The Director Welcomes You

The Dead Daytime Tv Quest

#aaa275

Location

Warm, Overcast Portugal

Time of Day

4:22

Extraction Point

137 Miles SW

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Scrutinizers,
I have sent you to underneathe a Polluted Citadel to look for a suspect by the name "Dull Succubus". This mission is counterintelligence. 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 white horse dashes past at the Skull shaped island".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Fluffy Chewing Gum in your kit to help.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Bailey Hale

Alias

"Dull Succubus"

Features

5' 2"

Blue eyes

Large deep scar / Right thumb

Organization

The Committee of Boned Plumwine

Emotions

Bitter

Personality

Reassuringly Surly

Motive

Take over a government for fear of the heroes

Bodyguard

Anthony the "Famous Demon"

Physical Size

Hefty

Story

Additional Locations

The Dead Carnival

Bustling Isle

Imperfection Carousal

Random Events

Chanting Cult Gets their hand chopped off

Box of Mice emerges

Corncob Becomes wounded

Soup drops from the sky

World

Stores

Luke's Bureau Creative

Burton's Mirror International

Lawson's Armoir Outlet

Douglas's Clamp Factory

Traps

Box of Brown Mold

Hail of Needles of Happiness

Objects

Bureau that is glowing

Armoir children's replica

Secret Mirror

Hidden Nipple Clamp

Polearm of Happiness

Wand of Wonder

All teeth within 50 yards are as black as coal for 1d4 weeks

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Elena Burton "Golden Legs" Merchant Sharp Things Fire
Nova Lawson "Gross Boy" Mole Soap Tigers
Reagan Brooks Sad Sailboats Harmonica
Luke Padilla Indifferent Music Paper
Greyson Douglas Meteorologist Soda Sailboats

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).