The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Black Seed

#41eebf

Location

Sunny, Humid New Zealand

Time of Day

19:0

Extraction Point

39 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

6 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Overpopulated Maze to look for a suspect by the name "Slow Dragon". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to uncover their plans. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a random cow at the Ghost Town".

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

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Alexa Hunter

Alias

"Slow Dragon"

Features

6' 1"

Amber eyes

Stretch Marks / Right arm

Organization

The Association of Helpless Twist

Emotions

Ambivalent

Personality

Yearningly Tropical

Motive

Take over a government to save humanity

Bodyguard

Jessica the "Greasy Seal"

Physical Size

Hefty

Story

Additional Locations

The Black Grove

Ancient Tower

Fire Tower

Random Events

Herd of Chicken Is frozen into a block of ice

Vagabond Bursts loudly

Spice Box skins a cat with his teeth

Chunk of Beef gathers near a point of interest

World

Stores

Camden's Notebook Emporium

Turner's Pedestal Consulting

Powers's Butter Churner Solutions

Molina's Flower in Vase Brothers

Traps

Rolling Rock

Arrow of Death

Objects

Notebook made of heavy metal

Butter Churner that is glowing

Secret Pedestal

Hidden Gauntlet

Credit Card of Death

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s spellbook is 30% likely to be invisible on any given day

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Asher Turner "Indigo Thumbs" Merchant Squirrels Honey
Gabriella Powers "Short Boy" Mole Fire Rubber Stamps
Liam Bauer Psychiatrist Eggs Socks
Camden Blair Old Man Tissues Soccer
Avery Molina Art Therapist Dinosaurs Slippers

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).