The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Intransigent Zebra

#761d65

Location

Cloudy, Dark Finland

Time of Day

11:51

Extraction Point

120 Miles E

Time to Complete

47 Hours

Shadows,
I have sent you to be locked inside of a Abandoned Festival to look for a suspect by the name "Yellow Goblins". This mission is black bag. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A roll of thunder at the Boneyard".

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

— The Vinyl record player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Sophia Flores

Alias

"Yellow Goblins"

Features

7' 2"

Amber eyes

Faint curved scar / Left eye

Organization

The Council of Oafish Breasts

Emotions

Trust

Personality

Wonderfully Wither

Motive

Disrupt the military out of survival

Bodyguard

Carl the "Fugly Armadillo"

Physical Size

Cramped

Story

Additional Locations

The Intransigent Lagoon

Rundown Reef

The Blackest Black Crypt

Random Events

Vagrant Lunges at the group

Squirrel Bounces oddly

Milk Shipment grabs a lady's purse

Beggar Is accused by the law

World

Stores

Alice's Cabinet Outlet

Meyer's Letter Opener Boutique

Harrison's Diary Collective

Patton's Taxidermy animal Threads

Traps

Black Tentacles

Chain Lightning of Dark

Objects

Cabinet that has been hollowed out

Diary with a False bottom

Secret Letter Opener

Hidden Boiled Leather

Whip of Dark

Wand of Wonder

When caster next draws blood, he must Save or fall unconscious

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jeremy Meyer "Tough Toes" Merchant Robots Tissues
Ian Harrison "Slow Boy" Mole Bells Squirrels
Karter Gregory Surveyor Quartz Crystals Squirrels
Alice Stone Surveyor Rubber Bands Snowglobes
Presley Patton Barber Tea Cousins

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).