The Director Welcomes You

The Chipper Collar Secrecy

#7aecf3

Location

Balmy, Arid Haiti

Time of Day

21:17

Extraction Point

169 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

6 Hours

Sleuths,
As you can see you are trapped inside within a Polluted Citadel . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Indigo Manticore" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A lone flower growing at the Top of the carousel wheel". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Explosive Stapler hidden on you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jacob McDonald

Alias

"Indigo Manticore"

Features

7' 10"

Red eyes

Stretch Marks / Right thumb

Organization

The Gang of Victorious Noise

Emotions

Compassionate

Personality

Weekly Puckish

Motive

Disrupt the military to save humanity

Bodyguard

George the "Brief Pixie"

Physical Size

Fat

Story

Additional Locations

The Chipper Reef

Abandoned Isle

Contentment Forest

Random Events

Demon Is frozen into a block of ice

Lactose Intolerance skins a cat with his teeth

Woman emerges

Transport Is being tortured

World

Stores

Leilani's Hanging Birdcage Department store

Pena's Bicycle Du jour

Ruiz's Drawers Specialities

Patterson's Rubber Plant Little shop

Traps

Bear Trap

Moving Executioner Statue of Amnesia

Objects

Hanging Birdcage made of heavy metal

Drawers made of heavy metal

Secret Bicycle

Hidden Button

Medallion of Amnesia

Wand of Wonder

Target’s neck can’t be broken

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Madelyn Pena "Dull Dumplings" Merchant Cooking Money
Robin Ruiz "Right Throats" Mole Cartography Video Games
Valerie Walton Plumber Bread Doves
Leilani Wise Angry Coffee Butterflies
Ruby Patterson Acupuncturist Tea Soccer

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).