The Director Welcomes You

The Pie Casualties Incident

#9b868e

Location

Cool, Icy Saint Lucia

Time of Day

13:13

Extraction Point

28 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

9 Hours

Investigators,
It seems "Sharp Sphinx" has gone level 6. They have been broadcasting this message "A vagrant asks for food at the Ivory Gate". We need you to eliminate them, Suddenly. Their last known location was recorded at 23:09. You have a Feminine Balloon as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Robin Walton

Alias

"Sharp Sphinx"

Features

6' 1"

Blue eyes

Stretch Marks / Left thumb

Organization

The Society of Many Basement

Emotions

Satisfied

Personality

Suddenly Uneven

Motive

Disrupt the military to inspire a rebellion

Bodyguard

Alex the "Sticky Giraffe"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Sparkling Island

Bustling Maze

Indecision Palace

Random Events

Meteor chase a suspect

Thief Calls menacingly

Ninja overflows

Procession Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

World

Stores

Clara's Coat Du jour

Lloyd's Sofa Worldwide

Cross's Sconce Outlet

Turner's Wingback chair Hole

Traps

Beehive

Flooding Room of Casualties

Objects

Coat with a False bottom

Sconce with a False bottom

Secret Sofa

Hidden Lance

Guthook of Casualties

Wand of Wonder

Target races toward the nearest lake and jumps into it

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Natalia Lloyd "Casual Arms" Merchant Ice Cubes Television
Amaya Cross "All Heels" Mole Drinking Bracelets
Aria Curtis Chief Executive Officer Children's Stories Tigers
Clara Jensen Artist Tissues Lipstick
Morgan Turner Firefighter Hamsters Photography

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).