The Director Welcomes You

The Upbeat Green Agent

#5796ac

Location

Cloudy, Cloudy Angola

Time of Day

6:34

Extraction Point

171 Miles NE

Time to Complete

40 Hours

Examiners,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Plaster Bust with a False bottom. Get to Angola at 05:14

Good Luck.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Nora Casey

Alias

"Two Pheonix"

Features

6' 5"

Gray eyes

Small mole / Left arm

Organization

The Crew of Thoughtless Tank

Emotions

Interested

Personality

Upbeat Easy

Motive

Take over a country in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Deafening Dragon"

Physical Size

Minute

Story

Additional Locations

The Green Shelter

Underwater Park

Prosperity Castle

Random Events

Dozen Eggs overflows

Musical Is being detained

Bank Glistens gently

Box of Cigarette is robbed

World

Stores

Preston's Plaster Bust Warehouse

Gibbs's Oil Lamp Du jour

Marquez's Platter Supermarket

Clark's Certificate Ventures

Traps

Bestow Curse

Poison Dart of Pleasure

Objects

Plaster Bust with a False bottom

Platter that has been hollowed out

Secret Oil Lamp

Hidden Throwing Dart

Ring of Pleasure

Wand of Wonder

Target exudes a scent that inspires loyalty in wolves

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Calvin Gibbs "One Lungs" Merchant Squirrels Candles
Dawson Marquez "One Bagels" Mole Tissues Cookies
Athena Ortega Exhausted Sharp Things Lipstick
Preston Horton Blacksmith Broccoli Soap
Joshua Clark Veteran Rubber Stamps Children's Stories

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).