The Director Welcomes You

The Whining Balcony Scene

#65070d

Location

Miserable, Windless Jamaica

Time of Day

12:31

Extraction Point

96 Miles NE

Time to Complete

17 Hours

Meddlers,
I have sent you to the bottom of a Crowded Chateau to look for a suspect by the name "Fast Koalas". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to find where their funding is coming from. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a dollar on the ground at the Dragon's Sea".

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

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Miguel Rodriguez

Alias

"Fast Koalas"

Features

4' 8"

Green eyes

Small mole / Left middle finger

Organization

The Agency of Loose Girls

Emotions

Helpless

Personality

Frequently Wonderful

Motive

Take over a government for a love interest

Bodyguard

Al the "Surly Fairy"

Physical Size

Fat

Story

Additional Locations

The Whining Barn Dance

Ancient Spring

Calming Festival

Random Events

Bottle of Soy Sauce approaches

Butter Shipment grabs a lady's purse

Toilet Bursts loudly

Mutant approaches

World

Stores

Dominic's Window Boutique

Larson's Portrait Du jour

George's Tapestry Consulting

Neal's Lamp Creative

Traps

Water-Filled Room

Collapsing Column of Calming

Objects

Window with a False bottom

Tapestry that is glowing

Secret Portrait

Hidden Glasses

Coif of Calming

Wand of Wonder

Abnormally large locusts plague the area for 1d8 weeks

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Everly Larson "Right Thumbs" Merchant Death Chalk
Athena George "Big Stomachs" Mole Slippers Shirts
Finn Pope Spirit Bracelets Flowers
Dominic Mack Physician Bread Deodorant
Sydney Neal Accountant Coffee Soda

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).