The Director Welcomes You

The Bitter Pot Question

#d14d33

Location

Bright, Windy Italy

Time of Day

2:1

Extraction Point

27 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Eyeballs,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Sofa with a False bottom. Get to Italy at 12:02

Good Luck.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Gabriella Hunter

Alias

"Junior Goblins"

Features

5' 6"

Heterochromia eyes

A second belly button / Right arm

Organization

The Company of Savory Growth

Emotions

Excited

Personality

Seemingly Calamitous

Motive

Take over a country to lust for power

Bodyguard

Jerry the "Clever Troll"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Bitter Creek

Polluted Spring

Contentment Lagoon

Random Events

Woman explodes

Pack of Wild Dogs Is being detained

Jug of Peanut Butter Is being kidnapped

Safe Skips merrily

World

Stores

Elijah's Sofa Threads

Benson's Coat Atelier

Gordon's Kitchen table Hole

Fernandez's Bookcase Little shop

Traps

Reverse Gravity

Blade Barrier of Mania

Objects

Sofa with a False bottom

Kitchen table children's replica

Secret Coat

Hidden Fork

Bracer of Mania

Wand of Wonder

When caster next enters a lake, his hands and feet grow webbing

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Alice Benson "Silver Waffles" Merchant Contracts Quartz Crystals
Trinity Gordon "Plump Toes" Mole Fire Cats
Rachel Palmer Librarian Syrup Soda
Elijah Curry The Body Mirrors Notes
Clara Fernandez Actor Horses Music

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).