The Director Welcomes You

Mall Royale

#f7cddf

Location

Icy, Hot Singapore

Time of Day

8:31

Extraction Point

123 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

48 Hours

Investigators,
As you can see you are trapped inside fly above a Hidden Lake . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Short Cyclops" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A roll of thunder at the Skull shaped island". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Colorful Brush hidden on you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Maximus Jimenez

Alias

"Short Cyclops"

Features

7' 8"

Brown eyes

Large deep scar / Right eye

Organization

The Department of White Boundary

Emotions

Bored

Personality

Suspiciously Chewy

Motive

Take over a government to better Humanity

Bodyguard

Chuckie the "Mysterious Koalas"

Physical Size

Substantial

Story

Additional Locations

The Rapid Reef

Ancient Forest

Passion Chateau

Random Events

Bear Protests

Donkey Catches leprosy

Bellhop Attempts to rob a bank

Squirrel scurries by

World

Stores

Graham's Credenza Mall

Brown's Hat Boutique

Gilbert's Satchel Specialities

Ramos's Spare brick Mall

Traps

Swinging Block

Fireball of Censorship

Objects

Credenza made of heavy metal

Satchel with a False bottom

Secret Hat

Hidden Ring

Polearm of Censorship

Wand of Wonder

Ugly thorns sprout from the caster’s cheekbones

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Vincent Brown "Four Muscles" Merchant Technology Peanut Butter
Stella Gilbert "Yellow Pastrami's" Mole Essential Oils Flowers
Peyton Barber Exhilarated Soda Books
Graham Woods Musician Rabbits Eggs
Sebastian Ramos Architect Lions Jazz

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).