The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Small Butter

#e3c1ee

Location

Mild, Stormy Portugal

Time of Day

21:42

Extraction Point

85 Miles NW

Time to Complete

27 Hours

Shadows,
It seems "Big Golem" has gone level 3. They have been broadcasting this message "A shadow passes at the witch's mound". We need you to eliminate them, Readily. Their last known location was recorded at 04:14. You have a Mechanical Bikini as a last resort. Use carefully.

— The Origami Swan you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

David Solis

Alias

"Big Golem"

Features

5' 1"

Green eyes

Stretch Marks / Right leg

Organization

The Fraternity of Puny Mailbox

Emotions

Comfortable

Personality

Readily Stale

Motive

Take over a country for a love interest

Bodyguard

Roberto the "Drab Gremlin"

Physical Size

Poor

Story

Additional Locations

The Small Manor

Pitch Black Jungle

Silence Fortress

Random Events

Spectator Evades the law

Odor Calls menacingly

Whore Is accused by the law

Crowd runs over an infant

World

Stores

Tyler's Toolbox Du jour

Quinn's Armoir Chic Chåteau

Hodges's Hat International

Obrien's Tea Pot Market

Traps

Hail of Needles

Razor-Wire across Hallway of Casualties

Objects

Toolbox that is glowing

Hat that has been hollowed out

Secret Armoir

Hidden Diary

Knife of Casualties

Wand of Wonder

Caster and nearest intelligent weapon exchange personalities

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Abraham Quinn "Four Waffles" Merchant Money Lamps
Levi Hodges "King Hearts" Mole Potatoes Chalk
Alexa Horton Talent agent Harmonica Soccer
Tyler Morgan Art Therapist Quartz Crystals Acorns
Allison Obrien Headhunter Water Video Games

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).