The Director Welcomes You

Who is Nancy Arithmetic?

#4ff0e6

Location

Frigid, Rainy Azerbaijan

Time of Day

24:3

Extraction Point

57 Miles SW

Time to Complete

13 Hours

Detectives,
As you can see you are trapped inside enter a Polluted Lodge . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Yellow Leech" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A vagrant asks for food at the Where grass will not grow". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Invisible Belt hidden on you.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Caroline Hines

Alias

"Yellow Leech"

Features

4' 11"

Hazel eyes

Faint curved scar / Neck

Organization

The Bunch of Risible Change

Emotions

Angry

Personality

Gratefully Huge

Motive

Make a lot of money to achieve their destiny

Bodyguard

Nancy the "Sovereign Bull"

Physical Size

Narrow

Story

Additional Locations

The Verdant Circus

Compact Palace

Optimism Carousal

Random Events

Pine Branch Is being kidnapped

Corncob is heard screaming

Woman approaches

Amulet Ignites violently

World

Stores

Rylee's Mirror Technologies

Porter's Goblet International

Powell's Shelf of alcohol Worldwide

Hansen's Oil Lamp Beauty Stop

Traps

Water-Filled Room

Earthquake of Calming

Objects

Mirror made of heavy metal

Shelf of alcohol made of heavy metal

Secret Goblet

Hidden Axe

Book of Calming

Wand of Wonder

Next person nearby to use magic sees illusory giraffes everywhere

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Trinity Porter "Nice Waffles" Merchant Singing Rubber Stamps
Elias Powell "Gross Churros" Mole Chickens Boxes
Allison Fox Old Timer Rubber Bands Lamps
Rylee Santos Cranky Robots Photography
Messiah Hansen Broker Dolphins Candy

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).