The Director Welcomes You

The Mural Happiness Incident

#10835c

Location

Balmy, Cloudless Congo, Republic of the

Time of Day

21:49

Extraction Point

46 Miles N

Time to Complete

36 Hours

Snoopers,
As you can see you are trapped inside circle a Deserted Nuclear Power Plant . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "King Bat" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A black cat runs past at the Ghost Town". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Sharp Apron hidden on you.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Josiah Hampton

Alias

"King Bat"

Features

7' 11"

Heterochromia eyes

Faint curved scar / Left arm

Organization

The Committee of Tight Artist

Emotions

Regretful

Personality

Thankfully Yellow

Motive

Take over a government for honor

Bodyguard

Joseph the "Repulsive starfish"

Physical Size

Insignificant

Story

Additional Locations

The Comical Circus

Bustling Pond

Cheer Business

Random Events

Carcass Is frozen into a block of ice

Bum screams at the top of their lungs

Jug of Peanut Butter arrives in the mail

Buccaneer Salutes the adventurers

World

Stores

Maverick's Flower in Vase Creative

McCormick's Sofa Consulting

Graham's Musical instrument Beauty Stop

Young's Fruit Bowl Productions

Traps

Poison Needle

Tripping Chain of Happiness

Objects

Flower in Vase that is glowing

Musical instrument made of heavy metal

Secret Sofa

Hidden Lance

Button of Happiness

Wand of Wonder

Target suddenly realizes that he’s undead

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Evan McCormick "Five Heels" Merchant Plushies Squirrels
Eli Graham "Red Lemons" Mole Cartography Deodorant
Eden Castillo Ghost Dinosaurs Money
Maverick Anderson Firefighter Sponges Quartz Crystals
Willow Young Actor Pillows Bracelets

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).