The Director Welcomes You

The Magician Disaster Protocol

#dc12d1

Location

Cloudless, Foggy East Timor

Time of Day

12:3

Extraction Point

6 Miles NE

Time to Complete

15 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
I have sent you to underneathe a Touristy Port to look for a suspect by the name "Slow Platypuses". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to deactivate their resources. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A black cat runs past at the Dead Forest".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Heavy Hot Glue Gun in your kit to help.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Callie Sims

Alias

"Slow Platypuses"

Features

6' 5"

Blue eyes

Small mole / Neck

Organization

The Crew of Insidious Tax

Emotions

Ambivalent

Personality

Properly Shrill

Motive

Disrupt the military justice for a wrong-doing

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Victorious Manticore"

Physical Size

Miniature

Story

Additional Locations

The Careful Creek

Expensive City

Weakness City

Random Events

Bag of Flour Integrates silently into the group

Crying Child Is under a curse

Squirrel Strikes the church bell

Bard Is being kidnapped

World

Stores

Diego's Suit of armor Consulting

Burns's Shirt Supermarket

Wang's Oil Lamp Little shop

Wells's Quill and Ink Creative

Traps

Moving Executioner Statue

Flooded Corridor of Disaster

Objects

Suit of armor that is glowing

Oil Lamp that has been hollowed out

Secret Shirt

Hidden Watch

Credit Card of Disaster

Wand of Wonder

Target can erect a four foot high wall of snow once per week

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Diego Burns "King Pastrami's" Merchant Flashlights Gym Memberships
Daniel Wang "Chunky Muscles" Mole Cats Water
Greyson Rice Technician Octopus Cookies
Diego Steele Teacher Mirrors Potatoes
Jace Wells Pharmacist Television Harmonica

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).