The Director Welcomes You

Pincer, Dragon, System, Spy.

#c39622

Location

Cloudless, Hot Belarus

Time of Day

17:15

Extraction Point

97 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

18 Hours

Informants,
We need your help. Agent Jonathan Ramirez has gone missing and we believe "All Doppelganger" is responsible. They were last seen in Belarus at 12:02. The agent sent one final message – "A white horse dashes past at the Grove of Weeping Willows". Take this Fluffy File - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Tyler Stevenson

Alias

"All Doppelganger"

Features

4' 5"

Brown eyes

A second belly button / Left arm

Organization

The Gang of Flaky System

Emotions

Bored

Personality

Dutifully Intransigent

Motive

Take over a country justice for a wrong-doing

Bodyguard

Peter the "Quaint Merfolk"

Physical Size

Huge

Story

Additional Locations

The Delightful Port

Underwater Grove

Silence Suburbs

Random Events

Wedding Cake Is being detained

Beggar approaches

Butter Shipment screams at the top of their lungs

Nearby Gas Tank Attempts to rob a bank

World

Stores

Ayden's Fruit Bowl Beauty Stop

Butler's Lamp International

Brown's Cutting board Mall

Ramirez's Trophy Worldwide

Traps

Compacting Room

Extended Bane of Instability

Objects

Fruit Bowl that has been hollowed out

Cutting board with a False bottom

Secret Lamp

Hidden Pen

Soy Sauce Packet of Instability

Wand of Wonder

Bright flames ripple harmlessly along target’s limbs for 1d4 days

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Finn Butler "Orange Legs" Merchant Slippers Houses
Alexis Brown "Stiff Cheesecakes" Mole Jazz Bread
Santiago Palmer Butcher Singing Coffee
Ayden Day Cheerful Lions Hammers
Jonathan Ramirez Angry Drinking Bread

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).