The Director Welcomes You

Balloon, Women, Mommy, Spy.

#4c72ec

Location

Foggy, Cloudy Montenegro

Time of Day

20:10

Extraction Point

192 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

48 Hours

Agents,
I have sent you to the inside of a Deserted Carnival to look for a suspect by the name "Blue giant". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to uncover their plans. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a sword in a stone at the Eye of Heaven".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Leah Holt

Alias

"Blue giant"

Features

6' 2"

Amber eyes

Large moles / Left foot

Organization

The Committee of Good Mommy

Emotions

Horrified

Personality

Usually Gray

Motive

Take over a country to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Darnell the "Portly Siren"

Physical Size

Massive

Story

Additional Locations

The Pitiful Business

Underwater Sanctuary

Darkness City

Random Events

Procession Is being kidnapped

Chauvinist chase a suspect

Carcass is loose

Rhapsody is robbed

World

Stores

Antonio's Pan Couture

Wang's Toolset Threads

Wong's Bottle Consulting

Rogers's Shelf of alcohol Du jour

Traps

Bear Trap

Flooding Room of Grave Consequences

Objects

Pan that is glowing

Bottle with a False bottom

Secret Toolset

Hidden Newspaper

Camera of Grave Consequences

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s teeth shatter on contact with unrefined iron

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Micah Wang "Right Knuckles" Merchant Tea Washing Machines
Zion Wong "Black Bones" Mole Physics Children's Stories
Angelina Wang The Body Cartography Balloons
Antonio Adams Technician Singing Peanut Butter
Abel Rogers Indifferent Chocolate Death

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).