Welcome to the Cocky & Incalculable Detective's Office!

This week on Episode #568

Don't Tumble with a Puddle of Perspiration

For the Head Detective's eyes only!

Give Them Direction

Monsters
The crooked Drunken Irish Guy of the Short Puddle
minuscule Pre-Pubescent Gnome of Perspiration
Short Fairy
Villain Motive
To achieve their Destiny
Starting Event
The commander sends them to explore a location
Random Events
A Box of cigarette overflows
A Vagrant Is being tortured
A gunshot chase a suspect
A sewer Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers
Local Business
Abraham's Mounted Animal Arcade
Timmy's Mantle Arcade
Horton's Desk Bureau
Fisher's Oil Lamp Boutique

Populate the World

Criminal Contacts
Juan "one parmigianas"
Timmy "black pinky's"
Daniel "slow toes"
Charles "Short Puddle"
Random People
Bentley Hunt
Lilly Haynes
Alice Horton
Cooper Scott
Abraham Walters
Aubrey Fisher
Kayden Lee
Evan Collins
Descriptions
Physician
Spirit
Frustrated
Technician
Meteorologist

MISC Ideas

Magical Objects
Stave of Perspiration
Chewing Gum of Influence
Secret objects
Secret Mounted Animal
Desk with a False bottom
Random objects
Oil Lamp
Creeping Vines
Mirror
Hose
Locations
Fortress
Mansion
City
Business
Destinations
Town of Amerley kingdom
City of Ealoldcum

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).