The Director Welcomes You

Basketball, Craigslist, Voyage, Spy.

#981907

Location

Stormy, Warm Morocco

Time of Day

19:53

Extraction Point

75 Miles W

Time to Complete

47 Hours

Informants,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Pan children's replica. Get to Morocco at 06:15

Good Luck.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Daniel Ramsey

Alias

"Blue Elves"

Features

6' 1"

Amber eyes

Small mole / Right eye

Organization

The Office of Spicy Voyage

Emotions

Outraged

Personality

Knowingly Ashy

Motive

Take over a government to please their master

Bodyguard

Roberto the "Broad Humanoid"

Physical Size

Young

Story

Additional Locations

The Tender Creek

Compact Barn Dance

Euphoria Lake

Random Events

Princess Is throwing a BBQ

Thief Glistens gently

Bear Is hurled at the adventurers

Robber Is under a curse

World

Stores

Emilia's Pan Hole

Austin's Spice shelf Emporium

Watts's Vanity Technologies

Ray's Letter Opener Convenience store

Traps

Acid Fog

Poison Needle of Silence

Objects

Pan children's replica

Vanity that is glowing

Secret Spice shelf

Hidden Stave

Pike of Silence

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s center of gravity is at the level of his eyes

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ellie Austin "Green Lox" Merchant Tea Jazz
Max Watts "One Muscles" Mole Cats Butterflies
Lillian Arnold Townsfolk Doves Balloons
Emilia Barnett Dietitian Basketball Children's Stories
Jude Ray Funeral Director Easter Jazz

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).