The Director Welcomes You

Labs Royale

#38bab2

Location

Arid, Chilly Moldova

Time of Day

17:36

Extraction Point

200 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

46 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
As you can see you are trapped inside underneathe a Rundown Grove . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Short child" is responsible and they sent us this message - "Clouds develop quickly at the Screaming Waterfall". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Clandestine Watch hidden on you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Robert Ramsey

Alias

"Short child"

Features

6' 7"

Blue eyes

Small mole / Left hand

Organization

The Sisterhood of Oafish Space

Emotions

Safe

Personality

Tenderly Short

Motive

Disrupt the military fueled by conspiracy

Bodyguard

Larry the "Victorious all-seeing eye"

Physical Size

Cramped

Story

Additional Locations

The Tertiary Festival

Overpopulated Barn Dance

Fate Manor

Random Events

Sewer gathers near a point of interest

Renaissance Faire Is under a curse

Soup grabs a lady's purse

Softball scurries by

World

Stores

Kingston's Tea Set Labs

Juarez's Urn Technologies

Perry's Crock Solutions

Flynn's Sconce Department store

Traps

Poisoned Arrow

Crushing Room of Irritation

Objects

Tea Set that has been hollowed out

Crock that has been hollowed out

Secret Urn

Hidden Shield

Staff of Irritation

Wand of Wonder

All within 50 yards must Save, or their wounds will never heal

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Aaron Juarez "Violet Parmigianas" Merchant Doves Soda
Mckenzie Perry "Meaty Ribs" Mole Ice Cubes Chocolate
Alina Morrison Professional Bridesmaid Water Sharks
Kingston Gregory Bruised Ice Cubes Doors
William Flynn Cheerful Candles Dolphins

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).