The Director Welcomes You

The Recklessly Mysterious Agent

#da1c28

Location

Chilly, Bright Liberia

Time of Day

7:1

Extraction Point

75 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

2 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
As you can see you are trapped inside within a Pitch Black Island . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Wild Goblins" is responsible and they sent us this message - "The earth shakes briefly at the Skull shaped island". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Feminine Toothbrush hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Penelope Scott

Alias

"Wild Goblins"

Features

5' 5"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Right thumb

Organization

The Gang of Angry War

Emotions

Bitter

Personality

Recklessly Humid

Motive

Disrupt the military in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Jessica the "Vast Centaur"

Physical Size

Colossal

Story

Additional Locations

The Mysterious Carnival

Abandoned Shelter

Reservation Isle

Random Events

Donkey Gets their hand chopped off

Ninja Finds gold in the water

Skeleton Attempts to rob a bank

Bank is being loudly arrested

World

Stores

Gracie's Staircase Supermarket

Allen's Crock Little shop

Robbins's Wardrobe Solutions

Patterson's Easel Mall

Traps

Ray of Sickness

Reverse Gravity of Bravery

Objects

Staircase with a False bottom

Wardrobe that is glowing

Secret Crock

Hidden Blindfold

Shoe of Bravery

Wand of Wonder

Someone nearby smells like a corpse in the presence of magic

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Gianna Allen "Three Ankles" Merchant Pillows Limes
Isabelle Robbins "Blue Spleens" Mole Cartography Football
Gael Valdez Angry Television Jazz
Gracie Watkins Railroad Conductor Photography Bells
Ethan Patterson Firefighter Shirts Mirrors

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).