The Director Welcomes You

The Harmony Demise Incident

#75b04c

Location

Dry, Mild Colombia

Time of Day

16:10

Extraction Point

35 Miles W

Time to Complete

20 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
We need your help. Agent Jameson Davidson has gone missing and we believe "Heavy Pheonix" is responsible. They were last seen in Colombia at 00:07. The agent sent one final message – "A roll of thunder at the Big Momma". Take this Polished Flute - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Maya McCarthy

Alias

"Heavy Pheonix"

Features

7' 11"

Blue eyes

Small mole / Right foot

Organization

The Association of Dire Faucet

Emotions

Cautious

Personality

Colorfully Jocular

Motive

Disrupt the military to become rich

Bodyguard

Daniel the "Engorged child"

Physical Size

Petty

Story

Additional Locations

The Pugilistic Jungle

Compact Creek

Doom Port

Random Events

Chanting Cult Calls menacingly

Nearby Gas Tank Bounces oddly

Diary is robbed

Deadbeat Integrates silently into the group

World

Stores

Carter's Candlesticks Cosmetics

Burns's Rubber Plant Mall

Wong's Spice shelf Arcade

Davidson's Fireplace Convenience store

Traps

Reverse Gravity

Chain Lightning of Demise

Objects

Candlesticks that is glowing

Spice shelf made of heavy metal

Secret Rubber Plant

Hidden Katana

Pants of Demise

Wand of Wonder

Target’s teeth glow like torches when he’s struck by magic

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jesse Burns "Stiff Hands" Merchant Chocolate Syrup
Liliana Wong "Four Fingers" Mole Houses Stickers
Jude Doyle Townsfolk Sharp Things Snowglobes
Carter Lawson Statistician Stickers Houses
Jameson Davidson Midwife Basketball Toilets

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).