The Director Welcomes You

The Properly Efficacious Agent

#ad0c53

Location

Gloomy, Foggy Moldova

Time of Day

23:8

Extraction Point

178 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Snoopers,
We need your help. Agent William Hampton has gone missing and we believe "Quiet Python" is responsible. They were last seen in Moldova at 15:05. The agent sent one final message – "A pool of blood at the Skull shaped island". Take this Heavy Blaser - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Emma Perry

Alias

"Quiet Python"

Features

4' 10"

Gray eyes

Stretch Marks / Right hand

Organization

The Firm of Agreeable Island

Emotions

Bitter

Personality

Properly Baked

Motive

Take over a government to become rich

Bodyguard

Ali the "Facetious Gargoyle"

Physical Size

Scanty

Story

Additional Locations

The Efficacious Suburbs

Deserted Maze

Freshness Sanctuary

Random Events

Bunny Is under a curse

Whore Is being kidnapped

Rustler is being loudly arrested

Hound emerges

World

Stores

Morgan's Creeping Vines Creative

Allen's Ceramic Crock Chic Chåteau

Crawford's Trinket Collective

Hampton's Workbench Unlimited

Traps

Flame Strike

Ceiling Pendulum of Endownment

Objects

Creeping Vines with a False bottom

Trinket that is glowing

Secret Ceramic Crock

Hidden Guthook

Hammers of Endownment

Wand of Wonder

Caster can’t speak in sentences longer than 10 syllables

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Elena Allen "Silver Matzo Balls" Merchant Bears Lipstick
Cole Crawford "Green Legs" Mole Soda Baseball
Brooklyn West Talent agent Bread Ice Cubes
Morgan McCormick Funeral Director Rabbits Eggs
William Hampton Plumber Broccoli Attention

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).