The Director Welcomes You

The Quality Freshness Protocol

#df95df

Location

Gorgeous, Icy East Timor

Time of Day

18:48

Extraction Point

59 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

11 Hours

Meddlers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Musical instrument made of heavy metal. Get to East Timor at 18:24

Good Luck.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Messiah Ellis

Alias

"Little Platypuses"

Features

7' 2"

Brown eyes

Large deep scar / Right arm

Organization

The Bureau of Petite Investment

Emotions

Anxious

Personality

Mechanically Dowdy

Motive

Take over a country to escape their destiny

Bodyguard

Hal the "Obnoxious kobold"

Physical Size

Scanty

Story

Additional Locations

The Swollen Fortress

Deserted Jungle

Irritation Citadel

Random Events

Druid Skips merrily

Meteor is heard screaming

Potato Is hurled at the adventurers

Potato Finds gold in the water

World

Stores

Arya's Musical instrument International

Tucker's Flowers Growing Emporium

Vasquez's Flowers Growing Atelier

Butler's Oil Lamp Couture

Traps

Insanity Mist Vapor

Black Tentacles of Freshness

Objects

Musical instrument made of heavy metal

Flowers Growing children's replica

Secret Flowers Growing

Hidden Targe

Guthook of Freshness

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s hands appear to be crude wooden replicas

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Savannah Tucker "No Kidneys" Merchant Squirrels Sharp Things
Abigail Vasquez "Big Eyes" Mole Acorns Bread
Emerson Kelley Actor Sun Glasses Ice Cubes
Arya Wood Farmer Sticky Notes Water
Alyssa Butler Teacher Batteries Tigers

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).