The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Scary The Pope

#d375f8

Location

Balmy, Gorgeous Vietnam

Time of Day

5:28

Extraction Point

16 Miles N

Time to Complete

3 Hours

Sleuths,
I have sent you to within a Hidden Forge to look for a suspect by the name "Tough Dragon". This mission is clandestine. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to discover their location. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A black cat runs past at the Turtle Rock".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Sharp Chewing Gum in your kit to help.

— The Burner Phone you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Adeline Larson

Alias

"Tough Dragon"

Features

7' 6"

Brown eyes

Faint curved scar / Left eye

Organization

The Union of Ripe Idea

Emotions

Vengeful

Personality

Coaxingly Square

Motive

Disrupt the military out of jealousy

Bodyguard

Johnny the "Chuffed Rabbit"

Physical Size

Young

Story

Additional Locations

The Scary Arcade

Polluted Manor

Joy Forge

Random Events

Princess Catches leprosy

Lactose Intolerance skins a cat with his teeth

Woman grabs a lady's purse

Safe Skips merrily

World

Stores

Jocelyn's Fire poker set Supermarket

Oliver's Goblet Group

Holland's Music Box Properties

Hanson's Paperweight Specialities

Traps

Extended Bane

Box of Brown Mold of Instability

Objects

Fire poker set that has been hollowed out

Music Box that has been hollowed out

Secret Goblet

Hidden Key

Credit Card of Instability

Wand of Wonder

A large pool of liquid helium appears beneath the target point

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Ethan Oliver "Bullet Livers" Merchant Sticks Gym Memberships
Grayson Holland "Cramped Muscles" Mole Cartography Trucks
Guy Ayala Annoyed Tea Technology
Jocelyn Medina Firefighter Sticks Hammers
Luna Hanson Frazzled Sailboats Cellphones

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).