The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Common Hive

#12cfa9

Location

Sunny, Dry Libya

Time of Day

13:26

Extraction Point

181 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

35 Hours

Snoopers,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Deserted Island to look for a suspect by the name "Drowsy Serpent". This mission is anti-surveillance. 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 vagrant asks for money at the Big Momma".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Robotic Paint Brush in your kit to help.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Rowan Richardson

Alias

"Drowsy Serpent"

Features

4' 2"

Green eyes

Small mole / Crotch

Organization

The Club of Deafening Shooting Range

Emotions

Eager

Personality

Easily Icy

Motive

Disrupt the military to become famous

Bodyguard

Tim the "Jagged Ogre"

Physical Size

Tall

Story

Additional Locations

The Common Maze

Expensive Suburbs

Fate Carnival

Random Events

Chauvinist Attempts to rob a bank

Herd of Chicken Glistens gently

Leopard emerges

Vagrant Adopts a nearby child

World

Stores

Kai's Flowers Growing Properties

McGuire's Trunk Bazaar

Porter's Rubber Plant Brothers

Lyons's Fruit Bowl Boutique

Traps

Earthquake

Box of Brown Mold of Well-being

Objects

Flowers Growing children's replica

Rubber Plant children's replica

Secret Trunk

Hidden Rock

Guthook of Well-being

Wand of Wonder

When caster next enters a lake, he’s mistaken for a sea monster

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Patrick McGuire "Small Brains" Merchant Attention Dinosaurs
Malachi Porter "Left Brains" Mole Basketball Jigsaw Puzzles
Dylan Wheeler Indifferent Harmonica Rubber Stamps
Kai Stanley Annoyed Writers Socks
Zoe Lyons Athlete Paper Quartz Crystals

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).