The Director Welcomes You

The Artist Influence Protocol

#85cb24

Location

Cloudless, Balmy Honduras

Time of Day

21:1

Extraction Point

87 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Agents,
I have sent you to climb a Underwater Carousal to look for a suspect by the name "The Sloth". 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 lone flower growing at the Where grass will not grow".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Richard Stone

Alias

"The Sloth"

Features

6' 11"

Brown eyes

Small mole / Right eye

Organization

The Clique of Extensive Vessel

Emotions

Resentful

Personality

Worriedly Slow

Motive

Take over a country to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

Jose the "Facetious Minotaur"

Physical Size

Teeny

Story

Additional Locations

The Angry Island

Abandoned Arcade

Obliteration Shelter

Random Events

Chicken Is frozen into a block of ice

Swarm of Bees Is getting confiscated

Woman runs over an infant

Squirrel Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

World

Stores

Grayson's Candelabra Unlimited

Hanson's Wardrobe Industries

Wang's Barrel Market

Christensen's Potted Plant Beauty Stop

Traps

Black Tentacles

Acid Fog of Influence

Objects

Candelabra made of heavy metal

Barrel made of heavy metal

Secret Wardrobe

Hidden Coin

Coin of Influence

Wand of Wonder

If caster is wearing a magic ring, that hand looks like a claw

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jordyn Hanson "White Boy" Merchant Notes Lions
Dylan Wang "Wild Pinky's" Mole Water Paper
Xander Hampton Barber Stickers Trees
Grayson Sanders Frazzled Butterflies Candy
Oscar Christensen Hotel Manager Acorns Sticky Notes

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).