The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Shy Cleaver

#4d6c79

Location

Humid, Gorgeous Nauru

Time of Day

16:5

Extraction Point

80 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

14 Hours

Investigators,
It seems "Junior Yeti" has gone level 7. They have been broadcasting this message "A lone flower growing at the Frozen palace". We need you to eliminate them, Rudely. Their last known location was recorded at 18:17. You have a Heavy Blanket as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tablet of Stone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Finley Hale

Alias

"Junior Yeti"

Features

7' 7"

Red eyes

Large moles / Right foot

Organization

The Clique of Hissing Gun

Emotions

Safe

Personality

Rudely Hyper

Motive

Make a lot of money because they straight up craycray

Bodyguard

Darnell the "Thoughtless Kangaroos"

Physical Size

Considerable

Story

Additional Locations

The Shy Barn Dance

Polluted Circus

Purity Sanctuary

Random Events

Jug of Peanut Butter is loose

Baker Is throwing a protest

Butter Shipment Is throwing a protest

Box of Mice runs over an infant

World

Stores

Malachi's Toolset Couture

White's Hatrack Labs

Ward's Brass Replica Labs

Cook's Lamp Factory

Traps

Arrow

Rolling Rock of Bliss

Objects

Toolset made of heavy metal

Brass Replica children's replica

Secret Hatrack

Hidden Pen

Diary of Bliss

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s left hand can’t be cut by any non-magical blade

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Morris White "No Pastrami's" Merchant Glass Fire
John Ward "King Livers" Mole Technology Soda
Finley Olson Vision Video Games Comic Books
Malachi Nguyen Accountant Butterflies Socks
Eliza Cook Hotel Manager Deodorant Oranges

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).