The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Incendiary Secretary

#24b8b0

Location

Bright, Dark Turkmenistan

Time of Day

16:42

Extraction Point

106 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

14 Hours

Detectives,
I have sent you to climb a Overpopulated Palace to look for a suspect by the name "Meaty Siren". 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 – "An object nearby starts bleeding at the Painted Sands".

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

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Jaxson Ray

Alias

"Meaty Siren"

Features

4' 4"

Heterochromia eyes

Large moles / Right middle finger

Organization

The Crew of Avian Wall

Emotions

Content

Personality

Quicker Regal

Motive

Take over a country to corrupt everyone

Bodyguard

Daniel the "Huge Alien"

Physical Size

Minuscule

Story

Additional Locations

The Incendiary Creek

Polluted Port

Optimism City

Random Events

Fairy Adopts a nearby child

Bard Bursts loudly

Carcass Spontaneously disintegrates

Keg Is throwing a protest

World

Stores

Madeline's Doorway Threads

Logan's Toolset Supermarket

Lane's Rug Logistics

Norris's Flower in Vase Productions

Traps

Crushing Room

Rolling Rock of Calming

Objects

Doorway that is glowing

Rug that is glowing

Secret Toolset

Hidden Diary

Pike of Calming

Wand of Wonder

Target’s mouth is replaced by a hideous scolex

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Alejandro Logan "Dull Forearms" Merchant Butterflies Quartz Crystals
Sarah Lane "Indigo Lemons" Mole Quartz Crystals Tigers
Aaron Gray Paramedic Bracelets Chili
Madeline Schroeder Elder Music Sticky Notes
Aaliyah Norris Mechanic Cookies Lions

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).