The Director Welcomes You

The Healthily Dank Agent

#7499dc

Location

Frigid, Wet Sweden

Time of Day

11:39

Extraction Point

103 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

15 Hours

Scrutinizers,
I have sent you to descend into Ancient Maze to look for a suspect by the name "Small Bull". This mission is black bag. 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 vagrant asks for food at the Serpents Nest".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Beautiful Pair of Gloves in your kit to help.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Julian Graves

Alias

"Small Bull"

Features

7' 9"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Left thumb

Organization

The Clique of Tight Acid

Emotions

Indifferent

Personality

Healthily Plain

Motive

Take over a country to lust for power

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Victorian Dragon"

Physical Size

Baby

Story

Additional Locations

The Dank Lagoon

Polluted Carnival

Delirium Mansion

Random Events

Store Ignites violently

Thief Evades the law

Butter Shipment Is under a curse

Butter Shipment is loose

World

Stores

Lillian's Canopy Bed Du jour

Reeves's Shelf of alcohol Emporium

Gordon's Oil Lamp Warehouse

Lyons's Window Productions

Traps

Ray of Sickness

Phantasmal Killer of Redemption

Objects

Canopy Bed that is glowing

Oil Lamp that is glowing

Secret Shelf of alcohol

Hidden Knife

Collar of Redemption

Wand of Wonder

Summoned creatures are at +2 ToHit the target

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ivy Reeves "Two Lemons" Merchant Bread Cellphones
Mia Gordon "Big Legs" Mole Lamps Money
Kai Ingram Pharmacist Dinosaurs Soap
Lillian Rios Secretary Books Tissues
Christopher Lyons Banker Lions Flashlights

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).