The Director Welcomes You

The Boundary Bitterness Incident

#934936

Location

Foul, Arid The Gambia

Time of Day

1:6

Extraction Point

187 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

11 Hours

Sleuths,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Candlesticks that is glowing. Get to The Gambia at 10:05

Good Luck.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Luca Francis

Alias

"Golden Beholder"

Features

5' 5"

Heterochromia eyes

Large deep scar / Neck

Organization

The Alliance of Tangy Ashtray

Emotions

Isolated

Personality

Really Harsh

Motive

Take over a country to please their master

Bodyguard

Hal the "Avian Bigfoot"

Physical Size

Tall

Story

Additional Locations

The Jealous Arcade

Hidden Palace

Skill Festival

Random Events

Lactose Intolerance skins a cat with his teeth

Druid Balances on a ledge

Dead Animal runs over an infant

Delivery Guy Attempts to rob a bank

World

Stores

Arya's Candlesticks Logistics

Harper's Bench Productions

Marshall's Bicycle Wardrobe

Castillo's Skeletal Animal Threads

Traps

Moving Executioner Statue

Rune of Paralyzation of Bitterness

Objects

Candlesticks that is glowing

Bicycle that is glowing

Secret Bench

Hidden Bottle

Frying Pan of Bitterness

Wand of Wonder

Target’s clothes inflate to the size of a house

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Julia Harper "Obese Churros" Merchant Chickens Children's Stories
Isla Marshall "Gross Hot Dogs" Mole Notes Octopus
Gabriel Hunt Hairdresser Death Lamps
Arya Chen Art Therapist Attention Dinosaurs
Matteo Castillo Human Statue Cartography 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).