The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Nutty Reading

#a37f53

Location

Gorgeous, Foul Mozambique

Time of Day

2:39

Extraction Point

62 Miles W

Time to Complete

21 Hours

Undercover Emissaries,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Butter Churner that has been hollowed out. Get to Mozambique at 14:07

Good Luck.

— The CD player you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Luke Gutierrez

Alias

"Junior Meerkat"

Features

6' 10"

Red eyes

Large moles / Right middle finger

Organization

The Sisterhood of Shrilling Rate

Emotions

Lonely

Personality

Knowledgeably Harsh

Motive

Take over a country to become rich

Bodyguard

Donald the "Happy The Grim Reaper"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Nutty Spring

Touristy Forge

Extinction Fortress

Random Events

Goblet overflows

Cauldron Catches leprosy

Pickpocket approaches

Spice Box is loose

World

Stores

Emma's Butter Churner Worldwide

Phillips's Sofa Factory

Davis's Paperweight Couture

Gregory's Stairwell Atelier

Traps

Falling Block

Poison Needle of Doom

Objects

Butter Churner that has been hollowed out

Paperweight made of heavy metal

Secret Sofa

Hidden Club

Goblet of Doom

Wand of Wonder

After each spell, caster forgets his name for one hour

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Adam Phillips "Tough Heels" Merchant Soup Cookies
Robin Davis "Red Eyes" Mole Snowglobes Drinking
Mia Ortega Cobbler Sailboats Teeth
Emma Nguyen Midwife Cousins Slippers
Violet Gregory Ghost Horses Jazz

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).