The Director Welcomes You

The Bleakly Thousands Agent

#969fc8

Location

Windy, Cool United Kingdom

Time of Day

21:53

Extraction Point

98 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

9 Hours

Scrutinizers,
I have sent you to climb a Touristy Castle to look for a suspect by the name "Casual mammoth". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to stop the outbreak. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A vagrant asks for money at the Big Momma".

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

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Eden Lee

Alias

"Casual mammoth"

Features

4' 4"

Gray eyes

A second belly button / Right eye

Organization

The Council of Comical Slime

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Bleakly Shitty

Motive

Take over a country to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

Roberto the "Surrogate Wraith"

Physical Size

Giant

Story

Additional Locations

The Thousands Port

Deserted Forest

Indecision Palace

Random Events

Diary Skips merrily

Crowd stop the party and asks questions

Drunk Bounces oddly

Donkey skins a cat with his teeth

World

Stores

Isaac's Large book Brothers

Lyons's Wingback chair Collective

Buchanan's Flowers Growing Properties

Padilla's Hat Unlimited

Traps

Water-Filled Room

Falling Block of Perspiration

Objects

Large book with a False bottom

Flowers Growing that is glowing

Secret Wingback chair

Hidden Spear

Coif of Perspiration

Wand of Wonder

No bipedal creatures can speak within 100 yards of this place

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kevin Lyons "Mad Lox" Merchant Drinking Boxes
Eli Buchanan "Tough Ribs" Mole Pillows Doors
Isaac Cannon Old Man Lamps Butterflies
Isaac May Intoxicated Horses Bears
Maddox Padilla Butcher Houses Glitter

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).