The Director Welcomes You

The Sparse Lunch Cryptogram

#e2529d

Location

Stormy, Windless Myanmar

Time of Day

6:16

Extraction Point

108 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

5 Hours

Informants,
I have sent you to the top of a Touristy Palace to look for a suspect by the name "Cramped Zombie". This mission is black ops. 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 – "A shrine is nearby at the Great Shadow".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Polished Can Opener in your kit to help.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Cole Hale

Alias

"Cramped Zombie"

Features

4' 2"

Blue eyes

Stretch Marks / Left arm

Organization

The Unit of Repulsive Breasts

Emotions

Depressed

Personality

Carelessly Orange

Motive

Make a lot of money to better Humanity

Bodyguard

Jack the "Deafening Banshee"

Physical Size

Hefty

Story

Additional Locations

The Sparse Villa

Overpopulated Carnival

Ruin Villa

Random Events

Woman screams at the top of their lungs

Gunshot Adopts a nearby child

Wedding Cake explodes

Husband Is accused by the law

World

Stores

Xander's Ceramic Crock Productions

Joseph's Bell Threads

Le's Stamp Set Productions

Martin's Vanity Logistics

Traps

Reverse Gravity

Rolling Rock of Freshness

Objects

Ceramic Crock children's replica

Stamp Set that is glowing

Secret Bell

Hidden Bottle

Pike of Freshness

Wand of Wonder

The entire area is blasted as if a huge conflagration has passed

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Elise Joseph "Casual Falafels" Merchant Tissues Rabbits
Jameson Le "Sharp Noses" Mole Trees Broccoli
Joel Olson Counselor Cousins Cartography
Xander Caldwell Angry Bears Houses
Emily Martin Envious Squirrels Death

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).