The Director Welcomes You

The Instantly Vacant Agent

#063341

Location

Warm, Dry Egypt

Time of Day

11:5

Extraction Point

93 Miles E

Time to Complete

28 Hours

Scrutinizers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Canopy Bed made of heavy metal. Get to Egypt at 02:14

Good Luck.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Mariah Yates

Alias

"Obese Unicorn"

Features

4' 1"

Red eyes

A second belly button / Right foot

Organization

The Board of Swollen Lace

Emotions

Anticipating

Personality

Instantly Petulant

Motive

Take over a government out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Simon the "Elegant Centaur"

Physical Size

Miniature

Story

Additional Locations

The Vacant Creek

Polluted Reef

Good Spirits Manor

Random Events

Biscuit Skips merrily

Turtle Ignites violently

Corncob Catches leprosy

Horse Carriage Bursts loudly

World

Stores

Rhett's Canopy Bed Boutique

Townsend's Diary Little shop

Davis's Desk Brothers

Little's Bookcase Supermarket

Traps

Bricks from Ceiling

Falling Block of Imperfection

Objects

Canopy Bed made of heavy metal

Desk that has been hollowed out

Secret Diary

Hidden Watch

Shield of Imperfection

Wand of Wonder

When target next spills blood, he is excommunicated and condemned

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Andrea Townsend "Mad Bones" Merchant Socks Paper
Asher Davis "Tough Throats" Mole Children's Stories Dolphins
Mariah James Intoxicated Glitter Syrup
Rhett Gallagher Consultant Water Rubber Stamps
Juliana Little Barber Tea Paper

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).