The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Calm Cactus

#9a2527

Location

Dull, Hot Bhutan

Time of Day

18:3

Extraction Point

6 Miles S

Time to Complete

11 Hours

Meddlers,
As you can see you are trapped inside fly above a Deserted Private Jet plane . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Three Nymph" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A stranger can be seen in the shadows at the Beast's Maze". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Bulbous Chewing Gum hidden on you.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Stella Carter

Alias

"Three Nymph"

Features

4' 8"

Green eyes

Large moles / Right thumb

Organization

The Union of Magnificent Oatmeal

Emotions

Bored

Personality

Wildly Irksome

Motive

Make a lot of money out of survival

Bodyguard

Ralphie the "Clever Golem"

Physical Size

Sizable

Story

Additional Locations

The Calm Mansion

Crowded House

Destruction Citadel

Random Events

Transport Strikes the church bell

Rustler Is frozen into a block of ice

Feminist Bursts loudly

Drunk chase a suspect

World

Stores

Grant's Chair Bureau

Weber's Flower in Vase Convenience store

Soto's Bookcase Solutions

Wolf's Candle Hole

Traps

Bestow Curse

Bear Trap of Reservation

Objects

Chair that has been hollowed out

Bookcase that is glowing

Secret Flower in Vase

Hidden Sling

Collar of Reservation

Wand of Wonder

Caster’s attacks are 20% likely to inflict no damage on undead

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Adalynn Weber "King Tongues" Merchant Chickens Comic Books
Julian Soto "Chunky Feet" Mole Soup Books
Leah Adkins Accountant Rock n' Roll Cooking
Grant Blake Drunken Bells Video Games
August Wolf Butcher Water Cookies

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).