The Director Welcomes You

The Promptly Boned Agent

#211b64

Location

Sunny, Bright Sri Lanka

Time of Day

9:4

Extraction Point

177 Miles NE

Time to Complete

11 Hours

Spy Deputies,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Paperweight children's replica. Get to Sri Lanka at 17:23

Good Luck.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Payton Hughes

Alias

"Sharp Eel"

Features

6' 5"

Blue eyes

Large deep scar / Right arm

Organization

The Society of Incalculable Pool

Emotions

Afraid

Personality

Promptly Victorian

Motive

Take over a country to save humanity

Bodyguard

James the "Puny Ghost"

Physical Size

Colossal

Story

Additional Locations

The Boned Creek

Abandoned Isle

Indecision Carnival

Random Events

Chicken Becomes wounded

Chauvinist Integrates silently into the group

Potato Is hurled at the adventurers

Lactose Intolerance skins a cat with his teeth

World

Stores

Landon's Paperweight International

Guzman's Bottle Little shop

Garrett's Mounted Animal Ventures

Harrington's Vase Ventures

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Falling Block of Pleasure

Objects

Paperweight children's replica

Mounted Animal children's replica

Secret Bottle

Hidden Handcuffs

File of Pleasure

Wand of Wonder

From now on, all within 50 yards look as wounded as they are now

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Angelina Guzman "Mad Churros" Merchant Cellphones Money
Morris Garrett "Right Hearts" Mole Quartz Crystals Rocks
Miguel Spencer Fortune Cookie Writer Bread Technology
Landon Taylor Human Statue Harmonica Lamps
Norah Harrington Depressed Cookies Honey

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).