The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Thankful Chain

#e4b55c

Location

Wet, Dark Niger

Time of Day

0:39

Extraction Point

173 Miles NWW

Time to Complete

12 Hours

Examiners,
I have sent you to approach a Overpopulated Castle to look for a suspect by the name "Red Worm". This mission is counterintelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to rescue our field agent. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "An out of place door appears at the Big Momma".

We're low budget this mission – I've packed a Invisible Banana in your kit to help.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Logan Singh

Alias

"Red Worm"

Features

6' 8"

Hazel eyes

Large moles / Right middle finger

Organization

The Association of Modern Kitten

Emotions

Jealous

Personality

Shyly Elegant

Motive

Take over a government because of grief and loss

Bodyguard

Donald the "Feisty Hedgehogs"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Thankful Carousal

Touristy Festival

Sanitation Manor

Random Events

Bag of Flour is loose

Cauldron Catches leprosy

Vagabond Crashes slowly

Wanderer Is throwing a protest

World

Stores

Michael's Oil Lamp Solutions

Thompson's Creeping Vines Ventures

McKinney's Credenza Logistics

Rowe's Bureau Brothers

Traps

Suspicious door with lock

Beehive of Ice

Objects

Oil Lamp that is glowing

Credenza with a False bottom

Secret Creeping Vines

Hidden Lance

Wrench of Ice

Wand of Wonder

During any combat round, target is 10% likely to be invisible

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Nolan Thompson "Small Cappuccinos" Merchant Dice Easter
Joshua McKinney "Drowsy Ribs" Mole Physics Trees
Messiah Young Professional Cuddler Doors Attention
Michael Rhodes Graphic Designer Broccoli Coffee
Beau Rowe Midwife Dinosaurs Cousins

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).