The Director Welcomes You

The Daughter Competency Incident

#5eeae4

Location

Calm, Foul Taiwan

Time of Day

20:19

Extraction Point

121 Miles E

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Scrutinizers,
I have sent you to enter a Overpopulated Circus to look for a suspect by the name "White Hydra". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve the stolen intel. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "Tracks of wolves can be seen at the Tempest".

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

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Peyton Wright

Alias

"White Hydra"

Features

6' 8"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Left leg

Organization

The Council of Baked Throat

Emotions

Powerless

Personality

Crossly Enlightened

Motive

Take over a government to escape their destiny

Bodyguard

John the "Famous Sprite"

Physical Size

Short

Story

Additional Locations

The Clumsy Carousal

Pitch Black Lake

Cheer Sanctuary

Random Events

Pack of Wild Dogs explodes

Gallon of Trash Is throwing a BBQ

Leopard stop the party and asks questions

Softball overflows

World

Stores

Joseph's Flowers Growing Little shop

Strickland's Staircase Factory

Patton's Canopy Bed Mall

McGuire's Counter Properties

Traps

Incendiary Cloud

Crushing Room of Competency

Objects

Flowers Growing children's replica

Canopy Bed made of heavy metal

Secret Staircase

Hidden Hatchet

Sling of Competency

Wand of Wonder

Each day, the caster is praised for some act of amazing heroism

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Amir Strickland "Three Matzo Balls" Merchant Children's Stories Rubber Stamps
Luis Patton "King Tongues" Mole Teeth Peanut Butter
Genevieve Silva Technician Notes Television
Joseph Lee Physician Writers Boxes
Carson McGuire Master Distiller Lions Cartography

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).