The Director Welcomes You

Skin, Election, Buffet, Spy.

#b6d099

Location

Arid, Chilly South Africa

Time of Day

19:39

Extraction Point

146 Miles E

Time to Complete

5 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Compact Lagoon to look for a suspect by the name "No Mongoose". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to uncover their plans. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A pool of blood at the Tempest".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Invisible Coin in your kit to help.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Madison Cortez

Alias

"No Mongoose"

Features

5' 1"

Heterochromia eyes

Faint curved scar / Right eye

Organization

The Department of Young Buffet

Emotions

Spiteful

Personality

Brightly Nervous

Motive

Disrupt the military justice for a wrong-doing

Bodyguard

Daniel the "Progressive Dwarf"

Physical Size

Limited

Story

Additional Locations

The Masochistic Festival

Underground Isle

Enjoyment Manor

Random Events

Beggar grabs a lady's purse

Whore Protests

Sewer Finds gold in the water

Dead Animal stop the party and asks questions

World

Stores

Greyson's Paperweight Emporium

Beck's Chair Emporium

Owens's Shirt Creative

Knight's Easel Unlimited

Traps

Flame Strike

Built-to-Collapse Wall of Delight

Objects

Paperweight that has been hollowed out

Shirt children's replica

Secret Chair

Hidden Magazine

Sword of Delight

Wand of Wonder

Target’s blood burn as bright as magnesium

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Camila Beck "King Waffles" Merchant Acorns Cartography
Vivian Owens "Blue Knuckles" Mole Slippers Cartography
Matthew Parks Farmer Money Fire
Greyson Manning Drummer Plushies Soup
Caroline Knight Bruised Cookies Tea

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).