The Director Welcomes You

Who is Crystal Throne?

#fe1e85

Location

Foul, Rainy Burkina Faso

Time of Day

19:42

Extraction Point

38 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

33 Hours

Detectives,
As you can see you are trapped inside within a Expensive Labratory . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "All Ogre" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Sacrificial Hole". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Soft Brush hidden on you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Isaiah Rice

Alias

"All Ogre"

Features

5' 9"

Green eyes

Faint curved scar / Right leg

Organization

The Committee of Portly Beggar

Emotions

Uncomfortable

Personality

Lively Gray

Motive

Make a lot of money because they straight up craycray

Bodyguard

Crystal the "Wet Opossums"

Physical Size

Huge

Story

Additional Locations

The Red Manor

Deserted Forest

Bravery Manor

Random Events

Bag of Lemons is heard screaming

Drunk Calls menacingly

Milk Shipment meets disaster

Hoard Is throwing a BBQ

World

Stores

Sofia's Bureau Collective

Cook's Mirror Factory

Daniel's Landscape Little shop

Lloyd's Statuette Arcade

Traps

Water-Filled Room

Ray of Sickness of Competency

Objects

Bureau made of heavy metal

Landscape that has been hollowed out

Secret Mirror

Hidden Morning Star

Goblet of Competency

Wand of Wonder

Suddenly the area is snowbound as from a year-long blizzard

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Olivia Cook "Gross Ribs" Merchant Squirrels Rock n' Roll
George Daniel "Red Waffles" Mole Cooking Washing Machines
Athena Adkins Vision Rabbits Football
Sofia Medina Shadow Slippers Glass
Rhett Lloyd Geologist Snowglobes Clocks

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).