The Director Welcomes You

The Sweltering Seed Quest

#ad704b

Location

Windy, Warm Laos

Time of Day

3:18

Extraction Point

16 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

26 Hours

Agents,
It seems "Little Elves" has gone level 5. They have been broadcasting this message "A lone flower growing at the Where grass will not grow". We need you to eliminate them, Smoothly. Their last known location was recorded at 11:04. You have a Glowing Boot as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Annabelle Torres

Alias

"Little Elves"

Features

7' 3"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Left leg

Organization

The Alliance of Verdant Stepmother

Emotions

Satisfied

Personality

Smoothly Encrypted

Motive

Take over a country because of a betrayal

Bodyguard

Nicky the "Rainy Mutants"

Physical Size

Insignificant

Story

Additional Locations

The Sweltering Arcade

Abandoned House

Purity Crypt

Random Events

Spectator is robbed

Donkey Salutes the adventurers

Majestic Painting Finds gold in the water

Leopard arrives in the mail

World

Stores

Elijah's Rubber Plant Solutions

Martin's Stamp Set Logistics

Wood's Desk Wardrobe

Alexander's Taxidermy animal Mall

Traps

Suspicious door with lock

Fireball of Doom

Objects

Rubber Plant that is glowing

Desk made of heavy metal

Secret Stamp Set

Hidden Crossbow

Boomerang of Doom

Wand of Wonder

All weapons within 50 yards attract flies and gnats for one week

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Gracie Martin "Casual Elbows" Merchant Trees Baseball
Penelope Wood "Green Feet" Mole Writers Candy
Marcus Soto Plumber Sharks Glitter
Elijah Fuller Hairdresser Sticks Rock n' Roll
Brooklyn Alexander Hotel Manager Honey Attention

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).