The Director Welcomes You

Veil, Paste, Upper Management, Spy.

#aad6cd

Location

Wet, Balmy Kazakhstan

Time of Day

22:45

Extraction Point

137 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

39 Hours

Snoopers,
We need your help. Agent Brandon Murray has gone missing and we believe "Junior Cockatrice" is responsible. They were last seen in Kazakhstan at 07:12. The agent sent one final message – "A pool of blood at the Fallen King". Take this Dull Level - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kayla Rice

Alias

"Junior Cockatrice"

Features

5' 5"

Heterochromia eyes

Large moles / Neck

Organization

The Guild of Wet Upper Management

Emotions

Cheerful

Personality

Selfishly Dusty

Motive

Disrupt the military in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Roberto the "Grumpy Orcs"

Physical Size

Giant

Story

Additional Locations

The Stocky Lodge

Bustling Maze

Weakness Maze

Random Events

Dead Animal explodes

Vegetable gathers near a point of interest

Donkey meets disaster

Procession Is throwing a protest

World

Stores

Grant's Trunk Industries

Salazar's Musical instrument Couture

Bowers's Certificate Threads

Murray's Potted Plant Boutique

Traps

Suspicious door with lock

Ice lock of Perspiration

Objects

Trunk that is glowing

Certificate children's replica

Secret Musical instrument

Hidden Shield

Bracelet of Perspiration

Wand of Wonder

Next door opened by caster opens upon a sanity-damaging vista

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Abraham Salazar "Two Livers" Merchant Jigsaw Puzzles Painting
Nolan Bowers "Red Forearms" Mole Money Teeth
Peyton Ortega Dog surfing instructor Clocks Squirrels
Grant Hernandez Veterinarian Teeth Chalk
Brandon Murray Demon Eggs Football

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).