The Director Welcomes You

The Icy Catamaran Assignment

#f77945

Location

Dry, Wet Yemen

Time of Day

9:17

Extraction Point

3 Miles S

Time to Complete

14 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to approach a Underground Motel to look for a suspect by the name "Heavy Sea Lion". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to find where their funding is coming from. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A shadow passes at the Golden Fire".

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

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ivan Stevenson

Alias

"Heavy Sea Lion"

Features

6' 5"

Gray eyes

Stretch Marks / Left arm

Organization

The Guild of Polite Cash

Emotions

Restless

Personality

Fatally Defeated

Motive

Take over a country to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Jackie the "Dubious Hobgoblin"

Physical Size

Enormous

Story

Additional Locations

The Icy Forest

Overpopulated Barn Dance

Doom Sanctuary

Random Events

Crow explodes

Sewer overflows

Dancer skins a cat with his teeth

Baker chase a suspect

World

Stores

Ryker's Lamp Cosmetics

Simon's Mounted Animal Cosmetics

Baker's Picture Frame Specialities

Ferguson's Iron stove Cosmetics

Traps

Flooding Room

Poisoned Arrow of Secrecy

Objects

Lamp made of heavy metal

Picture Frame made of heavy metal

Secret Mounted Animal

Hidden Boomerang

Banana of Secrecy

Wand of Wonder

Target’s weapon must be fed one mouse or rat per day, or it dies

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jameson Simon "Obese Boy" Merchant Doves Photography
Vivian Baker "Wild Legs" Mole Bread Rock n' Roll
Iris Shaw Exhilarated Paperclips Scarves
Ryker Clark Plumber Trucks Paperclips
Logan Ferguson Restless Acorns Chalk

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).