The Director Welcomes You

The Product Euthanasia Protocol

#badb4b

Location

Humid, Stormy Brazil

Time of Day

6:1

Extraction Point

126 Miles N

Time to Complete

31 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
I have sent you to be locked inside of a Abandoned Acropolis to look for a suspect by the name "Quiet Gnome". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A white horse dashes past at the Broken Face".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Leilani Lambert

Alias

"Quiet Gnome"

Features

5' 10"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Left foot

Organization

The Society of Lemon Phone

Emotions

Disoriented

Personality

Warmly Boned

Motive

Make a lot of money out of greed

Bodyguard

Jackie the "Melted Sea Lion"

Physical Size

Puny

Story

Additional Locations

The Thoughtless Maze

Rundown Maze

Destruction Carnival

Random Events

Mutant is loose

Box of Mice Integrates silently into the group

Milk Shipment skins a cat with his teeth

Swarm of Bees Is hurled at the adventurers

World

Stores

Nathaniel's Candelabra Atelier

Romero's Picture Frame Factory

Brooks's Bicycle Productions

Clarke's Drawers Boutique

Traps

Bear Trap

Scything Blade of Euthanasia

Objects

Candelabra with a False bottom

Bicycle that has been hollowed out

Secret Picture Frame

Hidden Helmet

Cat of Euthanasia

Wand of Wonder

Target won’t be able to sleep in the next 1d100 days

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
James Romero "Stiff Parmigianas" Merchant Bracelets Writers
John Brooks "One Spleens" Mole Dice Gym Memberships
Dylan Mitchell Chef Sharks Octopus
Nathaniel Walters Envious Bells Cooking
Emery Clarke Paramedic Singing Doves

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).