The Director Welcomes You

Ventures Royale

#25ceaf

Location

Bright, Overcast Antigua and Barbuda

Time of Day

5:49

Extraction Point

29 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

2 Hours

Meddlers,
As you can see you are trapped inside underneathe a Expensive Reef . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Small giant" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A traveling merchant appears at the Ancient Fountain". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Vicious Bicycle hidden on you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Katherine Silva

Alias

"Small giant"

Features

6' 10"

Heterochromia eyes

A second belly button / Left eye

Organization

The Union of Faint Game

Emotions

Resentful

Personality

Unbearably Pitiful

Motive

Make a lot of money fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

Al the "Invisible Anteaters"

Physical Size

Toy

Story

Additional Locations

The Verdant Creek

Touristy Jungle

Passion Masquerade

Random Events

Bunny Is hurled at the adventurers

Nomad approaches

Beggar catches on fire

Cat skins a cat with his teeth

World

Stores

Ethan's Mounted Animal Ventures

Watkins's Watch Boutique

Barnett's Shoe Horn Arcade

Malone's Painting Beauty Stop

Traps

Rune of Paralyzation

Fusillade of Darts of Ruin

Objects

Mounted Animal with a False bottom

Shoe Horn that is glowing

Secret Watch

Hidden Lighter

Axe of Ruin

Wand of Wonder

Next puddle stepped in by caster ignites like gasoline

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Valerie Watkins "Green Tongues" Merchant Slippers Oranges
Dylan Barnett "Quiet Ankles" Mole Soup Scarves
Luca Kramer Electrician Trucks Toilets
Ethan Mendez Broker Socks Shirts
Finn Malone Meteorologist Tea Tea

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).