The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Stale Calligraphy Pen

#e43508

Location

Warm, Sunny Cameroon

Time of Day

8:18

Extraction Point

93 Miles N

Time to Complete

42 Hours

Eyeballs,
As you can see you are trapped inside descend into Deserted Carnival . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Left Sea Lion" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A shrine is nearby at the witch's mound". Your mission was clandestine, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Robotic Lamp hidden on you.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Theodore Lloyd

Alias

"Left Sea Lion"

Features

4' 1"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Right middle finger

Organization

The Association of Prominent Yak

Emotions

Liking

Personality

Broadly Miniature

Motive

Make a lot of money for revenge

Bodyguard

Tony the "Obtuse Leprechaun"

Physical Size

Tremendous

Story

Additional Locations

The Stale Park

Polluted Villa

Bitterness Reef

Random Events

Renaissance Faire approaches

Musical emerges

Store scurries by

Keg Spontaneously disintegrates

World

Stores

Amelia's Globe Warehouse

Ray's Bench Consulting

McBride's Stamp Set Productions

Lynch's Armoir Consulting

Traps

Large Net

Bear Trap of Power

Objects

Globe that is glowing

Stamp Set that has been hollowed out

Secret Bench

Hidden Longsword

Wrench of Power

Wand of Wonder

Caster is immune to electrical attacks while he’s barefoot

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jasper Ray "Dull Eyes" Merchant Flowers Children's Stories
Jonah McBride "Mini Tongues" Mole Sailboats Honey
Paige Byrd Scientist Harmonica Rock n' Roll
Amelia Sparks Acupuncturist Sponges Flashlights
Jaxon Lynch Engineer Chocolate Rubber Bands

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).