The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Icy Prosperity

#e59582

Location

Arid, Sunny Togo

Time of Day

20:9

Extraction Point

129 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

6 Hours

Ambassadors,
We need your help. Agent Aaliyah Boyd has gone missing and we believe "Indigo Zombie" is responsible. They were last seen in Togo at 07:23. The agent sent one final message – "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Painted Sands". Take this Invisible Baking Tray - it was their favorite tool and might help you.

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Brantley Reyes

Alias

"Indigo Zombie"

Features

6' 9"

Red eyes

Stretch Marks / Left middle finger

Organization

The Company of Scruffy Duck

Emotions

Infatuated

Personality

Politely Uneven

Motive

Make a lot of money out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Al the "Brave Imp"

Physical Size

Vast

Story

Additional Locations

The Icy Masquerade

Abandoned Arcade

Amnesia Port

Random Events

Alligator stop the party and asks questions

Hound stop the party and asks questions

Cat Catches leprosy

Gypsy Attempts to rob a bank

World

Stores

Ariana's Chaise Supermarket

Arnold's Armoir Convenience store

Franklin's Goblet Wardrobe

Boyd's Cutting board Mall

Traps

Falling Block

Poison Wall Spikes of Casualties

Objects

Chaise children's replica

Goblet that is glowing

Secret Armoir

Hidden Newspaper

Magazine of Casualties

Wand of Wonder

Lightning bolts issue from the spell’s target point

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Bentley Arnold "Slow Pretzels" Merchant Batteries Tissues
Ariana Franklin "Right Hands" Mole Cats Fire
Serenity Stephens Judge Glass Soda
Ariana Campos Exhausted Dinosaurs Soccer
Aaliyah Boyd Butcher Paper Books

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).