The Director Welcomes You

The Squirrel Exuberance Protocol

#c0e9cc

Location

Windy, Miserable Rwanda

Time of Day

1:15

Extraction Point

72 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

22 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
I have sent you to the top of a Overpopulated Acropolis to look for a suspect by the name "Dull Hydra". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to deactivate their resources. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "An out of place door appears at the Dead Forest".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Bulbous Paint Brush in your kit to help.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Mia Wade

Alias

"Dull Hydra"

Features

5' 5"

Heterochromia eyes

Large moles / Left middle finger

Organization

The Gang of Thankful History

Emotions

Guilty

Personality

Victoriously Slatted

Motive

Make a lot of money for honor

Bodyguard

Bobby the "Zealous Gargoyle"

Physical Size

Scanty

Story

Additional Locations

The Robust City

Polluted Reef

Expiration Pond

Random Events

Water Vessel Is being tortured

Rhapsody Gets their hand chopped off

Goblet Is accused by the law

Bank Evades the law

World

Stores

King's Painting Closet

Horton's Iron stove Consulting

Alvarado's Mirror Logistics

Barton's Bookcase Brothers

Traps

Burning Hands

Beehive of Exuberance

Objects

Painting that has been hollowed out

Mirror that is glowing

Secret Iron stove

Hidden Cutlass

Bracelet of Exuberance

Wand of Wonder

Everyone now within 10 yards of target ignores him for 1d4 hours

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Addison Horton "Three Ankles" Merchant Baseball Video Games
Lydia Alvarado "Red Throats" Mole Eggs Bears
Emerson Brown Operator Cats Video Games
King Fisher Librarian Comic Books Bells
Alex Barton Angry Deodorant Potatoes

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).