The Director Welcomes You

The Boundary Mania Incident

#e9e58a

Location

Calm, Windless Russia

Time of Day

1:41

Extraction Point

41 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

8 Hours

Informants,
I have sent you to descend into Hidden Private Jet plane to look for a suspect by the name "Violet Pheonix". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to discover their location. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "An object nearby starts bleeding at the Eye of Heaven".

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

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Fiona Strickland

Alias

"Violet Pheonix"

Features

7' 5"

Heterochromia eyes

Large deep scar / Left middle finger

Organization

The Society of Boiling Bat

Emotions

Tenderness

Personality

Quarrelsomely Mushy

Motive

Take over a country to lust for power

Bodyguard

Donald the "Rabid Aardvark"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Freezing Carnival

Archaic Arcade

Indecision Grove

Random Events

Transport Spontaneously disintegrates

Procession Adopts a nearby child

Softball is being loudly arrested

Robber Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

World

Stores

Andrea's Butter Churner Outlet

Robles's Lamp Group

Richardson's Clamp Atelier

Norris's Crock Arcade

Traps

Arrow

Insanity Mist Vapor of Mania

Objects

Butter Churner that has been hollowed out

Clamp that is glowing

Secret Lamp

Hidden Sabre

Blades of Mania

Wand of Wonder

Target is suddenly sitting in the queen’s boudoir

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Brody Robles "Sharp Fingers" Merchant Potatoes Cellphones
Elias Richardson "Black Matzo Balls" Mole Christmas Slippers
Zoey Quinn Electrician Writers Soccer
Andrea Bauer Banker Doves Glass
Adeline Norris Hotel Manager Sharks Writers

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).