The Director Welcomes You

The Knife Endownment Protocol

#e5288e

Location

Rainy, Foggy Greece

Time of Day

13:13

Extraction Point

172 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

13 Hours

Informants,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Landscape that has been hollowed out. Get to Greece at 24:06

Good Luck.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Samantha Todd

Alias

"Big Koalas"

Features

6' 8"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Right thumb

Organization

The Union of Screeching Frame

Emotions

Enthusiastic

Personality

Awkwardly Puckish

Motive

Disrupt the military to become the best

Bodyguard

Donald the "Loose Sea Lion"

Physical Size

Substantial

Story

Additional Locations

The Poor Arcade

Archaic Castle

Delight Palace

Random Events

Bellhop catches on fire

Pine Branch Is getting confiscated

Building Lunges at the group

Box of Mice Integrates silently into the group

World

Stores

Chase's Landscape Outlet

Reese's Spice shelf Ventures

Roberts's Tea Set Atelier

Salinas's Large book Bureau

Traps

Ice lock

Incendiary Cloud of Endownment

Objects

Landscape that has been hollowed out

Tea Set that has been hollowed out

Secret Spice shelf

Hidden Shoe

Diary of Endownment

Wand of Wonder

Caster flees this spot and can’t return for at least one year

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Colton Reese "Meaty Pinky's" Merchant Snowglobes Sharp Things
Everly Roberts "Stiff Heels" Mole Water Deodorant
Mason Hill Fortune Cookie Writer Bracelets Lamps
Chase Greene Librarian Coffee Hammers
Claire Salinas Dead Tired Bells Video Games

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).