The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Tenacious Cheese

#d55f6b

Location

Cool, Humid Azerbaijan

Time of Day

17:6

Extraction Point

155 Miles W

Time to Complete

41 Hours

Silent Negotiators,
I have sent you to the top of a Compact City to look for a suspect by the name "Meaty Armadillo". This mission is clandestine. 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 – "Distant sounds of screaming at the Top of the carousel wheel".

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

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ellie Larson

Alias

"Meaty Armadillo"

Features

5' 11"

Red eyes

Large moles / Right arm

Organization

The Division of Howling Throat

Emotions

Awkward

Personality

Ultimately Great

Motive

Make a lot of money to be left alone

Bodyguard

Daniel the "Thoughtless Dolphin"

Physical Size

Sizable

Story

Additional Locations

The Tenacious Forge

Archaic City

Violence City

Random Events

Chunk of Beef Bursts loudly

Chicken Becomes wounded

Water Vessel screams at the top of their lungs

Box of Mice Is getting confiscated

World

Stores

Jesse's Window Unlimited

Diaz's Paperweight Bureau

Maldonado's Hanging Birdcage Collective

Hopkins's Glass Jars Worldwide

Traps

Hail of Needles

Reverse Gravity of Reservation

Objects

Window children's replica

Hanging Birdcage with a False bottom

Secret Paperweight

Hidden Magazine

Brass Knuckles of Reservation

Wand of Wonder

Nearest town is populated entirely by illusions

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Roman Diaz "Right Ribs" Merchant Cousins Hammers
Willow Maldonado "Orange Pinky's" Mole Money Ice Cubes
Aria Park Operator Potatoes Essential Oils
Jesse Dominguez Operator Cartography Flashlights
Emmanuel Hopkins Plumber Sponges Chocolate

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).