The Director Welcomes You

The Butter Instability Incident

#d87599

Location

Chilly, Mild Brazil

Time of Day

21:38

Extraction Point

36 Miles SW

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Operatives,
We need your help. Agent Victoria Keller has gone missing and we believe "All Platypuses" is responsible. They were last seen in Brazil at 05:21. The agent sent one final message – "The group finds a random cow at the Music Store". Take this Beautiful Banana - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kai Moss

Alias

"All Platypuses"

Features

7' 2"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Left foot

Organization

The Firm of Bruised Lubricant

Emotions

Exhausted

Personality

Frequently Vacant

Motive

Take over a government to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Chuckie the "Squirrelly Gremlin"

Physical Size

Slight

Story

Additional Locations

The Brave Crypt

Touristy Palace

Destruction Forge

Random Events

Store Becomes wounded

Gang Strikes the church bell

Bag of Flour is being loudly arrested

Dracula is being loudly arrested

World

Stores

Arabella's Bottle Logistics

West's Portrait Du jour

White's Flower in Vase Couture

Keller's Bonsai Properties

Traps

Poison Dart

Burning Hands of Instability

Objects

Bottle with a False bottom

Flower in Vase made of heavy metal

Secret Portrait

Hidden Stave

Blades of Instability

Wand of Wonder

When caster next enters a town, the king orders it destroyed

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Sophia West "Drowsy Hands" Merchant Television Jazz
Iris White "Two Spleens" Mole Glitter Clocks
Elliot Olson Waiter Plushies Flowers
Arabella Navarro Townsfolk Squirrels Flowers
Victoria Keller Spirit Death Cookies

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).