The Director Welcomes You

The Safety Catastrophe Incident

#abc285

Location

Breezy, Breezy Lesotho

Time of Day

10:16

Extraction Point

52 Miles NE

Time to Complete

6 Hours

Operatives,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Desk children's replica. Get to Lesotho at 16:15

Good Luck.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Liam Wolfe

Alias

"Red Lion"

Features

4' 6"

Brown eyes

Large moles / Right foot

Organization

The Bunch of Rhythmic Law

Emotions

Cautious

Personality

Briefly Savory

Motive

Make a lot of money in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Anthony the "Quick Alien"

Physical Size

Baby

Story

Additional Locations

The Stocky Manor

Touristy Mansion

Amnesia Carnival

Random Events

Goblet Bounces oddly

Ninja Is being kidnapped

Leopard grabs a lady's purse

Delivery Guy Crashes slowly

World

Stores

Peyton's Desk Solutions

Roberts's Lounge Chair Industries

Hanson's Vase Atelier

Fitzgerald's Loveseat Du jour

Traps

Falling Block

Ghoul Touch of Catastrophe

Objects

Desk children's replica

Vase made of heavy metal

Secret Lounge Chair

Hidden Button

Blindfold of Catastrophe

Wand of Wonder

Target asserts that he’ll die unless he eats a special mushroom

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kennedy Roberts "Sharp Bagels" Merchant Soap Photography
Penelope Hanson "Green Lox" Mole Cousins Children's Stories
Joshua Miles Acupuncturist Peanut Butter Notes
Peyton Rogers Weakened Sailboats Clocks
Brody Fitzgerald Cobbler Cousins Attention

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).