The Director Welcomes You

The Almost Unsightly Agent

#b6cda4

Location

Cloudless, Sunny New Zealand

Time of Day

23:1

Extraction Point

197 Miles NW

Time to Complete

6 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to climb a Underwater Masquerade to look for a suspect by the name "Two Sphinx". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A white horse dashes past at the Tempest".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Robotic Cake in your kit to help.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Teagan Wise

Alias

"Two Sphinx"

Features

5' 10"

Amber eyes

Faint curved scar / Left leg

Organization

The Brotherhood of Salmon Chain

Emotions

Hopeless

Personality

Almost Lazy

Motive

Take over a country to achieve their destiny

Bodyguard

Al the "Slimey Owl"

Physical Size

Little

Story

Additional Locations

The Unsightly Forge

Pitch Black Masquerade

Vulnerability Island

Random Events

Gunshot Becomes wounded

Meteor Is frozen into a block of ice

Baker Is frozen into a block of ice

Beggar Is being tortured

World

Stores

Arabella's Drawers Beauty Stop

Barnes's Painting Threads

Chandler's Vanity Threads

Cunningham's Counter Consulting

Traps

Object Smeared with Poison

Insanity Mist Vapor of Disaster

Objects

Drawers with a False bottom

Vanity that has been hollowed out

Secret Painting

Hidden Sword

Fork of Disaster

Wand of Wonder

Target’s weapon glows blue in the presence of orcs or birds

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Emerson Barnes "Heavy Churros" Merchant Sticky Notes Cats
Ezra Chandler "Meaty Elbows" Mole Dolphins Gym Memberships
Eden Webb Surgeon Clocks Writers
Arabella Nunez Athlete Bears Stickers
Jeremiah Cunningham Stressed Water Cats

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).