The Director Welcomes You

The Eager Mouth Insecurity

#2097b7

Location

Bright, Foggy Belgium

Time of Day

20:54

Extraction Point

15 Miles SE

Time to Complete

7 Hours

Meddlers,
As you can see you are trapped inside be locked inside of a Hidden Crypt . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Junior Normal Guy" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A shrine is nearby at the Serpents Nest". Your mission was anti-surveillance, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Angry Abascus hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Sophia Hawkins

Alias

"Junior Normal Guy"

Features

5' 9"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Right arm

Organization

The Crew of Breezy Goat

Emotions

Sympathy

Personality

Rightfully Salty

Motive

Make a lot of money out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Terry the "Consensual Turtle"

Physical Size

Meager

Story

Additional Locations

The Eager Barn Dance

Rundown Jungle

Power Business

Random Events

Crazy Man Skips merrily

Cauldron Strikes the church bell

Chauvinist Is being detained

Storm Lunges at the group

World

Stores

Ezekiel's Doorway Department store

Richards's Vase Technologies

Pierce's Bench Worldwide

Lucas's Coat Atelier

Traps

Collapsing Column

Suspicious door with lock of Demise

Objects

Doorway children's replica

Bench with a False bottom

Secret Vase

Hidden Coif

Stave of Demise

Wand of Wonder

Target’s presence causes birds to fall silent

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mattie Richards "The Lungs" Merchant Peanut Butter Bells
Eliza Pierce "No Toes" Mole Dinosaurs Harmonica
Nicole Greene Banker Limes Stickers
Ezekiel Powers Cobbler Broccoli Fire
Kaleb Lucas Scientist Physics Chickens

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).