The Director Welcomes You

Who is Penelope Power?

#0cd22c

Location

Bright, Cloudless Guatemala

Time of Day

11:57

Extraction Point

158 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

30 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
It seems "Fast Horse" has gone level 3. They have been broadcasting this message "A shadow passes at the Grey Hollow". We need you to eliminate them, Immediately. Their last known location was recorded at 05:13. You have a Dull Hot Glue Gun as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Fiona McKinney

Alias

"Fast Horse"

Features

5' 7"

Hazel eyes

Small mole / Left middle finger

Organization

The Clique of Constipated Language

Emotions

Scornful

Personality

Immediately Savory

Motive

Disrupt the military to achieve their destiny

Bodyguard

Penelope the "Mysterious Bigfoot"

Physical Size

Colossal

Story

Additional Locations

The Engorged Manor

Crowded Park

Sanitation Jungle

Random Events

Chanting Cult is robbed

Soup emerges

Box of Cigarette arrives in the mail

Rhapsody Is accused by the law

World

Stores

Elijah's Watch Ventures

Brooks's Certificate Du jour

Jones's Tea Pot Logistics

Curry's Clamp Productions

Traps

Symbol of Hypnosis

Camouflaged Pit of Well-being

Objects

Watch children's replica

Tea Pot that is glowing

Secret Certificate

Hidden Gauntlet

Mace of Well-being

Wand of Wonder

Caster declares himself to be the center of the universe

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Grace Brooks "Big Forearms" Merchant Cooking Butterflies
Genesis Jones "Green Hearts" Mole Video Games Rabbits
Oliver McCarthy Cobbler Writers Limes
Elijah Le Scientist Lamps Flowers
Everly Curry Indifferent Photography Tea

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).