The Director Welcomes You

Who is Charles Battle?

#3425a1

Location

Hot, Cloudy Norway

Time of Day

7:2

Extraction Point

151 Miles SE

Time to Complete

35 Hours

Scrutinizers,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Polluted Forest to look for a suspect by the name "Yellow Zombie". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to discover their location. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a dead fish at the hive".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kaylee Castillo

Alias

"Yellow Zombie"

Features

6' 1"

Red eyes

Large moles / Left arm

Organization

The Gang of Thousands Ice

Emotions

Love

Personality

Frankly Broad

Motive

Make a lot of money to control the Children

Bodyguard

Charles the "Quaint Imp"

Physical Size

Considerable

Story

Additional Locations

The Lively Lake

Overpopulated Arcade

Casualties City

Random Events

Spectator skins a cat with his teeth

Leopard Is hurled at the adventurers

Crazy Man Is accused by the law

Store Is hurled at the adventurers

World

Stores

Gianna's Large book Chic Chåteau

Contreras's Watch Logistics

Warner's Fruit Bowl Couture

Frank's Chair Unlimited

Traps

Bestow Curse

Object Smeared with Poison of Pleasure

Objects

Large book children's replica

Fruit Bowl children's replica

Secret Watch

Hidden Lance

Club of Pleasure

Wand of Wonder

Countless slugs and snails litter the ground

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
London Contreras "Silver Pinky's" Merchant Lamps Death
Presley Warner "All Lox" Mole Octopus Plushies
Waylon Avila Headhunter Oranges Tigers
Gianna Brady Accountant Boxes Oranges
Valeria Frank Firefighter Contracts Limes

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).