The Director Welcomes You

The Damp Hook Peril

#580baa

Location

Chilly, Gorgeous Canada

Time of Day

8:18

Extraction Point

162 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Informants,
We need your help. Agent Aaliyah Stephens has gone missing and we believe "Short Bear" is responsible. They were last seen in Canada at 12:06. The agent sent one final message – "A roll of thunder at the Screaming Waterfall". Take this Evil Hammock - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Adalynn Keller

Alias

"Short Bear"

Features

5' 7"

Blue eyes

Large moles / Crotch

Organization

The Board of Low Quality

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Jealously Damaged

Motive

Take over a government to save humanity

Bodyguard

Daniel the "Obtuse Imp"

Physical Size

Tremendous

Story

Additional Locations

The Damp House

Hidden Jungle

Fatality Villa

Random Events

Goblet Spontaneously disintegrates

Bear Gets their hand chopped off

Rhapsody Strikes the church bell

Spectator is being loudly arrested

World

Stores

Tricia's Music Box Arcade

Lyons's Crate Market

Davidson's Key Worldwide

Stephens's Medallion Closet

Traps

Ice lock

Bricks from Ceiling of Sanitation

Objects

Music Box made of heavy metal

Key that is glowing

Secret Crate

Hidden Cutlass

Bracer of Sanitation

Wand of Wonder

Caster smells strongly of garlic

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Natalie Lyons "Sharp Falafels" Merchant Books Baseball
Maverick Davidson "Quiet Tongues" Mole Children's Stories Broccoli
Jocelyn Gutierrez Operator Cooking Photography
Tricia Cross Depressed Ice Cubes Butterflies
Aaliyah Stephens Soul Syrup Cookies

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).