The Director Welcomes You

The Brief Effigy Occurrence

#3546ab

Location

Sunny, Breezy Kuwait

Time of Day

16:30

Extraction Point

115 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

39 Hours

Eyeballs,
It seems "Nice Python" has gone level 4. They have been broadcasting this message "A roll of thunder at the Ancient Fountain". We need you to eliminate them, Always. Their last known location was recorded at 06:13. You have a Colorful Bikini as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Sophia Ferguson

Alias

"Nice Python"

Features

5' 10"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Right thumb

Organization

The Board of Insolent Crib

Emotions

Tender

Personality

Always Sweet

Motive

Take over a government for sibling rivalry

Bodyguard

Juan the "Massive Giraffe"

Physical Size

Narrow

Story

Additional Locations

The Brief House

Underwater Pond

Violence Carnival

Random Events

Spectator Integrates silently into the group

Chauvinist screams at the top of their lungs

Fairy drops from the sky

Soup meets disaster

World

Stores

Steven's Paperweight Brothers

Logan's Candelabra Specialities

Obrien's Ceramic Crock Supermarket

Austin's Faberge Egg Industries

Traps

Bear Trap

Incendiary Cloud of Oblivion

Objects

Paperweight with a False bottom

Ceramic Crock made of heavy metal

Secret Candelabra

Hidden Notebook

Knife of Oblivion

Wand of Wonder

Water in this area boils at 70° Fahrenheit

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jace Logan "Green Forearms" Merchant Butterflies Tea
Vivian Obrien "All Pretzels" Mole Trees Doors
Katherine Perry Judge Balloons Easter
Steven Wolfe Zestful Houses Lipstick
Henry Austin Frazzled Writers 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).