The Director Welcomes You

Emporium Royale

#b8edfd

Location

Breezy, Bright Sudan

Time of Day

1:0

Extraction Point

41 Miles SW

Time to Complete

2 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to enter a Polluted Arcade to look for a suspect by the name "Meaty Ogre". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to uncover their plans. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A white horse dashes past at the Grey Hollow".

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

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Bentley Ayala

Alias

"Meaty Ogre"

Features

6' 8"

Green eyes

A second belly button / Right foot

Organization

The Task Force of Loquacious Heat

Emotions

Helpless

Personality

Slowly Swift

Motive

Make a lot of money to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Nicky the "Disruptive Siren"

Physical Size

Hefty

Story

Additional Locations

The Calamitous Grove

Deserted Park

Influence Chateau

Random Events

Corncob Gets their hand chopped off

Reindeer scurries by

Turtle strikes the ground

Delivery Guy Glistens gently

World

Stores

Aria's Drawers Emporium

Curtis's Chair Convenience store

Phillips's Lounge Chair Arcade

Cortez's Wingback chair Emporium

Traps

Flooded Corridor

Poisoned Arrow of Catastrophe

Objects

Drawers with a False bottom

Lounge Chair that is glowing

Secret Chair

Hidden Morning Star

Rapier of Catastrophe

Wand of Wonder

Bright flames ripple harmlessly along target’s limbs for 1d4 days

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Evelyn Curtis "Three Bagels" Merchant Water Singing
Genesis Phillips "Italian Pinky's" Mole Notes Slippers
Aria Gordon Sad Essential Oils Chalk
Aria Stephens Zestful Toilets Candles
Luca Cortez Old Man Batteries Boxes

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).