The Director Welcomes You

The Deftly Mannered Agent

#c065ef

Location

Gorgeous, Chilly Madagascar

Time of Day

14:49

Extraction Point

28 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

29 Hours

Sleuths,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Spare brick made of heavy metal. Get to Madagascar at 15:10

Good Luck.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kai Simmons

Alias

"Gross Troll"

Features

6' 2"

Green eyes

Faint curved scar / Left middle finger

Organization

The Sisterhood of Alive Video

Emotions

Grief-stricken

Personality

Deftly Rancid

Motive

Disrupt the military fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Hungry Normal Guy"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Mannered Masquerade

Crowded Mansion

Extinction Citadel

Random Events

Hound Spontaneously disintegrates

Donkey skins a cat with his teeth

Bag of Lemons Is being kidnapped

Deadbeat emerges

World

Stores

Dylan's Spare brick Outlet

Hughes's Sconce Cosmetics

Howard's Brass Replica Discount

Perkins's Bible Solutions

Traps

Lightning Bolt

Incendiary Cloud of Euthanasia

Objects

Spare brick made of heavy metal

Brass Replica that has been hollowed out

Secret Sconce

Hidden Cat

Javelins of Euthanasia

Wand of Wonder

Target is immune to area-effect magic for 1d4 days

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Leilani Hughes "King Eyes" Merchant Singing Rubber Stamps
Elena Howard "Indigo Tongues" Mole Pillows Harmonica
Gracie Burns Scientist Coffee Comic Books
Dylan Casey Counselor Tissues Technology
Ella Perkins Elevator Mechanic Flowers Physics

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).