The Director Welcomes You

Axe, Person, Crane, Spy.

#cbc477

Location

Icy, Bright Mongolia

Time of Day

2:11

Extraction Point

149 Miles SE

Time to Complete

12 Hours

Ambassadors,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Tapestry that is glowing. Get to Mongolia at 05:15

Good Luck.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Layla Bowers

Alias

"All The Grim Reaper"

Features

5' 9"

Amber eyes

Large deep scar / Left leg

Organization

The Commission of Verdant Crane

Emotions

Humiliated

Personality

Freely Few

Motive

Make a lot of money fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

David the "Defeated Koalas"

Physical Size

Limited

Story

Additional Locations

The Big Grove

Archaic Festival

Instability Crypt

Random Events

Spice Box drops from the sky

Hound Becomes wounded

Alligator Salutes the adventurers

Turtle emerges

World

Stores

Sawyer's Tapestry Labs

Sanders's Musical instrument Du jour

Logan's Tea Pot Specialities

Gilbert's Creeping Vines Consulting

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Flooded Corridor of Bravery

Objects

Tapestry that is glowing

Tea Pot children's replica

Secret Musical instrument

Hidden Scimitar

File of Bravery

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s next Summoning yields a creature that attacks him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jesse Sanders "Mini Hot Dogs" Merchant Video Games Clocks
Melanie Logan "White Noses" Mole Sailboats Football
Isla Marsh Technician Water Balloons
Sawyer Hart Mechanic Rabbits Toilets
Brantley Gilbert Depressed Glass Paperclips

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).