The Director Welcomes You

Magic, Cat, Equipment, Spy.

#830216

Location

Cloudless, Frigid Nigeria

Time of Day

19:56

Extraction Point

22 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Examiners,
As you can see you are trapped inside approach a Polluted Mansion . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Big Turtle" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A white horse dashes past at the Where grass will not grow". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Dull Atlas hidden on you.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Austin Reese

Alias

"Big Turtle"

Features

5' 3"

Amber eyes

A second belly button / Right arm

Organization

The Division of Mammoth Equipment

Emotions

Disliked

Personality

Innocently Spicy

Motive

Make a lot of money to become the best

Bodyguard

Carl the "Bloody Abominable Snowman"

Physical Size

Huge

Story

Additional Locations

The Salty Lake

Overpopulated Forest

Skill Palace

Random Events

Chauvinist Ignites violently

Demon Ignites violently

Lactose Intolerance Glistens gently

Transport Bursts loudly

World

Stores

Hadley's Watch Ventures

Sharp's Pair of Statues Cosmetics

Gardner's Mantle Mall

Hunter's Counter Properties

Traps

Fire

Burning Hands of Purity

Objects

Watch children's replica

Mantle children's replica

Secret Pair of Statues

Hidden Throwing Dart

Stave of Purity

Wand of Wonder

Target must give his name whenever he’s asked for it

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Riley Sharp "Big Dumplings" Merchant Shirts Balloons
Sawyer Gardner "Blue Fingers" Mole Glass Candy
Blake Ortega Geologist Cousins Tissues
Hadley Vargas Drunken Sticks Comic Books
Mila Hunter Dog surfing instructor Soup Robots

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).