The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Flaky Spaghetti

#e2e10b

Location

Bright, Dark Canada

Time of Day

24:7

Extraction Point

174 Miles SE

Time to Complete

32 Hours

Investigators,
It seems "Italian Owl" has gone level 9. They have been broadcasting this message "The earth shakes briefly at the Dragon's Sea". We need you to eliminate them, Unbearably. Their last known location was recorded at 14:05. You have a Mechanical Flute as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Maddox Duran

Alias

"Italian Owl"

Features

4' 4"

Heterochromia eyes

Large moles / Crotch

Organization

The Bunch of Old Mint

Emotions

Infatuated

Personality

Unbearably Easy

Motive

Disrupt the military because of a betrayal

Bodyguard

Simon the "Tragic Turtle"

Physical Size

Toy

Story

Additional Locations

The Flaky Arcade

Deserted Palace

Disaster Festival

Random Events

Vagabond Is accused by the law

Turtle emerges

Panhandler Is throwing a protest

Diary Skips merrily

World

Stores

Sophie's Candlesticks Consulting

Wolf's Bicycle Brothers

Stone's Fire poker set Mall

Welch's Bench Discount

Traps

Acid Arrow

Bricks from Ceiling of Excitement

Objects

Candlesticks made of heavy metal

Fire poker set that has been hollowed out

Secret Bicycle

Hidden Spoon

Pike of Excitement

Wand of Wonder

Target gains a level if he permanently severs his dominant hand

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Taylor Wolf "Five Ribs" Merchant Broccoli Batteries
Cora Stone "Five Lungs" Mole Bears Cookies
Mason Ortega Geologist Coffee Drinking
Sophie Molina Secretary Rocks Dolphins
Santiago Welch Waiter Doors Harmonica

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).