The Director Welcomes You

The Irksome Princess Problem

#98afd6

Location

Wet, Cloudy Vatican City

Time of Day

3:45

Extraction Point

138 Miles N

Time to Complete

11 Hours

Investigators,
We need your help. Agent Kaiden Stevenson has gone missing and we believe "Sharp kobold" is responsible. They were last seen in Vatican City at 00:00. The agent sent one final message – "Tracks of wolves can be seen at the Where grass will not grow". Take this Slippery Blanket - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Guy Hart

Alias

"Sharp kobold"

Features

5' 7"

Red eyes

Large deep scar / Left leg

Organization

The Association of Glamorous Rate

Emotions

Bitter

Personality

Kookily Defamatory

Motive

Take over a country to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Uptight Doppelganger"

Physical Size

Colossal

Story

Additional Locations

The Irksome Festival

Expensive Barn Dance

Joy Citadel

Random Events

Jug of Peanut Butter meets disaster

Rustler grabs a lady's purse

Milk Shipment gathers near a point of interest

Bard Is hurled at the adventurers

World

Stores

Sherri's Sculpture Mall

Moody's Watch Couture

Clarke's Metal chair Threads

Stevenson's Glass Jars Closet

Traps

Incendiary Cloud

Fireball of Destiny

Objects

Sculpture with a False bottom

Metal chair with a False bottom

Secret Watch

Hidden Sickle

Spear of Destiny

Wand of Wonder

No one within 50 yards can leave the area for 4d6 hours

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Maddox Moody "Stiff Brains" Merchant Quartz Crystals Socks
Roman Clarke "Italian Noses" Mole Sticks Teeth
Nora Singh Headhunter Trees Stickers
Sherri Maldonado Railroad Conductor Rubber Bands Acorns
Kaiden Stevenson Accountant Clocks Cats

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).