The Director Welcomes You

Chain, Sphincter, Curmudgeon, Spy.

#5d9f3a

Location

Dry, Breezy Bangladesh

Time of Day

21:42

Extraction Point

136 Miles SW

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Scrutinizers,
It seems "Mad Platypuses" has gone level 5. They have been broadcasting this message "The group finds a random cow at the giants footsteps". We need you to eliminate them, Loudly. Their last known location was recorded at 16:04. You have a Vicious Cake as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Sydney Snyder

Alias

"Mad Platypuses"

Features

7' 11"

Blue eyes

Large moles / Left arm

Organization

The Alliance of Helpless Curmudgeon

Emotions

Envious

Personality

Loudly White

Motive

Take over a government to save humanity

Bodyguard

Harold the "White Pixie"

Physical Size

Young

Story

Additional Locations

The Skinny Carnival

Pitch Black House

Competency Business

Random Events

Crow Lunges at the group

Vagrant Is being detained

Chauvinist Becomes wounded

Bank Bounces oddly

World

Stores

Avery's Paperweight Atelier

Nguyen's Glass Jars Labs

Mullins's Shelf of alcohol Wardrobe

Crawford's Kitchen knife Factory

Traps

Ice lock

Symbol of Hypnosis of Contentment

Objects

Paperweight that has been hollowed out

Shelf of alcohol with a False bottom

Secret Glass Jars

Hidden Sabre

Boomerang of Contentment

Wand of Wonder

No matter how far the caster travels today, he winds up here

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Marcus Nguyen "Fat Pretzels" Merchant Sharp Things Acorns
Kaylee Mullins "No Cappuccinos" Mole Photography Butterflies
Messiah Hampton Midwife Jazz Water
Avery James Depressed Technology Pillows
Jasmine Crawford Old Timer Gym Memberships Eggs

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).