The Director Welcomes You

The Dirty Music Inquisition

#50dbd9

Location

Hot, Dry Liberia

Time of Day

13:26

Extraction Point

23 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Operatives,
It seems "Blue Siren" has gone level 9. They have been broadcasting this message "A traveling merchant appears at the Dead Forest". We need you to eliminate them, Separately. Their last known location was recorded at 15:21. You have a Delicate Purse as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Diego Fox

Alias

"Blue Siren"

Features

5' 11"

Blue eyes

Small mole / Right foot

Organization

The Committee of Moldy Uranus

Emotions

Rageful

Personality

Separately Mealy

Motive

Make a lot of money to control the Children

Bodyguard

Hal the "Damaged Armadillo"

Physical Size

Meager

Story

Additional Locations

The Dirty House

Bustling Lagoon

Amnesia Arcade

Random Events

Diary Spontaneously disintegrates

Donkey Finds gold in the water

Storm Spontaneously disintegrates

Swarm of Bees meets disaster

World

Stores

Colton's Hat Little shop

Gonzalez's Lamp Threads

Webb's Bench Technologies

Salazar's Sofa Bureau

Traps

Collapsing Column

Rolling Rock of Contentment

Objects

Hat children's replica

Bench made of heavy metal

Secret Lamp

Hidden Necklace

Coin of Contentment

Wand of Wonder

Next attack on caster kills him, but he resurrects at dawn

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Madelyn Gonzalez "Plump Hearts" Merchant Candy Hamsters
Benjamin Webb "Right Hot Dogs" Mole Harmonica Limes
Allison Morris Veteran Mirrors Eggs
Colton Blair Shadow Attention Tissues
Nevaeh Salazar Envious Death Scarves

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).