The Director Welcomes You

The Snowflake Irritation Incident

#434046

Location

Hot, Foul United Arab Emirates

Time of Day

12:34

Extraction Point

100 Miles N

Time to Complete

2 Hours

Snoopers,
As you can see you are trapped inside within earshot of a Pitch Black Forge . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Nice Kraken" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A white horse dashes past at the Field of Wildflowers". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Explosive Toy hidden on you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Elizabeth Stevenson

Alias

"Nice Kraken"

Features

6' 8"

Gray eyes

A second belly button / Right middle finger

Organization

The Authority of Noxious Activity

Emotions

Satisfied

Personality

Zealously Sour

Motive

Take over a government for revenge

Bodyguard

Christopher the "Brief Merfolk"

Physical Size

Miniature

Story

Additional Locations

The Microscopic Lake

Expensive Crypt

Joy Grove

Random Events

Cat approaches

Pack of Wild Dogs Crashes slowly

Dozen Eggs Salutes the adventurers

Spice Box Strikes the church bell

World

Stores

Alaina's Painting Mall

Manning's Bookcase Supermarket

Warner's Key Threads

Parker's Crate Couture

Traps

Hail of Needles

Tripping Chain of Irritation

Objects

Painting that is glowing

Key that is glowing

Secret Bookcase

Hidden Arrows

Newspaper of Irritation

Wand of Wonder

Target turns into a pumpkin at midnight tonight; reverts at dawn

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kingston Manning "Four Pretzels" Merchant Honey Coffee
Sydney Warner "Junior Scars" Mole Sponges Cooking
Amaya Shelton Shadow Sponges Paper
Alaina Long Zestful Trees Water
Jason Parker Scientist Honey Horses

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).