The Director Welcomes You

The Boorish Poison Situation

#9a4841

Location

Rainy, Warm Eritrea

Time of Day

9:56

Extraction Point

3 Miles NW

Time to Complete

9 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
I have sent you to the inside of a Compact Reef to look for a suspect by the name "Fat Hedgehogs". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve the stolen intel. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A vagrant asks for food at the Stone Circle".

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

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Avery Hoffman

Alias

"Fat Hedgehogs"

Features

6' 3"

Brown eyes

Large deep scar / Right foot

Organization

The Authority of Surrogate Clamp

Emotions

Melancholy

Personality

Readily Creamy

Motive

Disrupt the military for a love interest

Bodyguard

Jack the "Jagged Rabbit"

Physical Size

Mini

Story

Additional Locations

The Boorish Acropolis

Touristy Forest

Vulnerability Citadel

Random Events

Diary Calls menacingly

Pickpocket gathers near a point of interest

Bear Spontaneously disintegrates

Druid Salutes the adventurers

World

Stores

Annabelle's Coat Labs

McGuire's Hat Labs

Blake's Loveseat International

Reyes's Footlocker Convenience store

Traps

Dropping Ceiling

Collapsing Column of Imperfection

Objects

Coat children's replica

Loveseat with a False bottom

Secret Hat

Hidden Frying Pan

Lance of Imperfection

Wand of Wonder

Target’s skin is as hard as bronze

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Bennett McGuire "Five Spleens" Merchant Snowglobes Sailboats
Elias Blake "Quiet Matzo Balls" Mole Tea Cookies
Kennedy Holt Judge Christmas Basketball
Annabelle Jordan Judge Soccer Broccoli
Valeria Reyes Surgeon Sharp Things Snowglobes

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).