The Director Welcomes You

The Moon Fate Incident

#20235a

Location

Dry, Foggy Tonga

Time of Day

11:16

Extraction Point

99 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

36 Hours

Sleuths,
It seems "Dull Troll" has gone level 1. They have been broadcasting this message "Distant sounds of screaming at the Broken Face". We need you to eliminate them, Selfishly. Their last known location was recorded at 00:02. You have a Rusty Condom as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Hadley Taylor

Alias

"Dull Troll"

Features

4' 2"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Left hand

Organization

The Division of Handsome Force

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Selfishly Fat

Motive

Take over a country fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

Anthony the "Bad giant"

Physical Size

Poor

Story

Additional Locations

The Insidious Acropolis

Rundown Creek

Fury Lake

Random Events

Tramp explodes

Prostitute chase a suspect

Horse Carriage is being loudly arrested

Squirrel catches on fire

World

Stores

Cooper's Grandfather Clock Logistics

Mullins's Key Brothers

Warren's Potted Plant Boutique

Mack's Statue International

Traps

Tripping Chain

Earthquake of Fate

Objects

Grandfather Clock made of heavy metal

Potted Plant children's replica

Secret Key

Hidden Pike

Book of Fate

Wand of Wonder

When reduced to one hit point, caster suffers wild hallucinations

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Madeline Mullins "Italian Hot Dogs" Merchant Tea Cartography
Evelyn Warren "Nice Matzo Balls" Mole Basketball Easter
Aliyah Moody Spirit Plushies Water
Cooper Parks Angry Paperclips Cats
Carlos Mack Elder Snowglobes Slippers

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).