The Director Welcomes You

Who is Joseph Advertisement?

#2054bc

Location

Stormy, Balmy East Timor

Time of Day

2:50

Extraction Point

90 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

14 Hours

Detectives,
I have sent you to fly above a Expensive City to look for a suspect by the name "Five Banshee". This mission is black bag. 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 – "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Apple Orchard".

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

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ashton Burton

Alias

"Five Banshee"

Features

7' 5"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Crotch

Organization

The Order of Mecha Quarter

Emotions

Intrigued

Personality

Bitterly Portly

Motive

Make a lot of money to cause catastrophe

Bodyguard

Joseph the "Massive Platypuses"

Physical Size

Adult

Story

Additional Locations

The Tropical Shelter

Desolate Villa

Fragility Jungle

Random Events

Safe Is getting confiscated

Pack of Wild Dogs meets disaster

Gypsy Is being tortured

Delivery Guy Skips merrily

World

Stores

Noah's Spice shelf Department store

Daniels's Taxidermy animal Logistics

Fisher's Mantle Discount

Brewer's Bureau Hole

Traps

Poison Dart

Ray of Sickness of Ice

Objects

Spice shelf children's replica

Mantle that has been hollowed out

Secret Taxidermy animal

Hidden Bangle

File of Ice

Wand of Wonder

Anyone nearby wielding a wooden weapon offers it to the target

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kaiden Daniels "Black Scars" Merchant Rock n' Roll Jazz
Giovanni Fisher "Tough Livers" Mole Fire Television
Lauren Leon Stressed Potatoes Sponges
Noah Ramirez Talent agent Cellphones Death
Ethan Brewer Human Statue Flowers Painting

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).