The Director Welcomes You

The Ring Disaster Protocol

#2a5621

Location

Breezy, Bright Chad

Time of Day

13:39

Extraction Point

200 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

21 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Trunk that is glowing. Get to Chad at 04:09

Good Luck.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Leonardo Parks

Alias

"Dull child"

Features

6' 6"

Red eyes

Large moles / Left thumb

Organization

The Firm of Screeching Hot

Emotions

Regretful

Personality

Faithfully Nervous

Motive

Take over a country for a love interest

Bodyguard

Ali the "Sturdy Elephant"

Physical Size

Massive

Story

Additional Locations

The Straight Park

Underground Business

Bitterness Mansion

Random Events

Chicken is heard screaming

Goblet Is under a curse

Rhapsody screams at the top of their lungs

Herd of Chicken Bursts loudly

World

Stores

David's Trunk Discount

Campbell's Quill and Ink Beauty Stop

Reynolds's Hatrack Worldwide

Peters's Picture Frame Department store

Traps

Arrow

Bear Trap of Disaster

Objects

Trunk that is glowing

Hatrack that has been hollowed out

Secret Quill and Ink

Hidden Cat

Stave of Disaster

Wand of Wonder

Elementals Summoned in caster’s presence are horrible to look at

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Peyton Campbell "Fat Scars" Merchant Painting Peanut Butter
Dean Reynolds "Heavy Legs" Mole Socks Water
Jonathan Rodriguez Librarian Tea Dolphins
David Hayes Journalist Attention Money
Christian Peters Operator Socks Candles

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).