The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Holy Basement

#d4de0f

Location

Mild, Cloudy Nigeria

Time of Day

24:29

Extraction Point

10 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

35 Hours

Scrutinizers,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Shelf of alcohol that has been hollowed out. Get to Nigeria at 01:21

Good Luck.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Madeline Schmidt

Alias

"Big Hobgoblin"

Features

4' 1"

Red eyes

Large deep scar / Left middle finger

Organization

The Crew of Encrypted Method

Emotions

Pleased

Personality

Suddenly Glamorous

Motive

Take over a government to please their master

Bodyguard

Frankie the "Sinful Bear"

Physical Size

Mini

Story

Additional Locations

The Holy Isle

Desolate Chateau

Bitterness Villa

Random Events

Pickpocket Bursts loudly

Reindeer overflows

Woman screams at the top of their lungs

Bottle of Soy Sauce Is hurled at the adventurers

World

Stores

Eric's Shelf of alcohol Boutique

Erickson's Fire poker set Creative

Brown's Pedestal Couture

Wolf's Trunk Factory

Traps

Bear Trap

Insanity Mist Vapor of Excitement

Objects

Shelf of alcohol that has been hollowed out

Pedestal children's replica

Secret Fire poker set

Hidden Pants

Lighter of Excitement

Wand of Wonder

Target’s skin appears permanently stained with blood

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jordyn Erickson "Quiet Scars" Merchant Physics Basketball
Alina Brown "Casual Stomachs" Mole Candy Tea
Daisy Reese Plumber Glitter Bells
Eric Mueller Animator Deodorant Toilets
Sawyer Wolf Phantom Easter Chili

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).