I have sent you to descend into Ancient Lake to look for a suspect by the name "Black Ghost". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A white horse dashes past at the graveyard".

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

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Anna Patton

Alias

"Black Ghost"

Features

6' 7"

Gray eyes

Stretch Marks / Left foot

Organization

The Incorporated of Wonderful Volcano

Emotions

Distrusting

Personality

Shyly Risible

Motive

Disrupt the military to save humanity

Bodyguard

Harrison the "Long Abominable Snowman"

Physical Size

Shrimpy

Story

Additional Locations

The Puny Port

Deserted Lodge

Contentment Tower

Random Events

Midwife overflows

Horse Carriage grabs a lady's purse

Chicken Becomes wounded

Sewer Is throwing a protest

World

Stores

Angel's Trophy Department store

Figueroa's Diary Little shop

Oliver's Wingback chair Outlet

Duncan's Landscape Labs

Traps

Flooded Corridor

Blade Barrier of Violence

Objects

Trophy that is glowing

Wingback chair with a False bottom

Secret Diary

Hidden Bracelet

Whip of Violence

Wand of Wonder

Any food now carried by caster turns to ice

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ryleigh Figueroa "Drowsy Feet" Merchant Basketball Soup
Esther Oliver "Two Forearms" Mole Paperclips Eggs
Tyler Sutton Mechanic Boxes Tea
Angel Curtis Zestful Honey Ice Cubes
Penelope Duncan Counselor Peanut Butter Harmonica

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).