The Director Welcomes You

Crib, Ladybug, Veil, Spy.

#311e5a

Location

Frigid, Warm Ghana

Time of Day

11:9

Extraction Point

3 Miles NE

Time to Complete

22 Hours

Sleuths,
I have sent you to the inside of a Archaic Circus to look for a suspect by the name "Bullet Ogre". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "Distant sounds of screaming at the Eye of Heaven".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Glowing Scissor in your kit to help.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Nicholas Quinn

Alias

"Bullet Ogre"

Features

4' 3"

Red eyes

Faint curved scar / Right arm

Organization

The Union of Icy Veil

Emotions

Trusting

Personality

Powerfully Hissing

Motive

Make a lot of money for pure destruction

Bodyguard

Al the "Bumpy Mutants"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Victorian Masquerade

Desolate Island

Mania Sanctuary

Random Events

Bag of Flour chase a suspect

Husband Strikes the church bell

Woman Catches leprosy

Musical Gets their hand chopped off

World

Stores

Khloe's Tea Set Consulting

Morgan's Taxidermy animal Emporium

Ellis's Butter Churner Bureau

Gregory's Key Wardrobe

Traps

Javelin

Acid Fog of Destruction

Objects

Tea Set made of heavy metal

Butter Churner made of heavy metal

Secret Taxidermy animal

Hidden Nipple Clamp

Trident of Destruction

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s fingernails grow 1d4 inches per day

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Clara Morgan "Four Boy" Merchant Glass Glitter
Waylon Ellis "Green Arms" Mole Football Photography
Dean Hubbard Dead Tired Broccoli Peanut Butter
Khloe Larson Demon Essential Oils Technology
Eden Gregory Physician Tissues Soda

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).