The Director Welcomes You

Little shop Royale

#34b956

Location

Mild, Mild Argentina

Time of Day

19:44

Extraction Point

122 Miles NE

Time to Complete

40 Hours

Meddlers,
As you can see you are trapped inside climb a Underground Festival . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Italian Cyclops" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Rainbow Mountain". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Glowing File hidden on you.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Madeline Rice

Alias

"Italian Cyclops"

Features

6' 1"

Heterochromia eyes

Faint curved scar / Neck

Organization

The Board of Encrypted Buffet

Emotions

Self-conscious

Personality

Mortally Angry

Motive

Disrupt the military fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

Alex the "Bad Manticore"

Physical Size

Limited

Story

Additional Locations

The Drooping Creek

Deserted Tower

Calming Crypt

Random Events

Princess Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Renaissance Faire approaches

Bear Lunges at the group

Store Finds gold in the water

World

Stores

Liliana's Plaster Bust Little shop

Patterson's Trunk Technologies

Kennedy's Iron stove Productions

Ferguson's Skeletal Animal International

Traps

Burning Hands

Lightning Bolt of Skill

Objects

Plaster Bust that has been hollowed out

Iron stove made of heavy metal

Secret Trunk

Hidden Diary

Longsword of Skill

Wand of Wonder

Target is invisible while carrying 1d4 burning torches

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mia Patterson "Obese Cheesecakes" Merchant Comic Books Horses
Hudson Kennedy "All Muscles" Mole Hamsters Writers
Wesley Joseph Flirty Money Quartz Crystals
Liliana Cole Optimistic Peanut Butter Painting
King Ferguson Bruised Trees Honey

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).