The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Childish Pancake

#c0ceeb

Location

Foul, Chilly Guinea-Bissau

Time of Day

23:8

Extraction Point

81 Miles SEE

Time to Complete

33 Hours

Operatives,
I have sent you to the top of a Desolate Park to look for a suspect by the name "Cheap Golem". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to assassinate the target. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A thick fog rolls in at the Unicorn Nest".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Bulbous Pair of Gloves in your kit to help.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Lorenzo Reyes

Alias

"Cheap Golem"

Features

6' 5"

Brown eyes

Small mole / Crotch

Organization

The Union of Hirsute Spaghetti

Emotions

Bored

Personality

Quaintly Teeny

Motive

Take over a government for fear of the heroes

Bodyguard

Tim the "Chilly Kaiju"

Physical Size

Tall

Story

Additional Locations

The Childish Peninsula

Expensive Spring

Bliss Citadel

Random Events

Bear Attempts to rob a bank

Dead Animal Spontaneously disintegrates

Sewer Evades the law

Keg grabs a lady's purse

World

Stores

Abigail's Sofa Brothers

Carter's Bookcase Couture

Walters's Letter Opener Worldwide

Lang's Candlesticks Arcade

Traps

Dropping Ceiling

Acid Arrow of Excitement

Objects

Sofa that is glowing

Letter Opener that has been hollowed out

Secret Bookcase

Hidden Bottle

Spikes of Excitement

Wand of Wonder

If caster is wearing any armor, he teleports to his home

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Eliza Carter "The Cheesecakes" Merchant Sharks Octopus
Owen Walters "Orange Forearms" Mole Flowers Boxes
Dominic Garner Lawyer Easter Quartz Crystals
Abigail Wallace Exhilarated Scarves Video Games
Catherine Lang Surgeon Soda Broccoli

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).