The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Damp Chinese Finger Trap

#61c3e0

Location

Cool, Mild Laos

Time of Day

11:43

Extraction Point

61 Miles NNE

Time to Complete

3 Hours

Examiners,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Drawers made of heavy metal. Get to Laos at 15:06

Good Luck.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Ava Reid

Alias

"Dull Eel"

Features

4' 10"

Heterochromia eyes

Large moles / Left hand

Organization

The Society of Dry Mist

Emotions

Brave

Personality

Unbearably Fierce

Motive

Take over a country to lead a mutiny

Bodyguard

Nick the "Clever Seal"

Physical Size

Limited

Story

Additional Locations

The Damp Manor

Crowded Carnival

Happiness Pond

Random Events

Dancer Ignites violently

Gypsy runs over an infant

Dracula Pulls on the coat tails of one of the adventurers

Procession Calls menacingly

World

Stores

Maxwell's Drawers Couture

Fields's Spice shelf Bureau

Moreno's Sconce Couture

Flynn's Flowers Growing Warehouse

Traps

Ceiling Pendulum

Portcullis of Disaster

Objects

Drawers made of heavy metal

Sconce children's replica

Secret Spice shelf

Hidden Notebook

Glasses of Disaster

Wand of Wonder

Target finds a canopic jar containing his own vital organs

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Gael Fields "Two Hearts" Merchant Toilets Butterflies
Braxton Moreno "No Hands" Mole Fire Football
Kaleb Marquez Veterinarian Painting Doors
Maxwell Cummings Chef Paperclips Rubber Stamps
Harrison Flynn Paramedic Harmonica Trees

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).