Happy holidays! For the season, I’ve dug up another unfinished tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) from my slush pile to share with you all. Like others, it’s playable as-is. So have fun! And it’s released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so feel free to hack away or even flat out flesh out and finish the game if you want!

Welcome to the Division, Merry Agent

The holidays are supposed to be magical, but when things go wrong, it’s up to the Holiday Anomalies Division (HAD) to restore balance. Whether it’s rogue magic, runaway cheer, or traditions gone haywire, HAD agents are on the front lines, armed with festive gadgets, quick thinking, and a healthy dose of improvisation.

In this game, you’ll face off against bizarre holiday crises, like out-of-control snowstorms, sentient ornaments, or time-warping New Year’s Eve balls. Your team of holiday protectors must use their wits, their gadgets, and each other to bring order to the chaos. Expect creative problem-solving, hilarious mishaps, and moments of unexpected brilliance as you save the season, one anomaly at a time.

Get ready for a wild ride filled with absurd challenges and holiday magic. The season’s chaos is just beginning… are you ready to step in and save it?

Core Gameplay

Mission Stages

Each mission unfolds in three stages, ensuring every scenario is packed with humor, action, and heartwarming resolutions:

1. Investigation: Explore the environment, gather clues, and piece together the source of the anomaly.
   Example: “The local snow globe collection is projecting a blizzard into real life. Let’s interview the toy store owner and see what’s going on.”
2. Containment: Use your skills, gadgets, and creative thinking to stabilize or neutralize the anomaly. Expect to deploy wild plans, sometimes on the fly!
   Example: “We’ll use the Christmas tree stand as a containment circle and trick the animated ornaments into it with carols.”
3. Aftermath: Wrap up any lingering consequences, smooth things over with the public, and report back to headquarters.
   Example: “Well, we stopped the giant mutant gingerbread man, but now the city smells like burnt cookies. We might need an apology card.”

Stats and Motif Rolls

Stats

Each agent assigns values to their stats: 0, 1, and 2. These stats define your agent’s strengths:

• Contain: For wrangling, neutralizing, or redirecting chaotic forces.
• Connect: For negotiations, teamwork, or emotional appeals.
• Improvise: For creating plans, blustering off the top of your head, or finding unexpected solutions.

Motif Roll System

Whenever agents take action, they describe their effort, ask about how they effort turns out, and roll 2d6:

• Answer Die: The first die answers the question about your effort. Your relevant stat adds to this die.
  • 1-3: No
  • 4-6: Yes
• Wrinkle Die: The second die adds a twist or extra flavor.
  • 1-2: But
  • 3-4: Plain answer
  • 5-6: And

Example Outcomes

• “Yes and” (6, 6): Your success snowballs into even greater outcomes, but it may get hilariously out of hand.
• “No but” (3, 1): You fail, but something mitigates the consequences or sets you up for future success.
• “Yes plain” (4, 3): A straightforward success, nothing fancy but it gets the job done.

Special Outcomes

• Double 6s: Over-the-top success. You succeed so well that the action spirals into chaos in unexpected ways.
• Double 1s: A catastrophic failure that introduces hilarious and humiliating consequences.

Interpreting Rolls

This is a game of chaotic fun and anarchic joy, even as the character strive to solve problems. Failures should not be punitive or simply stop the action. Failures and complications should introduce interesting consequences or simply move the story forward. There is intentionally no health system to this game. The results of actions and outcomes follow the fiction. Use common sense and the flow of the emerging story.

Chaos Meter

During the Investigation and Containment phases, the Chaos Meter tracks the growing instability of the anomaly, starting at 0 and maxing out at 10. Each failure (No result) adds 1 to the meter. If you roll a “No and” result, add an additional +1 (for a total gain of 2). The Chaos Meter resets to 0 at the start of each phase.

Escalating Chaos

• Reduction: Successfully helping civilians escape danger or making significant steps toward containing or calming the situation reduces the meter by 1.
• Weirdness Die: As the meter rises, the world becomes more bizarre:
  • Chaos 3: Add a third Weirdness die to all actions to measure how surreal things are getting.
  • Chaos 5: Add +1 to the Weirdness die rolls.
  • Chaos 7: Add +2 to the Weirdness die rolls.
  • Chaos 10: Crisis Peak! The situation reaches its boiling point, and the team must make a desperate attempt to resolve the chaos before it goes critical.

Weirdness Die

Rolled as a third die on actions when Chaos 3 is reached. Measures how the world bends under the strain of chaos as the characters act:

• 1: Normal and mundane.
• 2: Slightly odd or unusual.
• 3-4: Notably awkward or somewhat surreal.
• 5: Outright strange and surreal.
• 6: Reality is bleeding, expect total holiday mayhem.

Gadget Invention and Use

Creativity is key to resolving the holiday-themed anomalies, and agents can invent or tweak gadgets to aid in their missions.

• Invention Rolls: When agents create new gadgets, they roll 2d6 with no modifiers. They use whatever random holiday items are on hand or around in the scene as the core of their invention.
• Use Rolls: Using gadgets involves another 2d6 roll with no modifiers. The outcome is determined by the Motif system and failure could lead to hilarious malfunctions.

Example Invention

“I rigged this Rudolph-nose flashlight to repel candy cane bats. It works, more or less, except now it attracts sentient mistletoe!”

Example Use

“The snow globe containment device worked perfectly… until it started projecting disco lights into the blizzard.”

Holiday-Related Goals

Each agent has a personal holiday-related goal they’re working toward, perhaps a long-lost tradition, an unfulfilled wish, or simply a desire to make the season brighter. If it fits the situation, agents can rearrange their die after rolling to help achieve their goal.

Tone and Focus

This game is about embracing the chaos of the holidays with a heavy dose of humor, absurdity, and spontaneous creativity. Each mission is a wild ride, and players are encouraged to think outside the box, improvise, and roll with whatever unexpected twists come their way. The focus is on fun, the chaos of the holiday season, and keeping things light and entertaining.

Mission Variety

HAD deals with all sorts of absurd holiday crises, including but not limited to:

• Recovery Missions: Retrieve or contain rogue holiday artifacts.
• Containment Missions: Stabilize out-of-control magical events.
• Negotiation Missions: Convince sentient holiday creatures to play nice.
• Multi-Stage Anomalies: Tackle layered events, like a New Year’s ball countdown that creates a bubble of time and additional weird effects with each second counted.

Each mission should be treated like a holiday adventure, with bizarre problems and off-the-wall solutions that keep everyone laughing and on their toes.

Mission Loop: Building Your Holiday Adventure

The Mission Loop is the heartbeat of your holiday-themed adventures in Holiday Anomalies Division (HAD). Each mission unfolds in three key stages—Investigation, Containment, and Aftermath—ensuring that your game stays dynamic, fun, and full of surprises. In this section, we’ll guide you through how to create and run your missions, with advice on pacing, setting the scene, and a few tools to spark your creativity.

Investigation: Unravel the Mystery

The investigation phase is where your agents get to explore the weirdness surrounding the holiday anomaly. It’s time to gather clues, interview NPCs, and piece together what caused the problem in the first place. This is where the mystery unfolds and the tone is set.

Tips for Investigation

• Setting the Scene: Introduce a holiday setting that’s been turned upside down. A toy store filled with rogue, talking ornaments. A Christmas market under siege by malfunctioning reindeer. Let your players discover how far things have gone awry.
• What to Do: Encourage players to investigate with a mix of asking questions, gathering physical clues, and talking to quirky NPCs. They may need to use their “Connect” stat to get information from a nervous shopkeeper or “Improvise” to find hidden clues.
• Rewards: If the player successfully uncover helpful information and/or the root cause of the problem, all of their first actions in the next phase gain +2 on both dice.
• Consequences: If players fail too hard and too much, causing the Chaos Meter to rise too high to 10, reality completely melts down in a surreal dream-like scene. The fundamental cause or main responsible figure will be revealed. The character them suddenly find themselves waking up in res media in the Containment phase, with the Chaos Meter reset to 0.

Investigation Oracles

You can use some all flavor (or dice label) oracles to help fill things out and guide the investigation process.

Clue Shape

• Visibility: How noticeable is the clue?
• Condition: Is the clue in good shape?
• Urgency: Does this clue feel pressing?

Clue Value

• Importance: Is this clue significant?
• Clarity: How easy is it to understand?
• Connection: Does this point toward the source of the anomaly?

Clue Examination

• Strangeness: How weird is the clue?
• Reliability: How trustworthy is this clue?
• Relevance: Does it relate directly to the anomaly?

Clue Result

• Source: Does the clue have a clear origin?
• Difficulty: How hard is it to piece together?
• Direction: Does it lead to more clues?

Containment: Stabilize the Situation

Once your agents have gathered enough clues and identified the cause, it’s time to contain or neutralize the anomaly. This is where improvisation, creativity, and quick thinking come into play. Players will need to come up with wild plans, deploy gadgets, and sometimes use their holiday skills to stabilize the situation.

Tips for Containment

• Setting the Scene: Now the stakes get high! The anomaly might be growing, so it’s important to make the environment feel tense. Maybe the snowstorm is getting bigger, or the rogue candy canes are multiplying by the minute.
• What to Do: Players may need to work together to come up with a containment strategy, using their tools and talents. This could involve everything from singing a holiday song to calm down a rabid reindeer to using the Christmas tree stand to trap a rogue snow globe.
• Rewards: If the players manage to solve the problem before the Chaos Meter caps out, the aftermath will be easier to manage. NPCs will be naturally more forgiving and understanding. The extant of damage or disruption will be less than it could have been. They should also gain a friendly NPC who is grateful for their help, who they may call upon for friendship or even assistance at times.
• Consequences: The higher the Chaos Meter, the crazier and riskier the containment will be. At 10, the full power and strangeness of the event is unleashed and the characters must face a final showdown. The outcome will depend on their choice of actions and rolls, with no further chances.

Containment Oracles

Just like the Investigation phase, this phase also has some example oracles you can use to help flesh out and run the scenes.

First Impression

• Control: How easy is it to take charge of the situation?
• Strength: How powerful is the anomaly?
• Stability: How stable is the environment?

Assessment

• Speed: How fast is the anomaly growing?
• Disruption: How much damage is the anomaly causing?
• Intervention: How much can the agents intervene?

Planning

• Clarity: How clear is the containment strategy?
• Resources: How many resources are available for the plan?
• Consequence: What happens if containment fails?

Contact With Reality

• Duration: How long will it take to contain the anomaly?
• Effectiveness: How well will the containment strategy work?
• Risk: How risky is the plan?

Aftermath: The Clean-Up and Consequences

After the anomaly is contained, it’s time to wrap up. But the aftermath is never as simple as it seems! The town, city, or holiday environment still has to deal with the fallout of the situation, and your agents will have to make things right with the public and report back to headquarters.

Tips for Aftermath

• Setting the Scene: The holiday chaos should have left some quirky consequences behind, even in the best outcomes. Maybe the town is now covered in frosting, or there’s a herd of sentient snowmen wandering the streets.
• What to Do: This phase is about managing the fallout. Players will need to smooth things over with any panicked civilians, undo the effects of the anomaly, and maybe even deal with an unexpected twist (such as an apology tour or media frenzy). The phase should end with a debriefing and review back at headquarters.
• Rewards: If the aftermath is handled especially well, the Department may offer minor helpers or a less unreliable gadget for use on the next mission. There is also a chance to avoid gaining enemies and develop alliances.
• Consequences: If the Chaos Meter was high, things won’t be as easily fixed. Maybe there are lingering side effects, like an overabundance of holiday spirit that causes everything to turn ridiculously festive, or the return of an anomaly that wasn’t fully contained. If the phase is badly handled, the team may end up with some persistant enemies or bad PR.

Aftermath Oracles

There are also some example all flavor oracles using dice labels for this phase too! Use them to help introduce more surprise and round out details in play.

Simple Aftermath

• Public Response: How well do the townsfolk feel about the team?
• Holiday Spirit: How is the holiday mood affected?
• Damage Control: How much effort is needed to fix the situation?

Alternate Aftermath

• Civic Reaction: What’s the general mood of the crowd?
• Long-Term Effects: What lasting impact does the anomaly have?
• PR Recovery: How much does the team need to manage public relations?

Leftover Mess

• Clean-Up Effort: How easy is it to restore order?
• Media Frenzy: How does the media spin the event?
• Community Impact: How is the community dealing with the aftermath?

Fallout

• Reputation: How do the locals view the team post-mission?
• Festive Echoes: How much does the anomaly affect holiday celebrations?
• Side Effects: Are there any lingering issues?

Appendix: Using the All Flavor Oracles

You ask about how things are or turned out. Roll 3d6 for an answer. Assign the labels in order from left to right or closest to farthest. Each label is interpreted according to its plain meaning, as illustrated by the example question that the flavor answers. Follow the intuitive scale below, judging the weight of the label by how much the flavor comes through or how positive/negative the outcome is.

Scale

• 1: Absolute absence or the complete opposite; most negative response
• 2: Not at all or somewhat the contrary; clear negative response
• 3: Somewhat or slightly so; mildly negative response
• 4: Average or mediocre; slightly positive response
• 5: Above average or notably strong; strongly positive response
• 6: Peak or overwhelming; most positive response