The Director Welcomes You

The Fastidious Reward Riddle

#ccfe64

Location

Mild, Rainy Vietnam

Time of Day

19:49

Extraction Point

103 Miles E

Time to Complete

27 Hours

Meddlers,
As you can see you are trapped inside enter a Rundown Palace . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Meaty Dragon" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A traveling merchant appears at the Unicorn Nest". Your mission was anti-surveillance, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Colorful Lamp hidden on you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Leonardo Burton

Alias

"Meaty Dragon"

Features

5' 11"

Hazel eyes

Large deep scar / Right foot

Organization

The Fraternity of Gregorian Frame

Emotions

Weary

Personality

Furiously Boiled

Motive

Take over a country for pure destruction

Bodyguard

Prince the "Bad Hyena"

Physical Size

Minute

Story

Additional Locations

The Fastidious Maze

Bustling Circus

Reservation Jungle

Random Events

Meteor Is under a curse

Dozen Eggs Calls menacingly

Gallon of Trash scurries by

Alligator scurries by

World

Stores

Mary's Vase Outlet

Bauer's crutch Supermarket

Olson's Trunk Collective

Olson's Potted Plant Chic Chåteau

Traps

Acid Arrow

Swinging Block of Delight

Objects

Vase children's replica

Trunk that has been hollowed out

Secret crutch

Hidden Stave

Bracelet of Delight

Wand of Wonder

Next enemy wounded by caster will resurrect 24 hours after death

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jasmine Bauer "Small Boy" Merchant Fire Clocks
Adam Olson "Stiff Dumplings" Mole Tigers Houses
Xavier Kramer Weakened Honey Dice
Mary Hernandez Musician Bread Doves
Rachel Olson Judge Rabbits Jazz

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).