The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Skinny Vessel

#5a05d2

Location

Miserable, Stormy Samoa

Time of Day

20:29

Extraction Point

115 Miles NW

Time to Complete

36 Hours

Shadows,
I have sent you to enter a Touristy Water Park to look for a suspect by the name "Fast Zombie". This mission is anti-surveillance. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve their missile codes. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A black cat runs past at the dancing-trees".

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

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Damian Chen

Alias

"Fast Zombie"

Features

5' 11"

Blue eyes

Large deep scar / Right middle finger

Organization

The Club of Braised Craigslist

Emotions

Alienated

Personality

Happily Pernicious

Motive

Disrupt the military because they straight up craycray

Bodyguard

Harold the "Hirsute Mummy"

Physical Size

Hefty

Story

Additional Locations

The Skinny Lodge

Overpopulated Port

Ruin Fortress

Random Events

Softball strikes the ground

Potato Salutes the adventurers

Bear Gets their hand chopped off

Box of Cigarette screams at the top of their lungs

World

Stores

Damian's Grandfather Clock Discount

George's Bench Group

Oconnor's Bonsai Supermarket

Weaver's Pan Ventures

Traps

Blade Barrier

Object Smeared with Poison of The Blackest Black

Objects

Grandfather Clock made of heavy metal

Bonsai that has been hollowed out

Secret Bench

Hidden Ring

Katana of The Blackest Black

Wand of Wonder

One of target’s limbs is clearly artificial

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Eli George "Small Heels" Merchant Money Candles
Vivian Oconnor "Drowsy Ankles" Mole Boxes Snowglobes
Isabelle Norton Electrician Coffee Oranges
Damian Banks Physician Snowglobes Children's Stories
Antonio Weaver Accountant Washing Machines Glitter

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).