The Director Welcomes You

The Careful Throat Occurrence

#02586e

Location

Mild, Chilly Tanzania

Time of Day

15:52

Extraction Point

68 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Informants,
It seems "Five Serpent" has gone level 6. They have been broadcasting this message "A vagrant asks for food at the graveyard". We need you to eliminate them, Partially. Their last known location was recorded at 00:09. You have a Delicate Tissues as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Dominic Mendez

Alias

"Five Serpent"

Features

6' 6"

Red eyes

Stretch Marks / Left arm

Organization

The Office of Enlightened Ogre

Emotions

Alienated

Personality

Partially Boned

Motive

Disrupt the military for a love interest

Bodyguard

Tony the "Shrill Leprechaun"

Physical Size

Lanky

Story

Additional Locations

The Careful Villa

Touristy Maze

Extinction Carousal

Random Events

Bum Bounces oddly

Turtle Adopts a nearby child

Drunk skins a cat with his teeth

Rustler Skips merrily

World

Stores

Payton's Urn Industries

Parker's Satchel Labs

Barber's Mantle Unlimited

Lawson's Flowers Growing Department store

Traps

Beehive

Insanity Mist Vapor of Oblivion

Objects

Urn made of heavy metal

Mantle that is glowing

Secret Satchel

Hidden Coif

Rock of Oblivion

Wand of Wonder

When target next spills blood, his allies attack him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ezra Parker "Heavy Feet" Merchant Butterflies Bracelets
Maxwell Barber "Obese Pretzels" Mole Soccer Rubber Stamps
Robin Parks Hotel Manager Deodorant Balloons
Payton Blair Surveyor Cousins Rabbits
Amaya Lawson Lawyer Soda Sun Glasses

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).