The Director Welcomes You

The Pump Bitterness Incident

#d89b80

Location

Dull, Bright Guinea

Time of Day

22:25

Extraction Point

44 Miles N

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Sleuths,
As you can see you are trapped inside the outside of a Rundown Port . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Drowsy Sprite" is responsible and they sent us this message - "An out of place door appears at the Garden of Bears". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Angry Ashtray hidden on you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Claire Barnes

Alias

"Drowsy Sprite"

Features

5' 9"

Green eyes

Large deep scar / Right thumb

Organization

The Union of Feckless People

Emotions

Exasperated

Personality

Coyly Risible

Motive

Take over a country to better Humanity

Bodyguard

Timmy the "Bankrupt Python"

Physical Size

Miniature

Story

Additional Locations

The Early City

Crowded Forest

Skill Carousal

Random Events

Sewer Is throwing a BBQ

Biscuit approaches

Hound screams at the top of their lungs

Ninja Salutes the adventurers

World

Stores

Morgan's Stairwell Industries

Bowman's Sconce Productions

Douglas's Tea Pot Du jour

Lowe's Hanging Birdcage Factory

Traps

Ice lock

Ceiling Pendulum of Bitterness

Objects

Stairwell that has been hollowed out

Tea Pot that is glowing

Secret Sconce

Hidden Boomerang

Necklace of Bitterness

Wand of Wonder

Each of caster’s teeth screams each time he opens his mouth

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Brooke Bowman "Blue Livers" Merchant Snowglobes Comic Books
Tristan Douglas "Green Hot Dogs" Mole Batteries Peanut Butter
David Robinson Annoyed Octopus Batteries
Morgan Gibbs Veteran Boxes Eggs
Christopher Lowe Frazzled Sharp Things Lamps

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).