Welcome to the Warm & Small Detective's Community!

This week on Episode #409

At Supper With a Pitiful Vein Phantasm

For the Head Detective's eyes only!

Give Them Direction

Monsters
The dirty Pixie of the Pitiful Vein
miniature Hungry Succubus of Vulnerability
Pitiful Wendigo
Villain Motive
Rule the world
Starting Event
The commander has you meet someone somewhere
Random Events
A pine branch Salutes the adventures
A Reindeer Catches leprosy
A crowd Is being tortured
A Goblet is being loudly arrested
Local Business
Ashton's Bicycle Warehouse
Joseph's Vanity Logistics
McCoy's Landscape Market
Wells's Watch Couture

Populate the World

Criminal Contacts
Tony "heavy hot Dogs"
Joseph "chunky matzo balls"
Juan "bullet spleens"
Al "Pitiful Vein"
Random People
Brianna Caldwell
Joshua Warren
Harper McCoy
Emmanuel Moreno
Ashton Johnson
Olivia Wells
Nathan Montgomery
Liliana Guerrero
Descriptions
Old Timer
Secretary
Veteran
Engineer
Intoxicated

MISC Ideas

Magical Objects
Whip of Vulnerability
Shield of Disaster
Secret objects
Secret Bicycle
Landscape with a False bottom
Random objects
Watch
Taxidermy animal
Tea Set
Creeping Vines
Locations
Arcade
Peninsula
Island
Pond
Destinations
Town of Redlesfolk
City of Rugoldness

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).