The Director Welcomes You

Threads Royale

#65e404

Location

Chilly, Wet Egypt

Time of Day

23:57

Extraction Point

77 Miles NNW

Time to Complete

25 Hours

Investigators,
As you can see you are trapped inside within a Archaic Arcade . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Big Pheonix" is responsible and they sent us this message - "The group finds a sword in a stone at the Snowy garrison". Your mission was black bag, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Bulbous Stapler hidden on you.

— The Microsoft Zune you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Norah Hanson

Alias

"Big Pheonix"

Features

4' 10"

Amber eyes

Large deep scar / Right foot

Organization

The Community of Drab Mimosa

Emotions

Attraction

Personality

Unabashedly Mecha

Motive

Take over a country to escape their destiny

Bodyguard

Sam the "Rare Platypuses"

Physical Size

Considerable

Story

Additional Locations

The Numerous Jungle

Ancient Citadel

Redemption Grove

Random Events

Potato screams at the top of their lungs

Gypsy Skips merrily

Dozen Eggs stop the party and asks questions

Toilet Calls menacingly

World

Stores

Jasper's Wingback chair Threads

Olson's Barrel Outlet

Schmidt's Hose Du jour

Kim's Hatrack Hole

Traps

Poisoned Arrow

Falling Block of Instability

Objects

Wingback chair that is glowing

Hose with a False bottom

Secret Barrel

Hidden Rock

Camera of Instability

Wand of Wonder

Target is sheathed in a large, living sponge

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Theodore Olson "Violet Fingers" Merchant Whipped Cream Coffee
John Schmidt "Green Pinky's" Mole Easter Chalk
James Osborne Midwife Teeth Sun Glasses
Jasper Goodman Scientist Rubber Bands Glitter
Jackson Kim Scientist Bears Rock n' Roll

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).