The Director Welcomes You

The Upper Management Extermination Protocol

#e18757

Location

Arid, Sunny Montenegro

Time of Day

15:14

Extraction Point

158 Miles S

Time to Complete

4 Hours

Snoopers,
As you can see you are trapped inside circle a Desolate Lodge . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Big Kraken" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A mysterious key is found on the ground at the Great Shadow". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Colorful Banana hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Zoe Miranda

Alias

"Big Kraken"

Features

6' 8"

Blue eyes

Large moles / Left arm

Organization

The Guild of Tertiary Nature

Emotions

Disturbed

Personality

Regularly Endemic

Motive

Make a lot of money to control the Children

Bodyguard

Randy the "Rabid Kangaroos"

Physical Size

Substantial

Story

Additional Locations

The Some Festival

Underground Carnival

Extinction Barn Dance

Random Events

Ninja emerges

Store is robbed

Bear is loose

Dead Animal Evades the law

World

Stores

Malachi's Tea Set International

Dunn's Coat Cosmetics

Newton's Oil Lamp Ventures

Harrington's Flower in Vase Mall

Traps

Burning Hands

Fire of Extermination

Objects

Tea Set made of heavy metal

Oil Lamp with a False bottom

Secret Coat

Hidden Wrench

Shoe of Extermination

Wand of Wonder

Caster thinks that he’s being savaged by rabid dogs

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jaxon Dunn "Two Bones" Merchant Money Contracts
Dean Newton "Mini Cheesecakes" Mole Cats Water
Katherine Doyle Cranky Mirrors Sticky Notes
Malachi Hansen Weakened Basketball Baseball
Ryder Harrington Bruised Peanut Butter Socks

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).