The Director Welcomes You

Ventures Royale

#ddb1e7

Location

Miserable, Gorgeous Vietnam

Time of Day

7:12

Extraction Point

130 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

43 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
As you can see you are trapped inside descend into Hidden Mansion . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Small Drunken Irish Guy" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Serpents Nest". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Explosive Bolt Cutter hidden on you.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Oliver Joseph

Alias

"Small Drunken Irish Guy"

Features

4' 6"

Green eyes

Large deep scar / Right eye

Organization

The Council of Wonderful Throne

Emotions

Hostile

Personality

Seriously Pervasive

Motive

Disrupt the military for honor

Bodyguard

James the "Colossal Roc"

Physical Size

Cramped

Story

Additional Locations

The Unimportant Carnival

Underwater Palace

Fatality Palace

Random Events

Delivery Guy is loose

Alligator Balances on a ledge

Jug of Peanut Butter Strikes the church bell

Dead Animal Is under a curse

World

Stores

Dean's Trophy Ventures

Rivera's Canopy Bed Arcade

Aguilar's Trunk Creative

Elliott's Vase Specialities

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Phantasmal Killer of Mania

Objects

Trophy made of heavy metal

Trunk that has been hollowed out

Secret Canopy Bed

Hidden Chastity Belt

Falchion of Mania

Wand of Wonder

Once per day, caster can teleport up to one foot per level

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Miles Rivera "Golden Matzo Balls" Merchant Butterflies Painting
Esther Aguilar "Small Tongues" Mole Soda Dinosaurs
Abigail Mendez Soul Plushies Children's Stories
Dean Williamson Graphic Designer Comic Books Sticks
Amy Elliott Phantom Cellphones Rocks

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).