The Director Welcomes You

The Growth Darkness Protocol

#61edd9

Location

Windless, Stormy Mongolia

Time of Day

10:38

Extraction Point

67 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

15 Hours

Meddlers,
It seems "Indigo Sea Lion" has gone level 1. They have been broadcasting this message "A vagrant asks for money at the Golden Fire". We need you to eliminate them, Dreamily. Their last known location was recorded at 10:23. You have a Glowing Audio Cassette as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Leonardo Harrison

Alias

"Indigo Sea Lion"

Features

5' 10"

Gray eyes

Faint curved scar / Right middle finger

Organization

The Sisterhood of Tertiary Breasts

Emotions

Tender

Personality

Dreamily Efficacious

Motive

Make a lot of money out of desperation

Bodyguard

Charles the "Melted Kaiju"

Physical Size

Diminutive

Story

Additional Locations

The Disgusting House

Crowded Sanctuary

Exuberance Isle

Random Events

Chicken skins a cat with his teeth

Robber Lunges at the group

Majestic Painting arrives in the mail

Demon Is getting confiscated

World

Stores

Sara's Sconce Factory

Mills's Wingback chair Worldwide

Hodges's Notebook Market

Morris's Figurine Threads

Traps

Earthquake

Arrow of Darkness

Objects

Sconce made of heavy metal

Notebook with a False bottom

Secret Wingback chair

Hidden Camera

Spear of Darkness

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s feet smolder gently for 1d6 hours without harming him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Graham Mills "The Fingers" Merchant Chickens Toilets
Elliott Hodges "All Churros" Mole Football Bread
Brayden Garza Soul Mirrors Comic Books
Sara Weber Artist Tissues Soap
Adeline Morris The Body Houses Syrup

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).