The Director Welcomes You

Wardrobe Royale

#e765ee

Location

Rainy, Dry Cameroon

Time of Day

8:17

Extraction Point

60 Miles W

Time to Complete

29 Hours

Examiners,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Deserted Masquerade to look for a suspect by the name "Left gorgon". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a dollar on the ground at the Painted Sands".

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

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Presley Waters

Alias

"Left gorgon"

Features

6' 2"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Right foot

Organization

The Unit of Sparkling Wax

Emotions

Hateful

Personality

Regularly Quaint

Motive

Take over a government for fear of the heroes

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Calm Elves"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Yummy Pond

Pitch Black Isle

Fate Business

Random Events

Jug of Peanut Butter arrives in the mail

Nomad is being loudly arrested

Donkey meets disaster

Meteor Lunges at the group

World

Stores

Sophie's Goblet Wardrobe

Burke's Coat of Arms Chic Chåteau

Walton's Hatrack Cosmetics

Knight's Stamp Set Threads

Traps

Lightning Bolt

Symbol of Hypnosis of Fate

Objects

Goblet made of heavy metal

Hatrack children's replica

Secret Coat of Arms

Hidden Magazine

Scimitar of Fate

Wand of Wonder

2d100 spectators appear in the area

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jose Burke "White Lox" Merchant Comic Books Books
Vincent Walton "Quiet Thumbs" Mole Drinking Basketball
Andrew Webster Consultant Photography Candy
Sophie Turner Scientist Scarves Attention
Khloe Knight Secretary Baseball Fire

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).