The Director Welcomes You

Who is Johnny Hell?

#9e522b

Location

Calm, Cloudless Costa Rica

Time of Day

6:10

Extraction Point

59 Miles SW

Time to Complete

20 Hours

Examiners,
As you can see you are trapped inside circle a Compact Circus . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Right Lion" is responsible and they sent us this message - "Clouds develop quickly at the Broken Face". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Sharp Pencil hidden on you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Hazel Adams

Alias

"Right Lion"

Features

7' 4"

Hazel eyes

Large moles / Neck

Organization

The Sorority of Feckless Crane

Emotions

Nervous

Personality

Nearly Braised

Motive

Take over a country to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Hungry Ogre"

Physical Size

Cramped

Story

Additional Locations

The Plain City

Crowded Mansion

The Blackest Black Masquerade

Random Events

Corncob stop the party and asks questions

Corncob Balances on a ledge

Gypsy screams at the top of their lungs

Bag of Lemons Bursts loudly

World

Stores

Cecilia's Platter Specialities

Richards's Telescope Atelier

Rodriguez's Pocket watch Ventures

Carrillo's Taxidermy animal Threads

Traps

Camouflaged Pit

Bricks from Ceiling of Joy

Objects

Platter with a False bottom

Pocket watch children's replica

Secret Telescope

Hidden Falchion

Polearm of Joy

Wand of Wonder

Anyone nearby who turns invisible is bright orange forever after

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
James Richards "Left Ankles" Merchant Money Notes
Margaret Rodriguez "Italian Falafels" Mole Tea Bells
Graham Fleming Firefighter Soup Ice Cubes
Cecilia Vaughn Ghost Limes Candles
Evelyn Carrillo Cleaner Death Washing Machines

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).