The Director Welcomes You

The Lazily Drooping Agent

#61ff57

Location

Cloudy, Overcast Niger

Time of Day

9:20

Extraction Point

158 Miles SE

Time to Complete

18 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to descend into Deserted Castle to look for a suspect by the name "Wild Cockatrice". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to assassinate the target. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A white horse dashes past at the Golden Fire".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Feminine Paint Brush in your kit to help.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jeremy Klein

Alias

"Wild Cockatrice"

Features

5' 1"

Amber eyes

A second belly button / Right leg

Organization

The Unit of Obnoxious Thumb

Emotions

Regretful

Personality

Lazily Little

Motive

Disrupt the military to save humanity

Bodyguard

Nick the "Mandatory Leech"

Physical Size

Paltry

Story

Additional Locations

The Drooping Masquerade

Deserted Island

Good Spirits Maze

Random Events

Butter Shipment Ignites violently

Procession Skips merrily

Soup chase a suspect

Crazy Man runs over an infant

World

Stores

Gavin's Music Box Bazaar

Ryan's Paperweight Supermarket

Ross's Stool Outlet

Yang's Lounge Chair Specialities

Traps

Swinging Block

Object Smeared with Poison of Amnesia

Objects

Music Box made of heavy metal

Stool children's replica

Secret Paperweight

Hidden Magazine

Stave of Amnesia

Wand of Wonder

All tempered metal within 50 yards is reduced in weight by 50%

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Callie Ryan "Casual Thumbs" Merchant Butterflies Toilets
Greyson Ross "The Hot Dogs" Mole Dinosaurs Photography
Jaxon Bradley Professional Bridesmaid Peanut Butter Writers
Gavin Waters Meteorologist Tissues Socks
Silas Yang Surveyor Photography Balloons

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).