The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Hyper Wall

#ab2dfb

Location

Windy, Warm Ukraine

Time of Day

9:35

Extraction Point

51 Miles NE

Time to Complete

29 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Pitch Black Suburbs to look for a suspect by the name "Golden Roc". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to stop the outbreak. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A black cat runs past at the graveyard".

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

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Graham Cox

Alias

"Golden Roc"

Features

5' 8"

Heterochromia eyes

Stretch Marks / Right thumb

Organization

The Bunch of Fastidious Rocket

Emotions

Indifferent

Personality

Gladly Strong

Motive

Take over a government for sibling rivalry

Bodyguard

Joseph the "White giant"

Physical Size

Slight

Story

Additional Locations

The Hyper Reef

Ancient Fortress

Disaster Business

Random Events

Procession Is under a curse

Toilet Is throwing a protest

Panhandler strikes the ground

Delivery Guy Is being detained

World

Stores

Hannah's Portrait Supermarket

Bailey's Grandfather Clock Arcade

Banks's Loveseat Collective

Powers's Key Worldwide

Traps

Tripping Chain

Razor-Wire across Hallway of Imperfection

Objects

Portrait that has been hollowed out

Loveseat that has been hollowed out

Secret Grandfather Clock

Hidden Sabre

Club of Imperfection

Wand of Wonder

Caster is suddenly standing atop a very tall ladder

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Lilly Bailey "Fast Pinky's" Merchant Doves Doors
Teagan Banks "One Spleens" Mole Notes Singing
Gabriella Rodgers Bruised Dinosaurs Shirts
Hannah Fitzgerald Midwife Snowglobes Paperclips
Braxton Powers Counselor Lipstick Rock n' Roll

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).