The Director Welcomes You

Who is Nancy Retaliation?

#07465a

Location

Warm, Windless Mauritania

Time of Day

18:48

Extraction Point

197 Miles S

Time to Complete

3 Hours

Scrutinizers,
As you can see you are trapped inside approach a Underwater Volcano . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Mad Spirit" is responsible and they sent us this message - "Distant sounds of screaming at the Top of the carousel wheel". Your mission was anti-surveillance, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Sharp Belt hidden on you.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Camden Hill

Alias

"Mad Spirit"

Features

5' 8"

Green eyes

Large moles / Right thumb

Organization

The Agency of Damp Children

Emotions

Amused

Personality

Defiantly Acidic

Motive

Make a lot of money to become rich

Bodyguard

Nancy the "Surly Kraken"

Physical Size

Vast

Story

Additional Locations

The Mealy Palace

Overpopulated Acropolis

Ice Crypt

Random Events

Gallon of Trash Is being tortured

Beggar Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Gallon of Trash approaches

Bum Attempts to rob a bank

World

Stores

Charlie's Key Brothers

Mason's Lipstick Beauty Stop

Bryant's Chair Closet

Bennett's Grandfather Clock Industries

Traps

Fireball

Rune of Paralyzation of Oblivion

Objects

Key children's replica

Chair made of heavy metal

Secret Lipstick

Hidden Diary

Axe of Oblivion

Wand of Wonder

Target craves hay and has a long tail like a horse

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Waylon Mason "Casual Pinky's" Merchant Drinking Dolphins
Arianna Bryant "One Tongues" Mole Football Sticky Notes
Jeremiah Webb Physician Whipped Cream Batteries
Charlie Nichols Plumber Baseball Candles
Eliza Bennett Scientist Acorns 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).