Amateur Hour: The Vermillion Preservation Committee
A one-shot crisis for a staff whose procedures far outpace their circumstances
Players: 1 GM, 1 Chief Curator, 1+ Underlings (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.
Tonight is the opening gala. The donors are coming. The press is coming. The Minister of Culture is coming. Everything must be perfect.
It will not be perfect.
HOW TO PLAY
Roll 2d6 + Stat when the outcome is uncertain.
Foam-Padding: Nobody gets hurt. Ever. 0 HP = describe a slapstick mishap (stepping on a donor's foot, backing into a display case, getting tangled in velvet rope), reset to full HP immediately, and carry on. Cartoon physics apply. Nothing breaks that can't be fixed. No career ends that wasn't already ending.
Failure moves the story forward. A failed roll never stops the evening — it redirects it somewhere more chaotic.
MAKE YOUR CREW
The Chief Curator
You are the institutional authority behind this exhibition. You believe deeply in process, protocol, and the power of a well-filed form. Your confidence is not ego — it is bureaucratic optimism. You are convinced that if everyone follows the plan, reality will cooperate.
Reality has other commitments tonight.
Stats: Distribute 3 points across Charm (donor management, press statements, institutional gravitas), Mind (logistics, provenance, crisis protocols), and Body (physically intervening when systems fail). No stat higher than 2.
Recommended Distributions:
- Administrative Type: Mind 2, Charm 1, Body 0
- Fundraiser Type: Charm 2, Mind 1, Body 0
- Hands-On Type: Body 2, Mind 1, Charm 0
Pick one Special Ability (use once per scene):
- "Per the Guidelines" — +1 to any roll when citing an official procedure (real or invented)
- "Donor Voice" — +1 Charm when reassuring someone important that everything is under control
- "I'll Handle This Personally" — +1 Body when physically intervening in a situation that should have been delegated
- "Contingency Twelve" — +1 Mind when improvising a protocol that definitely did not exist before this moment
Pick one piece of Signature Gear (+3 to one roll per scenario):
- The Binder (laminated tabs, colour-coded sections, never consulted at the right moment)
- The Lanyard (grants access to everything, tangles in everything)
- The Earpiece (connects to all staff, picks up interference from the kitchen)
- The Emergency Contact List (comprehensive, alphabetised, one critical number missing)
HP: 5
Role: Announce procedures with unearned serenity, reframe disasters in grant language, express care through institutional action, need the Companion desperately (frame this as "consulting a colleague"), draft the press statement before the event is over.
The Underlings
The dedicated staff who keep this institution running through sincere effort and catastrophic miscommunication.
Each player picks a department (or invents one):
- Conservator — responsible for the physical safety of the artworks, increasingly horrified
- Registrar — responsible for documentation, drowning in paperwork that no longer reflects reality
- Exhibition Designer — responsible for the look and feel, watching their careful work get destroyed
- Security Coordinator — responsible for the safety plan, which stopped being relevant twenty minutes ago
- Intern — knows something is wrong, has no authority to say so, says so anyway to no effect
Stats: Distribute 3 points across Body / Mind / Charm (most are 1/1/1).
Pick one Special Ability (once per scene):
- "That's Not My Department" — +1 when assisting someone; describe the jurisdictional confusion it causes
- "I Flagged This in the Brief" — +1 Mind when a disaster validates something you warned about (no one listened)
- "Professional Smile" — +1 Charm when maintaining composure in front of donors or press while everything collapses behind you
- "Overcorrection" — +1 to any roll, but your fix creates a new problem elsewhere
Pick one Quirk: Sends emails during crises instead of speaking / refers to everything by its accession number / afraid of the freight elevator / follows fire safety protocol at inappropriate moments / corrects pronunciation of artists' names under stress / has keys to everything except the one room that matters.
HP: 5
The Companion — Nonna
A small, ancient tortoiseshell cat who has lived in the Galleria longer than any current staff member. She predates the renovation. Some believe she predates the building. She has a favourite spot on the windowsill of the conservation lab and regards all human activity in the museum as temporary.
Nonna does not roll dice. Nonna has narrative authority.
The GM plays Nonna using one move per scene, chosen when dramatically appropriate:
- Assist-with-a-Sigh — Nonna does the functional thing no one else managed. She sits on the correct form. She blocks the door that should have stayed closed. She knocks the right thing off the right shelf at the right moment. The Chief Curator cites protocol. Nonna knows better.
- Sabotage-by-Obedience — Nonna follows the building's logic rather than the staff's instructions. Told to stay out of the Sala Grande, she enters via the ductwork and dislodges something that needed dislodging. The chaos this causes accidentally prevents a worse disaster.
- The Smug Rescue — When everything collapses, Nonna pads out of the wreckage carrying something essential: the provenance file, a donor's reading glasses, the correct insurance form, a USB drive no one remembered existed.
Nonna cannot be harmed. She has survived seventeen exhibitions, three renovations, two floods, and the brief directorship of a man who was allergic to cats. She will survive this.
The Exhibition Stability Track
This replaces the Contraption Integrity Track. The "device" here is the exhibition itself — the lighting, the climate control, the display cases, the labels, the structural integrity of a baroque palace being asked to do things baroque palaces were not designed for.
The GM advances this when dramatically appropriate:
Reach Level 5 by the climax of Scene 3. When it triggers, the scene ends. Everyone is covered in dust but fine. The building is still standing. Several insurance claims will be filed. The art survives.
THE BACKGROUND CHAOS
The staff are not the only people having a bad evening.
Somewhere in the building, an incompetent criminal crew is attempting to steal La Donna Vermiglia. They have a device involving pulleys and a fog machine. They are disguised as caterers. Their disguises are bad.
Simultaneously, an overconfident police inspector is conducting surveillance at the gala, convinced an international syndicate is involved. He has a surveillance device that produces feedback and fingerprint powder clouds. His disguise is also bad.
The GM plays both groups offscreen. Neither needs stats. They exist as a source of complications the staff must respond to without understanding what is causing them. Signs of their presence include: unexplained fog, grinding sounds from the freight elevator, a suspicious man in a trench coat interrogating the opera critic, caterers behaving strangely in the kitchen, fingerprint powder on surfaces that haven't been dusted, a suction cup stuck to a wall.
The staff never figure out what is actually happening. They experience the symptoms, not the causes. Every explanation they construct is institutional: equipment malfunction, vendor error, building settlement, "the humidity." This is correct from their perspective and wrong from every other.
THE SCENARIO
Scene 1 — Final Preparations (8–10 minutes)
Location: The Galleria Reale, three hours before the gala. The Sala Grande is almost ready. Almost.
What happens:
- The Chief Curator conducts a final walkthrough. Labels are slightly wrong. Lighting is almost right. The climate control is making a noise it didn't make yesterday.
- A call comes in: the Minister of Culture is arriving an hour early. The canapés are not ready. The press packet has a typo. The freight elevator is making a new noise. Advance Stability to Level 1.
- An Underling reports that the caterers seem "odd" — they keep asking about the service corridors. The Chief Curator attributes this to the catering company being new.
- Someone has signed off on something they haven't read. This will matter later.
- Companion Move suggestion: Nonna uses Assist-with-a-Sigh — she knocks a clipboard off a desk, scattering papers. When the Underling gathers them, they find a facilities report noting that a load-bearing column in the Sala Grande "should be monitored." Nobody follows up.
Scene ends when the doors open, guests begin arriving, and one thing is already wrong.
Scene 2 — Public Interface (12–15 minutes)
Location: The Galleria during the opening gala. String quartet. Champagne. Donors in evening wear. The Minister of Culture asking questions no one is authorised to answer.
Complications (deploy 3–5 as needed):
- The Minister's Questions (Charm) — the Minister wants to know about the provenance of La Donna Vermiglia in detail. The correct file is in the conservation lab. Nonna is sitting on it.
- The Environmental Anomaly (Mind) — the climate control is spiking. Humidity in the Sala Grande is climbing. The conservator is increasingly alarmed. The cause is a fog machine hidden behind a false panel, but no one knows that. Advance Stability to Level 2–3.
- The Press Situation (Charm) — a journalist from the arts supplement is asking pointed questions about the building's structural assessment. An Underling said something unwise near a microphone.
- The Kitchen Crisis (Body) — something has gone wrong with the canapés. The caterers are distracted (they are criminals). A tray of prosecco is heading toward the Sala Grande at speed on a wobbly trolley.
- The Security Overlap — the Galleria's own security team keeps running into a man with a badge who claims to be conducting "routine surveillance." He is Inspector Ferro. Their radio frequencies are interfering with each other and with the Chief Curator's earpiece.
Companion Move suggestion: Nonna uses Sabotage-by-Obedience — she enters the Sala Grande via the ductwork, dislodging a vent cover that falls on the climate control panel, which resets the humidity to normal. The conservator cites this as proof that the system is "self-correcting." It is not.
Scene ends when multiple systems are failing, the public-facing situation is deteriorating, and something structural has just made a noise.
Scene 3 — The Collapse (15–20 minutes)
Location: The Sala Grande. Full institutional crisis.
Everything happens at once:
- The fog machine (hidden, criminal) fills the Sala Grande with haze. The staff interpret this as a catastrophic climate control failure.
- A grinding sound from the freight elevator shaft. The security coordinator radios for information. The earpiece picks up Inspector Ferro dictating his submarine theory.
- A display case in the adjacent gallery topples (a minion in a jumpsuit backed into it). A conservator screams — professionally.
- The chandelier sways. Something in the ceiling was load-bearing and is no longer bearing load.
- The Minister of Culture asks if this is part of the exhibition. The Chief Curator, without hesitation, says yes.
- The sprinklers activate. The press photographs everything.
GM Goal: Give every player a spotlight moment. Let them attempt increasingly desperate rolls to save the evening, the art, and the institution's reputation. Advance the Stability Track to Level 5 at the moment of maximum institutional dignity loss.
CATASTROPHIC RECONTEXTUALISATION: The chandelier crashes. The fog fills the room. The sprinklers drench the gala guests. A wall panel detaches, revealing the building's original baroque fresco underneath (this will later be described as "an intentional reveal"). In the chaos, the criminals bolt through the service corridor. Inspector Ferro pursues, slips on wet marble, and crashes into a suit of armour. The staff see none of this clearly through the fog and water. When it clears, La Donna Vermiglia is still on the wall — slightly crooked, lightly damp, otherwise fine. The Sala Grande looks like a contemporary installation. The Minister of Culture is, against all probability, impressed.
Companion Move suggestion: Nonna uses The Smug Rescue — she pads out of the fog carrying the provenance file in her mouth. She drops it at the Chief Curator's feet, sits down, and begins cleaning plaster dust from one paw. The file is dry. Everything else is not.
THE AFTERMATH
The staff regroups at a café on the harbour. The Chief Curator is drafting a press statement on their phone, describing the evening as "an ambitious experiment in spatial recontextualisation that challenged conventional exhibition paradigms." This is, remarkably, the statement the press will run with.
A conservator is checking their phone for humidity readings that no longer matter. The security coordinator has turned off their radio. The intern is staring into the middle distance with the expression of someone who has just learned something fundamental about institutions.
Nonna is on the café table, accepting a small piece of fish from the waiter. She has seen this before. She will see it again.
At a table nearby, a soot-covered figure in a cape is sketching on a napkin while a large grey cat cleans plaster from its paw. At another table, a man in a trench coat is dictating notes into a recorder while a large grey cat watches a seagull with practiced indifference.
Three tables. Three cats. Three crews who believe they were the protagonist of tonight's events. None of them are wrong. All of them are getting gelato.
An Underling asks if anyone wants gelato. The intern is already walking toward the shop on the corner.
They go get gelato. The Chief Curator is already composing a grant application for "resilience programming."
There's always the next exhibition.
GM CHEAT SHEET
Your job: Make institutional failure spectacular. The staff are not incompetent — they are competent people inside a system that is being subjected to forces they cannot see or understand. The comedy comes from the gap between their procedural confidence and the actual chaos.
Ask yourself: "What would make this funnier?" / "How would an institution explain this?" / "What would the official report say?" / "What is Nonna doing right now?"
When stuck: Have the earpiece pick up something from the wrong channel. Have a donor ask an unanswerable question. Have an Underling follow a procedure that makes things worse. Have the building itself contribute a complication. Have Nonna appear somewhere unexpected.
Running the offscreen chaos: You don't need to track the criminals or Inspector Ferro in detail. They are weather — things that happen to the building that the staff must interpret and respond to through an institutional lens. A fog machine is a "climate event." A grinding sound is "building settlement." A man in a trench coat asking about the freight elevator is "a facilities consultant we weren't briefed on."
The Chief Curator's press statement: Encourage the player to draft their institutional spin in real time as disasters unfold. The gap between what is happening and how it is being described is a reliable comedy engine.
Difficulty guidelines: Most rolls should be Difficulty 8. Make it 6 if you want them to succeed for pacing. Make it 10 if the institutional stakes are absurd.
NPCs can: ask unanswerable questions, arrive early, misquote staff, photograph the wrong thing, be impressed for the wrong reasons. NPCs cannot: cause lasting harm, end anyone's career permanently, or damage the art beyond repair.
End with: Collapse → Recontextualisation → Fog clears → Art survives → Companion retrieves the file → Chief Curator drafts statement → Gelato → There's always next exhibition.
Pass the provenance file. Get the gelato. There's always next exhibition.