The Director Welcomes You

Labs Royale

#56eaa9

Location

Arid, Hot Cambodia

Time of Day

12:31

Extraction Point

166 Miles S

Time to Complete

35 Hours

Snoopers,
It seems "Junior Spirit" has gone level 6. They have been broadcasting this message "The group finds a dead fish at the Devil's barrow". We need you to eliminate them, Openly. Their last known location was recorded at 03:02. You have a Explosive Blouse as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Violet Harper

Alias

"Junior Spirit"

Features

4' 7"

Amber eyes

Large moles / Right arm

Organization

The Alliance of Tinkling Troll

Emotions

Caring

Personality

Openly Aggressive

Motive

Make a lot of money for pure destruction

Bodyguard

Penelope the "Thoughtless Siren"

Physical Size

Trifling

Story

Additional Locations

The Echoing Carnival

Pitch Black Castle

Freshness Castle

Random Events

Buccaneer is heard screaming

Bank Crashes slowly

Store scurries by

Herd of Chicken Is getting confiscated

World

Stores

Brayden's Mirror Labs

Weber's Urn Atelier

Watts's Bench Couture

Leonard's Iron stove Specialities

Traps

Water-Filled Room

Ghoul Touch of Dark

Objects

Mirror with a False bottom

Bench that has been hollowed out

Secret Urn

Hidden Bangle

Blindfold of Dark

Wand of Wonder

Target receives a sign that his murder is imminent

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Dean Weber "Yellow Forearms" Merchant Lipstick Hammers
Teagan Watts "Quiet Muscles" Mole Candles Plushies
Hailey Jimenez Intoxicated Slippers Music
Brayden Parker Actor Boxes Honey
Dylan Leonard Cleaner Paperclips 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).