The Director Welcomes You

The Clam Ruin Incident

#19a4e4

Location

Humid, Arid Germany

Time of Day

24:35

Extraction Point

195 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

21 Hours

Ambassadors,
It seems "Three Merfolk" has gone level 10. They have been broadcasting this message "The group finds a dead fish at the Golden Fire". We need you to eliminate them, Gleefully. Their last known location was recorded at 02:12. You have a Delicate Socks as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jonah Cruz

Alias

"Three Merfolk"

Features

4' 11"

Red eyes

Large moles / Right arm

Organization

The Bunch of Purring Plunger

Emotions

Happy

Personality

Gleefully Small

Motive

Make a lot of money to control the Children

Bodyguard

Larry the "Sweltering Dwarf"

Physical Size

Tremendous

Story

Additional Locations

The Broad Barn Dance

Expensive Lodge

Disaster Castle

Random Events

Odor Spontaneously disintegrates

Potato explodes

Water Vessel is robbed

Mutant stop the party and asks questions

World

Stores

August's Mounted Animal Atelier

Martin's Shoe Horn Threads

Nguyen's Pedestal Convenience store

Knight's Telescope Properties

Traps

Compacting Room

Fire of Ruin

Objects

Mounted Animal that has been hollowed out

Pedestal that is glowing

Secret Shoe Horn

Hidden Watch

Banana of Ruin

Wand of Wonder

Caster thinks that his death will open the gates of heaven

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Brianna Martin "Fast Cappuccinos" Merchant Cartography Boxes
Mateo Nguyen "Four Parmigianas" Mole Attention Shirts
Samuel Fischer Barber Soap Butterflies
August Kramer Consultant Sponges Eggs
Eden Knight Operator Candles Trucks

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).