The Director Welcomes You

The Obnoxiously Arid Agent

#388d02

Location

Sunny, Cool Armenia

Time of Day

12:40

Extraction Point

161 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

40 Hours

Meddlers,
It seems "Drowsy Beast" has gone level 2. They have been broadcasting this message "An out of place door appears at the Eye of Heaven". We need you to eliminate them, Obnoxiously. Their last known location was recorded at 05:16. You have a Polished Towel as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Skylar Butler

Alias

"Drowsy Beast"

Features

4' 2"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Right foot

Organization

The Community of Defeated Safety

Emotions

Indifferent

Personality

Obnoxiously Square

Motive

Make a lot of money out of survival

Bodyguard

Crystal the "Petite Dragon"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Arid Acropolis

Desolate Grove

Perspiration Castle

Random Events

Storm Spontaneously disintegrates

Chicken Is under a curse

Hoard is heard screaming

Swarm of Bees is heard screaming

World

Stores

Olivia's Painting Worldwide

Hart's Landscape Factory

Navarro's Trunk International

Rose's Bible Worldwide

Traps

Moving Executioner Statue

Ghoul Touch of Enjoyment

Objects

Painting that has been hollowed out

Trunk made of heavy metal

Secret Landscape

Hidden Boiled Leather

Pen of Enjoyment

Wand of Wonder

Next enemy to wound caster heroically defends him for 1d4 turns

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Eliana Hart "Left Spleens" Merchant Soup Sun Glasses
Melanie Navarro "Three Churros" Mole Trucks Comic Books
Ellie Francis Depressed Cats Bracelets
Olivia Ward Accountant Cousins Fire
Joshua Rose Exhausted Writers Whipped Cream

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).