The Director Welcomes You

Hole Royale

#c479a1

Location

Bright, Bright Seychelles

Time of Day

5:12

Extraction Point

107 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

16 Hours

Detectives,
I have sent you to climb a Underground Arcade to look for a suspect by the name "Yellow Seal". This mission is clandestine. 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 shrine is nearby at the Painted Sands".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aurora Douglas

Alias

"Yellow Seal"

Features

7' 6"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Left hand

Organization

The Gang of Tropical Tax

Emotions

Sympathy

Personality

Queasily Old

Motive

Disrupt the military for scientific discovery

Bodyguard

Joseph the "Portly Kaiju"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Recessive Citadel

Ancient Festival

Irritation Maze

Random Events

Buccaneer Becomes wounded

Butter Shipment is being loudly arrested

Jug of Peanut Butter Is accused by the law

Bunny arrives in the mail

World

Stores

Luna's Fruit Bowl Hole

Elliott's Bookcase Arcade

Stephens's Iron stove Chic Chåteau

Bauer's Watch Threads

Traps

Large Net

Poison Dart of Destruction

Objects

Fruit Bowl made of heavy metal

Iron stove that has been hollowed out

Secret Bookcase

Hidden Bottle

Lance of Destruction

Wand of Wonder

Target’s eyes glow with malevolent fire when he faces true north

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Waylon Elliott "Nice Livers" Merchant Candy Soap
King Stephens "Fast Parmigianas" Mole Trucks Robots
Eliza Bowen Professional Cuddler Flashlights Jazz
Luna Diaz Optimistic Rabbits Music
Finley Bauer Musician Dinosaurs Dice

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).