The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Whining Piercing

#6da8cb

Location

Hot, Wet Taiwan

Time of Day

4:9

Extraction Point

139 Miles NW

Time to Complete

30 Hours

Spy Deputies,
It seems "Mad Abominable Snowman" has gone level 9. They have been broadcasting this message "Clouds develop quickly at the Apple Orchard". We need you to eliminate them, Mockingly. Their last known location was recorded at 21:21. You have a Clandestine Abascus as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Zion Tucker

Alias

"Mad Abominable Snowman"

Features

7' 9"

Green eyes

A second belly button / Left leg

Organization

The Division of Echoing Pie

Emotions

Lust

Personality

Mockingly Constipated

Motive

Take over a government in pursuit of knowledge

Bodyguard

Timmy the "Chewy Merfolk"

Physical Size

Young

Story

Additional Locations

The Whining Fortress

Polluted Carousal

Animosity Reef

Random Events

Spectator Integrates silently into the group

Skeleton strikes the ground

Gallon of Trash Is throwing a BBQ

Softball Is throwing a BBQ

World

Stores

Daniela's Pedestal Mall

Garner's File Labs

Powell's Spare brick Supermarket

Robertson's Clamp Atelier

Traps

Poison Dart

Fireball of Euthanasia

Objects

Pedestal that has been hollowed out

Spare brick with a False bottom

Secret File

Hidden Glasses

Coin of Euthanasia

Wand of Wonder

Target’s allies are stricken blind until the target says his name

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Leo Garner "Italian Stomachs" Merchant Syrup Dinosaurs
Penelope Powell "Five Bagels" Mole Christmas Rocks
Valerie Duncan Statistician Scarves Soccer
Daniela Hansen Secretary Sticky Notes Boxes
Hayden Robertson Firefighter Doves Flashlights

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).