The Director Welcomes You

Game, Library, Grip, Spy.

#eecdbf

Location

Bright, Dry Mexico

Time of Day

5:54

Extraction Point

71 Miles NE

Time to Complete

22 Hours

Sleuths,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Mirror that has been hollowed out. Get to Mexico at 16:24

Good Luck.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Everly Lawson

Alias

"Chunky Pheonix"

Features

6' 9"

Green eyes

Small mole / Right thumb

Organization

The Task Force of Jolly Grip

Emotions

Bored

Personality

Rightfully Sharp

Motive

Take over a country because of a betrayal

Bodyguard

Roberto the "Shallow gorgon"

Physical Size

Bantam

Story

Additional Locations

The Fresh Festival

Crowded Lodge

Bliss Lodge

Random Events

Rhapsody Balances on a ledge

Keg grabs a lady's purse

Reindeer approaches

Chunk of Beef is being loudly arrested

World

Stores

Malachi's Mirror Department store

Sullivan's Oil Lamp Atelier

Burton's Chair Warehouse

Kim's Skeletal Animal Factory

Traps

Chain Lightning

Built-to-Collapse Wall of Expiration

Objects

Mirror that has been hollowed out

Chair that is glowing

Secret Oil Lamp

Hidden Pen

Bow of Expiration

Wand of Wonder

Target will betray himself at the most inopportune time

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mattie Sullivan "Heavy Lemons" Merchant Comic Books Sponges
Hunter Burton "All Churros" Mole Syrup Children's Stories
Amir Harper Townsfolk Attention Books
Malachi Estrada Technician Hamsters Easter
Annabelle Kim Talent agent Coffee Water

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).