The Director Welcomes You

The Giraffe Competency Protocol

#ae3711

Location

Gorgeous, Icy Cameroon

Time of Day

11:3

Extraction Point

42 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

15 Hours

Sleuths,
I have sent you to underneathe a Underwater Port to look for a suspect by the name "No Opossums". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The earth shakes briefly at the Frozen palace".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Delicate Quilt in your kit to help.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Lincoln Espinoza

Alias

"No Opossums"

Features

7' 10"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Left eye

Organization

The Agency of Most Van

Emotions

Insulted

Personality

Searchingly Sinful

Motive

Take over a country to save humanity

Bodyguard

Bobby the "Clumsy Doppelganger"

Physical Size

Petite

Story

Additional Locations

The Limpid Port

Hidden Circus

Catastrophe House

Random Events

Turtle Is being kidnapped

Alligator overflows

Bum Spontaneously disintegrates

Gallon of Trash catches on fire

World

Stores

Connor's Cabinet Couture

Chang's Key Atelier

Oliver's Spice shelf Outlet

Vasquez's Kitchen knife Market

Traps

Floor Net

Large Net of Competency

Objects

Cabinet that is glowing

Spice shelf with a False bottom

Secret Key

Hidden Sword

Key of Competency

Wand of Wonder

Target must eat a pound of ice by sunset tonight

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ezra Chang "Mini Lungs" Merchant Flashlights Cooking
Josephine Oliver "Short Matzo Balls" Mole Chocolate Dinosaurs
Caroline Acosta Judge Rock n' Roll Hammers
Connor Wallace Technician Soap Pillows
Theodore Vasquez The Body Football Paperclips

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).