The Director Welcomes You

The Bumpy Tree Enigma

#1034cf

Location

Windless, Dry Brunei

Time of Day

18:53

Extraction Point

162 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

3 Hours

Informants,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Bottle children's replica. Get to Brunei at 17:17

Good Luck.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Penelope Buchanan

Alias

"Meaty Imp"

Features

4' 3"

Hazel eyes

Faint curved scar / Right foot

Organization

The Office of Quiet Log Cabin

Emotions

Isolated

Personality

Joyously Wrong

Motive

Take over a country because they straight up craycray

Bodyguard

Jose the "Deep Dwarf"

Physical Size

Poor

Story

Additional Locations

The Bumpy Maze

Deserted Carnival

Demise Maze

Random Events

Bag of Flour Finds gold in the water

Softball Is hurled at the adventurers

Bottle of Soy Sauce Is under a curse

Wedding Cake Calls menacingly

World

Stores

Paige's Bottle Arcade

Salazar's Brass Replica Wardrobe

McDaniel's Pair of Statues Beauty Stop

Tyler's Telescope Warehouse

Traps

Burning Hands

Portcullis of Death

Objects

Bottle children's replica

Pair of Statues that is glowing

Secret Brass Replica

Hidden Lance

Pike of Death

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s left arm doubles in length; right arm shrinks by 50%

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ethan Salazar "No Cappuccinos" Merchant Flashlights Paperclips
Nicole McDaniel "Cramped Ribs" Mole Acorns Lipstick
Alex Newman Athlete Peanut Butter Cookies
Paige Hanson Cobbler Bracelets Paperclips
Rowan Tyler Counselor Television Money

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).