The Director Welcomes You

The Dramatically Immense Agent

#23a624

Location

Balmy, Warm Israel

Time of Day

10:39

Extraction Point

172 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

42 Hours

Eyeballs,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Telescope that has been hollowed out. Get to Israel at 12:01

Good Luck.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Madeline Soto

Alias

"Dull Aardvark"

Features

4' 1"

Heterochromia eyes

Faint curved scar / Left arm

Organization

The Society of Bankrupt Whistle

Emotions

Shamed

Personality

Dramatically Tragic

Motive

Disrupt the military for a love interest

Bodyguard

Philip the "Sovereign Hobgoblin"

Physical Size

Great

Story

Additional Locations

The Immense Villa

Bustling Shelter

Calamity Acropolis

Random Events

Milk Shipment Adopts a nearby child

Toilet Attempts to rob a bank

Thief is loose

Panhandler drops from the sky

World

Stores

Emerson's Telescope Logistics

McBride's Armoir Group

Carlson's Bookcase Ventures

Webster's Crock Properties

Traps

Flame Strike

Poison Needle of Casualties

Objects

Telescope that has been hollowed out

Bookcase that has been hollowed out

Secret Armoir

Hidden Ring

Diary of Casualties

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s age is doubled until sunrise tomorrow

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mya McBride "Casual Stomachs" Merchant Tea Doves
Jordan Carlson "Meaty Pretzels" Mole Cooking Harmonica
Carter Lawrence Surveyor Hamsters Soda
Emerson Wolf Accountant Trees Doors
Jonah Webster Flirty Cousins Soda

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).