The Director Welcomes You

The Mealy Zebra Contingency

#5759b3

Location

Miserable, Windy Mozambique

Time of Day

23:53

Extraction Point

42 Miles SE

Time to Complete

1 Hours

Investigators,
I have sent you to approach a Underground Lake to look for a suspect by the name "Heavy Horse". This mission is black ops. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to deactivate their resources. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A white horse dashes past at the Beast's Maze".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Explosive File in your kit to help.

β€” The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Payton McBride

Alias

"Heavy Horse"

Features

4' 4"

Heterochromia eyes

A second belly button / Right arm

Organization

The Sorority of Obedient Player

Emotions

Insecure

Personality

Intently Tinkling

Motive

Disrupt the military to escape their destiny

Bodyguard

Peter the "Tragic Chimera"

Physical Size

Slight

Story

Additional Locations

The Mealy Mansion

Desolate Peninsula

The Blackest Black Carousal

Random Events

Box of Cigarette Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Donkey is being loudly arrested

Squirrel Is under a curse

Chicken Is being tortured

World

Stores

Cecilia's Crate Bazaar

Washington's Skeletal Animal Specialities

George's Urn Productions

Hamilton's Quill and Ink Boutique

Traps

Rolling Rock

Poison Wall Spikes of Calamity

Objects

Crate with a False bottom

Urn made of heavy metal

Secret Skeletal Animal

Hidden Knife

Credit Card of Calamity

Wand of Wonder

Target experiences vague nostalgia whenever he’s wounded

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Michelle Washington "Black Cappuccinos" Merchant Jazz Cousins
Angel George "Cheap Hands" Mole Chickens Writers
Rachel Fernandez Depressed Writers Eggs
Cecilia Bishop Dietitian Sharks Limes
Jeremy Hamilton Exhausted Children's Stories Tea

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).