The Director Welcomes You

The Edgy Cactus Caper

#90488d

Location

Foul, Chilly Romania

Time of Day

6:50

Extraction Point

39 Miles SE

Time to Complete

33 Hours

Examiners,
I have sent you to descend into Rundown Palace to look for a suspect by the name "Obese ghost". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to slow them down. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A lone flower growing at the giants footsteps".

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

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Allison Hoffman

Alias

"Obese ghost"

Features

5' 4"

Brown eyes

Large deep scar / Right eye

Organization

The Fraternity of Fancy The Pope

Emotions

Spiteful

Personality

Really Eager

Motive

Make a lot of money to save humanity

Bodyguard

Peter the "Tiring Hydra"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Edgy Suburbs

Underwater Carousal

Obsession Acropolis

Random Events

Meteor Gets their hand chopped off

Woman Gets their hand chopped off

Box of Mice Is throwing a BBQ

Dozen Eggs is being loudly arrested

World

Stores

Zachary's Large book Supermarket

Schroeder's Kitchen table Outlet

Padilla's Plaster Bust Technologies

Griffith's Loveseat Cosmetics

Traps

Rune of Paralyzation

Hail of Needles of Excitement

Objects

Large book with a False bottom

Plaster Bust children's replica

Secret Kitchen table

Hidden Collar

Scimitar of Excitement

Wand of Wonder

Target can easily be persuaded to disarm himself

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Alexandra Schroeder "Three Arms" Merchant Peanut Butter Squirrels
Amy Padilla "The Hands" Mole Chili Soccer
Roman Thomas Spirit Rocks Rubber Stamps
Zachary Kramer Dentist Video Games Boxes
Dominic Griffith Angry Tea Singing

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).