The Director Welcomes You

The Helplessly Bitter Agent

#b55b8f

Location

Warm, Cool Cuba

Time of Day

16:32

Extraction Point

59 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Snoopers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Sofa with a False bottom. Get to Cuba at 00:16

Good Luck.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aria Lane

Alias

"Drowsy Sphinx"

Features

6' 5"

Blue eyes

Faint curved scar / Left thumb

Organization

The League of Thoughtless Floor

Emotions

Numb

Personality

Helplessly Slow

Motive

Make a lot of money to become the best

Bodyguard

Penelope the "Brave Griffin"

Physical Size

Little

Story

Additional Locations

The Bitter Circus

Desolate Forge

Delight Manor

Random Events

Bard chase a suspect

Leopard runs over an infant

Vagabond runs over an infant

Chauvinist Crashes slowly

World

Stores

Melanie's Sofa Couture

Powell's Oil Lamp Wardrobe

Schultz's Landscape Closet

Rhodes's Spice shelf Bazaar

Traps

Floor Net

Portcullis of Calming

Objects

Sofa with a False bottom

Landscape that is glowing

Secret Oil Lamp

Hidden Coin

Axe of Calming

Wand of Wonder

One of caster’s arms turns to solid silver

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Waylon Powell "Mini Legs" Merchant Bread Slippers
Michael Schultz "No Lemons" Mole Water Cartography
Victor Keller Envious Dinosaurs Basketball
Melanie Diaz Old Timer Potatoes Flashlights
King Rhodes Artist Houses Sponges

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).