The Director Welcomes You

Labs Royale

#7138a4

Location

Calm, Foul China

Time of Day

6:41

Extraction Point

82 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

40 Hours

Investigators,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Bonsai made of heavy metal. Get to China at 08:09

Good Luck.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Callie Dixon

Alias

"Dull Bull"

Features

5' 6"

Amber eyes

Large moles / Right arm

Organization

The Community of Hot Pincer

Emotions

Hurt

Personality

Sympathetically Didactic

Motive

Take over a government to be left alone

Bodyguard

Charles the "Scaley Worm"

Physical Size

Minuscule

Story

Additional Locations

The Rapping Forge

Polluted Business

Obsession Festival

Random Events

Crowd Is throwing a protest

Dozen Eggs Strikes the church bell

Carcass is being loudly arrested

Chunk of Beef Is accused by the law

World

Stores

Luis's Bonsai Labs

Weaver's Basket Solutions

Sanders's Hatrack Atelier

Burke's Flower in Vase Little shop

Traps

Blade Barrier

Reverse Gravity of Pleasure

Objects

Bonsai made of heavy metal

Hatrack with a False bottom

Secret Basket

Hidden Collar

Lighter of Pleasure

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s face turns to wood

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Elijah Weaver "Mad Parmigianas" Merchant Hamsters Trucks
Kaylee Sanders "Fast Waffles" Mole Toilets Shirts
Edward Zimmerman Dead Tired Coffee Technology
Luis Dixon Psychiatrist Singing Shirts
Nova Burke Art Therapist Soup Doors

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).