The Director Welcomes You

The Steep Spa Cryptogram

#3f0af6

Location

Chilly, Hot Italy

Time of Day

10:41

Extraction Point

144 Miles NE

Time to Complete

23 Hours

Operatives,
As you can see you are trapped inside climb a Archaic Island . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Fast Cat" is responsible and they sent us this message - "Tracks of wolves can be seen at the Old battlefield". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Beautiful Can Opener hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elliott Ramos

Alias

"Fast Cat"

Features

7' 8"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Right leg

Organization

The Committee of Dirty Children

Emotions

Relaxed

Personality

Rightfully Alive

Motive

Disrupt the military out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Oscar the "Sweltering child"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Steep Peninsula

Crowded Creek

Expiration Island

Random Events

Goblet strikes the ground

Building Spontaneously disintegrates

Prostitute Adopts a nearby child

Storm is loose

World

Stores

Daniela's Chaise Labs

Hicks's Trunk Worldwide

Hughes's Vase Bureau

Bowman's Cabinet Threads

Traps

Compacting Room

Phantasmal Killer of Excitement

Objects

Chaise that is glowing

Vase children's replica

Secret Trunk

Hidden Longsword

Spear of Excitement

Wand of Wonder

Target’s age is now 3d20, with all related bonuses and penalties

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Morgan Hicks "Orange Spleens" Merchant Rock n' Roll Lipstick
Grace Hughes "Nice Arms" Mole Honey Lamps
Grayson Sharp Exhilarated Drinking Baseball
Daniela Day Artist Rubber Bands Attention
Cooper Bowman Annoyed Sun Glasses Sharks

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).