The Director Welcomes You

Mouth, Community, Burn, Spy.

#c64941

Location

Miserable, Foul Jordan

Time of Day

16:31

Extraction Point

124 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

30 Hours

Shadows,
We need your help. Agent Nicholas Douglas has gone missing and we believe "White Whale" is responsible. They were last seen in Jordan at 05:11. The agent sent one final message – "An object nearby starts bleeding at the Three Fingers". Take this Clandestine Candle - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Brandon Ross

Alias

"White Whale"

Features

4' 3"

Heterochromia eyes

Faint curved scar / Left thumb

Organization

The Society of Icy Burn

Emotions

Amused

Personality

Weekly Spicy

Motive

Disrupt the military out of survival

Bodyguard

Darnell the "Powerful mammoth"

Physical Size

Minute

Story

Additional Locations

The Surrogate Island

Compact House

Darkness Lake

Random Events

Prostitute is robbed

Safe skins a cat with his teeth

Chicken Catches leprosy

Woman chase a suspect

World

Stores

William's Vanity Solutions

Mann's Diary Wardrobe

Lowe's Bicycle Group

Douglas's Coat Outlet

Traps

Acid Fog

Extended Bane of Indecision

Objects

Vanity that is glowing

Bicycle children's replica

Secret Diary

Hidden Bangle

Longsword of Indecision

Wand of Wonder

Once per day, caster can cause his spellbook to ignite

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Lucia Mann "Three Toes" Merchant Glitter Teeth
Jordan Lowe "Five Throats" Mole Robots Socks
Grant White Acupuncturist Fire Boxes
William Robbins Counselor Bread Balloons
Nicholas Douglas Police Officer Basketball Rubber Stamps

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).