The Director Welcomes You

Discount Royale

#460790

Location

Wet, Breezy Mauritania

Time of Day

18:13

Extraction Point

42 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

5 Hours

Eyeballs,
I have sent you to underneathe a Pitch Black City to look for a suspect by the name "Mad starfish". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a random cow at the Crossroads".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Glowing Bikini in your kit to help.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elias Myers

Alias

"Mad starfish"

Features

6' 4"

Amber eyes

Large moles / Right eye

Organization

The Firm of Big Monsoon

Emotions

Content

Personality

Innocently Sharp

Motive

Take over a government to control the Children

Bodyguard

Crystal the "Empty Hyena"

Physical Size

Bantam

Story

Additional Locations

The Angry Lodge

Underwater Suburbs

Reservation Manor

Random Events

Whore Is being tortured

Buccaneer catches on fire

Bard Finds gold in the water

Feminist approaches

World

Stores

Silas's Figurine Discount

Hawkins's Stool Atelier

Blair's Medallion Outlet

Graves's Watch Du jour

Traps

Phantasmal Killer

Tripping Chain of Good Spirits

Objects

Figurine with a False bottom

Medallion that is glowing

Secret Stool

Hidden Hammers

Crossbow of Good Spirits

Wand of Wonder

Anyone who wounds the target must Save or disarm themselves

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Isabel Hawkins "Black Hot Dogs" Merchant Cellphones Tigers
Audrey Blair "Fast Pretzels" Mole Flashlights Money
Arianna Chapman Artist Teeth Ice Cubes
Silas Jensen Barber Baseball Cartography
Tucker Graves Consultant Trucks Water

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).