The Director Welcomes You

The Ancient Loss Problem

#0ed9d3

Location

Dry, Breezy Thailand

Time of Day

20:14

Extraction Point

151 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

27 Hours

Informants,
As you can see you are trapped inside the outside of a Bustling Fortress . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Drowsy Bull" is responsible and they sent us this message - "The group finds a random cow at the Hollow oak tree". Your mission was clandestine, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Dull Can Opener hidden on you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Emma Richardson

Alias

"Drowsy Bull"

Features

4' 3"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Left foot

Organization

The Union of Whispering Bubble

Emotions

Helpless

Personality

Acidly Avian

Motive

Disrupt the military to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Jack the "Jealous Leech"

Physical Size

Great

Story

Additional Locations

The Ancient Island

Abandoned Port

Rage Peninsula

Random Events

Robber is being loudly arrested

Wedding Cake Is being detained

Panhandler Balances on a ledge

Vagrant Is being detained

World

Stores

Piper's Wingback chair Convenience store

Warner's Pocket watch Chic Chåteau

Dunn's Bell Beauty Stop

Cohen's Bell Supermarket

Traps

Rolling Rock

Bestow Curse of Disaster

Objects

Wingback chair with a False bottom

Bell that has been hollowed out

Secret Pocket watch

Hidden Cutlass

Whip of Disaster

Wand of Wonder

The target point scrambles any effort to teleport near it

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Isabella Warner "Sharp Pretzels" Merchant Trucks Limes
Nicholas Dunn "Tough Toes" Mole Rubber Bands Chili
Adam Molina Blacksmith Photography Ice Cubes
Piper Tyler Physician Octopus Horses
Piper Cohen Railroad Conductor Acorns Dinosaurs

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).