The Director Welcomes You

Babies, Beard, Fairies, Spy.

#c377d0

Location

Dull, Foul Austria

Time of Day

11:2

Extraction Point

2 Miles E

Time to Complete

45 Hours

Detectives,
I have sent you to circle a Rundown Lagoon to look for a suspect by the name "The mammoth". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A mysterious key is found on the ground at the Turtle Rock".

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

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ryan Holmes

Alias

"The mammoth"

Features

5' 2"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Right eye

Organization

The Crew of Large Fairies

Emotions

Inferior

Personality

Neatly Salty

Motive

Make a lot of money to better Humanity

Bodyguard

Sam the "Delicious Dragon"

Physical Size

Miniature

Story

Additional Locations

The Swift Mansion

Archaic Reef

Prosperity Park

Random Events

Herd of Chicken gathers near a point of interest

Robber stop the party and asks questions

Crying Child Lunges at the group

Box of Mice Is frozen into a block of ice

World

Stores

Jose's Globe Specialities

Dean's Hatrack Worldwide

Pratt's Mirror Worldwide

Horton's Mural Ventures

Traps

Collapsing Column

Tripping Chain of Euphoria

Objects

Globe children's replica

Mirror made of heavy metal

Secret Hatrack

Hidden Cutlass

Lipstick of Euphoria

Wand of Wonder

When caster next kills someone, he must Save vs Fortitude or die

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Lucy Dean "Small Spleens" Merchant Balloons Lamps
Thomas Pratt "Bullet Forearms" Mole Soda Bells
Abel Hanson Surgeon Acorns Soup
Jose Hale Barber Houses Horses
Ryder Horton Animator Singing Easter

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).