The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Ubiquitous Product

#e832f0

Location

Foggy, Dark East Timor

Time of Day

18:48

Extraction Point

84 Miles SSE

Time to Complete

26 Hours

Spy Deputies,
I have sent you to within earshot of a Underground Jungle to look for a suspect by the name "Green Ogre". This mission is intelligence. Their recent activity is concerning and we need you to slow them down. We don't know much about their goals but we've intercepted this cryptic message – "A mysterious key is found on the ground at the Grove of Weeping Willows".

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

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Nicole Sanchez

Alias

"Green Ogre"

Features

5' 4"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Left foot

Organization

The Association of Sparkling Force

Emotions

Worried

Personality

Yieldingly Thundering

Motive

Take over a country to be left alone

Bodyguard

Penelope the "Heavy Imp"

Physical Size

Petite

Story

Additional Locations

The Ubiquitous Pond

Deserted Citadel

Imperfection Sanctuary

Random Events

Chauvinist meets disaster

Bard Attempts to rob a bank

Crowd Is being detained

Renaissance Faire approaches

World

Stores

Valeria's Kitchen table Bureau

Moran's Suit of armor Group

Cunningham's Music Box Beauty Stop

Barnes's Loveseat Emporium

Traps

Earthquake

Dropping Ceiling of Indecision

Objects

Kitchen table that is glowing

Music Box made of heavy metal

Secret Suit of armor

Hidden Pants

Rock of Indecision

Wand of Wonder

Next enemy to wound caster is himself restored to full hit points

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Scarlett Moran "Two Lungs" Merchant Broccoli Slippers
Skylar Cunningham "Stiff Livers" Mole Attention Honey
Calvin Edwards Engineer Soda Bears
Valeria Dawson Art Therapist Peanut Butter Washing Machines
Leah Barnes Weakened Flowers Jigsaw Puzzles

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).