Amateur Hour: The Case of the Vermillion Lady
A one-shot investigation for a detective whose deductions far outpace the facts
Players: 1 GM, 1 Inspector, 1+ Constables (2–4 total) | Time: 45–60 minutes | You Need: 2d6, pencils, this document
THE SETUP
The seaside city of San Fiore clings to steep hillsides above a glittering harbour. Pastel buildings in faded coral and yellow crowd narrow streets lined with orange trees. Funiculars rattle between the old town and the waterfront, packed with tourists and locals who treat the near-vertical ride as routine. Laundry lines cross above cobblestone alleys, Vespas weave through impossibly tight corners, and every rooftop terrace has a view of the sea. The city smells like espresso, sea salt, and warm stone.
The Galleria Reale di San Fiore — a crumbling baroque palace converted into the city's art museum — is hosting Masterworks in Transit, a traveling exhibition of iconic paintings on loan from institutions across the continent. The crown jewel: La Donna Vermiglia ("The Vermillion Lady"), a luminous portrait by a long-dead master, said to be worth more than the building that houses it.
Intelligence suggests someone intends to steal it during tomorrow night's opening gala. The tip is vague. The source is unreliable. The Inspector is already certain they know exactly who is behind this.
They are wrong.
HOW TO PLAY
Roll 2d6 + Stat when the outcome is uncertain.
Foam-Padding: Nobody gets hurt. Ever. 0 HP = describe a slapstick mishap (tripping over evidence, walking into a glass door, getting tangled in crime scene tape), reset to full HP immediately, and carry on. Cartoon physics apply. Falls produce dust clouds, not injuries. Collapsing scenery produces indignity, not wounds.
Failure moves the story forward. A failed roll never stops the investigation — it redirects it somewhere funnier.
MAKE YOUR CREW
The Inspector
You are the self-declared greatest detective in San Fiore. Your confidence vastly exceeds your observational skills.
Stats: Distribute 3 points across Charm (interrogation, announcements, dramatic reveals), Mind (deduction, evidence, gadgetry), and Body (chasing, climbing, crashing through things). No stat higher than 2.
Recommended Distributions:
- Dramatic Type: Charm 2, Mind 1, Body 0
- Cerebral Type: Mind 2, Charm 1, Body 0
- Physical Type: Body 2, Charm 1, Mind 0
Pick one Special Ability (use once per scene):
- "Elementary!" — +1 to any roll, declared with absolute confidence
- "Just as I Suspected" — +1 Mind when improvising a theory after your last one collapsed
- "Brilliant Deduction" — +1 Charm when explaining your theory at impressive length
- "After Them!" — +1 Body when pursuing someone through chaos or debris
Pick one piece of Signature Gear (+3 to one roll per scenario):
- Magnifying Glass (used on everything, helpful for nothing)
- Leather-bound Journal (full of wrong conclusions in beautiful handwriting)
- Trench Coat (dramatic in all weather, functional in none)
- Official Badge (flashed constantly, rarely respected)
HP: 5
Role: Announce theories with unearned certainty, misread every clue, take credit for the Companion's discoveries, need the Companion desperately (never admit this), declare the case closed (it isn't).
The Constables
Eager junior officers in matching uniforms, loyal to the Inspector beyond all professional reason.
Stats: Distribute 3 points across Body / Mind / Charm (most are 1/1/1).
Pick one Special Ability (once per scene):
- "Helpful Idiot" — +1 when assisting someone; describe how you nearly contaminate the evidence
- "Lucky Stumble" — +1 Body when tripping over something reveals a clue
- "Sincere Confusion" — +1 Charm when a misunderstanding accidentally gets a witness talking
- "Overenthusiasm" — +1 to any roll, but something else at the scene gets disturbed
Pick one Quirk: Drops evidence bags at dramatic moments / speaks in malapropisms / afraid of pigeons / extremely literal / states wrong forensic facts confidently / accidentally activates things at crime scenes.
HP: 5
The Companion — Reno
A large, grey, deeply unimpressed cat. Reno does not roll dice. Reno has narrative authority.
Reno is not a police animal. Reno is not trained. Reno simply appears at crime scenes, having followed the Inspector from home, and proceeds to find everything the professionals miss. The Inspector considers Reno a mascot. Reno considers the Inspector a project.
The GM plays Reno using one move per scene, chosen when dramatically appropriate:
- Assist-with-a-Sigh — Reno finds the actual clue, walks past the actual suspect, or sits on the actual evidence. No roll. The Inspector takes credit with a wildly wrong interpretation.
- Sabotage-by-Obedience — Reno follows an instruction too literally (told to "guard the evidence," Reno sits on a completely different item that turns out to be important), causing chaos that accidentally advances the case.
- The Smug Rescue — When everything collapses, Reno pads out of the wreckage carrying the one piece of evidence that actually matters. The Inspector files it under the wrong case.
Reno cannot be harmed. He observes disasters from a safe distance, then saunters over to solve things.
The Contraption — The Ferro-Spector 2000
The Inspector's custom surveillance and crime-solving apparatus, assembled from requisitioned police equipment, consumer electronics, and optimism. It definitely will not work as intended.
Components (the Inspector presents these at briefing): A directional microphone with feedback issues, a night-vision monocular that only works in daylight, a fingerprint dusting kit that produces clouds, a periscope made from bathroom mirrors, and a recording device that captures everything except what matters.
Contraption Integrity Track — the GM advances this when dramatically appropriate:
Reach Level 5 by the climax of Scene 3.
THE OPPOSITION — The Thieves
Somewhere in San Fiore, an equally incompetent criminal crew is planning to steal La Donna Vermiglia. The GM plays them offscreen. Their disasters interleave with the investigation.
The Schemer — a theatrical figure in a cape who refers to themselves in the third person. They have a plan. The plan is bad. They are adjusting it constantly.
The Minions — two or three enthusiastic accomplices in matching jumpsuits. They are doing their best. Their best involves dropping things and pressing buttons.
The Contraption — an elaborate extraction device called something like "The Vermillion Extractor Mark IV." It involves pulleys and a fog machine. It is already making concerning noises.
The GM does not need stats for the thieves. They exist as a source of complications, background chaos, and evidence that the Inspector will misinterpret. Their failures are discovered by the crew as: an abandoned blueprint covered in coffee rings, a suspicious van with a flat tyre, a gift shop receipt for twelve postcard prints of La Donna Vermiglia, a fog machine left in a bush.
The thieves are never cruel, never competent, and never caught — at least not permanently. They are the mirror. They escape by accident, just as the Inspector solves things by accident.
THE SCENARIO
Scene 1 — The Briefing (8–10 minutes)
Location: The Inspector's office at the San Fiore police station. Papers everywhere. A corkboard with red string connecting unrelated photographs. A half-eaten cornetto on the desk. Reno is asleep on the filing cabinet.
The Inspector has received a tip: someone plans to steal La Donna Vermiglia during tomorrow's gala. The tip came from a source described only as "a man in a hat at the harbour café." The Inspector already has a theory. The theory involves an international syndicate, a shadowy mastermind, and possibly submarines. None of this is correct.
What happens:
- The Inspector unveils their theory and the Ferro-Spector 2000. Something immediately malfunctions. Advance Integrity to Level 1.
- A Constable is sent to reconnoitre the Galleria and returns with details: the painting will be in the Sala Grande, a domed hall on the second floor. Security consists of a laser grid (temperamental), a freight elevator (ancient), and two guards (one is new, one is asleep).
- The Constable also found something suspicious near the service entrance: a crumpled blueprint covered in arrows and optimistic labels. The Inspector studies it at length and draws the wrong conclusion.
- Companion Move suggestion: Reno uses Assist-with-a-Sigh — while the Inspector holds the blueprint upside down, Reno sits on a coffee-ringed napkin that fell out of it. The napkin has the actual address of the thieves' hideout on it. Nobody notices.
Scene ends when the crew heads to the Galleria to set up surveillance, one theory already wrong.
Scene 2 — The Stakeout (12–15 minutes)
Location: The Galleria Reale during the opening gala. The Inspector and Constables are undercover, dressed as gala guests (the disguises are bad, but in a different way than the thieves' disguises, which are also bad).
The Inspector is scanning the room for their imagined international syndicate. The actual thieves are also here, disguised as caterers, bumbling through the kitchen. The two crews keep almost running into each other.
Complications (deploy 3–5 as needed):
- The Wrong Suspect (Mind) — the Inspector becomes convinced a perfectly innocent opera critic is the mastermind. Interrogating them requires navigating a very long conversation about Puccini.
- The Kitchen Encounter (Body) — a Constable goes to get canapés and walks directly through the thieves' staging area without recognizing it. They do, however, knock something over that the thieves needed.
- The Ferro-Spector Acts Up (automatic) — deploying the directional microphone at the gala produces piercing feedback that silences the string quartet. Everyone stares. Advance Integrity to Level 3–4.
- The Actual Clue (Charm) — a nervous guard mentions that someone asked very specific questions about the freight elevator earlier. The Inspector interprets this as confirmation of the submarine theory.
- The Near-Miss — the Inspector and the Schemer pass each other in a corridor. Neither recognizes the other. Reno watches both of them with equal disdain.
Companion Move suggestion: Reno uses Sabotage-by-Obedience — told to "stay by the painting," Reno sits in the Sala Grande directly on the spot where the thieves planned to position their Contraption, forcing them to adjust their plan in real time.
Scene ends when the investigation has produced several wrong conclusions and the actual theft is about to begin.
Scene 3 — The Spectacular Collapse (15–20 minutes)
Location: The Sala Grande. Full chaos. Both crews are here now.
Everything happens at once:
- The thieves activate their Contraption. The suction arm latches onto the painting — and onto the wall behind it.
- The Inspector activates the Ferro-Spector to "gather evidence." The fingerprint powder detonates in a cloud. The recording device begins playing back everything at full volume.
- A Constable recognizes the thieves ("Those caterers have been acting suspicious!") and gives chase — in the wrong direction.
- The thieves' fog machine fills the Sala Grande. The Inspector's periscope is useless in fog.
- The chandelier begins to sway. Both Contraptions are somehow attached to load-bearing elements.
- A Constable accidentally activates the fire suppression sprinklers while trying to use the Ferro-Spector's night-vision monocular.
GM Goal: Give every player a spotlight moment. Let them attempt increasingly desperate rolls. Both crews' Integrity Tracks should hit Level 5 simultaneously or near-simultaneously for maximum spectacle.
SPECTACULAR CATASTROPHE: Both Contraptions fail at once. The chandelier crashes. The sprinklers drench everyone. The fog machine fills the room. In the chaos, the thieves bolt through the service corridor. The Inspector gives chase, slips on wet marble, slides into a decorative suit of armour, and brings down a display of Renaissance pottery. The Constables pursue enthusiastically in three different wrong directions. When the smoke clears, the painting is still on the wall — slightly crooked, lightly damp, otherwise fine. The thieves are gone. The Inspector is wearing a helmet from the suit of armour and declaring this a successful operation.
Companion Move suggestion: Reno uses The Smug Rescue — he pads out of the chaos and drops something at the Inspector's feet. A crumpled napkin with an address on it — the thieves' hideout. The Inspector pockets it, mutters "confirmation of the submarine theory," and moves on.
THE AFTERMATH
The crew regroups at a café on the harbour. The Inspector is giving a statement to a junior reporter, describing how their surveillance operation successfully prevented the theft of La Donna Vermiglia through "a combination of advanced forensic methodology and tactical deployment." The reporter is writing this down. None of it is accurate.
A Constable points out that they didn't actually catch anyone. The Inspector explains that the thieves were "clearly intimidated by our presence" and "fled before executing their plan," which is technically half-true in the same way that a stopped clock is technically right twice a day.
Reno sits on the café table, watching a seagull steal bread from the Inspector's plate. He has the look of someone who has seen this before and will see it again.
A Constable asks if anyone wants gelato. Another Constable is already walking toward the shop on the corner.
They go get gelato. The Inspector is already theorizing about the next case — something about the submarine, and possibly a second painting. The napkin with the actual address is in their coat pocket, forgotten.
There's always next week.
GM CHEAT SHEET
Your job: Make failure spectacular — on both sides. You are running two incompetent crews whose disasters collide. Neither side wins. Both sides escape. The painting survives.
Ask yourself: "What would make this funnier?" / "How can the two crews' failures intersect?" / "What would Clouseau do?" / "What would happen in a cartoon?"
When stuck: Have the two crews almost encounter each other. Have the Ferro-Spector malfunction. Have a Constable stumble onto real evidence and misidentify it. Have something turn out to be load-bearing.
Running the thieves offscreen: You don't need to track their rolls or HP. They exist as a source of background chaos, misinterpreted evidence, and near-misses. Their plan is falling apart at the same rate as the investigation. Signs of their presence include: suspicious sounds from the kitchen, a fog machine activating too early, a minion dropping something in a corridor, a suction cup stuck to an unexpected surface.
The Inspector's theories: The Inspector should have a running theory that gets more elaborate and more wrong as the scenario progresses. Encourage the player to build on each new (mis)interpretation. The submarine is optional but recommended.
Difficulty guidelines: Most rolls should be Difficulty 8. Make it 6 if you want them to succeed for pacing. Make it 10 if the situation is absurd.
NPCs can: get confused, get stuck, witness disasters, provide accidental help, remember details wrong. NPCs cannot: actually catch anyone permanently, cause real harm, or file accurate reports. This applies to the thieves too — they can't be caught permanently, and they're never a real threat.
End with: Collapse → Both crews escape → Soot → Companion retrieves real evidence (ignored) → Inspector declares case closed → Everyone gets gelato → There's always next week.
Pass the magnifying glass. Get the gelato. There's always next case.