The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Sadistic Zebra

#4d1270

Location

Breezy, Bright Turkmenistan

Time of Day

22:11

Extraction Point

160 Miles E

Time to Complete

37 Hours

Shadows,
As you can see you are trapped inside descend into Bustling Casino . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Orange Pig" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A white horse dashes past at the Eye of Heaven". Your mission was counterintelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Beautiful Barstool hidden on you.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Lily Green

Alias

"Orange Pig"

Features

5' 11"

Brown eyes

Stretch Marks / Right eye

Organization

The Council of Stocky Poodle

Emotions

Humiliated

Personality

Busily Clacking

Motive

Take over a country out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Penelope the "Thoughtless Mutants"

Physical Size

Great

Story

Additional Locations

The Sadistic Chateau

Ancient Citadel

Irritation Sanctuary

Random Events

Potato Is frozen into a block of ice

Vagabond scurries by

Spectator is loose

Bellhop screams at the top of their lungs

World

Stores

Miguel's Notebook Supermarket

Greene's Large book Atelier

Leon's Portrait Properties

Townsend's Bench Outlet

Traps

Beehive

Swinging Block of Purity

Objects

Notebook children's replica

Portrait that is glowing

Secret Large book

Hidden Bangle

Mace of Purity

Wand of Wonder

Target is covered by thick, ugly scales for an AC bonus of 1

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Hailey Greene "White Livers" Merchant Water Sun Glasses
Dawson Leon "Bullet Falafels" Mole Tea Chalk
Judy Leonard Waiter Photography Chocolate
Miguel Evans Journalist Limes Eggs
Bella Townsend Chef Baseball 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).