The Director Welcomes You

Labs Royale

#b819a6

Location

Balmy, Cool Uzbekistan

Time of Day

5:31

Extraction Point

129 Miles E

Time to Complete

33 Hours

Shadows,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Kitchen knife made of heavy metal. Get to Uzbekistan at 19:01

Good Luck.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Alaina Davidson

Alias

"Five Owlman"

Features

4' 4"

Red eyes

A second belly button / Left middle finger

Organization

The Society of Stoned Gladiator

Emotions

Bored

Personality

Closely Delicious

Motive

Take over a government to become famous

Bodyguard

Simon the "Dire Beast"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Baleful Palace

Hidden Park

Weakness Isle

Random Events

VAT of Broth scurries by

Thief Catches leprosy

Dead Animal scurries by

Vagabond is heard screaming

World

Stores

Ezra's Kitchen knife Labs

Kim's Chair Specialities

Stewart's Certificate Logistics

Jimenez's Chair Technologies

Traps

Swinging Block

Large Net of Joy

Objects

Kitchen knife made of heavy metal

Certificate children's replica

Secret Chair

Hidden Club

Stave of Joy

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s clothes are burned to cinders, but he is unharmed

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ariel Kim "Right Toes" Merchant Lamps Cellphones
Brayden Stewart "Black Scars" Mole Cats Eggs
Rachel Christensen Zestful Physics Technology
Ezra Carrillo Broker Music Batteries
Bennett Jimenez Meteorologist Cartography Sponges

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).