The Director Welcomes You

The Officially Mossy Agent

#8c7861

Location

Dull, Sunny Costa Rica

Time of Day

19:19

Extraction Point

138 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

3 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
We need your help. Agent Sophia Bennett has gone missing and we believe "Indigo Sloth" is responsible. They were last seen in Costa Rica at 12:15. The agent sent one final message – "A shadow passes at the Garden of Bears". Take this Robotic Lamp - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Madeline Peters

Alias

"Indigo Sloth"

Features

4' 5"

Gray eyes

Large moles / Left foot

Organization

The Club of Bankrupt Tramp

Emotions

Confident

Personality

Officially Shy

Motive

Disrupt the military for pure destruction

Bodyguard

Carl the "Obnoxious Owlman"

Physical Size

Enormous

Story

Additional Locations

The Mossy Forest

Abandoned Forge

Disaster Arcade

Random Events

Soup emerges

Ninja Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Bard Becomes wounded

Hoard overflows

World

Stores

Olivia's Key Supermarket

Joseph's Flower in Vase Brothers

Flores's Flower in Vase Chic Chåteau

Bennett's Grandfather Clock Ventures

Traps

Built-to-Collapse Wall

Large Net of Endownment

Objects

Key with a False bottom

Flower in Vase children's replica

Secret Flower in Vase

Hidden Coin

Coif of Endownment

Wand of Wonder

Caster is stripped of monetary wealth except what he’s carrying

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Londyn Joseph "Sharp Elbows" Merchant Chili Shirts
Emerson Flores "Cramped Scars" Mole Sticky Notes Teeth
Sofia Burke Accountant Music Flowers
Olivia Morrison Artist Music Pillows
Sophia Bennett Veterinarian Butterflies Deodorant

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).