The Director Welcomes You

The Meaningfully Tart Agent

#191fa4

Location

Rainy, Balmy Papua New Guinea

Time of Day

16:52

Extraction Point

102 Miles N

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Agents,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Pitch Black Forest to look for a suspect by the name "Italian The Grim Reaper". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to find where their funding is coming from. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a dead fish at the Ghost Town".

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

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kai Harrington

Alias

"Italian The Grim Reaper"

Features

5' 8"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Left foot

Organization

The League of Chubby Economics

Emotions

Regretful

Personality

Meaningfully Late

Motive

Make a lot of money for a love interest

Bodyguard

Oscar the "Obedient all-seeing eye"

Physical Size

Mini

Story

Additional Locations

The Tart Pond

Ancient Palace

Ruin Crypt

Random Events

Potato Becomes wounded

Horse Carriage Skips merrily

Majestic Painting Is under a curse

Gallon of Trash Glistens gently

World

Stores

Jasper's Trunk Group

Kramer's Crate Emporium

Cruz's Clamp Labs

Ingram's Bicycle Supermarket

Traps

Hail of Needles

Ceiling Pendulum of Disaster

Objects

Trunk that has been hollowed out

Clamp children's replica

Secret Crate

Hidden Polearm

Pants of Disaster

Wand of Wonder

Caster shuns the use of weapons that contain ferrous metal

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mariah Kramer "Four Lungs" Merchant Soccer Rubber Bands
Bentley Cruz "King Eyes" Mole Chili Syrup
Isaiah Rowe Dentist Christmas Cats
Jasper Sims Human Statue Easter Chili
Ava Ingram Psychiatrist Contracts Potatoes

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).