The Director Welcomes You

The Suddenly Ancient Agent

#4764d0

Location

Cloudy, Wet Japan

Time of Day

17:1

Extraction Point

66 Miles N

Time to Complete

22 Hours

Shadows,
It seems "Slow Elephant" has gone level 5. They have been broadcasting this message "A shrine is nearby at the hive". We need you to eliminate them, Suddenly. Their last known location was recorded at 15:05. You have a Delicate Wrench as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ava Marquez

Alias

"Slow Elephant"

Features

4' 11"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Right eye

Organization

The Gang of Humid Crib

Emotions

Interested

Personality

Suddenly Mannered

Motive

Disrupt the military to become famous

Bodyguard

Nick the "Mecha Mongoose"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Ancient Island

Polluted Arcade

Oblivion Park

Random Events

Reindeer grabs a lady's purse

Lactose Intolerance screams at the top of their lungs

Princess Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Thief Is throwing a protest

World

Stores

Mckenzie's Desk Collective

Matthews's Telescope Solutions

Solis's Coat of Arms Couture

Watson's Bonsai Convenience store

Traps

Poison Needle

Bricks from Ceiling of Bitterness

Objects

Desk that is glowing

Coat of Arms with a False bottom

Secret Telescope

Hidden Notebook

Chewing Gum of Bitterness

Wand of Wonder

If caster has a beard, it vanishes; if he doesn’t, he grows one

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Liliana Matthews "Gross Noses" Merchant Horses Drinking
Ava Solis "Cheap Brains" Mole Cats Bells
Kai McGee Envious Snowglobes Syrup
Mckenzie Lang Barber Fire Coffee
Christian Watson Zestful Peanut Butter Lipstick

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).