The Director Welcomes You

The Colossal Substance Predicament

#1003cb

Location

Chilly, Dull United Arab Emirates

Time of Day

16:37

Extraction Point

127 Miles N

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Investigators,
As you can see you are trapped inside approach a Ancient Missile Launch Site . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Small Opossums" is responsible and they sent us this message - "The earth shakes briefly at the dry riverbed". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Clean Blender hidden on you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Kaylee Ball

Alias

"Small Opossums"

Features

7' 9"

Brown eyes

A second belly button / Left middle finger

Organization

The Department of Drab Belief

Emotions

Grief-stricken

Personality

Foolishly Chubby

Motive

Disrupt the military to become famous

Bodyguard

Darnell the "Huge Fairy"

Physical Size

Full

Story

Additional Locations

The Colossal Peninsula

Expensive Park

Dark Jungle

Random Events

Leopard is loose

Pine Branch Attempts to rob a bank

Majestic Painting Skips merrily

Transport meets disaster

World

Stores

Isaiah's Trophy Solutions

Jenkins's File Discount

Brady's File Ventures

Ray's Lipstick Mall

Traps

Dropping Ceiling

Insanity Mist Vapor of Instability

Objects

Trophy that has been hollowed out

File children's replica

Secret File

Hidden Nipple Clamp

Lipstick of Instability

Wand of Wonder

Someone nearby realizes that he’s carrying a dangerous artifact

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
London Jenkins "Three Elbows" Merchant Television Chili
Grace Brady "King Pretzels" Mole Essential Oils Dice
Norah Hill Paramedic Socks Basketball
Isaiah Gonzales Professional Cuddler Sailboats Bread
Sadie Ray Old Timer Christmas Lipstick

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).