The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Melodic Beast

#0621ce

Location

Bright, Dull Montenegro

Time of Day

10:47

Extraction Point

102 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

19 Hours

Spy Deputies,
As you can see you are trapped inside the bottom of a Pitch Black Maze . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Violet Meerkat" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A pool of blood at the Screaming Waterfall". Your mission was intelligence, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Clean Bicycle hidden on you.

— The Portable Radio you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Reagan White

Alias

"Violet Meerkat"

Features

6' 9"

Red eyes

Faint curved scar / Right eye

Organization

The Bureau of Melodic Digestion

Emotions

Elated

Personality

Potentially Incendiary

Motive

Make a lot of money to lust for power

Bodyguard

Nick the "Progressive Manticore"

Physical Size

Poor

Story

Additional Locations

The Melodic Sanctuary

Crowded Island

Fragility Pond

Random Events

Store Integrates silently into the group

Bottle of Soy Sauce Calls menacingly

Wanderer Is being kidnapped

Baker grabs a lady's purse

World

Stores

Kevin's Urn Hole

Wallace's Bonsai Warehouse

Douglas's Candelabra Creative

Wallace's Landscape Boutique

Traps

Bestow Curse

Beehive of Dark

Objects

Urn with a False bottom

Candelabra that is glowing

Secret Bonsai

Hidden Polearm

Pike of Dark

Wand of Wonder

All worked stone within 50 yards increases in size by 1d100%

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Bentley Wallace "Golden Ribs" Merchant Octopus Eggs
Juliana Douglas "Small Thumbs" Mole Hammers Clocks
Juan Gardner Cranky Plushies Dice
Kevin Nelson Scientist Lions Money
Waylon Wallace Elder Baseball Slippers

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).