The Director Welcomes You

The Helplessly Good Agent

#fd3e4d

Location

Wet, Frigid Lesotho

Time of Day

21:52

Extraction Point

25 Miles E

Time to Complete

5 Hours

Informants,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Skeletal Animal that has been hollowed out. Get to Lesotho at 20:16

Good Luck.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Adam Nelson

Alias

"Indigo Python"

Features

5' 2"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Left thumb

Organization

The Council of Gigantic Glasses

Emotions

Uncomfortable

Personality

Helplessly Wet

Motive

Disrupt the military to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Shitty Cyclops"

Physical Size

Tall

Story

Additional Locations

The Good Festival

Rundown Villa

Fury Castle

Random Events

Wanderer grabs a lady's purse

Nomad stop the party and asks questions

Milk Shipment Finds gold in the water

Bank Skips merrily

World

Stores

Isabella's Skeletal Animal Discount

Robles's Stool Consulting

Hampton's Brass Replica Factory

Gilbert's Ceramic Crock Outlet

Traps

Incendiary Cloud

Scything Blade of Vulnerability

Objects

Skeletal Animal that has been hollowed out

Brass Replica children's replica

Secret Stool

Hidden Pants

Collar of Vulnerability

Wand of Wonder

Target is blind while his hair is wet

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Xavier Robles "Chunky Muscles" Merchant Slippers Scarves
Presley Hampton "Heavy Scars" Mole Glass Soccer
Ximena Garrett Accountant Chalk Doors
Isabella Berry Graphic Designer Cartography Tigers
Adeline Gilbert Butcher Cartography Clocks

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).