The Director Welcomes You

The Burn Expiration Protocol

#44e9f7

Location

Stormy, Miserable Uzbekistan

Time of Day

12:24

Extraction Point

124 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

26 Hours

Informants,
As you can see you are trapped inside the outside of a Underwater Lake . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Stiff Cockatrice" is responsible and they sent us this message - "Tracks of wolves can be seen at the Eye of Heaven". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Invisible Bandana hidden on you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Callie Haynes

Alias

"Stiff Cockatrice"

Features

5' 8"

Gray eyes

Small mole / Left thumb

Organization

The Guild of Curious Chili

Emotions

Uncomfortable

Personality

Wildly Consensual

Motive

Take over a country to achieve their destiny

Bodyguard

Penelope the "Prickly Hydra"

Physical Size

Slight

Story

Additional Locations

The Mecha Citadel

Expensive Shelter

The Blackest Black Business

Random Events

Deadbeat Is under a curse

Pickpocket Is throwing a protest

Dozen Eggs Evades the law

Beggar strikes the ground

World

Stores

Reagan's Ceramic Crock Atelier

McCoy's Sculpture Atelier

Carter's Trinket Little shop

Leonard's Desk Emporium

Traps

Ghoul Touch

Camouflaged Pit of Expiration

Objects

Ceramic Crock that is glowing

Trinket children's replica

Secret Sculpture

Hidden Credit Card

Brass Knuckles of Expiration

Wand of Wonder

Any blood spilled in this area combusts on contact with water

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Athena McCoy "Obese Muscles" Merchant Doors Soccer
Julia Carter "Five Stomachs" Mole Glitter Christmas
Eden Watkins Midwife Socks Mirrors
Reagan Flores Cranky Limes Bells
Antonio Leonard Police Officer Pillows Limes

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).