The Director Welcomes You

The Pitiful Galley Voyage

#1c5bfe

Location

Cloudless, Calm Fiji

Time of Day

5:25

Extraction Point

15 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to within a Expensive City to look for a suspect by the name "Fast Sphinx". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to deactivate their resources. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a sword in a stone at the Ivory Gate".

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

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jordan Barber

Alias

"Fast Sphinx"

Features

5' 11"

Amber eyes

Small mole / Left thumb

Organization

The Union of Sore Voice

Emotions

Regretful

Personality

Weekly Miniature

Motive

Take over a country to achieve their destiny

Bodyguard

Jose the "Intelligent Platypuses"

Physical Size

Elder

Story

Additional Locations

The Pitiful Lagoon

Pitch Black Castle

Grave Consequences Palace

Random Events

Softball Catches leprosy

Crazy Man drops from the sky

Crow Ignites violently

Renaissance Faire grabs a lady's purse

World

Stores

Angel's Suit of armor Factory

Myers's Tea Pot Bazaar

Cross's Cutting board Brothers

Martinez's Musical instrument Ventures

Traps

Suspicious door with lock

Ghoul Touch of Vulnerability

Objects

Suit of armor with a False bottom

Cutting board children's replica

Secret Tea Pot

Hidden Sickle

Spoon of Vulnerability

Wand of Wonder

Before each spell, caster must claim that his shoes are too tight

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Blake Myers "Chunky Elbows" Merchant Flashlights Toilets
Jaxon Cross "Two Fingers" Mole Cartography Coffee
Caroline Pratt Waiter Sharp Things Trees
Angel Diaz Funeral Director Hamsters Dinosaurs
Avery Martinez Hotel Manager Soup Cats

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).