The Director Welcomes You

The Thanks Fate Protocol

#ea72f0

Location

Breezy, Dark Denmark

Time of Day

16:5

Extraction Point

29 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

9 Hours

Agents,
It seems "The Elephants" has gone level 2. They have been broadcasting this message "Distant sounds of screaming at the Serpents Nest". We need you to eliminate them, Upliftingly. Their last known location was recorded at 07:09. You have a Glowing Toy as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aiden Rice

Alias

"The Elephants"

Features

6' 8"

Gray eyes

A second belly button / Left thumb

Organization

The Firm of Cool Dirigible

Emotions

Rejected

Personality

Upliftingly Frilled

Motive

Take over a government to become rich

Bodyguard

Randy the "Pre-Pubescent kobold"

Physical Size

Substantial

Story

Additional Locations

The Girthy Circus

Archaic Acropolis

Calamity Castle

Random Events

Keg Balances on a ledge

Cat Calls menacingly

Princess is being loudly arrested

Soup explodes

World

Stores

Fiona's Trunk Threads

Wolf's Medallion Hole

Griffin's Lounge Chair Hole

Hernandez's Glass Jars Warehouse

Traps

Extended Bane

Object Smeared with Poison of Fate

Objects

Trunk that is glowing

Lounge Chair with a False bottom

Secret Medallion

Hidden File

Blades of Fate

Wand of Wonder

Caster has an overpowering hatred of artificial light sources

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Tyler Wolf "Mad Churros" Merchant Soap Technology
Jayden Griffin "Meaty Eyes" Mole Comic Books Cellphones
Levi Espinoza Architect Cooking Painting
Fiona Sharp Depressed Fire Teeth
Sherri Hernandez Sad Chocolate Soda

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).