The Director Welcomes You

The Sternly Girthy Agent

#65ac6d

Location

Rainy, Dry Zimbabwe

Time of Day

18:53

Extraction Point

27 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Informants,
As you can see you are trapped inside circle a Underwater Missile Launch Site . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Chunky Pheonix" is responsible and they sent us this message - "The earth shakes briefly at the old bridge". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Feminine Lamp hidden on you.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Emerson Burton

Alias

"Chunky Pheonix"

Features

6' 10"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Right eye

Organization

The Agency of Repulsive Donkey

Emotions

Scornful

Personality

Sternly Important

Motive

Take over a country for pure destruction

Bodyguard

Jessica the "Mandatory Zombie"

Physical Size

Minuscule

Story

Additional Locations

The Girthy Maze

Expensive Lodge

Euphoria Shelter

Random Events

Potato Is being tortured

Procession Skips merrily

Crow Is under a curse

Nomad approaches

World

Stores

Margaret's Bottle Warehouse

Padilla's Diary Warehouse

Moss's Bonsai Supermarket

Rice's Butter Churner Logistics

Traps

Phantasmal Killer

Ceiling Pendulum of Expiration

Objects

Bottle made of heavy metal

Bonsai with a False bottom

Secret Diary

Hidden Watch

Medallion of Expiration

Wand of Wonder

Caster can teleport at will but loses 1d100 hit points each time

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Eden Padilla "Gross Pastrami's" Merchant Jigsaw Puzzles Houses
Zayden Moss "Bullet Eyes" Mole Scarves Gym Memberships
Judy Kennedy Animator Teeth Sticks
Margaret Murray Geologist Bears Sponges
Violet Rice Vision Lamps Cartography

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).