The Director Welcomes You

Operation — Great Apparatus

#988c50

Location

Gorgeous, Chilly Bangladesh

Time of Day

3:28

Extraction Point

198 Miles SE

Time to Complete

27 Hours

Investigators,
This week should be easy. You are delivering a Kitchen table made of heavy metal. Get to Bangladesh at 18:21

Good Luck.

— The Messenger Pigeon you were holding self destructs.

The Villain Dossier

Name

Charles May

Alias

"Fat Mongoose"

Features

4' 7"

Heterochromia eyes

Small mole / Left thumb

Organization

The League of Mannered Religion

Emotions

Cautious

Personality

Offensively Mango

Motive

Disrupt the military to achieve their destiny

Bodyguard

Alex the "Affluent Yeti"

Physical Size

Microscopic

Story

Additional Locations

The Great Lagoon

Archaic Festival

Ice Mansion

Random Events

Prostitute Balances on a ledge

Midwife Is being kidnapped

Thief screams at the top of their lungs

Reindeer Crashes slowly

World

Stores

Nathaniel's Kitchen table Warehouse

Curry's Letter Opener Chic Chåteau

Elliott's Bureau Convenience store

Benson's Flowers Growing Cosmetics

Traps

Bear Trap

Earthquake of Darkness

Objects

Kitchen table made of heavy metal

Bureau made of heavy metal

Secret Letter Opener

Hidden Pants

Sabre of Darkness

Wand of Wonder

Target teleports to a point 1d100 feet above the nearest lake

People

Name Codename Career Likes Dislikes
Athena Curry "Bullet Boy" Merchant Clocks Rubber Bands
Harmony Elliott "Blue Heels" Mole Gym Memberships Sponges
Gabriella Jones Mechanic Fire Lamps
Nathaniel Weber Phantom Glitter Lions
Violet Benson Secretary Lipstick Trucks

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).