The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Cooling Gladiator

#11b421

Location

Overcast, Arid The Gambia

Time of Day

23:50

Extraction Point

158 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

6 Hours

Shadows,
It seems "Italian Elephants" has gone level 5. They have been broadcasting this message "Clouds develop quickly at the Painted Sands". We need you to eliminate them, Utterly. Their last known location was recorded at 08:02. You have a Vicious Atlas as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Leah Jackson

Alias

"Italian Elephants"

Features

6' 8"

Gray eyes

Large deep scar / Left eye

Organization

The Agency of Feisty Digestion

Emotions

Grief-stricken

Personality

Utterly Swollen

Motive

Make a lot of money for scientific discovery

Bodyguard

Chuckie the "Dusty Nymph"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Cooling Lodge

Crowded Manor

Euphoria Island

Random Events

Rhapsody Crashes slowly

Pack of Wild Dogs stop the party and asks questions

Toilet grabs a lady's purse

Softball Catches leprosy

World

Stores

Mateo's Watch Ventures

Vazquez's Pair of Statues Unlimited

Hughes's Taxidermy animal Specialities

Moody's File Discount

Traps

Rune of Paralyzation

Bestow Curse of Demise

Objects

Watch made of heavy metal

Taxidermy animal that is glowing

Secret Pair of Statues

Hidden Blowgun

Spikes of Demise

Wand of Wonder

Eerie and ominous susurrations issue from the air for one week

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Brianna Vazquez "Indigo Pretzels" Merchant Water Dolphins
Mia Hughes "Heavy Toes" Mole Baseball Cookies
Sherri Zimmerman Surveyor Broccoli Broccoli
Mateo Riley Dietitian Sharks Soap
Arabella Moody Cleaner Slippers Death

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).