The Director Welcomes You

The Error Contentment Protocol

#73ac1f

Location

Dry, Rainy Sweden

Time of Day

5:3

Extraction Point

85 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Detectives,
It seems "Gross Spirit" has gone level 8. They have been broadcasting this message "A thick fog rolls in at the Stone Circle". We need you to eliminate them, Unbearably. Their last known location was recorded at 03:07. You have a Clean Plier as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Michael Hicks

Alias

"Gross Spirit"

Features

4' 9"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Right eye

Organization

The Task Force of Egregious Arithmetic

Emotions

Amazed

Personality

Unbearably Dirty

Motive

Take over a government to become famous

Bodyguard

Al the "Old Centaur"

Physical Size

Paltry

Story

Additional Locations

The Chuffed Port

Desolate Park

Skill Mansion

Random Events

Meteor Is being detained

Renaissance Faire chase a suspect

Vagabond meets disaster

Squirrel Is being detained

World

Stores

Liliana's Shoe Horn Specialities

Rodgers's Spare brick Worldwide

Lowe's Mirror Group

Norris's Glass Jars Convenience store

Traps

Fusillade of Darts

Javelin of Contentment

Objects

Shoe Horn that has been hollowed out

Mirror children's replica

Secret Spare brick

Hidden Blowgun

Coin of Contentment

Wand of Wonder

Caster is known to have had illicit dealings with the undead

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Hunter Rodgers "Cramped Hot Dogs" Merchant Children's Stories Bells
Jason Lowe "Fat Scars" Mole Doors Syrup
Aria Lang Graphic Designer Teeth Rock n' Roll
Liliana Lewis Electrician Bracelets Plushies
Greyson Norris Dentist Potatoes Snowglobes

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).