The Director Welcomes You

Who is Jessica Collar?

#72d02e

Location

Dry, Mild Hungary

Time of Day

9:29

Extraction Point

91 Miles SW

Time to Complete

47 Hours

Detectives,
We need your help. Agent Zoey Manning has gone missing and we believe "Four Eel" is responsible. They were last seen in Hungary at 03:19. The agent sent one final message – "Tracks of wolves can be seen at the ruined castle". Take this Dull Tissues - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jonathan Pope

Alias

"Four Eel"

Features

7' 2"

Gray eyes

Small mole / Right foot

Organization

The League of Nutritious Women

Emotions

Revulsion

Personality

Kissingly Nervous

Motive

Disrupt the military to save humanity

Bodyguard

Jessica the "Faithful Roc"

Physical Size

Meager

Story

Additional Locations

The Holy Circus

Hidden Fortress

Bitterness Castle

Random Events

Fairy Glistens gently

Sewer screams at the top of their lungs

Pine Branch is robbed

Cookie Is frozen into a block of ice

World

Stores

Oscar's Statue International

Haynes's Pipe Industries

Blair's Quill and Ink Beauty Stop

Manning's Music Box Logistics

Traps

Burning Hands

Fire of Oblivion

Objects

Statue made of heavy metal

Quill and Ink children's replica

Secret Pipe

Hidden Glasses

Staff of Oblivion

Wand of Wonder

Target single-mindedly tries to kill the caster until one is dead

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Alice Haynes "Mini Hearts" Merchant Whipped Cream Pillows
Jason Blair "No Toes" Mole Robots Soup
Benjamin Lyons Drummer Gym Memberships Cats
Oscar Figueroa Vision Glitter Eggs
Zoey Manning Secretary Television Sun Glasses

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).