The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Spicy Scoundrel

#562612

Location

Balmy, Warm Australia

Time of Day

15:39

Extraction Point

92 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

9 Hours

Sleuths,
We need your help. Agent Noah Martinez has gone missing and we believe "Short Zombie" is responsible. They were last seen in Australia at 22:01. The agent sent one final message – "A white horse dashes past at the Boneyard". Take this Slippery Quilt - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Anthony Adkins

Alias

"Short Zombie"

Features

4' 5"

Blue eyes

A second belly button / Left hand

Organization

The Association of Angry Hairdryer

Emotions

Fondness

Personality

Oddly Recessive

Motive

Take over a country to escape their destiny

Bodyguard

Hal the "Strung Out Elephants"

Physical Size

Tremendous

Story

Additional Locations

The Spicy Shelter

Pitch Black Business

Bravery Acropolis

Random Events

Thief is robbed

VAT of Broth Is being tortured

Bard Evades the law

Milk Shipment Evades the law

World

Stores

Brandon's Footlocker Convenience store

Hill's Armoir Logistics

Kramer's Crate Group

Martinez's Lipstick Arcade

Traps

Fusillade of Darts

Extended Bane of Sanitation

Objects

Footlocker that is glowing

Crate children's replica

Secret Armoir

Hidden Arrows

Coif of Sanitation

Wand of Wonder

Next weapon nearby to draw blood is encased in a plaster cast

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Amaya Hill "Plump Scars" Merchant Easter Toilets
Adam Kramer "Left Brains" Mole Chili Cartography
Eli Perkins Cleaner Children's Stories Rubber Stamps
Brandon Cruz Dentist Honey Christmas
Noah Martinez Hotel Manager Death Flashlights

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).