The Director Welcomes You

The Nature Obsession Incident

#55a894

Location

Cool, Cloudy Georgia

Time of Day

3:27

Extraction Point

146 Miles NW

Time to Complete

48 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
It seems "No Porpoises" has gone level 7. They have been broadcasting this message "A shadow passes at the Stone Circle". We need you to eliminate them, Willfully. Their last known location was recorded at 02:02. You have a Clandestine Hammock as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Abigail Le

Alias

"No Porpoises"

Features

4' 8"

Red eyes

Large moles / Right hand

Organization

The Clique of Verdant The Pope

Emotions

Cautious

Personality

Willfully Revolting

Motive

Disrupt the military for fear of the heroes

Bodyguard

Billy the "Meaty Vampires"

Physical Size

Puny

Story

Additional Locations

The Rancid House

Deserted Creek

Silence Jungle

Random Events

Crowd chase a suspect

Dancer Is frozen into a block of ice

Crowd skins a cat with his teeth

Mutant Crashes slowly

World

Stores

Mateo's Fireplace Factory

Oliver's Creeping Vines Properties

Hines's Bookcase Closet

Hubbard's Sink Bazaar

Traps

Box of Brown Mold

Black Tentacles of Obsession

Objects

Fireplace children's replica

Bookcase made of heavy metal

Secret Creeping Vines

Hidden Sickle

Banana of Obsession

Wand of Wonder

Target’s weapon can’t pass through doorways

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Zion Oliver "Chunky Noses" Merchant Toilets Trucks
Addison Hines "Slow Churros" Mole Washing Machines Rubber Bands
Laila Shaw Flirty Chickens Soap
Mateo Zimmerman Frustrated Contracts Ice Cubes
Giovanni Hubbard Professional Bridesmaid Mirrors Mirrors

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).