A gelatinous cube one-shot might be the most unexpected adventure on your shelf, and Squeaky Clean makes the joke land. The dungeon the locals call The Gullet has always cleaned itself, because a population of gentle gelatinous cubes drifts its corridors dissolving everything the delvers leave behind. Now those cubes are turning up dead, the corridors are rotting, and the town that lives off the dungeon is going broke. Your players are hired to find out why, and what they uncover is a murder, a racket, and a moral choice the rules will not make for them. Built for fifth edition and small groups, this is a complete, no-prep session you can run tonight: funny on the surface, genuinely pointed underneath, and unlike anything else your table has played. If you want a one-shot that surprises experienced players and hands a Game Master everything they need in a single sitting, start here.
A Gelatinous Cube One-Shot That Is Really a Murder Mystery
The premise is absurd, and that is exactly why it works. Someone is poisoning the dungeon’s cleanup crew to manufacture a crisis, and the party has to follow the evidence to find out who. The case unfolds as a four-act investigation rather than a straight dungeon crawl.
The party follows the stench inward, finds the dying cubes and the poison darts buried in their translucent bodies, catches the crew responsible deep in the dungeon, and traces a signed contract back to the man behind it: a beloved local alchemist selling the cure for a disease he created. Every act adds one more link in the chain, and the trail is deliberately redundant, so the mystery never stalls. The result is a session that rewards curiosity and clever questions, not just initiative rolls.
The Victims Nobody Expects
The gelatinous cubes are not monsters here. They are the dungeon’s quiet, gentle sanitation crew, drifting the halls and dissolving the refuse, the spoiled rations, and the fallen so the place stays clean. When the party finds one dying, it does not attack. It reaches out and tries, weakly, to clean the grime from a boot. That small moment is the heart of the adventure, and it is what turns a comedy premise into something that actually lands. Players come for the joke about murdered slime janitors and leave a little invested in whether the cubes survive.
A Trail That Never Dead-Ends
The investigation is a corridor, not a maze. A single poison dart in a dying cube tells the party that someone is doing this on purpose. Residue, supply caches, and a captured crew all point the same direction, and the villain’s name surfaces three separate ways, so the trail holds together no matter how the dice fall or which clues the players miss. You get the satisfaction of running a real mystery without the risk of a stalled session.
Built for Small Groups and Zero Prep
Squeaky Clean is designed from the ground up for two or three players at levels 2-3, and it runs in a single two to three hour session. There is no homework. Open the book and play.
Every act is broken into named scenes with boxed read-aloud text, so you always know what to say when the party walks into a room. Each combat comes with full tactics, composition, and a “what to do if the players are losing” note, and nearly every scene includes discoverable clues, each with a difficulty number and a line of flavor, so investigation always pays off. The structure does the heavy lifting that a busy Game Master normally has to do alone.
Everything Is on the Page
The book is written for the Game Master who decided to run a game an hour before everyone arrives. An “at a glance” summary opens every act, a pacing guide tells you roughly how long each stretch should take, and dialogue cues are provided for the key NPCs so even the talk-heavy scenes run themselves. You are never left guessing what a scene is for or how to push it forward, which means your prep time is the time it takes to read the book once.
A Moral Choice, Not Just Another Monster Fight
Most one-shots end when the villain’s hit points hit zero. This one ends with a decision. Once the party traces the scheme back to its source, the alchemist offers them a bribe to look the other way, and the adventure refuses to tell them what to do.
Expose a respected local and let the dungeon slowly heal, or pocket the coin and walk away rich, because the service is real and the cubes are, honestly, a little gross. There is no correct answer and no mechanical reward weighting one path over the other. It is the kind of choice a table argues about on the drive home, and it gives a comedic adventure a surprising amount of staying power.
That single decision reshapes the ending. The book includes a branching epilogue that follows each choice through to its consequences, from the immediate fallout to where the town and the dungeon stand months later, so whatever your players decide, you have a satisfying close ready to read aloud.
Scales Cleanly for Two, Three, or Four Players
Small-group play is the whole point, not an afterthought. Every creature and encounter in the book carries explicit scaling notes for two, three, or four players, so you can run it confidently with a duo or a slightly larger crew without doing the math yourself.
The climactic fight and the optional confrontation with the villain are both tuned so a two-player party can win them, and the design steers gently toward talking and bargaining as real alternatives to fighting. Nobody gets accidentally wiped because the table was one player short.
Two-player tables get extra attention, with reduced enemy counts and gentler boss numbers called out explicitly rather than left to you to improvise. The villain is written to prefer talking and bribery over a brawl, which gives a small or cautious group a genuine way through that does not hinge on winning a stand-up fight.
What Is Included
Squeaky Clean is a complete, ready-to-run package, not a sketch you have to flesh out yourself. Inside you will find:
- Over 70 pages of fully developed, ready-to-run content
- A four-act dungeon mystery with named scenes, read-aloud text, and built-out tactics for every encounter
- Four maps, including a regional overview and three tactical battle maps
- Seven fully statted creatures and NPCs, each with scaling notes for different party sizes
- Four pre-generated characters, ready to hand out and play
- Six alternate opening hooks and a “what if” section for when players go off-script
- A branching epilogue that resolves every possible ending
It also includes Game Master guidance throughout, from pacing notes to an overview of how the whole adventure fits together, so the book quietly teaches you to run it as you read it.
Perfect For
This adventure was made for the busy Game Master who wants a complete session without the prep grind, and for tables of two or three players at levels 2-3 looking for something different. It works beautifully as a one-night change of pace, a convention slot, or a palate-cleanser between long campaigns. New Game Masters will appreciate a fully scripted adventure to learn on, and veteran groups will enjoy a one-shot that genuinely surprises them. If your table likes its comedy with a little weight underneath, this one is for you.
Part of the Ready Adventure Series
Squeaky Clean is part of the Ready Adventure Series, a growing line of zero-prep one-shots for small groups, all built for two to three players and a single sitting. The series spans a wide tonal range, from the lighthearted romance of Love’s Labyrinth to the tight heist of The Score and the outnumbered last stand of Hold the Fifth. Each one is designed to drop cleanly into any fifth-edition campaign whenever you need a complete session in a hurry.
Run Your First Gelatinous Cube One-Shot Tonight
You do not need three hours of prep to give your players a session they will remember. Squeaky Clean hands you a funny, surprisingly thoughtful murder mystery wrapped around the most unlikely victims in any dungeon, fully scaled for small groups and ready the moment you open it. Grab it, gather two or three friends, and find out what your table decides when the cleanup crew turns up dead.
Squeaky Clean is the gelatinous cube one-shot you did not know your table needed: gross, funny, and quietly unforgettable.
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