The Director Welcomes You

Tail, Management, Pot, Spy.

#48b26a

Location

Stormy, Gorgeous Korea, South

Time of Day

10:30

Extraction Point

57 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

24 Hours

Detectives,
I have sent you to fly above a Crowded Park to look for a suspect by the name "Chunky Lion". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to stop the outbreak. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A traveling merchant appears at the Three Fingers".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Slippery Bandana in your kit to help.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Margaret Fields

Alias

"Chunky Lion"

Features

5' 2"

Red eyes

Large moles / Left middle finger

Organization

The Association of Disruptive Pot

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Wetly Rancid

Motive

Take over a country for honor

Bodyguard

James the "Municipal Pig"

Physical Size

Miniature

Story

Additional Locations

The Rough Circus

Polluted Park

Ice Castle

Random Events

Crowd drops from the sky

Swarm of Bees Lunges at the group

Woman is heard screaming

Bank Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

World

Stores

Hayden's Trophy Mall

Peterson's Vanity Closet

Garza's Urn Little shop

Shelton's Suit of armor Bazaar

Traps

Ray of Sickness

Arrow of Mania

Objects

Trophy that is glowing

Urn children's replica

Secret Vanity

Hidden Guthook

Longsword of Mania

Wand of Wonder

All soil and rock within 100 yards vanishes

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Liliana Peterson "Casual Scars" Merchant Octopus Sponges
Xander Garza "King Pastrami's" Mole Glass Hamsters
Julian Graham Surgeon Writers Flashlights
Hayden Todd Accountant Glass Ice Cubes
David Shelton Geologist Lipstick Trucks

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).