The Director Welcomes You

The Clumsy Hunter Cliffhanger

#a103dc

Location

Dry, Wet Philippines

Time of Day

12:27

Extraction Point

156 Miles E

Time to Complete

16 Hours

Sleuths,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Wardrobe with a False bottom. Get to Philippines at 20:17

Good Luck.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jose Bush

Alias

"Violet Beholder"

Features

4' 9"

Red eyes

Large moles / Crotch

Organization

The Bureau of Cooling Vessel

Emotions

Exasperated

Personality

Regularly Tenacious

Motive

Take over a government out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Hal the "Rotten Sloth"

Physical Size

Minute

Story

Additional Locations

The Clumsy Lagoon

Touristy Spring

Ruin Maze

Random Events

Wedding Cake Protests

Woman Lunges at the group

Robber Is frozen into a block of ice

Spectator is robbed

World

Stores

Sophie's Wardrobe Beauty Stop

Wheeler's Spare brick Little shop

Reynolds's Urn Factory

Hart's Wardrobe Unlimited

Traps

Acid Arrow

Poison Dart of Endownment

Objects

Wardrobe with a False bottom

Urn children's replica

Secret Spare brick

Hidden Lipstick

Banana of Endownment

Wand of Wonder

Target’s skin is repeatedly tattooed with slurs against the king

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Bryson Wheeler "Bullet Lungs" Merchant Lions Dinosaurs
Nathan Reynolds "Left Tongues" Mole Sailboats Comic Books
Kaylee Willis Old Man Bracelets Glitter
Sophie Chandler Weakened Jigsaw Puzzles Trucks
Mya Hart Drummer Glitter Slippers

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).