The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Howling Corset

#645d14

Location

Wet, Wet Uzbekistan

Time of Day

5:43

Extraction Point

34 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

40 Hours

Informants,
As you can see you are trapped inside the inside of a Archaic Villa . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Fat Elephant" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A lone flower growing at the Dragon's Sea". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Polished Clamp hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jacob Paul

Alias

"Fat Elephant"

Features

7' 9"

Amber eyes

Large deep scar / Neck

Organization

The Commission of Faithful Queen

Emotions

Exhausted

Personality

Neatly Boned

Motive

Disrupt the military to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Harold the "Damp Sprite"

Physical Size

Insignificant

Story

Additional Locations

The Howling Maze

Rundown Manor

Catastrophe Chateau

Random Events

Donkey Becomes wounded

Bard approaches

Rustler Is getting confiscated

Lactose Intolerance runs over an infant

World

Stores

Wyatt's Landscape Arcade

Lee's Cutting board Couture

Welch's Ring Unlimited

Olson's Notebook Department store

Traps

Falling Block

Box of Brown Mold of Darkness

Objects

Landscape with a False bottom

Ring with a False bottom

Secret Cutting board

Hidden Pen

Necklace of Darkness

Wand of Wonder

One of caster’s eyes glows with infernal radiance

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Alice Lee "Chunky Throats" Merchant Hamsters Sharp Things
David Welch "Meaty Churros" Mole Children's Stories Rocks
Jesus Spencer Plumber Lions Water
Wyatt Rodriguez Physician Lamps Money
Brooklyn Olson Bruised Sponges Stickers

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).