The Director Welcomes You

Emporium Royale

#48232e

Location

Chilly, Windless Honduras

Time of Day

2:52

Extraction Point

37 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

45 Hours

Detectives,
As you can see you are trapped inside descend into Crowded Sanctuary . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Cheap child" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A mysterious key is found on the ground at the Stone Circle". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Colorful Blender hidden on you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Nora Wang

Alias

"Cheap child"

Features

7' 11"

Red eyes

Large moles / Right arm

Organization

The Order of Wide Honey

Emotions

Distrusting

Personality

Absentmindedly Shapely

Motive

Take over a country for revenge

Bodyguard

Charles the "Bumpy Opossums"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Mastadonic Chateau

Compact Spring

Power Palace

Random Events

Bellhop Bounces oddly

Beggar Finds gold in the water

Goblet Is throwing a BBQ

Storm screams at the top of their lungs

World

Stores

Landon's Armoir Emporium

White's Letter Opener Ventures

Chandler's Paperweight Chic Chåteau

Mullins's Pipe Du jour

Traps

Fire

Portcullis of Fatality

Objects

Armoir children's replica

Paperweight with a False bottom

Secret Letter Opener

Hidden Magazine

Magazine of Fatality

Wand of Wonder

Target is shunned by all other members of his species

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Rachel White "Heavy Stomachs" Merchant Children's Stories Drinking
Anna Chandler "Fast Forearms" Mole Soccer Physics
Sadie Mclaughlin Hotel Manager Jigsaw Puzzles Paperclips
Landon Armstrong Consultant Sun Glasses Tissues
Steven Mullins Indifferent Butterflies Books

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).