The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Ruminating Church

#b4a23d

Location

Wet, Cloudy Ghana

Time of Day

8:22

Extraction Point

167 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

45 Hours

Scrutinizers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Easel children's replica. Get to Ghana at 02:16

Good Luck.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Angelina Turner

Alias

"Dull Cat"

Features

6' 3"

Green eyes

Small mole / Right hand

Organization

The League of Loose Wizard

Emotions

Revulsion

Personality

Blindly Prickly

Motive

Make a lot of money for a love interest

Bodyguard

Harold the "Puny Mutants"

Physical Size

Little

Story

Additional Locations

The Ruminating Lagoon

Crowded Mansion

Animosity Festival

Random Events

Drunk Balances on a ledge

Princess catches on fire

Potato Is being detained

Keg Is hurled at the adventurers

World

Stores

Kaiden's Easel Unlimited

Harper's Bible Unlimited

Swanson's Mural Closet

Pearson's Metal chair Labs

Traps

Compacting Room

Moving Executioner Statue of Redemption

Objects

Easel children's replica

Mural that has been hollowed out

Secret Bible

Hidden Lance

Cutlass of Redemption

Wand of Wonder

All priestly magic within 500 yards is dispelled

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Kennedy Harper "Fat Toes" Merchant Basketball Jigsaw Puzzles
Steven Swanson "Tough Thumbs" Mole Paperclips Deodorant
Leah Cole Shadow Rubber Stamps Eggs
Kaiden Howard Butcher Stickers Sailboats
Kingston Pearson Barber Eggs Rabbits

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).