The Director Welcomes You

The Sadly Rancid Agent

#08fdbc

Location

Cool, Calm Madagascar

Time of Day

7:8

Extraction Point

66 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

36 Hours

Shadows,
I have sent you to be locked inside of a Expensive Casino to look for a suspect by the name "Red Doppelganger". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A shrine is nearby at the Grove of Weeping Willows".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Heavy Cake in your kit to help.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Calvin Lawrence

Alias

"Red Doppelganger"

Features

5' 8"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Right middle finger

Organization

The Agency of Mysterious Artist

Emotions

Sympathy

Personality

Sadly Melodic

Motive

Take over a country because of grief and loss

Bodyguard

Peter the "Jagged Serpent"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Rancid Chateau

Touristy Villa

Vulnerability House

Random Events

Demon Is being kidnapped

Chunk of Beef Skips merrily

Biscuit Gets their hand chopped off

Drunk Finds gold in the water

World

Stores

Grace's Toolset International

Warren's Hose Solutions

Pierce's Satchel Hole

Bowen's Platter Threads

Traps

Portcullis

Poison Dart of Laughter

Objects

Toolset made of heavy metal

Satchel that is glowing

Secret Hose

Hidden Guthook

Targe of Laughter

Wand of Wonder

Next weapon nearby to draw blood imparts visions of perdition

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Rhett Warren "Golden Heels" Merchant Video Games Honey
Jordan Pierce "White Elbows" Mole Christmas Horses
Morgan Freeman Zestful Stickers Flashlights
Grace Patterson Librarian Music Candy
Josephine Bowen Plumber Cooking Sticks

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).