The Director Welcomes You

Group Royale

#175705

Location

Chilly, Wet Argentina

Time of Day

16:31

Extraction Point

131 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

48 Hours

Scrutinizers,
I have sent you to enter a Underground Grove to look for a suspect by the name "Sharp Pixie". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A pool of blood at the dry riverbed".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Dull Pair of Gloves in your kit to help.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Presley Willis

Alias

"Sharp Pixie"

Features

4' 1"

Red eyes

Small mole / Left arm

Organization

The Committee of Ruminating Acid

Emotions

Bitter

Personality

Inquisitively Red

Motive

Take over a government for a love interest

Bodyguard

Chuckie the "Portly Kangaroos"

Physical Size

Lanky

Story

Additional Locations

The Feckless City

Bustling Sanctuary

Rage Grove

Random Events

Renaissance Faire gathers near a point of interest

Herd of Chicken meets disaster

Whore strikes the ground

Squirrel arrives in the mail

World

Stores

Mason's Oil Lamp Group

Green's Stool Boutique

Hartman's Kitchen knife Discount

Barton's Quill and Ink Worldwide

Traps

Collapsing Column

Suspicious door with lock of Joy

Objects

Oil Lamp that is glowing

Kitchen knife with a False bottom

Secret Stool

Hidden Coif

Blindfold of Joy

Wand of Wonder

Caster can speak in a whisper to anyone in his line of sight

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Sawyer Green "Short Scars" Merchant Cousins Toilets
Peyton Hartman "No Parmigianas" Mole Whipped Cream Tigers
Brantley Gonzales Annoyed Paper Mirrors
Mason Kelly Art Therapist Tissues Paper
Esther Barton Architect Soda Houses

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).