The Director Welcomes You

Flavor, Basketball, Engine, Spy.

#fb9af6

Location

Miserable, Overcast Botswana

Time of Day

0:37

Extraction Point

163 Miles W

Time to Complete

38 Hours

Ambassadors,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Mural that has been hollowed out. Get to Botswana at 01:16

Good Luck.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Angelina Hodges

Alias

"King child"

Features

6' 1"

Gray eyes

Large moles / Left foot

Organization

The Order of Grumpy Engine

Emotions

Revulsion

Personality

Hastily Regal

Motive

Take over a government to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

Juan the "Brave Ogre"

Physical Size

Mini

Story

Additional Locations

The Thankful Circus

Overpopulated Lagoon

Endownment Spring

Random Events

Deadbeat Is being kidnapped

Crazy Man Is accused by the law

Meteor Balances on a ledge

Crazy Man Adopts a nearby child

World

Stores

Alina's Mural Atelier

Woods's Pedestal Consulting

Turner's Canopy Bed Emporium

Roberts's Creeping Vines Technologies

Traps

Flooded Corridor

Built-to-Collapse Wall of Fate

Objects

Mural that has been hollowed out

Canopy Bed that has been hollowed out

Secret Pedestal

Hidden Goblet

Newspaper of Fate

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s clothes are stripped of any and all enchantments

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jose Woods "Bullet Forearms" Merchant Money Cats
Elise Turner "Five Hearts" Mole Paperclips Sharp Things
Julianna Wang Butcher Horses Coffee
Alina Walker Sad Rock n' Roll Cooking
Easton Roberts Mechanic Sharks Gym Memberships

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).