The Director Welcomes You

Warehouse Royale

#cdcc06

Location

Arid, Windless Canada

Time of Day

1:58

Extraction Point

35 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

44 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
We need your help. Agent Norah Lawson has gone missing and we believe "Violet Porpoises" is responsible. They were last seen in Canada at 03:11. The agent sent one final message – "The group finds a dead fish at the Boneyard". Take this Sharp File - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Genesis Becker

Alias

"Violet Porpoises"

Features

7' 10"

Hazel eyes

Small mole / Left middle finger

Organization

The Clique of Baked Bees

Emotions

Brave

Personality

Sedately Boorish

Motive

Take over a country in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Alex the "Wide Gremlin"

Physical Size

Teeny

Story

Additional Locations

The Unimportant Castle

Overpopulated Island

Extermination Isle

Random Events

Panhandler grabs a lady's purse

German Trench Club scurries by

Carcass stop the party and asks questions

Box of Mice Evades the law

World

Stores

Evan's Workbench Warehouse

Wheeler's Sculpture Factory

Rogers's Spice shelf International

Lawson's Armoir Discount

Traps

Scything Blade

Tripping Chain of Death

Objects

Workbench children's replica

Spice shelf with a False bottom

Secret Sculpture

Hidden Soy Sauce Packet

Spikes of Death

Wand of Wonder

All within 50 yards who are injured smell strongly of peppermint

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Scarlett Wheeler "Two Hot Dogs" Merchant Coffee Rocks
Isaac Rogers "Silver Throats" Mole Broccoli Acorns
Eva Ortiz The Body Syrup Sharp Things
Evan Singh Artist Writers Lamps
Norah Lawson Cheerful Tea Boxes

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).