The Director Welcomes You

Who is George Earrings?

#d884ce

Location

Windless, Wet Djibouti

Time of Day

23:0

Extraction Point

87 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

4 Hours

Examiners,
I have sent you to enter a Desolate Carnival to look for a suspect by the name "Yellow Beholder". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve the stolen intel. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "An out of place door appears at the Three Fingers".

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

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ashley Farmer

Alias

"Yellow Beholder"

Features

6' 8"

Red eyes

Small mole / Right middle finger

Organization

The Board of Fulsome Yak

Emotions

Delighted

Personality

Foolishly Shrilling

Motive

Make a lot of money for fear of the heroes

Bodyguard

George the "Cocky Bigfoot"

Physical Size

Limited

Story

Additional Locations

The Tangy Acropolis

Ancient Citadel

Passion Isle

Random Events

Mutant runs over an infant

Mutant Glistens gently

Gang Spontaneously disintegrates

Chunk of Beef skins a cat with his teeth

World

Stores

Tyler's Large book Creative

Olson's Notebook Solutions

Cobb's Figurine Discount

Schmidt's Figurine Du jour

Traps

Burning Hands

Dropping Ceiling of Death

Objects

Large book made of heavy metal

Figurine with a False bottom

Secret Notebook

Hidden Guthook

Guthook of Death

Wand of Wonder

Whenever caster casts a spell, he whistles like a teapot

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jace Olson "Mad Churros" Merchant Cellphones Batteries
Quinn Cobb "Meaty Cappuccinos" Mole Whipped Cream Bracelets
Mia Long Spirit Chocolate Chocolate
Tyler Lindsey Frustrated Stickers Houses
Morris Schmidt Weakened Gym Memberships Books

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).