The Director Welcomes You

The Race Well-being Incident

#bc9bff

Location

Cloudless, Cloudless Madagascar

Time of Day

21:22

Extraction Point

38 Miles E

Time to Complete

2 Hours

Scrutinizers,
We need your help. Agent Emmett Horton has gone missing and we believe "King Opossums" is responsible. They were last seen in Madagascar at 24:05. The agent sent one final message – "A shrine is nearby at the Dead Forest". Take this Robotic Towel - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kylie Manning

Alias

"King Opossums"

Features

5' 4"

Red eyes

Stretch Marks / Right leg

Organization

The Guild of Humid Software

Emotions

Delighted

Personality

Fully Efficacious

Motive

Take over a government because of a betrayal

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Jealous Owl"

Physical Size

Huge

Story

Additional Locations

The Round Arcade

Overpopulated Spring

Pleasure Lake

Random Events

Robber Protests

Bum skins a cat with his teeth

Dead Animal Is hurled at the adventurers

Druid Is hurled at the adventurers

World

Stores

Nathan's Statue Discount

Hines's Musical instrument Ventures

Moreno's Tea Set Emporium

Horton's Flower in Vase Cosmetics

Traps

Crushing Room

Box of Brown Mold of Well-being

Objects

Statue that has been hollowed out

Tea Set children's replica

Secret Musical instrument

Hidden Sling

Throwing Dart of Well-being

Wand of Wonder

Caster is seated on a platform high atop a tall, narrow pole

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Rachel Hines "Meaty Stomachs" Merchant Coffee Cookies
Jaxson Moreno "Meaty Bones" Mole Attention Dolphins
Ethan Rogers Zestful Squirrels Jigsaw Puzzles
Nathan Riley Geologist Lions Robots
Emmett Horton Butcher Broccoli Easter

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).