The Director Welcomes You

Who is George Volcano?

#fae858

Location

Warm, Wet Estonia

Time of Day

17:52

Extraction Point

88 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

14 Hours

Snoopers,
I have sent you to fly above a Ancient Grove to look for a suspect by the name "Cheap Dwarf". This mission is counterintelligence. 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 roll of thunder at the Hollow oak tree".

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

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Norah Ramirez

Alias

"Cheap Dwarf"

Features

6' 6"

Red eyes

Large moles / Right foot

Organization

The Committee of Red Pizza

Emotions

Amazed

Personality

Carelessly Damp

Motive

Disrupt the military to corrupt everyone

Bodyguard

George the "Sinful Gargoyle"

Physical Size

Giant

Story

Additional Locations

The Tiring Maze

Expensive Island

Freshness Sanctuary

Random Events

Vegetable Is frozen into a block of ice

Gang skins a cat with his teeth

Crowd Spontaneously disintegrates

Potato grabs a lady's purse

World

Stores

Alexis's Trinket Industries

Cook's Clamp Cosmetics

Joseph's Hatrack Threads

Aguilar's Bicycle Bureau

Traps

Ice lock

Bricks from Ceiling of Demise

Objects

Trinket children's replica

Hatrack children's replica

Secret Clamp

Hidden Guthook

Hammers of Demise

Wand of Wonder

Target can never become invisible to anyone who has wounded him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
August Cook "Green Throats" Merchant Batteries Technology
Steven Joseph "Red Pinky's" Mole Bracelets Tissues
Daniela Valdez Physician Glass Houses
Alexis Vargas Talent agent Sun Glasses Harmonica
Emery Aguilar Cheerful Drinking Chocolate

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).