The Director Welcomes You

The Dragon Ruin Incident

#df1ca3

Location

Arid, Hot Grenada

Time of Day

19:6

Extraction Point

85 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Ambassadors,
As you can see you are trapped inside within earshot of a Archaic Water Park . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Small Platypuses" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A thick fog rolls in at the Eye of Heaven". Your mission was anti-surveillance, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Fluffy Lighter hidden on you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Iris Holt

Alias

"Small Platypuses"

Features

4' 5"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Left foot

Organization

The Bureau of Curved Law

Emotions

Panicked

Personality

Briskly Loquacious

Motive

Take over a country to corrupt everyone

Bodyguard

Emily the "Defeated Demon"

Physical Size

Great

Story

Additional Locations

The Huge Island

Underground Carnival

Doom Citadel

Random Events

Bag of Flour Ignites violently

Demon Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Butter Shipment Bounces oddly

Cookie Is hurled at the adventurers

World

Stores

Alina's Flower in Vase Wardrobe

Campbell's Statue Discount

Baldwin's Notebook Warehouse

Mann's Bell Hole

Traps

Large Net

Hail of Needles of Ruin

Objects

Flower in Vase made of heavy metal

Notebook that is glowing

Secret Statue

Hidden Lance

Notebook of Ruin

Wand of Wonder

Target’s arms spin like propellers until he’s hit by magic

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Chloe Campbell "Drowsy Boy" Merchant Deodorant Music
Calvin Baldwin "Quiet Cappuccinos" Mole Sailboats Water
Charlotte Wong Dietitian Horses Snowglobes
Alina Byrd Ghost Money Harmonica
Benjamin Mann Graphic Designer Notes Doves

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).