The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Gentle Snowflake

#e9885b

Location

Dry, Warm Netherlands

Time of Day

11:52

Extraction Point

96 Miles SW

Time to Complete

39 Hours

Scrutinizers,
It seems "Red Unicorn" has gone level 7. They have been broadcasting this message "A traveling merchant appears at the Where grass will not grow". We need you to eliminate them, Mockingly. Their last known location was recorded at 06:20. You have a Angry Belt as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Arya Barnett

Alias

"Red Unicorn"

Features

6' 2"

Gray eyes

Stretch Marks / Right arm

Organization

The Commission of Calm Heroin

Emotions

Irritated

Personality

Mockingly Garrulous

Motive

Disrupt the military to control the Children

Bodyguard

Peter the "Hungry Meerkat"

Physical Size

Colossal

Story

Additional Locations

The Gentle Citadel

Crowded Shelter

Ruin Creek

Random Events

Keg Is hurled at the adventurers

Turtle Skips merrily

Safe meets disaster

Mutant Integrates silently into the group

World

Stores

John's Shelf of alcohol Bureau

Flynn's Candlesticks Solutions

Mueller's Bonsai Factory

Williams's Sconce Unlimited

Traps

Scything Blade

Tripping Chain of Disaster

Objects

Shelf of alcohol made of heavy metal

Bonsai with a False bottom

Secret Candlesticks

Hidden Soy Sauce Packet

Credit Card of Disaster

Wand of Wonder

Caster feels inexplicable anxiety when he hears his name

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Braxton Flynn "Yellow Heels" Merchant Pillows Syrup
David Mueller "One Hearts" Mole Batteries Clocks
Cooper Morris Flirty Boxes Bells
John Sanchez Cleaner Water Cats
Jasmine Williams Butcher Sharks Lions

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).