The Director Welcomes You

The Faithful Balloon Problem

#9041cd

Location

Hot, Calm Indonesia

Time of Day

15:42

Extraction Point

66 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

18 Hours

Agents,
As you can see you are trapped inside within earshot of a Overpopulated Villa . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Heavy Meerkat" is responsible and they sent us this message - "The group finds a random cow at the Skull shaped island". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Polished Mirror hidden on you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Waylon Vega

Alias

"Heavy Meerkat"

Features

6' 1"

Amber eyes

Large deep scar / Neck

Organization

The Clique of Evasive Thimble

Emotions

Safe

Personality

Offensively Purple

Motive

Take over a country to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Alex the "Girthy Zombie"

Physical Size

Shrimpy

Story

Additional Locations

The Faithful Creek

Underground Tower

Catastrophe Grove

Random Events

Reindeer approaches

Softball Is throwing a BBQ

Box of Cigarette is robbed

Majestic Painting Adopts a nearby child

World

Stores

Lauren's Basket Couture

Santiago's Statuette Closet

Lloyd's Quill and Ink Beauty Stop

Davis's Glass Jars Emporium

Traps

Wall Blade

Poison Dart of Redemption

Objects

Basket children's replica

Quill and Ink that is glowing

Secret Statuette

Hidden Crossbow

Arrows of Redemption

Wand of Wonder

Target can be injured by magical fire, but it can’t kill him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Quinn Santiago "Wild Falafels" Merchant Limes Flashlights
Jaxson Lloyd "Little Lox" Mole Jazz Children's Stories
Grayson Cortez Tailor Acorns Plushies
Lauren Strickland Indifferent Mirrors Paper
Liam Davis Shadow Honey Flowers

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).