The Director Welcomes You

The Sinful Library Pursuit

#b51af4

Location

Dry, Cloudless Madagascar

Time of Day

14:53

Extraction Point

110 Miles SE

Time to Complete

21 Hours

Snoopers,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Overpopulated Fortress to look for a suspect by the name "Black Giraffe". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve the stolen intel. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A black cat runs past at the old bridge".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Polished Hot Glue Gun in your kit to help.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Leo Schultz

Alias

"Black Giraffe"

Features

6' 1"

Blue eyes

Large deep scar / Right middle finger

Organization

The League of Great Hope

Emotions

Insecure

Personality

Frantically Obtuse

Motive

Disrupt the military because they straight up craycray

Bodyguard

Tony the "Cuddly The Grim Reaper"

Physical Size

Minuscule

Story

Additional Locations

The Sinful Masquerade

Underwater Reef

Secrecy Jungle

Random Events

Drunk Is being kidnapped

German Trench Club Bounces oddly

Whore explodes

Thief Finds gold in the water

World

Stores

Katherine's Bottle Du jour

Mendez's Pedestal Department store

Campbell's Crock Supermarket

Estrada's Letter Opener Threads

Traps

Large Net

Built-to-Collapse Wall of Fate

Objects

Bottle children's replica

Crock children's replica

Secret Pedestal

Hidden Polearm

Hatchet of Fate

Wand of Wonder

Target sprouts a pair of loathsome tentacles from his forehead

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Isabelle Mendez "White Brains" Merchant Money Soup
Justin Campbell "Cheap Eyes" Mole Flashlights Eggs
Ashton Becker Exhilarated Cookies Rubber Stamps
Katherine Howell Phantom Hammers Bears
Kennedy Estrada Veterinarian Potatoes Television

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).