The Director Welcomes You

The Area Obsession Incident

#2debd7

Location

Dark, Rainy Pakistan

Time of Day

11:20

Extraction Point

169 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

3 Hours

Examiners,
It seems "No Centaur" has gone level 3. They have been broadcasting this message "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Hollow oak tree". We need you to eliminate them, Frankly. Their last known location was recorded at 18:02. You have a Rusty Atlas as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jasper Martinez

Alias

"No Centaur"

Features

5' 5"

Blue eyes

Stretch Marks / Right arm

Organization

The Association of Attractive Thunder

Emotions

Humiliated

Personality

Frankly Noisy

Motive

Disrupt the military to lust for power

Bodyguard

Chuckie the "White Rhinoceroses"

Physical Size

Tall

Story

Additional Locations

The Sinful City

Pitch Black Lodge

Optimism Port

Random Events

Lactose Intolerance Is frozen into a block of ice

Bag of Lemons Bounces oddly

Swarm of Bees drops from the sky

Buccaneer Calls menacingly

World

Stores

Serenity's Goblet Chic Chåteau

Deleon's Hanging Birdcage Group

Love's File Solutions

Leon's Platter Brothers

Traps

Burning Hands

Poison Needle of Obsession

Objects

Goblet made of heavy metal

File children's replica

Secret Hanging Birdcage

Hidden Button

Key of Obsession

Wand of Wonder

If caster is wearing any leather, he moos like a cow until sunset

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Camden Deleon "Little Lungs" Merchant Bears Christmas
Ian Love "Mad Feet" Mole Physics Peanut Butter
Zoey Wallace Musician Photography Batteries
Serenity Fischer Elevator Mechanic Slippers Video Games
Connor Leon Townsfolk Rubber Stamps Gym Memberships

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).