The Director Welcomes You

The Quality Ruin Incident

#573268

Location

Wet, Mild Guinea-Bissau

Time of Day

9:13

Extraction Point

157 Miles N

Time to Complete

27 Hours

Eyeballs,
As you can see you are trapped inside be locked inside of a Ancient Missile Launch Site . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Violet Wendigo" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A thick fog rolls in at the Ancient Fountain". Your mission was clandestine, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Bulbous Paint Brush hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kinsley Reid

Alias

"Violet Wendigo"

Features

6' 2"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Right eye

Organization

The Crew of Ubiquitous Heat

Emotions

Sympathy

Personality

Silently Gifted

Motive

Take over a government to lust for power

Bodyguard

Emily the "Old starfish"

Physical Size

Limited

Story

Additional Locations

The Broad Business

Underground Carousal

Calming Creek

Random Events

Box of Cigarette overflows

Milk Shipment Becomes wounded

Horse Carriage Is hurled at the adventurers

Ninja Is getting confiscated

World

Stores

Zayden's crutch Discount

Castro's Candelabra Brothers

Waters's Crock Worldwide

Aguilar's Fireplace Warehouse

Traps

Blade Barrier

Tripping Chain of Ruin

Objects

crutch that has been hollowed out

Crock that has been hollowed out

Secret Candelabra

Hidden Boomerang

Polearm of Ruin

Wand of Wonder

Target wobbles and clangs like a buoy while walking in fog

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Harmony Castro "Black Eyes" Merchant Syrup Hamsters
London Waters "Meaty Lox" Mole Water Cousins
Maria White Bounty hunter Singing Toilets
Zayden McBride Elder Mirrors Horses
Rhett Aguilar Envious Rocks Sharks

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).