The Director Welcomes You

The Calmly Prehensile Agent

#937b34

Location

Humid, Gloomy Eswatini

Time of Day

2:2

Extraction Point

136 Miles SW

Time to Complete

10 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to enter a Rundown Villa to look for a suspect by the name "All Goblins". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "An object nearby starts bleeding at the Hollow oak tree".

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

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Adeline Smith

Alias

"All Goblins"

Features

5' 5"

Green eyes

A second belly button / Right eye

Organization

The Task Force of Huge Troll

Emotions

Trust

Personality

Calmly Noisy

Motive

Disrupt the military to cause catastrophe

Bodyguard

John the "Faint Abominable Snowman"

Physical Size

Shrimpy

Story

Additional Locations

The Prehensile Creek

Abandoned Citadel

Prosperity Suburbs

Random Events

Donkey Is getting confiscated

Soup Bursts loudly

Gypsy Catches leprosy

Corncob Is being tortured

World

Stores

Easton's Picture Frame Labs

Fox's Bell Little shop

Lee's Brass Replica Solutions

Flynn's Barrel Creative

Traps

Bear Trap

Ice lock of Competency

Objects

Picture Frame with a False bottom

Brass Replica that is glowing

Secret Bell

Hidden Fork

File of Competency

Wand of Wonder

Target confesses to rampant kleptomania

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Zion Fox "Fat Pastrami's" Merchant Syrup Christmas
Eleanor Lee "Right Ribs" Mole Singing Teeth
Piper Carpenter Consultant Chalk Tigers
Easton Robbins Professional Cuddler Balloons Fire
Kinsley Flynn Dog surfing instructor Dinosaurs Lions

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).