The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Odd Tail

#5283ed

Location

Overcast, Stormy Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Time of Day

5:21

Extraction Point

9 Miles SWW

Time to Complete

39 Hours

Detectives,
It seems "Nice Lion" has gone level 6. They have been broadcasting this message "The group finds a random cow at the Top of the carousel wheel". We need you to eliminate them, Awkwardly. Their last known location was recorded at 22:00. You have a Invisible Spoon as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Tinder Date you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Liliana Robles

Alias

"Nice Lion"

Features

6' 7"

Green eyes

Large moles / Right leg

Organization

The Company of Huge Nerve

Emotions

Aggravated

Personality

Awkwardly Wrapped

Motive

Take over a country for revenge

Bodyguard

Larry the "Raw Aardvark"

Physical Size

Small-scale

Story

Additional Locations

The Odd Suburbs

Underground Jungle

Calming City

Random Events

Cookie Finds gold in the water

Dracula Becomes wounded

Bag of Lemons Is being kidnapped

Midwife emerges

World

Stores

Harper's Portrait Brothers

Dixon's Tea Pot Department store

Hammond's Large book Discount

Holmes's Chaise Hole

Traps

Poison Needle

Flame Strike of Calamity

Objects

Portrait made of heavy metal

Large book children's replica

Secret Tea Pot

Hidden Helmet

Nipple Clamp of Calamity

Wand of Wonder

If caster is wearing a magic ring, that hand sprouts feathers

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Jasmine Dixon "Wild Matzo Balls" Merchant Attention Cookies
Audrey Hammond "Drowsy Throats" Mole Quartz Crystals Christmas
Lilly Franklin Intoxicated Squirrels Cooking
Harper Parker Midwife Mirrors Doves
Kennedy Holmes Dentist Cellphones Lipstick

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).