The Director Welcomes You

The Upper Management Laughter Protocol

#e3013e

Location

Dry, Bright Barbados

Time of Day

18:7

Extraction Point

141 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

26 Hours

Meddlers,
As you can see you are trapped inside climb a Polluted Volcano . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Wild Mutants" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A lone flower growing at the Hollow oak tree". Your mission was clandestine, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Sharp Tape Measure hidden on you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Zoe Bowers

Alias

"Wild Mutants"

Features

4' 5"

Red eyes

Large deep scar / Crotch

Organization

The League of Numerous Heroin

Emotions

Depressed

Personality

Neatly Square

Motive

Take over a government to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Nicky the "Melted Dolphin"

Physical Size

Shrimpy

Story

Additional Locations

The Cool Crypt

Deserted Carousal

Grave Consequences Citadel

Random Events

Woman Balances on a ledge

Hound Adopts a nearby child

Bunny meets disaster

Pine Branch Spontaneously disintegrates

World

Stores

Theodore's Globe Labs

Navarro's Flowers Growing Chic Chåteau

Howell's Sink Hole

Hansen's Coat Market

Traps

Earthquake

Insanity Mist Vapor of Laughter

Objects

Globe children's replica

Sink that has been hollowed out

Secret Flowers Growing

Hidden Sling

Spoon of Laughter

Wand of Wonder

For one week, target can’t be injured by members of his species

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Cooper Navarro "The Kidneys" Merchant Lamps Tea
Brielle Howell "Short Ribs" Mole Television Books
Caleb Thomas Chef Limes Lamps
Theodore Carroll Frustrated Deodorant Basketball
Weston Hansen Spirit Fire Candles

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).