The Director Welcomes You

The Mint Endownment Incident

#cd4808

Location

Cool, Frigid Sudan

Time of Day

18:32

Extraction Point

120 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

7 Hours

Meddlers,
I have sent you to enter a Underground Water Park to look for a suspect by the name "Green Kangaroos". This mission is counterintelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to discover their location. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a random cow at the Frozen palace".

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

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aaron Welch

Alias

"Green Kangaroos"

Features

5' 8"

Red eyes

A second belly button / Left arm

Organization

The Alliance of Scary Crib

Emotions

Rageful

Personality

Sternly Empty

Motive

Take over a country to corrupt everyone

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Progressive Zombie"

Physical Size

Limited

Story

Additional Locations

The Long Maze

Underground Reef

Excitement Forest

Random Events

Water Vessel Ignites violently

Gang Is under a curse

Panhandler overflows

Chunk of Beef grabs a lady's purse

World

Stores

Steven's Flower in Vase Ventures

Parker's Shoe Horn Factory

Andrews's Sink Emporium

Holmes's Wardrobe Technologies

Traps

Fusillade of Darts

Wall Blade of Endownment

Objects

Flower in Vase made of heavy metal

Sink that is glowing

Secret Shoe Horn

Hidden Dagger

Necklace of Endownment

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s ears grow to the size of dinner plates

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Nora Parker "Italian Hands" Merchant Socks Doves
Tristan Andrews "Fast Elbows" Mole Eggs Doors
Jordyn Ramirez Waiter Essential Oils Photography
Steven Owens Architect Football Easter
Brandon Holmes Envious Dice Squirrels

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).