The Director Welcomes You

Threads Royale

#53bda6

Location

Rainy, Miserable Liberia

Time of Day

4:54

Extraction Point

96 Miles SSW

Time to Complete

46 Hours

Eyeballs,
I have sent you to circle a Underwater Lodge to look for a suspect by the name "Green Bigfoot". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to retrieve the stolen intel. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "The group finds a sword in a stone at the Golden Fire".

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

— The iPod you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Iris Schroeder

Alias

"Green Bigfoot"

Features

7' 5"

Red eyes

A second belly button / Left hand

Organization

The Sisterhood of Lemon Prosperity

Emotions

Confused

Personality

Generally Massive

Motive

Take over a government out of greed

Bodyguard

Timmy the "Heavy Opossums"

Physical Size

Gigantic

Story

Additional Locations

The Ambitious Masquerade

Expensive Business

Obliteration Peninsula

Random Events

Box of Cigarette grabs a lady's purse

VAT of Broth Strikes the church bell

Bag of Flour Skips merrily

Beggar Calls menacingly

World

Stores

Mariah's Figurine Threads

Gardner's Rug Consulting

Thornton's Stamp Set Wardrobe

Hawkins's Rubber Plant Arcade

Traps

Poison Dart

Water-Filled Room of Calming

Objects

Figurine children's replica

Stamp Set made of heavy metal

Secret Rug

Hidden Collar

Blindfold of Calming

Wand of Wonder

If cut open, caster is found to be a mechanical construct

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Maxwell Gardner "Casual Churros" Merchant Notes Video Games
Brantley Thornton "White Elbows" Mole Snowglobes Chocolate
Maria Potter Police Officer Candles Money
Mariah Davidson Musician Cellphones Water
Chloe Hawkins Butcher Rocks Soda

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).