The Director Welcomes You

The Cactus Fatality Protocol

#22d085

Location

Windless, Cool Brunei

Time of Day

10:17

Extraction Point

61 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

4 Hours

Operatives,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Plaster Bust that has been hollowed out. Get to Brunei at 23:02

Good Luck.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Anthony Duran

Alias

"Drowsy Gremlin"

Features

6' 2"

Blue eyes

Faint curved scar / Right arm

Organization

The Order of Victorian Donkey Dick

Emotions

Disturbed

Personality

Separately Disgusting

Motive

Make a lot of money out of greed

Bodyguard

Mitch the "Shitty Mutants"

Physical Size

Narrow

Story

Additional Locations

The Curved Arcade

Overpopulated Barn Dance

Bitterness Villa

Random Events

Fairy Is being detained

Renaissance Faire Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Gallon of Trash Calls menacingly

German Trench Club meets disaster

World

Stores

King's Plaster Bust Solutions

Adams's Statuette Couture

Bates's Flower in Vase Bureau

Flynn's Hanging Birdcage Department store

Traps

Crushing Room

Lightning Bolt of Fatality

Objects

Plaster Bust that has been hollowed out

Flower in Vase that has been hollowed out

Secret Statuette

Hidden Targe

Fork of Fatality

Wand of Wonder

When caster dies, his skeleton turns to glass

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Julian Adams "Heavy Hot Dogs" Merchant Lamps Plushies
August Bates "Yellow Noses" Mole Lamps Tissues
Austin Jacobs Hotel Manager Money Washing Machines
King Mills Chef Candy Singing
Madison Flynn Pharmacist Painting Dice

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).