The Director Welcomes You

The Loyally Holy Agent

#ee721a

Location

Mild, Cool Bahrain

Time of Day

17:51

Extraction Point

163 Miles E

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
I have sent you to the inside of a Underwater Castle to look for a suspect by the name "Five Banshee". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A roll of thunder at the Top of the carousel wheel".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Bulbous Paint Brush in your kit to help.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Andrew Paul

Alias

"Five Banshee"

Features

4' 9"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Left foot

Organization

The Association of Calm Week

Emotions

Weary

Personality

Loyally Mammoth

Motive

Take over a government out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Crystal the "Obedient Manticore"

Physical Size

Sizable

Story

Additional Locations

The Holy Business

Bustling Carnival

Animosity Spring

Random Events

Store Calls menacingly

Gypsy Bursts loudly

Bear catches on fire

Meteor Gets their hand chopped off

World

Stores

Jason's Plaster Bust Productions

Wang's Credenza Hole

Ball's Spare brick Industries

Porter's Ceramic Crock Discount

Traps

Swinging Block

Bricks from Ceiling of Death

Objects

Plaster Bust that has been hollowed out

Spare brick that has been hollowed out

Secret Credenza

Hidden Spikes

Glasses of Death

Wand of Wonder

Target’s weapon induces a fear of magic in anyone wounded by it

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Messiah Wang "Casual Parmigianas" Merchant Squirrels Plushies
Maya Ball "All Stomachs" Mole Mirrors Bells
Gabriel Hart Lawyer Rubber Stamps Christmas
Jason Gray Exhausted Lions Painting
Juliana Porter Judge Tea Paper

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).