The Director Welcomes You

The Occasionally Embarrassed Agent

#d000dd

Location

Cool, Icy Guinea

Time of Day

0:28

Extraction Point

103 Miles SE

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Investigators,
I have sent you to be locked inside of a Pitch Black Crypt to look for a suspect by the name "Five Wraith". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve the stolen intel. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "Distant sounds of screaming at the Skull shaped island".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Mechanical Chewing Gum in your kit to help.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ezekiel Barrett

Alias

"Five Wraith"

Features

7' 5"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Right leg

Organization

The Association of Dirty Children

Emotions

Disliked

Personality

Occasionally Revolting

Motive

Take over a country for sibling rivalry

Bodyguard

Randy the "Shitty kobold"

Physical Size

Elder

Story

Additional Locations

The Embarrassed Port

Rundown Maze

Well-being Shelter

Random Events

Sewer Ignites violently

Bottle of Soy Sauce Glistens gently

Renaissance Faire Is throwing a protest

Biscuit is robbed

World

Stores

Ruby's Vase Couture

Bennett's Brass Replica Outlet

Leon's Staircase Consulting

Glover's Drawers Collective

Traps

Large Net

Fire of Joy

Objects

Vase children's replica

Staircase children's replica

Secret Brass Replica

Hidden Pants

Cat of Joy

Wand of Wonder

Target can’t be stunned by any blow to the head

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Braxton Bennett "White Matzo Balls" Merchant Toilets Attention
Lydia Leon "Four Arms" Mole Trucks Mirrors
Quinn Hicks Exhilarated Syrup Cartography
Ruby Dominguez Exhausted Flashlights Money
Mary Glover Funeral Director Comic Books Rock n' Roll

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).