Welcome to the Dowdy & Cooling Detective's League!

This week on Episode #766

Madhouse in the Shrilling Snake

For the Head Detective's eyes only!

Give Them Direction

Monsters
The Squirrelly Unicorn of the Shrilling Snake
teeny hissing Cyclops of Reservation
Shrilling Hydra
Villain Motive
Destruction
Starting Event
Adventurer's are at a location already
Random Events
A meteor grabs a lady's purse
A Toilet explodes
A Butter shipment gathers near a point of interest
A Gang Integrates silently into the group
Local Business
Serenity's Diary Hole
Darnell's Platter Boutique
Guzman's Platter Arcade
Curry's Spice shelf Collective

Populate the World

Criminal Contacts
Al "Tough bones"
Darnell "mad legs"
Joseph "five pastrami's"
Frankie "Shrilling Snake"
Random People
Lillian Hill
Christopher Jordan
Emery Guzman
Hudson Morgan
Serenity Phillips
Matteo Curry
Judy Graham
Ximena Swanson
Descriptions
Surveyor
Acupuncturist
Optimistic
The Body
Soul

MISC Ideas

Magical Objects
Newspaper of Reservation
Arrows of Redemption
Secret objects
Secret Diary
Platter with a False bottom
Random objects
Spice shelf
Flowers Growing
Taxidermy animal
Trophy
Locations
Peninsula
Barn Dance
Villa
Shelter
Destinations
Town of Louthrowwick
City of Sheringkencum

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).