The Director Welcomes You

Convenience store Royale

#dcad06

Location

Foggy, Dry Sierra Leone

Time of Day

0:55

Extraction Point

109 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Detectives,
We need your help. Agent Samantha Webster has gone missing and we believe "Nice Siren" is responsible. They were last seen in Sierra Leone at 08:04. The agent sent one final message – "The group finds a sword in a stone at the Snowy garrison". Take this Rusty Bread - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aliyah McCoy

Alias

"Nice Siren"

Features

4' 3"

Red eyes

Faint curved scar / Left middle finger

Organization

The Fraternity of Broken Equipment

Emotions

Numb

Personality

Especially Raw

Motive

Disrupt the military to escape their destiny

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Enlightened Sea Lion"

Physical Size

Fat

Story

Additional Locations

The Sticky Jungle

Expensive Manor

Contentment Grove

Random Events

Softball explodes

Sewer Is accused by the law

Wedding Cake Is being detained

Bag of Lemons scurries by

World

Stores

Ryker's Butter Churner Convenience store

Myers's Bell Bureau

Wong's Stool Group

Webster's Iron stove Consulting

Traps

Ceiling Pendulum

Flame Strike of Instability

Objects

Butter Churner that is glowing

Stool made of heavy metal

Secret Bell

Hidden Medallion

Medallion of Instability

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s fingernails are poisonous to him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Londyn Myers "White Hot Dogs" Merchant Rock n' Roll Rock n' Roll
Maximus Wong "Silver Lungs" Mole Fire Snowglobes
Madeline Frazier Banker Soup Lamps
Ryker Edwards Pharmacist Doors Soda
Samantha Webster Tailor Clocks Chocolate

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).