The Director Welcomes You

Arcade Royale

#26e93c

Location

Miserable, Chilly Jordan

Time of Day

24:17

Extraction Point

36 Miles W

Time to Complete

25 Hours

Informants,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Skeletal Animal that is glowing. Get to Jordan at 02:17

Good Luck.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Clara Walsh

Alias

"All Dolphin"

Features

7' 4"

Red eyes

Large deep scar / Right eye

Organization

The Agency of Bad Management

Emotions

Absorbed

Personality

Poorly Rapping

Motive

Make a lot of money to be left alone

Bodyguard

Tiffany the "Tiring Mermaid"

Physical Size

Soaring

Story

Additional Locations

The Efficacious Sanctuary

Expensive Mansion

Euthanasia Business

Random Events

Butter Shipment Becomes wounded

Dracula Strikes the church bell

Butter Shipment Is accused by the law

Crazy Man catches on fire

World

Stores

Colton's Skeletal Animal Arcade

Schwartz's crutch Unlimited

Harmon's Fireplace Logistics

Adams's Oil Lamp Technologies

Traps

Swinging Block

Poison Needle of Euthanasia

Objects

Skeletal Animal that is glowing

Fireplace that is glowing

Secret crutch

Hidden Pike

Blowgun of Euthanasia

Wand of Wonder

Anyone nearby with formal military rank is stripped of that rank

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Alejandro Schwartz "Left Pastrami's" Merchant Shirts Washing Machines
Piper Harmon "Fat Cappuccinos" Mole Rabbits Eggs
Harmony Cortez Consultant Dolphins Houses
Colton Guerrero Drummer Baseball Syrup
Leah Adams Cobbler Whipped Cream Death

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).