The Director Welcomes You

The Tail Contentment Protocol

#791442

Location

Cloudless, Stormy South Africa

Time of Day

15:21

Extraction Point

113 Miles S

Time to Complete

23 Hours

Meddlers,
As you can see you are trapped inside be locked inside of a Deserted Castle . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Black Cyclops" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A roll of thunder at the Apple Orchard". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Light Screwdriver hidden on you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Judy Knight

Alias

"Black Cyclops"

Features

5' 7"

Gray eyes

Small mole / Right middle finger

Organization

The Crew of Jealous Basement

Emotions

Absorbed

Personality

Solidly Purple

Motive

Take over a government for a love interest

Bodyguard

Donald the "White Orcs"

Physical Size

Bantam

Story

Additional Locations

The Swift Festival

Underground Reef

Exuberance Isle

Random Events

Lactose Intolerance Protests

Bag of Lemons Attempts to rob a bank

Amulet Is under a curse

Nearby Gas Tank runs over an infant

World

Stores

Eden's Trinket Group

Clarke's Letter Opener Factory

Carrillo's Certificate Closet

Sharp's Figurine Cosmetics

Traps

Wall Blade

Acid Fog of Contentment

Objects

Trinket that is glowing

Certificate children's replica

Secret Letter Opener

Hidden Handcuffs

Button of Contentment

Wand of Wonder

Caster is convinced that his allies plan to kill and eat him

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Khloe Clarke "Right Livers" Merchant Dolphins Rubber Bands
Sydney Carrillo "Four Thumbs" Mole Dolphins Butterflies
Trinity Watts Intoxicated Scarves Soccer
Eden Harrington Acupuncturist Fire Hammers
Jordan Sharp Barber Slippers Soccer

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).