The Director Welcomes You

Walk, Yak, Management, Spy.

#6765dd

Location

Cool, Wet Burkina Faso

Time of Day

13:12

Extraction Point

110 Miles E

Time to Complete

47 Hours

Eyeballs,
I have sent you to be locked inside of a Underground Carousal to look for a suspect by the name "Big all-seeing eye". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A roll of thunder at the Top of the carousel wheel".

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

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Adam Morrison

Alias

"Big all-seeing eye"

Features

4' 9"

Amber eyes

Stretch Marks / Left eye

Organization

The Brotherhood of Many Management

Emotions

Nervous

Personality

Coyly Angry

Motive

Disrupt the military for honor

Bodyguard

Emily the "Lively Normal Guy"

Physical Size

Narrow

Story

Additional Locations

The Moldy Carousal

Compact Chateau

Censorship Manor

Random Events

Nomad Adopts a nearby child

Procession Crashes slowly

Herd of Chicken skins a cat with his teeth

Hound Spontaneously disintegrates

World

Stores

Olivia's Coat Couture

Boyd's Tapestry Warehouse

James's Rug Convenience store

Vargas's Iron stove Productions

Traps

Poisoned Arrow

Ghoul Touch of Secrecy

Objects

Coat made of heavy metal

Rug that has been hollowed out

Secret Tapestry

Hidden Longsword

Ring of Secrecy

Wand of Wonder

Target’s weapon appears to be very hot to anyone else wielding it

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
August Boyd "Stiff Brains" Merchant Ice Cubes Bears
Elena James "Right Livers" Mole Harmonica Christmas
Evan Lee Townsfolk Sharp Things Tea
Olivia Rowe Art Therapist Robots Syrup
Michael Vargas Drummer Technology Bracelets

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).