The Director Welcomes You

The Burn Delight Incident

#8eb67a

Location

Foul, Windless Peru

Time of Day

6:57

Extraction Point

169 Miles E

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Examiners,
We need your help. Agent Amaya Gardner has gone missing and we believe "All Hedgehogs" is responsible. They were last seen in Peru at 13:13. The agent sent one final message – "A thick fog rolls in at the Wizard's Scar". Take this Light Spoon - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Santiago Armstrong

Alias

"All Hedgehogs"

Features

6' 4"

Red eyes

A second belly button / Crotch

Organization

The Association of Good Death

Emotions

Interested

Personality

Verbally Empty

Motive

Take over a country to better Humanity

Bodyguard

Christopher the "Sweltering Platypuses"

Physical Size

Little

Story

Additional Locations

The Wet Spring

Bustling Port

Extermination Jungle

Random Events

Goblet Finds gold in the water

Carcass strikes the ground

Box of Mice Catches leprosy

Cauldron Integrates silently into the group

World

Stores

Nathan's Drawers Collective

Logan's Flowers Growing Wardrobe

Sparks's Clamp Factory

Gardner's Sink Market

Traps

Swinging Block

Fireball of Delight

Objects

Drawers children's replica

Clamp made of heavy metal

Secret Flowers Growing

Hidden Polearm

Stave of Delight

Wand of Wonder

Target’s nose looks like a small, clenched fist

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Sadie Logan "Dull Throats" Merchant Easter Soccer
Payton Sparks "Quiet Pinky's" Mole Bears Butterflies
Brantley Campbell Indifferent Tea Plushies
Nathan Wells Zestful Contracts Notes
Amaya Gardner Veterinarian Flowers Paper

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).