The Director Welcomes You

Who is Al Polarbear?

#75919f

Location

Breezy, Overcast Estonia

Time of Day

14:55

Extraction Point

194 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

4 Hours

Sleuths,
As you can see you are trapped inside the inside of a Abandoned Lodge . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Casual mammoth" is responsible and they sent us this message - "The group finds a random cow at the witch's mound". Your mission was anti-surveillance, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Rusty Lipstick hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Cora Higgins

Alias

"Casual mammoth"

Features

6' 2"

Amber eyes

Large moles / Left arm

Organization

The Company of Easy Literature

Emotions

Elated

Personality

Overconfidently Egregious

Motive

Take over a country for sibling rivalry

Bodyguard

Al the "Curious Hyena"

Physical Size

Giant

Story

Additional Locations

The Hollow Arcade

Desolate Circus

Perspiration Circus

Random Events

Crowd catches on fire

Transport Balances on a ledge

Odor Attempts to rob a bank

Meteor Attempts to rob a bank

World

Stores

Rachel's Musical instrument Emporium

Walters's Footlocker Closet

Rojas's Oil Lamp Group

Hodges's Cutting board Department store

Traps

Built-to-Collapse Wall

Insanity Mist Vapor of Happiness

Objects

Musical instrument that is glowing

Oil Lamp with a False bottom

Secret Footlocker

Hidden Mace

Sabre of Happiness

Wand of Wonder

Target is encircled by tall icicles, each as thick as his leg

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Emmanuel Walters "One Noses" Merchant Oranges Singing
Mia Rojas "Yellow Eyes" Mole Attention Potatoes
Juliana Porter Geologist Rocks Candy
Rachel Maldonado Old Man Cousins Boxes
Adalyn Hodges Headhunter Deodorant Stickers

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).