The Director Welcomes You

The Jolly Rings Plight

#f2ae87

Location

Dark, Chilly Malta

Time of Day

7:15

Extraction Point

76 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

45 Hours

Spy Deputies,
I have sent you to the outside of a Underwater Villa to look for a suspect by the name "Red Kraken". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to disable the bomb. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A roll of thunder at the Rainbow Mountain".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Grayson Todd

Alias

"Red Kraken"

Features

7' 1"

Hazel eyes

Stretch Marks / Left eye

Organization

The Club of Wrapped Hen

Emotions

Relieved

Personality

Jubilantly High

Motive

Take over a government in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Charles the "Worn Succubus"

Physical Size

Paltry

Story

Additional Locations

The Jolly Citadel

Underground Business

Weakness Festival

Random Events

Building approaches

Box of Cigarette Protests

Pack of Wild Dogs drops from the sky

Midwife Gets their hand chopped off

World

Stores

Brandon's Wardrobe Wardrobe

White's Crock Bazaar

Henderson's Taxidermy animal Logistics

Nguyen's Candelabra Beauty Stop

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Chain Lightning of The Blackest Black

Objects

Wardrobe children's replica

Taxidermy animal made of heavy metal

Secret Crock

Hidden Trident

Polearm of The Blackest Black

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s voice seems to issue from some item he’s now carrying

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Elijah White "Mini Lemons" Merchant Bears Honey
Jocelyn Henderson "Short Matzo Balls" Mole Harmonica Potatoes
Jayden Erickson Geologist Chalk Christmas
Brandon Cohen Dentist Basketball Money
Kayla Nguyen Consultant Rubber Stamps Baseball

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).