The Director Welcomes You

The Incendiary Donkey Predicament

#2b4f6c

Location

Wet, Humid Palau

Time of Day

2:15

Extraction Point

144 Miles W

Time to Complete

47 Hours

Examiners,
It seems "Cramped Cockatrice" has gone level 3. They have been broadcasting this message "A shrine is nearby at the Rainbow Mountain". We need you to eliminate them, Oddly. Their last known location was recorded at 08:02. You have a Delicate Paint as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Hudson Figueroa

Alias

"Cramped Cockatrice"

Features

5' 11"

Blue eyes

Small mole / Right thumb

Organization

The Society of Slimey Information

Emotions

Indifferent

Personality

Oddly Boiled

Motive

Make a lot of money to become rich

Bodyguard

Sam the "Magnificent mammoth"

Physical Size

Teeny

Story

Additional Locations

The Incendiary Reef

Polluted Peninsula

Calamity Fortress

Random Events

Horse Carriage Is being detained

Cauldron Integrates silently into the group

Spectator Is accused by the law

Chunk of Beef Lunges at the group

World

Stores

Natalie's Metal chair Bureau

Lynch's Kitchen table Atelier

Bates's Lipstick Mall

Wright's Watch Brothers

Traps

Bestow Curse

Tripping Chain of Ruin

Objects

Metal chair that is glowing

Lipstick that is glowing

Secret Kitchen table

Hidden Rock

Newspaper of Ruin

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s spellbook has straps and can be worn as a backpack

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Beau Lynch "Two Bones" Merchant Sailboats Jazz
Daniel Bates "King Churros" Mole Basketball Rabbits
Iris Gonzales Angry Cooking Sharks
Natalie Buchanan The Body Rock n' Roll Houses
Jayden Wright Envious Chalk Tea

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).