The Director Welcomes You

Arcade Royale

#388d93

Location

Windy, Mild Venezuela

Time of Day

7:59

Extraction Point

192 Miles W

Time to Complete

30 Hours

Detectives,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Kitchen knife that is glowing. Get to Venezuela at 09:13

Good Luck.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Aliyah Valdez

Alias

"Small Mummy"

Features

7' 11"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Left thumb

Organization

The Association of Straight Thing

Emotions

Frustrated

Personality

Coaxingly Vacant

Motive

Take over a government to cause catastrophe

Bodyguard

Terry the "Rare Succubus"

Physical Size

Short

Story

Additional Locations

The Sturdy Reef

Underground Citadel

Delirium Forge

Random Events

Bellhop skins a cat with his teeth

Delivery Guy Skips merrily

Box of Mice Is throwing a protest

Bear Glistens gently

World

Stores

Paige's Kitchen knife Arcade

Graham's Mirror Solutions

Glover's Portrait Threads

Deleon's Rug Specialities

Traps

Floor Net

Wall Blade of Expiration

Objects

Kitchen knife that is glowing

Portrait that is glowing

Secret Mirror

Hidden Bracer

Blowgun of Expiration

Wand of Wonder

Target sprouts 1d10 fingers from his cheeks

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Lincoln Graham "Obese Ribs" Merchant Writers Flashlights
Morgan Glover "Violet Elbows" Mole Doves Comic Books
Braxton Terry Old Man Easter Basketball
Paige Morrison Human Statue Comic Books Notes
Carlos Deleon Teacher Potatoes Death

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).