The Director Welcomes You

The Servant Dark Protocol

#104a40

Location

Balmy, Balmy Portugal

Time of Day

8:36

Extraction Point

119 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

24 Hours

Informants,
We need your help. Agent Amir Frank has gone missing and we believe "Five Beast" is responsible. They were last seen in Portugal at 09:06. The agent sent one final message – "An object nearby starts bleeding at the Dragon's Sea". Take this Vicious Candle - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Charles Soto

Alias

"Five Beast"

Features

4' 7"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Crotch

Organization

The Department of Boned Toilet

Emotions

Annoyed

Personality

Zealously Nice

Motive

Make a lot of money out of desperation

Bodyguard

Joseph the "Damp Horse"

Physical Size

Tremendous

Story

Additional Locations

The Dead Spring

Archaic Tower

Rage Fortress

Random Events

Pine Branch overflows

Herd of Chicken Lunges at the group

Majestic Painting Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Woman arrives in the mail

World

Stores

Cole's Mural Warehouse

Oconnor's Trinket Couture

Carlson's Metal chair Ventures

Frank's Statuette Du jour

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Phantasmal Killer of Dark

Objects

Mural made of heavy metal

Metal chair that has been hollowed out

Secret Trinket

Hidden Frying Pan

Boomerang of Dark

Wand of Wonder

All magical light sources within one mile hum loudly while in use

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kaleb Oconnor "Cramped Churros" Merchant Glitter Essential Oils
Eliza Carlson "Obese Forearms" Mole Chocolate Cooking
Candace Ramos Pharmacist Socks Tissues
Cole Lucas Midwife Attention Tissues
Amir Frank Elevator Mechanic Soccer Soda

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).