The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Sclerotic Parking Lot

#83c415

Location

Wet, Rainy Gabon

Time of Day

23:51

Extraction Point

88 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

30 Hours

Ambassadors,
We need your help. Agent Hadley Craig has gone missing and we believe "Small mammoth" is responsible. They were last seen in Gabon at 11:01. The agent sent one final message – "A roll of thunder at the Skull shaped island". Take this Mechanical Blender - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Grant Vega

Alias

"Small mammoth"

Features

4' 9"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Left leg

Organization

The Bureau of Recessive Safety

Emotions

Neglected

Personality

Terribly Boorish

Motive

Make a lot of money out of survival

Bodyguard

Hal the "Bloody Bigfoot"

Physical Size

Scanty

Story

Additional Locations

The Sclerotic Peninsula

Rundown Reef

Good Spirits Port

Random Events

Deadbeat emerges

Druid Adopts a nearby child

Tramp is loose

Soup Integrates silently into the group

World

Stores

Lilly's Tea Pot Atelier

Alexander's Bureau Boutique

Steele's Credenza Warehouse

Craig's Shelf of alcohol Du jour

Traps

Extended Bane

Compacting Room of Bravery

Objects

Tea Pot made of heavy metal

Credenza with a False bottom

Secret Bureau

Hidden Sticks

Polearm of Bravery

Wand of Wonder

Target teleports to a tiny and distant island for 1d4 days

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Andrew Alexander "Indigo Eyes" Merchant Sticks Cartography
Grace Steele "Yellow Bones" Mole Children's Stories Tea
Violet Zimmerman Artist Baseball Soap
Lilly Deleon Bounty hunter Sun Glasses Bells
Hadley Craig Shadow Lipstick Rabbits

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).