The Director Welcomes You

Who is Sam Burn?

#683f96

Location

Foul, Breezy Vietnam

Time of Day

23:43

Extraction Point

81 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

41 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Overpopulated Spring to look for a suspect by the name "Gross Sloth". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to slow them down. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "An object nearby starts bleeding at the Eye of Heaven".

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

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Teagan Kelley

Alias

"Gross Sloth"

Features

5' 11"

Green eyes

A second belly button / Right middle finger

Organization

The Alliance of Cold Brunch

Emotions

Trusting

Personality

Truthfully Baked

Motive

Take over a government to be left alone

Bodyguard

Sam the "Sticky Banshee"

Physical Size

Minuscule

Story

Additional Locations

The Extended Lake

Ancient Reef

Calming Shelter

Random Events

Spectator Spontaneously disintegrates

Mutant Is hurled at the adventurers

Biscuit arrives in the mail

Alligator emerges

World

Stores

Anastasia's Candelabra Couture

Gregory's Pipe Specialities

Dominguez's Quill and Ink Properties

Ross's Loveseat Productions

Traps

Bricks from Ceiling

Incendiary Cloud of Pleasure

Objects

Candelabra children's replica

Quill and Ink made of heavy metal

Secret Pipe

Hidden Helmet

Cutlass of Pleasure

Wand of Wonder

Caster disgorges a ring full of keys that don’t fit any lock

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Richard Gregory "Three Ribs" Merchant Acorns Glitter
Adrian Dominguez "Stiff Throats" Mole Soup Soccer
Brielle Cummings Dead Tired Balloons Glass
Anastasia Delgado Vision Butterflies Chili
Robert Ross Blacksmith Chickens Batteries

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).