The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Judicious Daughter

#03c485

Location

Foggy, Overcast Burkina Faso

Time of Day

24:56

Extraction Point

182 Miles NEE

Time to Complete

31 Hours

Ambassadors,
As you can see you are trapped inside the outside of a Touristy Shelter . We almost couldn't find you — Please explain when you get back. All we know is "Big Gnome" is responsible and they sent us this message - "A pool of blood at the Crossroads". Your mission was black ops, achieve what you can.

Hopefully you still have that Beautiful Screwdriver hidden on you.

— The Tape recorder you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Mattie Bates

Alias

"Big Gnome"

Features

7' 3"

Hazel eyes

Faint curved scar / Left foot

Organization

The Fraternity of Small Rum

Emotions

Insulted

Personality

Shyly Weak

Motive

Take over a government for sibling rivalry

Bodyguard

Randy the "Scaley Fairy"

Physical Size

Substantial

Story

Additional Locations

The Judicious Island

Underwater Lagoon

Power Acropolis

Random Events

Odor scurries by

Dozen Eggs Finds gold in the water

Alligator Evades the law

Bear strikes the ground

World

Stores

Laila's End Table Brothers

Crawford's Hanging Birdcage Properties

Wilson's Metal chair Mall

Edwards's Potted Plant Unlimited

Traps

Flooding Room

Insanity Mist Vapor of Mania

Objects

End Table that is glowing

Metal chair that has been hollowed out

Secret Hanging Birdcage

Hidden Boiled Leather

Club of Mania

Wand of Wonder

If cut open, caster is found to contain countless glass beads

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Mya Crawford "No Tongues" Merchant Syrup Cooking
Madeline Wilson "White Toes" Mole Music Cats
Elise Lloyd Journalist Whipped Cream Potatoes
Laila Cruz Librarian Bread Dolphins
Julianna Edwards Stressed Scarves Television

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).