The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Slatted Calligraphy Pen

#180013

Location

Wet, Overcast Singapore

Time of Day

23:5

Extraction Point

163 Miles NE

Time to Complete

9 Hours

Informants,
As you can see you are trapped inside the top of a Abandoned Grove . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Left Bull" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A lone flower growing at the Unicorn Nest". Your mission was anti-surveillance, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Clandestine Ladder hidden on you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Richard Watts

Alias

"Left Bull"

Features

6' 8"

Blue eyes

Faint curved scar / Left leg

Organization

The League of Victorious Purse

Emotions

Attraction

Personality

Hungrily Heavy

Motive

Take over a government because of grief and loss

Bodyguard

Oscar the "Prehensile Elephant"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Slatted Pond

Rundown Reef

Violence Lagoon

Random Events

Butter Shipment Spontaneously disintegrates

Leopard Ignites violently

VAT of Broth Evades the law

Woman stop the party and asks questions

World

Stores

Cecilia's File Discount

Boyd's Cabinet Worldwide

Juarez's Taxidermy animal Worldwide

Roberts's Trinket Ventures

Traps

Acid Arrow

Flooding Room of Ice

Objects

File that has been hollowed out

Taxidermy animal that has been hollowed out

Secret Cabinet

Hidden Goblet

Rapier of Ice

Wand of Wonder

Caster finds a handful of mysterious pills in his pocket

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Gracie Boyd "Indigo Forearms" Merchant Gym Memberships Photography
Ian Juarez "Nice Matzo Balls" Mole Sun Glasses Teeth
Melody Campos Graphic Designer Octopus Children's Stories
Cecilia Washington Human Statue Tissues Broccoli
Landon Roberts Musician Squirrels Easter

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).