The Director Welcomes You

The Zealous Pump Assignment

#b5f30f

Location

Rainy, Sunny Japan

Time of Day

23:39

Extraction Point

90 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

42 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
As you can see you are trapped inside the inside of a Polluted Motel . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Heavy Dwarf" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A traveling merchant appears at the Wizard's Scar". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Soft File hidden on you.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Nathaniel Olson

Alias

"Heavy Dwarf"

Features

7' 1"

Brown eyes

A second belly button / Crotch

Organization

The Board of Surly Burlesque

Emotions

Overwhelmed

Personality

Boldly Empty

Motive

Take over a country to save humanity

Bodyguard

Christopher the "Good Beholder"

Physical Size

Toy

Story

Additional Locations

The Zealous Crypt

Overpopulated Isle

Good Spirits Grove

Random Events

Sewer screams at the top of their lungs

Pack of Wild Dogs Becomes wounded

Squirrel Strikes the church bell

Bunny is heard screaming

World

Stores

Emmett's Flower in Vase Bazaar

Kennedy's Workbench Closet

Ingram's Potted Plant Convenience store

Torres's Pipe Group

Traps

Camouflaged Pit

Bear Trap of Freshness

Objects

Flower in Vase made of heavy metal

Potted Plant that has been hollowed out

Secret Workbench

Hidden Arrows

Pen of Freshness

Wand of Wonder

Caster runs to and attempts to uproot the nearest tree

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Julia Kennedy "Heavy Pinky's" Merchant Tissues Stickers
Josephine Ingram "Tough Lox" Mole Whipped Cream Ice Cubes
Rachel Fuller Angry Cellphones Dolphins
Emmett Pierce Tailor Painting Comic Books
Isabelle Torres Banker Death Attention

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).