[CoC] Delta Green: Realities Shatter [Archive]

WalkingDead

09-25-2007, 07:25 AM

Spoilers ahead!

Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays

After a quick review of the BRP rules, we jumped into the first session of what I hope will be a long-running Delta Green game.

August 6th

The campaign began in the Phoenix, Arizona FBI office, with Special-Agent-in-Charge Patrick Hobbson getting a call from Major Frank Garrett of the state police. Half an hour later, Hobbson hung up the phone and called a meeting with Agents Martin Gray, Michelle Amber and Carlos DeSanto. He laid out the situation as a request from the state police for help in the investigation of several missing persons along State Road 70 near the southern edge of the San Carlos Apache Reservation.

With the focus of the agents' role being to help -- rather than assume control off -- the investigation, Hobbson stressed that they were there to help, but he also made it clear that the FBI had a strong interest in trying to maintain relations with the Apache. He told the agents he didn't want another Leonard Peltier incident (I gave the players the handouts on the reservation, the Peltier incident and the Devil's Highway news article -- thanks for the tip on those handouts, kinnygraham; they were very useful).

The agents all had their standard sidearms (the S&W .40 -- I did a little research on FBI firearms and got in some interesting reading in the weeks prior to the first session), but Agent DeSanto also requested Kevlar vests for each of them, as well as a shotgun for himself (he's HRT, and just in case the disappearances really were kidnappings, he wanted to be ready). They also got one of those black SUVs for driving around. :)

The agents drove right on to Geronimo, where they met with Major Garrett at the state police office. I tried to show Garrett as a cowboy stereotype (cowboy hat and boots, and low-slung holster) and a prejudiced man, but I don't think it went over very well (I also didn't feel right about over-doing his racist attitude).

From there, things got bogged down for awhile, as the PCs insisted on checking out the locations of all of the disappearances. While I wish I'd rushed things through with a "all the sites are as the police reported," I didn't, and we probably wasted up to an hour of play time. :(

Out at the Begay farm, I forgot about the coyote digging up the graves and simply had a dull search of the house, as well as the first meeting between the PCs and Sheriff Mangas Colorados of the tribal police.

By the end of the day, after reviewing the police reports and visiting each of the sites, the PCs had decided their best suspect was Enrico Royos, the brother of Felix Royos (one of the victims -- both had criminal records), but even they admitted it was unlikely.

The players were a little surprised when they asked about a helicopter and were told that the state police had one available. They decided to get an aerial view of the scenes the next morning.

August 7th

Up bright and early, the PCs headed out to the helicopter and went for a spin with Garrett and the pilot. Over the Begay farm, they spotted the white hood of a buried car, and they had the pilot land near the site. The next few hours were spent getting a digging crew in and excavating the car. Agents Amber and Gray also recognized coyote tracks around the uncovered hood, and I told them it was clear the coyote had dug up the site.

I tried to downplay the Coyote Spirit element of the adventure. It was the only part of Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays I'm not really fond of.

Once the car was excavated, Agent Amber went to investigate. Although she made her SAN check, she lost her lunch at the sight of Kenneth Braverman's disemboweled, rotting corpse. Later on, they received the report about Braverman being wanted for murder (and cannibalism), and this sparked the first attempt by Agent Gray to assume control of the investigation. Garrett wasn't about to give up control, though.

They spent the evening cruising up and down State Road 70 in the hopes of spotting something of importance, but they came up with nothing.

August 8th

The PCs decided to go talk with Enrico Royos, but after a discussion with him, they hadn't turned up any more useful information. After that, they went for a drive around the local reservoir, but they also called back to Hobbson to request data on other cases similar to Braverman's.

When DeSanto decided to call Colorados (he wanted to ask whether the death of Braverman was in any way similar to any Native American or local folkore), the sheriff told him that they'd discovered several graves on the Begay property.

The PCs headed to the Begay property, where they met up with Colorados. Twenty-six graves, mostly of sheep but one as a mass grave with the Begay's family bodies, were found. A few choice words were exchanged between Amber/Gray and Colorados about how things had been turning up since the FBI showed up (suggesting the police hadn't done their jobs).

Gray also discovered more coyote tracks (again, a coyote had dug up the graves), but Colorados was only able to track them for a few hundred yards before they vanished.

After an examination by the local forensics team, the PCs learned that each of the corpses had small, needle-like wounds that reached the hearts and lungs (the bodies were all bloodless), as well as a form of tranquilizer in the central nervous system.

Additionally, they also learned the only fingerprints in Braverman's car belonged to him and his wife.

The PCs also asked Colorados about folklore, and the sheriff told them he'd try to put them in touch with someone the next day.

When the PCs returned to their motel rooms, Agent Amber found a plain brown envelope with her name on it. Inside were a couple of news articles on a meteor shower that happened in West Virginia in February.

August 9th

Agent DeSanto called Professor Matthew DeVries at the University of West Virginia. He had been quoted in one of the articles, and DeSanto was curious what the connection between the Arizona incidents and the meteor shower might be. He only got DeVries' voicemail, though, so he left a message.

Shortly afterwards, Garrett called the PCs to let them know the FBI had sent them a fax. They stopped by the state police station to pick up the fax, which contained several news articles about murder and cannibalism starting in West Virginia and leading to Texas. This was the first point that one of the PCs (Amber) suggested aliens -- in a half-kidding kind of way.

The next call they received was from Colorados, who told them he'd found a tribal elder for them to speak to about local folkore, but they wouldn't be able to speak with him until later that night. The elder was in the middle of a religious rite and couldn't be disturbed. The PCs disagreed, but Colorados said he wouldn't disrupt an important religious rite just to talk about folklore.

So the PCs went behind his back. They went looking around the area asking around about religious rites from the local youth until they found someone who gave them the approximate area of a cave the Apache used for religious rites. DeSanto slipped the kid a twenty and told him not to tell anyone about their conversation. Then they all packed into the SUV and headed out to the desert (I told them at this point they were likely to make an enemy of Sheriff Colorados).

The PCs started to think maybe Colorados was covering something up, so they went to the cave expecting trouble. They put on their Kevlar vests, got their binoculars and watched the cave from a distance. The only person they saw was a man with a rifle in the cave. Soon enough, the man spotted them and took a shot at them. However, the PCs chose not to fire back, but instead just keep low and continue to watch the cave.

Agent DeSanto went back to the SUV (they parked it a mile away) to get his shotgun and then returned. The rest of the day was spent in a stand-off between the PCs and whoever was in the cave.

After nightfall, the agents decided to circle around the back of the cave and then go in after the armed man. They called out, identifying themselves as FBI, but when they got no response, they decided to take action. They all had higher Dexterity stats than the man in the cave, so when they stormed in, they got the jump on him and gunned him down. He was dead, just last that.

That's when they spotted the two skeletal corpses and the one partially eaten corpse. They had learned there were three shaman out at the ritual, so they quickly put two and two together. Then they called in Garrett and Colorados. While waiting, they spotted an odd, glowing metallic sphere in the back. Deciding it might be radioactive, they left the cave and waited for Garrett.

When Garrett arrived, Agent Gray once again tried to take over the case, telling Garret it had just become a federal matter, but Garrett told the Feds if they didn't like his command, they could get the hell off his crime scene. The argument got loud, but at the end, Garrett had maintained control but had agreed to transfer the spherical object to the FBI in the morning.

That's where left off. They hadn't spoken with Colorados about the incident (the sheriff had made it to the scene, though), but the coroner had done his thing. The bodies and the sphere were being sent back to town.

And that's it. We'll continue this coming Sunday.

Although we did get bogged down in meaningless details at times, I think the session went okay. I downplayed Coyote Spirit a lot, and the stand-off with the man in the cave (the PCs will learn his identity in the next session) didn't go down as suggested in the adventure. I think everyone had some fun once they actually started to get some new evidence, though.

Chris

PTiKachu

09-26-2007, 07:37 PM

CoC players new to DG are always surprised when they ask for a helicopter and actually get one. It's good to be the Feds. :)

Looking forward to the PCs' first encounter with the Mythos. I see they've found the alien ship already. That's pretty early.

WalkingDead

09-27-2007, 06:44 AM

CoC players new to DG are always surprised when they ask for a helicopter and actually get one. It's good to be the Feds. :)
I didn't think they were going to ask about a helicopter, and I was starting to believe I'd have to have the state police do the aerial surveillance and find the car. Then Rich (Agent Gray) asked, "I guess there's no chance there's a helicopter available?" I thought he was going to fall out of his chair when I told him that yes, there was one available from the state police.

After that, I got a few comments about the novelty of actually being able to ask for something big and getting it. I think they're going to like being part of law enforcement. :cool:

Looking forward to the PCs' first encounter with the Mythos. I see they've found the alien ship already. That's pretty early.
Yeah. The PCs went about going out to the cave in a bizarre way. The adventure assumes a group made up of the PCs and tribal/state police, but it was just the three of them doing a recon.

The way it played out will probably mean they won't get the chance to organize a manhunt, though. I think they'll be going right on to the morgue ... and then an encounter with what's really behind all this gruesome horror. Then we'll see what happens. :D

Chris

WalkingDead

10-02-2007, 10:44 AM

We finished off Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays on Sunday. It took about another hour-and-a-half (give or take). So here's a summary of how things finished up (those familiar with PS&SP have probably noticed I've changed a few things in the adventure -- some by accident, some on purpose).

Aug. 9th (cont.)

After the evening's events, Gray decided he wanted to stay close to the sphere they'd found in the cave, so while Amber and DeSanto headed back to the motel (Amber changing rooms; she was a little freaked out by the package from some anonymous person), Gray camped out at the state police station.

Around midnight, a black sedan pulled up in front of the station and a few men in black suits got out, entered the station and asked for Major Garrett. Identifying themselves as NSA agents, the officer at the desk agreed to call Garrett at home and get him to the station as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile, Gray walked over to them and engaged them in conversation, essentially telling them they better not be there to take his evidence away. After being asked to identify himself (which he did), the agents flashed IDs and said that yes, indeed, they were there to take the evidence. They handed him a file on Emanuel Santana (it showed his connection to the CIA in Vietnam and his status as AWOL) and told him everything about the evidence and Santana was classified.

Gray was dead set on not giving them anything, but after a quick call to Agent Hobbson (at his home; he woke Hobbson up), he learned that his orders were to fully cooperate with the NSA agents. Gray wasn't happy. He placed a call to Agent Amber and told her: "NSA. Bring guns." :D

While Amber and DeSanto headed over to the police station, Amber received a call from a woman who told her the sphere wasn't important -- and what the agents really wanted was the body. Amber passed on this information via cell phone to Gray, and when Amber and DeSanto arrived at the police station, the three of them headed out to the morgue to make sure the body wasn't about to get swiped out from under their noses.

Aug. 10th

After spending all night hanging around the hospital's morgue to make sure the body didn't disappear, the agents were relieved to finally get on with the autopsy. Dr. Joseph Gutierrez began the autopsy at 9:00 a.m. (recording his process and findings with a small, handheld tape recorder).

While Agent Amber stayed in the autopsy room to watch, DeSanto watched from a nearby observation room and Gray stepped outside the hospital to call Professor DeVries. The call with DeVries proved to be a dead end, with Gray only getting a lot of scientific detail on meteor showers and such.

Meanwhile, as Dr. Gutierrez made the Y incision and opened Santana's corpse up, something long and thin darted out from the incision, struck the doctor in the forehead and knocked him sprawling to the floor unconsciou. Then the body of Emanuel Santana sat up.

Both PCs blew their SAN checks. DeSanto took a loss of 6 SAN (in hindsight, this should have been quite the blow to his psyche) and Amber took 1 SAN loss.

Freaked out, DeSanto did the first thing that came to his mind. He drew his pistol and fired through the glass between the autopsy and observation rooms, shattering the window and missing his mark. Then he started yelling as loud as he could for Gray. Amber drew her pistol and moved over to Dr. Gutierrez to protect him.

The gunshot was heard throughout the hospital, sending staff and patients into a panic. Gray curtly ended his call with Professor DeVries and ran into the hospital, pulling an emergency alarm in the hopes of getting everyone to clear out quickly.

Back in the morgue, Santana stooped to pick up a fallen scalpel and moved quickly towards Amber, who started trying to drag Dr. Gutierrez towards the exit. DeSanto opened fire, as did Amber, but the bullets seemed to have little to no effect on the walking corpse.

Santana lunged forward and plunged the scalpel deep into Amber's gut. DeSanto tried to come to her rescue, punching Santana in the face, making him step back (removing the scalpel from Amber). Santana took another swipe with the scalpel at Amber, cutting her up pretty bad.

Then, turning to DeSanto, Santana drove a kick into his chest, sending him flying across the morgue, crashing into an autopsy table. When he landed, he was unconscious.

Injured severely, Amber headed for the door and up into the hospital proper. She wasn't followed. When Gray found her, she was leaning against a wall and starting to get somewhat dazed by the loss of blood. He called for a doctor to help her and then headed down to the morgue.

When he opened the door, Santana's body was facedown on the floor and Gutierrez was administering first aid to DeSanto. Gutierrez and Gray quickly got a stretcher and put DeSanto on it. Gray asked Gutierrez to go get a doctor to check on him, but Gutierrez never returned. Santana's walking dead capers were also over.

DeSanto was treated for a concussion and Amber was quickly admitted for surgery to patch up the injuries she had sustained.

While she was in surgery, her cell phone rang and DeSanto answered. A woman who called herself Ms. Green told them she wanted to meet them at a local museum that evening. DeSanto agreed, and at 6:00, he and Gray found a well-dressed, thirty-ish woman at the museum.

They discussed what had happened. Knowing they'd be put on psychological examination and probation for telling their boss what really happened, Gray and DeSanto had already concocted a story involving Dr. Gutierrez attacking the agents and then fleeing. Ms. Green suggested they stick to that story.

She gave them a very brief overview of the organization she worked for (which she later told them was called Delta Green) and also gave a little bit of information on the Majestic-12 organization, which she was determined to use non-terrestrial technology for their own benefit. She stressed that Delta Green was about destroying that technology and keeping the United States safe. She offered the two of them and Agent Amber a chance to join -- "a chance to serve their country," as she put it.

She gave them a week to brief Amber and make a decision. In the end, they chose to join.

After the play session ended, I explained the cell structure to the players and asked them to choose a letter (removing A, D, M and N from their choices) for their cell. I suggested they not choose Q (especially after the trouble of coming up with names in PTiKachu's PbP). ;)

They chose Cell O, which they found quite funny (Cell O, cell o, cello -- musical instrument; a little bit of silliness).

So that's it. All three PCs survived their first encounter with the Mythos, although there are loose ends that will probably have to be tied up in the future. Dr. Gutierrez and the alien parasite within him are on the run, and it's practically a guarantee they'll be leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

Now I just need to start prepping for the next session. :D

Chris

WalkingDead

10-03-2007, 07:53 AM

With the first two sessions of the game over with, one thing I'm realizing is I really need to get more familiar with the rules. I was struggling a little bit with certain elements, and there are things that could have come into play that never did (like the armour rules -- the PCs had FBI Kevlar vests, and while I found a reference to them having 6hp in the DG book, I never did find the armour rules in CoC 4E ... perhaps I need to upgrade to the most recent CoC edition?).

Some of the rules in the CoC 4E book are not in the most easily found place, and the table of contents/index isn't the most helpful. Amazon has the most recent edition of the book for a very reasonable price, so I'm thinking I might put in an order for a copy. It might help clear a few things up.

Our next session is Oct. 14th, so I need to figure out rather quickly which adventure I'm going to run. I looked over Music From A Darkened Room, and it looks like a great adventure. I'm just not sure I want to run it next (but I will definitely run it). I'm worried that since the last Call of Cthulhu game I ran was The Haunted House, this adventure might be just a little too similar to it.

Chris

kinnygraham

10-03-2007, 08:05 AM

Good stuff and glad you got to use the handouts.

An interesting thing from my pov is that I’ve ran this 3 times for different groups and the players have never followed up on the ‘folklore’ aspect (I think the closest they got once was in trying to befriend the John Rope character who lives next to the Begay ranch) ……So it was interesting to see your group follow up on that – and to see them find their own way to the cave. Good initiative on their part – and in the ‘timeline’ of the scenario they actually saved a life (that of the shaman’s apprentice who would otherwise have investigated their disappearance himself).

WalkingDead

10-10-2007, 06:43 AM

The next session is this coming Sunday, and I'm going to run them through Convergence. We'll have two extra players at the table, so it should be interesting.

Based on reading Convergence and starting to prepare for it, it looks like this adventure really takes the kid gloves off. If there aren't more casualties this time, I'll be surprised.

But then again, my players are always surprising me. :D

Chris

kinnygraham

10-10-2007, 07:20 AM

The next session is this coming Sunday, and I'm going to run them through Convergence.

There are a couple of resources - area maps and suchlike - on the Files section of the Delta Green Mailing List Yahoo Group. Worth looking at.

The Delta Green site itself also has the original map of Groversville that appeared in the The Unspeakable Oath when the first version of the scenario appeared. It's basic, but serves.

The 'Campaign Summary' in my Actual Play also discusses some of the choices that a Keeper has when running 'Convergence' - you may find it useful......

Can't wait to hear about it - another one of my faves ;)

WalkingDead

10-10-2007, 10:48 AM

Thanks again. :D

Chris

PTiKachu

10-10-2007, 10:50 AM

5th Ed CoC mentioned nothing about kevlar vests that I can remember - it looks like the DG writers just eyeballed it.

It's funny, I've NEVER run Convergence, although I've run other book scenarios like Artifact Zero and The New Age...

kinnygraham

10-11-2007, 05:39 AM

Just on the subject of combat in CoC.

You might find this useful:

http://www.yog-sothoth.com/docs2/utility-coc-combat-reference-sheet.pdf

WalkingDead

10-11-2007, 05:44 AM

Just on the subject of combat in CoC.

You might find this useful:

http://www.yog-sothoth.com/docs2/utility-coc-combat-reference-sheet.pdf
Nice. Thanks. That solves a few combat issues I was having, and it'll be a nice, handy sheet to have at the table.

Chris

WalkingDead

10-15-2007, 11:04 AM

On Sunday night, we got together to start playing through Convergence. While Rich (Gray) wasn't able to attend, we did add two new players:

Eric created a park ranger and Delta Green veteran (dating back to Vietnam) named George Brown (Codename: Agent Orson). Brown and his dog, Buck, spend most of their time out in the wild, but he comes back to civilization here and there -- mostly to serve Delta Green in some capacity. I established at the beginning of the session that Agent Orson was the last survivor of Cell O, but we haven't determined what happened to the other members.

Ean created a medical doctor and Delta Green newbie named ... well, I didn't get his character's real name. His codename is Agent Oscar.

The other players settled on their codenames. Rawl's Michelle Amber (the criminal profiler) has taken on the codename Agent Ophilia. Logan's Carlos DeSanto (the HRT guy) took on the codename Agent Othello. Even though Rich wasn't present, I believe Martin Gray is still going to use the codename Agent Ozwald.

And now, our first session of Convergence.

Spoilers ahead!

Convergence

After Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, Dr. Amber spent several weeks in recovery from the injuries she sustained, and DeSanto started seeing a therapist in the hopes of coming to grips with what he experienced in the morgue.

After awhile, it started to seem like Delta Green wasn't going to call. And then one night, all the members of O Cell got a call...

Nov. 8th, 1999

"You've been invited to a night at the opera ... in Knoxville, Tennessee. Pack heavy and for an extended stay."

Each of the members got what I described as a typical call from Alphonse that kicks off a Delta Green operation. They were ordered to board a plane the next morning and head to Knoxville, where they would liaise with a Delta Green friendly -- Special-Agent-in-Charge James Derringer in the Knoxville FBI office. They learned their superiors believed they were being pulled off of regular duty to participate in a special assignment in Washington.

Nov. 9th, 1999

Prior to departure for the airport, each of the PCs received an envelope via courier. Inside was an FBI ID with their pictures and fake names.

A few hours later, they arrived in Knoxville and made their way to the local FBI office. Once they were all assembled and went through the pleasantries of introductions, Derringer brought them into a meeting room and explained that a young man named Billy Ray Spivey from Groversville, Tennessee, had committed two murders, several gas station and convenience store robberies and displayed evidence of superhuman strength. He showed them a video of Billy Ray murdering a cashier by punching the cashier's head off (only Ophilia blew her SAN roll, losing 1 SAN).

Then they went into the next room to be introduced to Billy Ray, who was secured, drugged and under heavy guard. It had taken four bullets to take him down, and he had survived ... and healed. Doctors had found almost invisible scars on his arms and legs, where his muscles had been removed and replaced with an unknown tissue that presumably gave him his superhuman strength.

Giving them an FBI black SUV, Derringer sent them off to Groversville to look into the situation under the pretense that they were investigating drug dealings in the county.

Once in Groversville, they checked in with Sheriff Dan Oakley, who said he didn't believe there were any drug dealers in Groversville. After that, Ophilia, Oscar and Othello hit the library to start doing research on Groversville (discovering various reports making jokes about aliens, UFO sightings, cattle mutilations, crop circles and even Elvis sightings), while Orson headed off to the local bar (Merle's Country Bunker), where he learned there were reporters in town.

That evening, Ophilia and Orson went to talk to Angel Spivey, where they learned about Billy Ray's girlfriend, Jane Allen. Oscar and Othello went to look for the reporter in town, and they learned he was staying in the same motel they were (well, there was only one motel in town). After flashing badges, the attendant took them to the room of Scott Adams.

Once inside his room, they were greeted with a strange scene, where the reporter had seemingly tried to block out all access from the outside world. Checking the bathroom, they discovered Adams' body in the bathtub. The tub water was dark with his blood, and it seemed he had slashed his wrists. They also spotted an odd bit of flesh on top of his head.

Deciding to call the coroner, they went back into the bedroom area and rummaged around Adams' computer, finding his research notes and a couple of almost incoherent files (one text, one voice).

Ophilia and Orson returned to the motel before the coroner arrived. Orson and Oscar decided to check out the body. Oscar checked the body and dunked his hand into the water to search for a blade, and he felt something sliver over his hand. Then the flesh on Adams' head moved and fell into the water. Something started thumping on the tub, and in another moment, the drain exploded outwards, spraying water, blood and goo all over the bathroom.

While Oscar tried (but failed) to dive out of the room, Orson simply shielded his eyes as the two of them were sprayed with the fleshy goo and blood. The goo creeped quickly into their eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Both Orson and Oscar made their SAN rolls, but they still took a 1 SAN hit. Howevever, now that they were infected with whatever (and freaking out a bit), Orson had an idea. He called for a jug of bleach, which he chugged and then vomited out. He expected that might kill some of the goo.

After they got cleaned up and the coroner arrived, Oscar and Othello decided to return to Knoxville to use the hospital and FBI labs, respectively. Oscar started working with other doctors to analyze the goo, while Othello got the largely incoherent voice file on Adams' computer analyzed.

More in a bit...

Chris

PTiKachu

10-15-2007, 11:07 AM

BLEACH! Woooo!

Players do the darnedest things. :)

WalkingDead

10-15-2007, 12:05 PM

BLEACH! Woooo!

Players do the darnedest things. :)
You said it. Mechanically speaking, I had no clue what I was going to do about it. Thankfully, one of the new players (Ean) knows the system really well, and he offered some suggestions. We ended up making Orson do a Con vs. POT 10 roll. A failure, we declared would be 2d6 damage. A success would be 2d6 halved. He succeeded. He took three points of damage.

Then he chugged milk and continued vomiting. It was just bizarre. :D

Chris

WalkingDead

10-15-2007, 12:20 PM

Nov. 10th, 1999

Othello and Oscar eventually decided to drive back to Groversville. In the meantime, Ophilia and Orson had rented a vehicle locally and headed out to meet Jane Allen's mother. They found a rather out-of-it Nancy Allen, who seemed stoned (or something ;)). She hadn't seen her daughter or husband (they discovered he was an alderman at this point) in days, at best.

Now they decided to read Scott Adams' notes more thoroughly, and they figured Jane must be in the other room Adams had rented. When they returned to the motel, they spotted someone watching them from that room, and when they went to the room and demanded she open the door ("Open up! FBI!" tends to get doors opened), they discovered a very pregant Jane Allen, who claimed she had only been pregnant for about three weeks. They decided it was best to take her back to Knoxville to the FBI office, so Ophilia took her out in the rented car.

While the others were en route to or from Knoxville, Orson started asking around about the various cases of missing time, cattle mutilations and cattle alterations. At this point, he and the others believed various names listed in Adams' notes about people who never went home were students (the name Allen was listed, and they assumed it was Jane Allen), but after asking around a bit, Orson discovered they were all names of aldermen.

When everyone had returned to Groversville, they headed over to town hall, where they demanded to speak with the aldermen. They were told to make an appointment, but the agents were being very demanding. Eventually Orson pulled the fire alarm and ordered everybody out of the building. Then they turned their attention on the locked door of the aldermen's council chambers. The door then opened and Alderman Allen stepped out. An argument ensued, as the agents demanded to be let into the council chambers. Finally, they pushed Allen out of the way and opened the door.

I'm not sure what they were expecting, but I'm sure the huge amorphous blob of fleshy goo taking up half the council chambers floor wasn't on the list of possibilities. They probably thought they were about to run into some kind of cult that had taken over the city, but whatever the case, they weren't prepared for the wrecked council chambers and the gooey blob of whatever in the middle of it.

SAN checks all around. Three of them got lucky. Oscar blew his roll. Then he succeeded in his Idea roll, so the full understanding of what he was seeing set in. While everyone else suffered a 1 SAN hit, I picked up my trusty d8 for Oscar and gave it a toss. It went bad for Oscar right there, as he took a full 8 SAN loss.

Since I use the 4th ed. CoC book, I don't actually have a temporary insanity table outside of the one that dictates how long an episode lasts. It's up to the GM to decide what exactly happens. I rolled that the episode would last four minutes and decided that Oscar's brain just fell apart. He had a complete mental and nervous breakdown, collapsing right there in the doorway leading to the council chambers.

And we had run out of time right there. As we started packing up, I heard several comments to the tune of "we are so fucked" and "I think I'll roll up another character before next session." :D

For next session, we'll have to play out at least a couple of rounds of battle between the agents and the fleshy blob of protoplasm, but I've already reminded one player that turning tail and running for their lives isn't a bad idea.

At this point, the real brains behind the goings-on in Groversville will realize the jig is up and it's time to get the hell out of Dodge. I'm curious whether the PCs will figure things out at all before the big bad guys escape. I'm also trying to decide what NRO DELTA's response should be, seeing as they have several agents in town.

Chris

kinnygraham

10-16-2007, 12:57 AM

Sounds fun so far –

If you’ve decided that the Agents confrontation with the ‘Alderman mass' has triggered the Mi-go ‘contingency plan’ (i.e. the ‘virus’) then your players next steps are vital………Have they expressed any interest yet in the ‘lights in the hills’ from Adam's notes or reservoir ? To have a chance of forestalling the virus then they need to somehow get to the barn – so personally I would hold off on the NRO Delta option because the players may get hung up on that, rather than looking for the source of the trouble in Groversville…….Of course that’s just my opinion. YMMV and all that……:) . Also, just curious if you are inflicting the ‘abduction event’ on one of them ?

WalkingDead

10-16-2007, 05:41 AM

Sounds fun so far –
I'm enjoying myself, and I got some good comments from the players. Despite a lighthearted attitude at the table, a couple of them said they got a bit creeped out when they broke into the aldermen council chambers. I take that as a compliment. :D

If you’ve decided that the Agents confrontation with the ‘Alderman mass' has triggered the Mi-go ‘contingency plan’ (i.e. the ‘virus’) then your players next steps are vital………Have they expressed any interest yet in the ‘lights in the hills’ from Adam's notes or reservoir ?
Not really yet.

In fact, they haven't even got the spray that shows the infection yet. They got to the aldermen a little earlier than I expected they would.

To have a chance of forestalling the virus then they need to somehow get to the barn – so personally I would hold off on the NRO Delta option because the players may get hung up on that, rather than looking for the source of the trouble in Groversville…
Good point.

Also, just curious if you are inflicting the ‘abduction event’ on one of them ?
I've been thinking really hard about that. That's pretty much an automatic death sentence, and two characters may already be heading for an early grave because of the bathroom incident. I wouldn't turn down advice from those who've run the adventure before. :) Also when it comes time, I'm not really sure how I want to handle the virus. It would be nice if at least one PC got out of this alive. ;)

Chris

PTiKachu

10-16-2007, 08:06 AM

Have one of the guys get abducted, and have the Mi-Go extensively modify one of his arms. He can afford to lose the arm when the protomatter fails. :) One of my most memorable players had his character amputate her own arm on her first case, and continued to participate in 5 Delta Green operations afterwards. She never died. :)

kinnygraham

10-16-2007, 09:23 AM

A suggestion:

Move the 'abandoned' farmhouse much closer to the reservoir. Then if the players get the 'identifying spray' and realise about the water contamination then they might find the farmhouse quicker when they go check it out.

I'd use the abduction scenario to full effect - but the 'lost limb' suggestion by PTiKachu is a good one ;)

PTiKachu

10-16-2007, 09:45 AM

WalkingDead

10-16-2007, 12:52 PM

Why do I get the feeling I'm too much of a softie Delta Green GM? ;)

Chris

PTiKachu

10-17-2007, 07:32 PM

Why do I get the feeling I'm too much of a softie Delta Green GM? ;)

Chris

Don't worry about it. Every GM has their own style. :)

bloodshadows

10-23-2007, 08:34 AM

BLEACH! Woooo!

Players do the darnedest things. :)

I second that! I think I lost Sanity just reading that and imagining it... ugh, bleach...

WalkingDead

10-30-2007, 01:55 PM

As usual...

Spoilers ahead!

On Sunday night, we got together to finish Convergence (which I've had A Cell dub Operation BLUE RIDGE). In between sessions, I got my hands on the Call of Cthulhu 6th ed. core book, as well as a copy of the Last Rites '90s era adventure book. Unfortunately, I didn't really have much of a chance to look through the new core book, so during the session, we still mostly referred CoC 4E for the sake of convenience.

A mid-afternoon Shadowrun Missions game at my FLGS ran long, which meant we got started a bit late. However, all of the players, except for Ean/Agent Oscar, were able to make it to the conclusion of Convergence. Things didn't go well for O Cell, though. :o

When we last left off, the team had forced their way into the town hall aldermen's chamber and found themselves staring at a rather large and ugly protoplasmic mass. Each had taken a 1 SAN hit, but poor Agent Oscar had not only blown his SAN roll, but he'd made his Idea roll and understood the truth of the situation. A d8 of SAN loss turned up with the max SAN hit, and he fell to the floor, quivering and drooling, in a catatonic state.

The rest of the team jumped into action. Rawl reminded me that Agent Ophilia was staying "way back," which really wasn't all that far back considering the small-ish size of the Groversville town hall. O Cell tried to play hero while also protecting their asses. Logan's Agent Othello dragged Oscar's body away from the double-doors to the chambers and pulled the doors shut. We made a call about the structural integrity of the doors and decided on 25 hp (the protoplasm spawn was about to try to break them down).

Before Othello could close the doors, though, a long tendril of flesh shot out and smacked Orson hard in the head. He lost more than half of his hit points right there, and then he blew a Shock roll. His character dropped unconscious just like that.

As the protoplasmic mass tried to break down the door, Othello tried to drag both Oscar and Orson out of the town hall. Ophilia ran to get the truck. Also, Alderman Allen grabbed Orson's rifle and started firing at Othello. I deemed him a crappy 20% shot, forgot about the point-blank range and had Allen firing uselessly through the office (but he did shatter the front glass doors).

Unfortunately, the protoplasm spawn broke through in three rounds, which was just about enough time for Othello to drag his fellow agents out the front doors. It moved towards him as quickly as possible (I assumed since the earlier protoplasm could move fairly quickly, it also wasn't slow). Othello picked up Orson's body and tossed it into the truck just as the spawn got within striking range. A rather brutal hit killed Othello on the spot, leaving him a sprawled corpse in the parking lot.

With Othello and Oscar still on the pavement and the protoplasm coming out the front door, Ophilia gunned the engine and got the hell out of Groversville. She and Orson headed for Knoxville to figure out what to do next, get Orson some medical treatment and contact A Cell.

Ophilia requested that A Cell just wipe out the entire town -- a request that was denied. Alphonse ordered the team back to Groversville to find out was wrong and to put a stop to it. He was going to try to dig up some help (Logan had started creating a Delta Green friendly, which never did get to enter play on Sunday night).

Nov. 11th, 2007

With Orson being treated in the local hospital, FBI Agent Derringer brought a spray that could detect the alien tissue (it turns purple upon contact) to Ophilia. Using the spray, she discovered Orson was heavily infected and she was lightly infected.

Upon contacting A Cell again, Alphonse ordered Ophilia to kill Orson if he couldn't be cured (her first real clue that maybe Delta Green wasn't really on the up and up). Otherwise, they were to return to Groversville with the spray and continue the operation.

By that evening, Orson was up but still severely injured. They stopped to get a few things at the local hardware store, but Alphonse also pointed them to a green box in a U-Stor-It kind of facility (I quickly explained green boxes). They wanted something flamey, so I told Rawl if Ophilia could make a Luck roll, there'd be a flamethrower in the green box. He blew the roll, so no flamethrower for O Cell. I decided the green box contained a couple of 9mm pistols, an M16, a few boxes of ammo and a bottle of Jack Daniels with a note reading "Good luck." They took the Jack and left the rest. :D

In hindsight, I should have created a green box prior to the start of the adventure (or at least before the session). Do any of you Delta Green veterans have any tips for creating green boxes?

Nov. 12th, 1999

As Logan continued building his replacement character, Ophilia and Orson returned to Groversville. While on the way, Ophilia asked Orson (a long-time member of Delta Green) about the organization, and Orson let her in on the fact that Delta Green hasn't been legit since about 1969.

As it turned out, Rawl and Eric both came to the conclusion that the infection must have something to do with the water supply, so they found their way up to the reservoir. Big surprise -- it was really heavily infected. ;)

They looked around and discovered by using the spray that not only the water, but also the air and everything else in Groversville was infected. A quick SAN check for both of them, but they made it. They started looking around, and that eventually led them to the disused farm along the north end of Groversville.

As they approached the barn, they noticed all the windows were either boarded up or blacked out. Orson picked up a rock and threw it through a blacked-out window. Then he chucked a Jack Daniels-based molotov cocktail after it (with a bunch of shotgun shells strapped to it for good measure), setting the barn on fire and alerting four rather pissed-off human-sized insect things (one of which was slightly injured from the molotov). The insects came flying out of the loft doors. SAN checks were made, but it became clear quickly that the agents were in big trouble.

Then the shit hit the fan. The insects attacked with electricity guns of some sort. Ophilia jumped back into the FBI SUV and took off while Orson headed for the nearby farmhouse. Unfortunately for the PCs, my rolls were lucky that night.

Orson created a fire outside of the farmhouse and started to fire at the flying insects with his rifle (in hindsight, he'd lost that when he'd been knocked unconscious -- I just remembered that; oh well). Although the insects had taken an interest in the speeding SUV, once he'd hit one of them (for minimal damage -- that's all they could take from standard firearms), they focused their attention on Orson. A lucky shot with an electrical weapon took the sniping agent down, killing him instantly.

I told Rawl that the insects had decided that Agent Ophilia would make a nice specimen, and the plan was to take her alive. That got a bit of a freaky reaction from him. However, based on the adventure, I knew Majestic-12's NRO Delta squad was about to arrive. I gave Listen checks to both Ophilia and the insects. Ophilia heard nothing. The insects picked up on the helicopter and headed skyward to avoid being seen.

The helicopter came down, spotted the SUV and forced Ophilia to stop. Six NRO Delta members armed with assault rifles, as well as their boss, exited the chopper and relieved a very scared Ophilia of her sidearm. The boss quizzed her, and she spoke the truth of what had happened at the barn.

Knowing he had to cover things up, the boss sent three of the NRO agents and the helicopter to the farm to detonate what was left of the burning barn, as well as the farmhouse -- and to make sure Agent Orson was truly dead. The MJ-12 boss also let on that he suspected Ophilia was a Delta Green agent. Since she didn't put up a struggle, he gave her some vague threats about watching her and then let her go.

I told the players afterwards that even though none of them knew it, Orson had saved all of Groversville and Agent Ophilia. With the barn going up in flames, he had inadvertently stopped the insects from turning the protoplasmic infection into a lethal virus.

And that was it. Ophilia returned to the Phoenix FBI office, as the only survivor of Operation BLUE RIDGE. She brought back with her some valuable information on a possible new threat -- or maybe an old threat. ;) Whatever the case, it was connected to MJ-12. Although Alphonse wasn't happy to lose most of O Cell, he was happy to get that information.

Next time, I'm going to run Music From A Darkened Room. :)

Chris

kinnygraham

10-31-2007, 05:34 AM

Good write up and good session !

On Green Boxes, you really need to head here:

http://www.nemesis-system.com/

You'll see there is a write-up of a Green Box on the front page there.

But more importantly - if you look down the right hand side you will see a link to the legendary Green Box generator, which will randomly generate all sorts of interesting contents for you.

I'd advise reading through the descriptions carefully, because some of them contain details that shouldn't be disclosed to the players right away (so you might want to edit that information out).

You'll also need to come up with the locations of the Green Boxes yourself (generally I just use those lock up / storage places that you see Clarice Sterling in near the beginning of Silence of the Lambs) but for the actual contents it's a brilliant resource.

WalkingDead

11-01-2007, 05:55 AM

Thanks. :)

Oh yeah, I forgot to comment further on my decision regarding the agent with missing time. In the end, I decided against letting the Mi-Go toy with an agent's insides.

Near the end of the session, I was getting some comments about the rather nasty insects and how difficult they probably would have been to kill if the entire team had still been alive and uninjured. I told the players that things could have been much worse in this mission, as the adventure as written had some very cruel recommendations.

After the session ended, I told them about the part of the scenario where one agent is kidnapped and is experimented on. I told them it was practically a death sentence (at the very least, they'd lose a limb), and it was clear from the comments that my decision was a good one. To paraphrase Eric/Agent Orson: It's one thing to have a slim chance. It's another to have none at all.

Chris

WalkingDead

11-01-2007, 05:57 AM

Regarding the Green Box Generator: What would be a typical number of mundane, weird and supernatural items in a Green Box? Or do you just randomize numbers and plug them in?

Chris

PTiKachu

11-01-2007, 05:59 AM

Regarding the Green Box Generator: What would be a typical number of mundane, weird and supernatural items in a Green Box? Or do you just randomize numbers and plug them in?

Chris

Really, it's up to the GM to decide. Play with the generator a few times to get an idea of what kind of power and weirdness level you get.

Great write-up, by the way! And yes, Convergence is one of those things I consider a little too lethal to put into the early part of a campaign... :)

WalkingDead

11-01-2007, 06:01 AM

Great write-up, by the way! And yes, Convergence is one of those things I consider a little too lethal to put into the early part of a campaign... :)
After running it, I can see why. And now the team (or what's left of it) has run up against MJ-12 twice. I need to give O Cell a break from extra-terrestrial kind of stuff -- and MJ-12 probably shouldn't show up again for a few adventures.

Here's hoping Music From A Darkened Room doesn't wipe the cell out. :)

Chris

kinnygraham

11-01-2007, 07:26 AM

I hear what you say about the deadliness of Convergence perhaps not being suitable when used early in a campaign.

That's why when I ran it I used it as the climax of the campaign. It was the last scenario and all bets were off so to speak.

I tend to think of my campaigns like TV series - with Convergence being so deadly I'd use it only as the campaign clincher / final episode or as a series 'finale'.......with the next season being taken up with stuff like 'New Age' mini-campaign.... :)

As for the Green Box generator I tend to populate it with mostly mundane and weird items (the latter for flavour). Supernatural items can be adventures all on their own so might be a distraction from the case at hand...

WalkingDead

11-12-2007, 07:57 AM

Last night, the group got together to start our third Delta Green adventure. As had been recommended here, I opted to run Music From A Darkened Room -- an adventure so many little details that it was making me a bit irritable by the end of the night. ;)

Music From A Darkened Room

Prologue

Although I have no plans to bring Majestic-12 into Music From A Darkened Room, the events that took place during Convergence (specifically, the seizure of Agent Ophilia's FBI sidearm) made me want to fuel the paranoia a bit.

As the only survivor of Operation BLUE RIDGE, Ophilia had come face-to-face with Adoph Lepus (although she never got his name), head of NRO Delta. Her FBI sidearm had been confiscated by Lepus' men, and she never did get it back from them. Instead, they sent her on her way.

The deaths of Agents Othello and Orson, and the presumed death of Agent Oscar (I like the idea that maybe his brain is in a jar somewhere, enduring Mi-Go experiments :D), led to A Cell getting their deaths classified so Ophilia's superiors (and Orson's and Oscar's) wouldn't be able to get much information or grill the agent too hard.

In the case of missing handgun, though, I told Rawl that Ophilia received a FedEx package a few weeks after the incident. It was from an unknown sender, and inside was her sidearm. The implication didn't sink in with Logan at first, but the others quickly got it: Majestic-12 had learned who she was.

After a humourous discussion where Rawl suggested Ophilia should defect to MJ-12, we got down to the adventure.

The Characters

Agent Ophilia/Dr. Michelle Amber -- Now leader of O Cell, the psychologist is none too happy with her involvement in an illegal conspiracy, but she understands the importance of the work Delta Green is doing. Played by Rawl.

Agent O'Grady -- Previously a Delta Green friendly, O'Grady was called up to join O Cell after the deaths of most members in Operation BLUE RIDGE. O'Grady (the player hasn't given him a real name yet) works for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) dealing with surveillance and cryptography. Played by Eric.

Agent Oswell -- Also previously a Delta Green friendly, Oswell is a demolitions expert (I forget which branch of the government he's in). Played by Ean.

Jack Stevens -- A CIA "contractor," Jack is a Delta Green friendly known as Mr. Grim in the intelligence community. Played by Logan.

March 17th, 2000

While Jack and O'Grady received the obligatory "you've been invited to a night at the opera" phone call, Ophilia received a FedEx package with A Cell's directives and an old cell phone with the names and numbers of two Delta Green friendlies in the Meadowbrook, Illinois area.

By that evening, all the characters (except Oswell -- Ean arrived late to the game, so we wrote him in afterwards) had arrived in Meadowbrook and connected in a coffee shop to strategize. They were to investigate the mysterious suicide of Agent Garrett of G Cell in the house at 1206 Spooner Ave., which had been brought to the attention of A Cell before by Garrett. Believed to be a centre of paranormal activity, O Cell was to learn the cause of Garrett's death and figure out if the house was actually a threat.

O'Grady went to watch the house, which he found to be unoccupied. Jack gave Emil Yarrow, a parapsychologist and local friendly, a call and met up with him in a local bar. Yarrow knew nothing about the house or its history, but promised to look into it.

Ophilia decided to check out Green Box 711 at the Meadowbrook Store-It, where she learned there was a $1200 outstanding bill. Although I suggested that maybe Ophlia should check with A Cell first, Rawl decided to have her put the cost on Ophilia's credit card (creating the first bit of a paper trail) and hoping A Cell would pay the expense later (she learned later that night that A Cell wasn't fronting the bill).

We haven't worried at all about how much cash the PCs have on hand, and I think that's led to a "heck, we'll just buy everything" kind of attitude amongst the players. This isn't necessarily a problem, but when a player just throws that kind of cash on a credit card, perhaps I should be concerned they're a little too uninterested in their characters' financial well-being.

Ophilia checked out the Green Box, found some keys, a camera, some partially-destroyed images of a house, an old coffin that looked like it had been dug up (she steered clear of it), a couple of Mossberg shotguns with their serial numbers filed off (she took one, as well as a box of ammo) and all kinds of other stuff that weren't necessarily important.

After leaving the Green Box, she called and met up with Elizabeth Tucker, a local antique dealer and Delta Green friendly. During the meet, Ophilia started getting pushy and actually ordered Elizabeth to accompany O Cell to the house on Spooner Avenue the next day. Put off by this, Elizabeth declined firmly and told her if Ophilia had some real use for her talents, to let her know -- but there was no damn way she was going to the house for the day and ignoring her antiques business.

You just have to love the nerve of my players. If Ophilia hadn't been any pushier, she might have started threatening Elizabeth's status as a friendly. I'm sure A Cell would not be pleased.

March 18th, 2000

O Cell received word they had a new member arriving that morning. Agent Oswell met the group for breakfast, where they looked over a notebook Ophilia had found. It was written by a Special Agent Donnelly (who they assumed was Agent Garrett), who through a psychology roll Ophilia was sure was psychotic by the time he had finished writing his notes.

A group trip to the Green Box led O'Grady to discovering the coffin and the completely decayed form of a boy named Anton Turé. They took that bit of information and headed to the County Seat, where they had to bribe the clerk with a Starbucks mocha to get access to the records room -- which they found to be a complete mess.

They started researching the house and the name Turé.

March 19th, 2000

It took them a good twelve to fifteen hours before they'd finished their research, at which point they'd compiled a list of owners and deaths in the house (a sizable list, I might add), as well as some specific information on the Turé family.

I had each of them roll library use instead of the suggested luck roll. I didn't like that finding information was based entirely on luck, and I wanted them to get some use out of their library use skills. They didn't roll well on the first day, but they did just fine on the second day of research.

At this point, they decided to check out the house. Of course, Ophilia forgot to mention she had some keys that might open the doors, so after O'Grady had tried and failed to pick the garage door's lock, she let him know about the keys, which opened the garage door and the other exterior doors to the house. Everyone had a good laugh at Ophilia's intent to keep important bits of information a secret from the rest of the cell. :D

They searched the house up and down, which was a bit of a struggle for me. They split up into pairs, so the house wasn't really going to do anything out of the ordinary (in most cases of paranormal phenomena, an agent either has to be alone or there with the group at night -- they were there during the afternoon). They explored the house and then decided to come back around 8:00. They headed out.

O'Grady talked to the neighbours in 1204 and 1208 Spooner Ave., one of which really didn't want to talk about the house and kept stroking a cross that was around her neck, he did find out a bit of information, including the name of the pre-1956 owner's wife, Isabelle Wheeler. While O'Grady kept insinuating there was something wrong with the house, but the neighbours wouldn't go along with that line of thinking.

Meanwhile, Ophilia went to the coroner, who talked about the similarities (and gruesome details) of the suicides of Special Agent Donnelly and the last owner of the house, Yamilla Isari. They were pretty much identical.

Also, Jack gave Emil Yarrow a call, but Jack had more information than what Emil had been able to dig up.

And that's where we ended. The exploration of the house, mixed with the various paranormal occurrences that can happen, seems a bit daunting, so I'm kind of concerned about that. I think I'm going to have to spend a lot more time preparing for next time. I'm impressed with the amount of detail, but I'm finding it to be a bit of a headache trying to find everything on a moment's notice and run the game smoothly.

Still, with some more preparation, I think I should be ready for the overnight stay at 1206 Spooner. And that's what they're planning on doing -- staying in the house overnight. That could lead to all sorts of craziness. :D

Chris

PTiKachu

11-12-2007, 08:14 AM

Great report again! Glad to see that you're keeping track of the logical details of working for an illegal conspiracy that doesn't always pay your bills. :)

I should have mentioned in my actual play report that MFADR is very detail-heavy, the way it's written. It can give you information overload - in fact the research into the house's history will definitely give your players information overload too!

WalkingDead

11-13-2007, 06:53 AM

I should have mentioned in my actual play report that MFADR is very detail-heavy, the way it's written. It can give you information overload - in fact the research into the house's history will definitely give your players information overload too!
For sure. I don't want to complain, as I do think it's a great adventure with some awesome ideas. Depending on what the players decide to do (and I did forget to mention that Agent Oswell has already put together an explosive device of sorts to blow the house up -- which should prove interesting should he try to use it ;)), they have a chance to come face-to-face with some really cool things.

It looks like we have a couple of players out for our next scheduled session (Nov. 25th), so I don't think we'll be getting back to the adventure until Dec. 9th. I'm hoping we can finish the adventure on the 9th -- otherwise, it'll probably be January before it concludes. :(

After that, I think I'd like to introduce them to another element of the Delta Green universe. I'm very tempted to introduce them to Stephen Alzis over the course of the next several adventures (probably first as a name, then rumours about him and then finally have them require something Alzis has), but I have a couple of ideas for Karotechia-based adventures, too.

Since they didn't run into PhenomenX during Convergence, I'd like to find a way to introduce the show and its team to O Cell -- probably as a foil or a simple annoyance.

For something later down the road, it would be cool to run something a bit more epic in scale like your Younger Than The Mountains adventure.

Chris

WalkingDead

11-15-2007, 06:25 AM

As GM, one thing I'm struggling with is figuring out exactly what kind of resources A Cell has access to. Is $1200 really that hard to come up with, or is it just that Alphonse didn't see the upkeep of that Green Box as a priority?

Perhaps even more important is the struggle with how far the law enforcement characters can actually push. In the first two adventures, when the majority of them were FBI agents, they flashed the badge and demanded anything and everything whenever they wanted, but I seriously doubt the FBI has the legal ability to do that. I know if they push too hard in MFADR, they might just end up getting their leashes pulled on by either A Cell or their bosses, but when it's left a little more ambiguous, I'm not sure how much power federal law enforcement agencies truly have.

Granted, two (or three -- still need to check with Ean on his character) of the PCs in MFADR have zero law enforcement power, but one of them certainly does.

Anyway, these are just a few thoughts about things I'm wrestling with as GM.

Chris

kinnygraham

11-15-2007, 07:00 AM

After that, I think I'd like to introduce them to another element of the Delta Green universe. I'm very tempted to introduce them to Stephen Alzis over the course of the next several adventures (probably first as a name, then rumours about him and then finally have them require something Alzis has), but I have a couple of ideas for Karotechia-based adventures, too.

Assuming you have ordered a copy of DG: Eyes Only (due to ship tomorow I believe !!) you will find LOTS of juicy information on The Fate. Plenty to inspire.

I'm thinking of introducing them to my own campaign in fact. Speaking of which I must update my own AP thread with what's been happening...

WalkingDead

11-15-2007, 07:42 AM

Assuming you have ordered a copy of DG: Eyes Only (due to ship tomorow I believe !!) you will find LOTS of juicy information on The Fate. Plenty to inspire.
Unfortunately, I didn't. I'll have to base The Fate on the information in the core book and Countdown. Hopefully that'll be enough.

Chris

WalkingDead

12-10-2007, 10:52 AM

After a session off Delta Green for a modern day Call of Cthulhu adventure (where I actually got to play, for once), we finally got together again last night to complete (more or less) Music From A Darkened Room. The session was kind of rough, and I was a little annoyed at a couple of points, and I know I could have used a lot more preparation -- or just scrapped all the planning and made shit up as I went along. ;) I found the scripted nature of the encounters and how they related to different POW levels to be very difficult to run.

With Ean missing the session and Rich able to make it, we wrote Agent Oswell out as conducting "additional research" and wrote Agent Ozwald in as suddenly finding himself available and being re-directed by Alphonse to connect with O Cell.

Seeing as the agents had been making demands of the local clerk and flashing badges -- or just making claims of federal agent status, like in the case of Logan's character, Jack -- I checked to see who had the lowest Luck score. That was Eric's character, Agent O'Grady, with a 50 Luck. He rolled and blew it, so as the agents were getting ready to spend a night in a possibly haunted house, Police Chief Michael Buffington arrived at Agent Ophilia's door (she was staying at a different motel than the others).

What I figured would be a quick "yes, we're investigating the death of a federal agent" kind of encounter turned out with Ophilia arrested. She gave her name as her Delta Green persona and played dumb, like she didn't have ID. The chief, who had really shown up to talk about jurisdiction and proper etiquette between law enforcement officials, ended up having to haul Ophilia into the station. Her one phone call brought O'Grady and Ozwald to the scene, and they persuaded the chief to let her go once they'd proven she was a federal agent (her ID was in her purse).

Ophilia wasn't being overly cooperative with the local police force, which just threw me for a loop and created a bit of a humourous situation.

After that, the agents headed to the house on Spooner Ave. to look around some more. As they approached, they heard the sound of a piano playing inside, although they all knew there was no piano or radio of any sort in the home.

Now here's where things got really difficult: The agents went into the house as a group and wandered the entire place as a group. Trying to separate them was -- well, I might as well have been trying to teach my dogs to use the toilet. They stuck together, and they didn't even want to break up into two separate groups, let alone go off alone.

The result: They mostly saw or heard very minor visions, as the biggest and scariest of the visions only occur when an agent is in a room by him/herself. The only big vision they came across was when Ozwald and O'Grady were alone in the kitchen (the others were in the den). As O'Grady checked cupboards, turning his back on his comrade, Ozwald suddenly felt a tug on his hand. He whirled about, drawing his gun and aiming it ... right into the face of the walking corpse of a dead young boy, who looked up with sunken eyes and said, "Where is my daddy?" Then he promptly vanished. Even that only resulted in a loss of 3 SAN points for Ozwald.

Also, Agent Ophilia came under the house's spell as an obsessed individual. This ended up getting played for humour, as Rawl started talking about putting up wallpaper and fixing the house up.

The agents became convinced they were dealing with ghosts or some kind of manifestations that needed to be put to rest -- and that only showed themselves at night. They left, with the idea of returning in the morning.

With Ophilia as a potential danger, Ozwald checked in with Alphonse, relaying information about the investigation. Agent Garrett had apparently killed himself or been killed by the house, and the house was a definite threat. He also informed Alphonse about the corpse and other items in the Green Box. Ozwald recommended the destruction of the house. Alphonse gave permission to do so, and he also told them to remove the corpse from the Green Box and then torch the place (they ended up making it look like a meth lab that was destroyed).

March 20th, 2000

Early in the morning, Ozwald received a call on his cell phone. It was the voice of the dead boy, Anton Turé, who again asked for his daddy. What should have been spooky provoked a smartass comment from Rich, so I gave up on the scare by cell phone tactic.

O Cell's plan was to take Oswell's bomb into the house, rig it up in the utility closet with the furnace and let it blow (they made sure not to tell Ophilia about the plan). Jack and O'Grady were the ones to go into the house, and as Jack started rigging the bomb, I decided the house had to stop it. It possessed Jack, with an 80% chance of success.

I told Logan what was about to happen, rolled a 79 and informed him he was now under the control of the house. I know he was getting pissed off about it. He argued with me about it and wanted to know why he didn't get a resistance roll of some sort, and I explained the resistance was based on his POW score. He actually picked up his character sheet and tossed it down in front of me, and said, "Have fun." Ugh. He had already been argumentative that evening, calling into question several SAN checks I asked him to make.

Jack immediately started dismantling the bomb. O'Grady quickly engaged him and ended up putting a bullet into Jack's shoulder to stop him. He dragged the injured Jack out of the house and then went to plan B -- rolling a canister of butane into the house towards the utility room and igniting it.

The group made their way out of the town after blowing up both the house and the Green Box. :)

They all returned to their normal lives, and then a couple of months later, members of O Cell received a package from A Cell. It contained photographs of the house on Spooner. Somebody had purchased the land and was busy re-building the house exactly as it was. Alphonse was not impressed.

And that's where we left it for the night. After we were finished, it was made very clear to me that the players were confused and frustrated with the adventure. They thought they had some idea of what was going on, but it was largely based on (incorrect) assumptions. They also felt they were running up against roadblocks at every turn, such as with the police chief showing up to question Ophilia or with the clerk at the town hall (granted, I made the clerk out to be fairly hostile from the beginning, so that's partly my fault).

From my perspective, I can understand why they went the route of blowing up the house, but they really had no idea if that would destroy whatever manifestation was there. Obviously it didn't.

We could return to the adventure and they could go back to their investigations to try to find a way to actually destroy the manifestation itself, but considering the complaints I got at the end of the session, it's probably just best to move on to the next adventure.

Chris

Arc Dream

12-18-2007, 05:02 AM

Unfortunately, I didn't. I'll have to base The Fate on the information in the core book and Countdown. Hopefully that'll be enough.

It's available still from Chaosium.com and from Leisure Games in the UK.

http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=1163

http://www.leisuregames.com

WalkingDead

12-20-2007, 07:33 AM

It's available still from Chaosium.com and from Leisure Games in the UK.

http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=1163

http://www.leisuregames.com
I appreciate the links, but the sheer cost of Eyes Only with shipping is a bit too much for me to grab it. :o

It's been nearly two weeks since our last session, and I'm now starting to think ahead to when we start the campaign up again in January. A couple of the players have said they'd be interested in returning to Music From A Darkened Room at some point in the future, so I'll probably re-work a few things regarding the re-built house on Spooner Ave. and make preparations. For those players who didn't enjoy the experience, they can sit out when we go back to it.

As mentioned in a previous post, I'd really like to start dropping hints about Stephen Alzis in the next adventure, so I'm thinking of setting the next mission in New York (that is, if I don't choose another pre-made adventure).

Another concept I want to start getting across is the negative impact that Delta Green can have on an agent's career. Ophilia has now been on three DG ops, and she's also created a paper trail that could connect her to certain events, so I've been thinking about what kind of effect this is having on her and her career in the FBI.

Chris

PTiKachu

12-20-2007, 08:23 AM

I'm sorry to hear your session didn't go so good. PCs rarely really split up so it would be hard to unleash the house on them. Plus the PCs can easily miss some of the important research. When you continue Music From A Darkened Room, try making the antique dealer a more important character - have her seek the investigators out when they start asking questions again.

If you want a good way to link Alzis and his people into this, have one or more of the Spooner Ave. furniture items end up in their hands...forcing the PCs to deal with the Fate. Don't make it a big obstacle, but have an Adept of the Fate agree to provide the essential items in exchange for being present when they exorcise the house...just to watch. Creepy stuff like that. :)

WalkingDead

12-20-2007, 12:54 PM

Those are great ideas. Perhaps the Fate has actually come into possession of the little table that contains the diary. That would give me something to lead with while also opening up some possibilities for future encounters with the Fate.

Thanks. :)

Chris

WalkingDead

01-29-2008, 12:15 PM

We had several weeks between the end of Music From A Darkened Room and the beginning of the next scenario -- A Victim of the Art from DG: Countdown. We tried to get together two weeks ago, but when only two players showed up, we set the RPG books aside and broke out a board game.

On Sunday night, I had four players come out for the game, and it ended up being a vast improvement when compared to our last session.

I chose A Victim of the Art because it looked like a fairly simple adventure to run with an interesting premise. The basic idea is that someone or something has murdered three people in a rather gruesome fashion (ripped their spines out, shattered their bodies, etc.) in a small upper-middle-class Long Island town, and the local authorities called the FBI in to deal with what they considered a possible serial killer.

The case hit the desk of a Delta Green friendly, who sent the information out to his DG contact, Agent Marcus. Marcus, unable to take the case on himself, chose another cell and sent them into the midst of things.

One thing the players were somewhat happy about this time is they had been officially assigned to the case. Two of the characters were already FBI agents (Rawl's Agent Ophilia and Rich's Agent Ozwald), whereas the other two (Eric's Agent O'Grady and Logan's friendly Jack Stevens) were given doctored FBI badges so they could look the parts they were being asked to play.

Additionally, they were going into a town with law enforcement that, for once, didn't have any rivalries between the local, state and federal agencies. I think this made for a story that was somewhat less frustrating for the players than the last couple.

October 24, 2000
With Agent Ozwald acting as de facto leader for Operation WINDWALKER, the team arrived in Glenridge, Long Island and connected with the two FBI agents who had been first sent to the scene. They met with the agents and the police detective who had worked the case, asked a few questions, received the files they needed and then began work on the case themselves.

All three victims had had their spines forcibly removed, as well as their heads. Only the first victim's head was actually recovered. Also, all three victims had been found suspended far above ground, leading the medical examiner to believe their bodies had been dumped out of a helicopter or plane.

The first murder took place in mid-September. Dr. Carl Maretti was a local dentist and family man with no known enemies. He disappeared after work and was found later that night by a jogger.

The second murder took place about a week into October. The local high librarian, Vanessa Hatvan, turned up dead and mutilated. She also didn't appear to have any enemies.

The third murder happened a few days before O Cell arrived on the scene. Lauren Harrogate was a seventeen-year-old cheerleader who had been taken from her home. The perpetrator broke into the house through a French door and made off with the girl. The girl's mother witnessed the event, but it sent her over the edge and she's been catatonic ever since. Lauren's body was discovered the next morning in much the same state as the previous two victims.

O Cell checked into the local Howard Johnson's and then began their investigation. Ophilia headed to the high school to get a yearbook and talk to the principal and guidance counsellor. She came up with no leads.

She then headed to Montauk, Long Island, where Sandra Harrogate had become a patient at a psychology institute. Talking to Sandra got Ophilia nowhere, and it seemed like she made the trip for nothing. From a game perspective, at least Rawl got to make a psychology check for Ophilia. A successful roll while talking to Sandra got him a check on Ophilia's character sheet.

O'Grady, Ozwald and Jack visited with the county medical examiner, Dr. Stephen Santorini. He'd been the one to suggest the bodies had been dropped from a helicopter or airplane. He handed over what files and evidence the PCs asked for and was very cooperative (again, this is really a first for the team since the first adventure -- they've been met with a lot of hostility during the last couple of operations, so this was a nice change of pace).

After that, Jack headed for the library to start researching the town -- the first sign I had that they were about to go in the wrong direction for the investigation. Ozwald and O'Grady headed for the dentist office and asked for a patient list for the day Dr. Maretti was killed (an important piece of evidence, they would later find).

When Ophilia returned to Glenridge, the entire team met at the local library and started researching the town's history, only to find over and over again that the town had a pretty clean background. Sure, there was crime, but murders and kidnappings and other bizarre crimes were very rare.

At this point, Logan asked for a "deus ex machina" because he didn't feel they were getting anywhere. I told him they were definitely on the wrong track. Looking into the town's history wasn't going to help them solve the case. That at least got them somewhat back on track.

Next, they hired a pilot/helicopter for the night and took an overhead tour of Glenridge, hoping to spot something. At this point, they'd become convinced the perpetrator was a winged monster.

October 25, 2000
After a good night's sleep, O Cell started up again, checking the Harrogate household. They checked Lauren's room and her diary -- and then Ophilia came up with the idea to check the caller ID and scribble down the numbers that had called the Harrogate residence on the day of Lauren's murder.

At this point, they got a little lost again. They headed off to the high school to talk to Lauren's friends, but they were really thinking out of the box here. They didn't even think to check the names/numbers on Lauren's call display against the patient list. Instead of letting them get off track again, I asked Ophilia to make an Idea roll, which she passed.

After pointing out the last name of Dengler appeared on the caller ID and on the patient list, they checked the yearbook and found one Thomas Dengler, who was about a year younger than Lauren. They didn't have any evidence to connect him to the school librarian, but they were sure they'd found their culprit.

O Cell decided they'd visit the Dengler home. They had discovered both parents worked during the day, so they figured they'd break in and look around. Inside Thomas' room, they discovered the boy liked to read sci-fi and had a fascination with archaeology.

They bugged Thomas' room and then headed to the high school to break into Thomas' locker and bug his jacket. They also added a tracker to the jacket so they could find him when they wanted to.

That night, Thomas just went home and stayed in his room all night, with O Cell hovering around the neighbourhood keeping tabs on him.

October 26, 2000
Under the guise of gathering information from students, O Cell sent Ophilia in to talk with all of Lauren's friends, as well as Thomas Dengler. That was actually kind of smart. They were able to talk with their suspect without arousing any suspicions.

They talked with Thomas to find out that he'd had root canal surgery that day at the dentist and that Lauren had turned him down for a date on the day she died. Once Ophilia was finished talking to Thomas, they continued tracking Thomas.

O Cell became convinced that there was a pattern to the murders, in that they happened three and two weeks apart. They were sure the next one would be a week after Lauren's murder, and then the murders would get even more frequent.

That's where we ended. Although the players are making a few incorrect assumptions about what's going on, they're getting pretty close to figuring things out. I think we only need about two hours to finish up the adventure, so we'll be getting together again in two weeks for the conclusion.

Chris

kinnygraham

01-29-2008, 02:44 PM

Thanks for the write-up and nice to hear that this game is still going.

I like 'A Victim of the Art' a lot ; one thing to further arouse the agent's suspicions re Dengler is if they manage to spot the pendant he is wearing. It's likely concealed under a T-shirt but maybe they could SPOT to notice that he is wearing something a little unusual.........

The next part is the interesting one - how they deal with Dengler - who is essentially both innocent and the cause of this :)

WalkingDead

01-30-2008, 05:22 AM

I like 'A Victim of the Art' a lot ; one thing to further arouse the agent's suspicions re Dengler is if they manage to spot the pendant he is wearing. It's likely concealed under a T-shirt but maybe they could SPOT to notice that he is wearing something a little unusual.........
Yeah. I don't want to put a wall up in front of them, but I want to give them a little bit more time in the next session to wonder how the hell Thomas is killing all these people. There's going to be another murder at the beginning of the next session, but Thomas will be at home when it happens. I'm looking forward to hearing the wild theories of my players. :D

After that, I'll lead them towards the solution, and then they can decide what to do about it.

I really like this adventure. There's enough detail and mystery to make it interesting, but it's not scripted at all. I like the open-endedness of it. I only need to keep a few key facts in my head and then let the PCs lead the story. Are there any other DG adventures written in this style?

Chris

kinnygraham

01-30-2008, 06:51 AM

I really like this adventure. There's enough detail and mystery to make it interesting, but it's not scripted at all. I like the open-endedness of it. I only need to keep a few key facts in my head and then let the PCs lead the story. Are there any other DG adventures written in this style?

Chris

I'd say that of all of them, 'A Night on Owlshead Mountain' is perhaps the closest in style to this ; unfortunately it's in the Eyes Only collection which you don't have....

Basically though I think a lot of DG scenarios have that 'open ended' quality to them. I've been getting a lot of pleasure in my current campaign from seeing how a second group tackles the same situations as my last group.

WalkingDead

02-07-2008, 05:44 PM

On Sunday, we'll be finishing up A Victim of the Art, and I've been feeling inspired about starting to flesh out the campaign a bit and give some life to it. So far, it has been a short string of unrelated Delta Green operations, but what I really want to do is start focusing a little bit more on what makes the PCs tick and how working for Delta Green is affecting them.

Additionally, I'm looking for some sub-plot possibilities, as well as leverage their enemies can use against them. ;) Even though Rawl (who plays Agent Ophilia) doesn't know it yet, I've decided that Adolph Lepus of NRO Delta has been keeping tabs on his character and is targeting her for conversion. He wants to turn her into a mole so he can get more vital information about the workings and personnel of Delta Green.

To begin with, I sent Rawl a little questionnaire about Agent Ophilia. His responses have given Ophilia a bit more depth -- including a high-profile family with a politician mother and a scientist father who worked for the government, a significant other who also happens to work for the FBI and an older brother who's in the publishing business.

I've also discovered something I suspected -- that Agent Ophilia places a lot of importance on her career. Now that's leverage MJ-12 can use. :D

I'm going to introduce this towards the end of the Sunday night session, when Ophilia is going to get a "request" to meet with Lepus.

Chris

kinnygraham

02-08-2008, 01:05 AM

WalkingDead

02-08-2008, 05:58 AM

Interesting stuff - if there's one thing I've very much neglected in my own campaign it has been to examine the 'personal lives' and careers of the agents. I'd be interested to hear how things turn out.
Me, too. ;) I'm looking forward to the reactions of the players when MJ-12 pulls Agent Ophilia in and basically says, "Do what we tell you or we'll fuck up your life." Some players might not be able to handle that kind of scene, but I'm pretty sure Rawl is going to love being put in that position. I'm curious what he'll have Ophilia do. :D

One thing I realized last night is the NRO connection. Lepus run NRO Delta, which I assume is an off-the-books wetworks operation within NRO, but we do have an agent in O Cell who works as an NRO analyst. It might be interesting to have satellite surveillance photos of Agent Ophilia end up on his desk (I assume Lepus has the ability to make use of NRO's recon capabilities). What happens when he's put in the position of working with Ophilia but also keeping tabs on her at the same time?

Chris

WalkingDead

02-11-2008, 06:41 AM

PTiKachu

02-11-2008, 06:54 AM

Funny - I had Alzis approach one of the friendlies in my very first DG campaign to recruit her as his mole...and she accepted. It didn't end well for her, but then it ended even worse for her entire cell. Not that it was her fault - she actually called in help from Alzis in dealing with a sonic weapon malfunction at Los Alamos that would have re-enacted the original A-bomb test and summoned the nuclear chaos of Azathoth...

kinnygraham

02-11-2008, 07:36 AM

I had to cancel the Sunday session, so all those plans will have to be put on hold until March. It's been a slow start to the new year. We've had to cancel a couple of sessions and move others around.

Chris

That's a pity - will keep an eye out though for more.

I've been lucky in that we have been fairly regular with DG of late, but we are now taking a break to play some RuneQuest.

WalkingDead

03-17-2008, 06:32 AM

It took two months, but we finally managed to get back to the Delta Green campaign. The break probably wouldn't have felt so long if we hadn't been in the middle of an adventure when we last ended.

So here's the conclusion of A Victim of the Art

October 27, 2000
O'Grady spent the night of the 26th on surveillance duty, keeping tabs on Thomas, but since the player couldn't actually make the session, he returned to the rest of the cell the next morning to let them know he'd received an urgent call from work and had to return immediately. So that took O'Grady out of the adventure, leaving Ophilia, Ozwald and the friendly Jack Stevens.

O Cell decided to spend the day on surveillance. They set up a recording device in a nearby phone box to record any sounds coming from the bugs in the Dengler household. Ophilia followed the father, Mark, to work to keep her ears on him, while Ozwald and Jack headed to the high school to listen to the bugs they'd planted on Thomas (they parked in a nearby driveway).

Ophilia came up with nothing. Ozwald and Jack spent most of their day listening to various class lessons, but at lunch, while Thomas was in the cafeteria, he was confronted by another student named Jason. Jason bullied him, and in the end, Thomas fell over, twisting his ankle, which landed him in the nurse's office for the rest of lunch.

There was nothing else of interest until the Denglers had all returned home, at which point they listened to Thomas telling his father about one Jason Eddies who had bullied him that day. Ozwald looked up the name and left the other two near the Dengler residence to go watch the Eddies' house a few blocks away.

Surveillance of both residence continued, until around midnight, I had Rich make a listen check for Ozwald. He made his check by rolling his score exactly. He heard what sounded like large wings flapping, making their way quickly towards him. He stepped out of the car and looked up to see a three-winged black horror zipping out of the sky and latching itself onto Jason's bedroom window. They byakhee was about to get a midnight snack. :)

Ozwald blew his SAN check, but only took a 1 SAN hit. No problem. The creature smashed through the window and ripped it and the casing right out of the wall. Ozwald drew his pistol and fired twice. The first bullet clipped one of the the byakhee's wings and did one point of damage (after subtracting the two points of armour). The creature turned and pushed itself off the wall of the house towards Ozwald.

Checking Dexterity for initiative, Ozwald got lucky. He was quicker on the initiative than the byakhee. He got in his (already started) car and hit the gas, screaming into his cell to let Jack and Ophilia know what was happening. He gunned the car as fast as he could (rolling his drive skill and once again getting exactly his score, just barely keeping that car under control) and headed in the direction of Jack and Ophilia.

As he passed the rest of O Cell, Ophilia gunned the car to chase the creature, which was right on Ozwald's tail, and Jack prepped his pistol. Both rolled for SAN. Jack made his roll and lost 1 SAN point. Ophilia blew her roll and lost 3 SAN points. I think it would have been very interesting had she lost enough to go temporarily insane while behind the wheel of a car, but it was not meant to be. ;)

Jack fired up at the creature, hitting it once and doing six points of damage (after armour). By this point, the byakhee had taken a significant amount of damage. I decided it wasn't stupid, so it shot straight up into the air. Jack got one parting shot and managed to hit it again for another six points of damage (after armour reduction). It was down to 5 HP by the time it got out of range.

Ozwald dealt with the police when they arrived and cooked up a story about a running gunfight with a suspect for the recent murders. They talked to Jason, who had been quite shaken up (he took 2 SAN loss, and only really remembered a beaked maw coming in through the shattered window). Ozwald got the police sketch artist to go along with doing a sketch of the creature Jason described, but naturally nobody but O Cell believed the kid's story. They figured he had been traumatized by the incident, so they were going to send him off for psychiatric evaluation. The poor kid. He'll probably spend much of the next few years listening to a psychiatrist convince him what he saw wasn't real.

Ozwald tried to find the bullets he'd fired at the creature, but since it was dark, he had no luck. O Cell called it quits for the night.

October 28, 2000
The morning news reported that the FBI had shot it out with someone believed to be connected to the recent murders. The CSI team found Ozwald's bullets, but later that day, it came as little surprise that there were traces of the polymer found underneath the victims' fingernails.

At this point, I decided that Thomas was going to get an Idea roll to see if he'd connect the attacks with himself and the amulet. It was a success. So now here's this somewhat geeky kid who believes there's a force connected to the amulet around his neck looking out for him. I decide he believes he's now invincible, so when Ophilia decides to chat with him at his high school, she finds a very cocky sixteen-year-old who is actually unhappy Jason survived his attack.

While speaking with Thomas, I had Rawl make a spot roll for Ophilia. He makes the roll, so she noticed a lump under his T-shirt, as if he was wearing a necklace or something (thanks for the idea, PTiKachu).

She brought this new information back to O Cell and they decided Thomas was now a threat. Whether he knew what was going on before, they figure he definitely knows now. They came to the conclusion the necklace must be an amulet that was controlling the creature.

The players spent the next fifteen minutes coming up with a plan to kidnap Thomas, which basically involved balaclavas, a white van and a quick snatch-and-grab. They went over far more detail than they needed to. Ophilia drove the van. Jack and Ozwald did the snatching. When they had Thomas in the car, they headed out of the city. Almost immediately, though, Jack found the amulet and shattered it (at which point I decided the byakhee was happy for its newfound freedom and headed back to the stars).

The pissed-off teenager wasn't as scared as he should have been. That cockiness was still there, and Jack had to give him a couple of kicks to get him talking, at which point he told them about his grandfather's belongings back at the house. The chit-chat among the players suggested they had decided Thomas was a threat and were going to put a bullet in his head, but in the end, they decided against doing so.

Ophilia dropped Ozwald and Jack off near one of the black SUVs they'd parked just outside of town. Ophilia drove away from the town while Ozwald and Jack headed back to the Denglers' home. Ozwald entered the house, found a box of the grandfather's archaeology journals in the attic, stole them and returned to the SUV.

Meanwhile, Ophilia drove Thomas about 45 minutes out of the town, cut loose his legs and dropped him on the side of the highway. :)

O Cell spent another couple of days in town, reading through the grandfather's journals about his archaeological digs in Peru and telling the local police they were sure the killer had left the area after they'd shot him.

After contacting Agent Marcus about getting access to a green box in New York so they could drop the books somewhere, they were instructed to leave them in a locker. A local cell would deal with them.

October 31, 2000
Although A Victim of the Art was over, I had one other thing planned for the evening.

A few days later, while Ophilia was at work, she got a call from someone who said he had met her on a farm several months back. This person (Adolph Lupus, although he never gave his name) wanted a meeting. Ophilia decided to go along with the meeting, but she called Alphonse first to let him know about it.

That night, Ophilia went to a Starbucks not far from her home and was picked up by two agents (with the earpieces and everything) driving a black sedan. They took her sidearm away from her and drove her to a dark, out-of-the-way motel, where she was left alone with the man she had met on the farm in Convergence.

Adolph Lepus told her that Delta Green was a significant threat to the United States and that he wanted to eliminate that threat. He told Ophilia he had covered up the arson in Meadowbrook (Music In a Darkened Room) and had the paperwork to connect her to it. He was also sure he had enough evidence to charge her with treason. He wanted her to work as a mole within Delta Green to feed him information.

While Ophilia took the threats seriously, she also wanted to know what else was in it for her, at which point Lepus offered to get her promoted or money. She liked the idea of the promotion, but didn't care about the cash. To clinch the deal, Lepus offered her a role in MJ-12 once she could no longer be of use to him in Delta Green.

"Where do I sign?" was Ophilia's answer.

And that was that. I'm curious whether Ophilia will actually become a mole or whether she was just agreeing to Lepus' offer because she was afraid for her life. Also, what is she going to tell Alphonse about the meeting?

Chris

PTiKachu

03-17-2008, 06:41 AM

I'm glad to hear the game went well. I find that players often over-plan raids and heists far more than they need to sometimes, but there's often no getting past it.

Oh, and the question now is: Does MJ-12 have an agent inside DELTA GREEN?

Or does DELTA GREEN now have an agent inside MJ-12? :D

WalkingDead

03-17-2008, 06:45 AM

Oh, and the question now is: Does MJ-12 have an agent inside DELTA GREEN?

Or does DELTA GREEN now have an agent inside MJ-12? :D
Yeah. Either way, this could prove interesting, even though this is likely going to be really hard on the PC. However, I got the reaction from the player I was hoping for. He told me he thought it was a really cool twist. Mission accomplished. :D

Chris

WalkingDead

03-26-2008, 07:32 AM

We have another session coming up this Sunday, and I've turned to the shotgun scenarios for our next adventure. Specifically, I'm going to try running Whereabouts Unknown (http://fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/whereabouts-unknown) from the 2006 shotgun scenario contest. It looks to be fun, relatively short and focused more in investigation and weirdness.

Have you any of you Delta Green players run this one before? Are there any challenges or pitfalls I should be aware of?

Chris

PTiKachu

03-26-2008, 10:11 AM

I haven't used anything from the DG mailing list in the last couple of years - I'm really out of date...

WalkingDead

04-02-2008, 07:44 AM

I haven't used anything from the DG mailing list in the last couple of years - I'm really out of date...
Unfortunately, I didn't get my chance on Sunday. I caught a cold and had to cancel. :( With any luck, we'll run through Whereabouts Unknown in two weeks.

At least I'll have a bit more time to think about the adventure. It looks like the biggest potential problem is the gate itself. I'm confused as to whether it's still open or not (it sounds like it may be). If it is open, where does it go? I thought about it being the Moon. It might be best just to have it closed, though.

I think I'd also like to go with the author's idea of having something come out of the gate for a little bit of action at the end. I don't want it to be anything too horrific, though. A TPK is the last thing I want right now.

Chris

WinstonP

04-02-2008, 04:22 PM

At least I'll have a bit more time to think about the adventure. It looks like the biggest potential problem is the gate itself. I'm confused as to whether it's still open or not (it sounds like it may be). If it is open, where does it go? I thought about it being the Moon. It might be best just to have it closed, though.

As I wrote this, let me chime in...
The gate, as I imagined it, opened, warped the space enclosed in its limits to 'elsewhere' and then came back sans Ms. Villardalles. The weird electrical effects are mean to demonstrate the bizarre nature of what has happened, perhaps showing that the power of the event is only slowly dissipating, not to suggest it is still open. I would think the area might be a weak spot for future gates, if it wasn't already, however.

As for where it goes- that is totally up to you. If the whole space within was transported elsewhere for any length of time, remember what affect it would have had on the soil, etc. If it went to the moon I'd think that the snow would possibly have sublimated (on the light side) for example. My idea of it was that the gate took Ms. Villardalles away but only 'twisted' the land where she was. I'd say it doesn't matter too much where the gate went unless you want it to stay open.

I think I'd also like to go with the author's idea of having something come out of the gate for a little bit of action at the end. I don't want it to be anything too horrific, though. A TPK is the last thing I want right now.

There are a goodly number of possibilities, of course. If you've read AdamAstonbury's write-up, he had a dead creature from a Half-Life like world, one with a totally alien biology. I was somewhat inspired by "The Barrens" so you could have some Lumens lurking about or a mutated Ms. Villardalles. The Desh might be an option as well, or even the things from T-space. Consider also having the creature having wandered off from the Spot or even maybe manifest via some of the gear the investigators bring into the Spot- i.e. their cell phone beings to melt down a few hours later and a desh pops out.

I look forward to hearing how this goes for you players.

WalkingDead

04-03-2008, 06:00 AM

As I wrote this, let me chime in...
Thanks a lot for your comments. And thanks for making the scenario available.

I'll go with what you had intended and have the gate closed, so I guess it really doesn't matter where the gate went. If it was opened, there would have been too much of a possibility of one of the PCs walking through it, so this makes my life simpler, anyway.

I'm not familiar with the desh. They must be in a sourcebook I don't possess. Do you know where information on them appears?

Chris

WinstonP

04-03-2008, 04:54 PM

The only scenario they show up in, IIRC, is "The Dark Woods" in the Adventures in Arkham Country. They are also statted up in the Malleus Monstrorum (and the Creature Companion, but that is out of print). They share more than a bit with some of the creatures around the Tillinghast resonator, honestly.

TheManinBlack

04-06-2008, 03:45 PM

Oh, and the question now is: Does MJ-12 have an agent inside DELTA GREEN?

Or does DELTA GREEN now have an agent inside MJ-12? :D

If Agent BUTLER has his way, it won't matter. His plan is to deliberately expose DG operations to MJ-3 GARNET personnel until they are convinced of the supernatural threats that Delta Green faces every day. Lepus is already convinced, and men like Charlie Bostick, Gavin Ross, Kurtis Schenk and Robert Coffey don't need very much convincing.

Once the initial exposure has had time to sink in, BUTLER plans to recruit these men into Delta Green in much the same way as any other Agent and have them use Majestic resources in much the same way as non-Majestic Agents abuse their host agencies resources and authority. From there, it's a short hop towards purging the Steering Committee and reinstating Delta Green as a Special Access Program. Delta Green will then quit being fully illegal and once again take it's place in the quasi-legal world of the clandestine services.

WalkingDead

04-10-2008, 11:13 AM

I checked out AdamAstonbury's session report for Whereabouts Unknown (http://www.yog-sothoth.com/modules.php?name=Journal&file=display&jid=916), and I really like what he did with the idea of something coming through the gate. Kind of creepy.

I'm still trying to come up with my own idea for this, but if necessary, I might just steal his idea and make a change.

At the same time, I'm finally starting to write my own Delta Green scenario, using Sandy Petersen's The Lazy Man's Guide to Constructing a Call of Cthulhu Adventure (http://www.yog-sothoth.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=51). I even did what he did and chose a story idea from a list of cult horror movies (counting down 32 movies, 'cause that's my age).

Chris

WalkingDead

04-14-2008, 07:31 AM

The group got together last night to play through Whereabouts Unknown, and we had a good time. It was a fun, straightforward mission with not much physical danger, but with some weirdness. The players enjoyed it, so I think I'll try running a few more of the shotgun scenarios here and there.

However, after Whereabouts Unknown, I'm craving a meaty, heavy SAN loss, high danger kind of op. :cool:

We had four of the five players available last night. We had:

Agent Ophilia -- FBI parapsychologist and criminal profiler. At the end of the last op, Ophilia had been recruited by Adolph Lepus of NRO Delta to act as a mole within Delta Green. Or had she? Played by Rawl.

Agent O'Grady -- NRO surveillance expert. Played by Eric.

Agent Oswell -- FBI special agent and pretty much de facto leader of O Cell at the moment. Although Ophilia had been cell leader until recently, her foul-ups and the contact between her and MJ-12 has made A Cell somewhat suspicious about her and her level of competence in the field. Played by Rich.

Jack Stevens -- Contract killer for the CIA. The only friendly on the mission. Jack is heavily armed, and that became a bit of a problem near the end of the Whereabouts Unknown scenario. Played by Logan.

Nov. 1, 2000
The session started the day after Agent Ophilia's meet with Adolph Lepus of MJ-12. We played through a quick phone discussion between Ophilia and Alphonse, where Ophilia left out a lot of details and simple told Alphonse: "They wanted to know what we're up to. I told them nothing."

"And they simply let you go?" Alphonse inquired.

I had Ophilia make a Psychology check for her lies (not sure if that was the right skill to use -- I really should better familiarize myself with the various skills and their purposes), and she made the roll (she has a great Psych skill). It was still too suspicious for Alphonse, though, but he seemed to accept her word.

Fast-forward a few hours. The information on the mission was sent to Ozwald, while the other PCs got phone calls notifying them they had to be on their way to Grand Rapids, Michigan that night.

I handed out two pieces of paper -- one to Rich and one to Eric.

This is what Agent Ozwald got:
DIRECTIVE FROM A CELL

Operation LOOKOUT
You are to investigate the whereabouts and disposition of Ms. Migdalia Valladares, associate professor of mathematics at Grand Rapids Community College and DELTA GREEN friendly. Ms. Valladares has been an exemplary friendly for eight years and has been an important asset. She was reported missing by her family three weeks ago. The FBI is currently assigned to the missing persons case. Yesterday, someone charged a pizza delivery to Ms. Valladares' credit card from room 137 at Shirley's Motel in Higgins Lake, Michigan. This information has been temporarily misplaced, but time is of the essence.

Mission Instructions
Determine Ms. Valladares' current circumstances and if she is a danger to the conspiracy.
Once this is complete, contact Agent ADAM for further instructions via secure email.

And for Agent O'Grady:
DIRECTIVE FROM A CELL

FOR YOUR EYES ONLY!!!
Agent OPHILIA may have been compromised and may pose a threat to DELTA GREEN, in particular to the members of O Cell. You are to observe OPHILIA's behavior and note anything erratic.

Instructions
Observe Agent OPHILIA for erratic behaviour or evidence of betrayal.
Determine if Agent OPHILIA poses a threat to Delta Green.
Once these two protocols are complete, contact A Cell for further instructions.
Both chose to keep the pieces of paper to themselves, which prompted the use of secret messages to the GM throughout the session. I don't want that to become a habit, but it was fine for one session.

Once assembled in Grand Rapids that night, Ozwald gave them a very brief description of their operation, but he left out a few details (really leaving them in the dark for the first while). After considering checking into a hotel, O Cell decided to instead hop in Jack's SUV (he drives everywhere; he doesn't fly) and drive the couple of hours to Higgins Lake.

Once in Higgins Lake, they went to work quickly. O'Grady and Ophilia checked themselves into a room as a married couple, while Jack and Ozwald scoped out the exterior of room 137. A knock at the door seemed to assure them Migdalia Valladares was not there.

With a room of their own, they decided to break into the room. First, Ophilia went off to ask the motel clerk about "her friend, Migdalia," but the clerk notified her nobody under that name was checked into the motel. Meanwhile, the other three tried to break into the room, but neither O'Grady or Ozwald could successfully pick the lock.

Plan B was slightly more complicated. :)

The others disappeared out of sight while Ophilia created a distraction with the clerk, telling him about a mouse in her room and demanding a new room -- and help from the clerk in moving her bags. She got the clerk away from the front office, which gave O'Grady time to break into the front office, check to see that a "Mrs. Paully" was checked into room 137 and fail to find a master key. He did swipe the keys to rooms 136 and 138, though.

The clerk was already on his way back to the office when O'Grady was heading out. Seeing as Ophilia was walking behind him and nagging him, I said the clerk had a 15% chance of spotting O'Grady coming out of the office. Bad luck for the group. I rolled 8%, so a quick confrontation between O'Grady and the motel clerk was sparked -- but we wrapped up quickly.

Plan B involved going into room 136, cutting a hole between the rooms and entering room 137 that way. These guys come up with some funny ideas sometimes, but it worked. They cut through the drywall sections and made their way into room 137, where they discovered maps, books, journals, newspaper clippings and a lot of moldering fast food. Also, all the electronic equipment except the coffee maker ('cause even insane friendlies need caffeine, I guess) had been put in the bathtub.

They took everything of interest and then tried to hide the damage they'd caused.

They looked over the notes regarding the map of the region they found, and decided they'd set out before dawn to an area labeled as "THE SPOT." Instead of getting sleep, though, O'Grady looked over the print-out of a computer program they fond while Ophilia flipped through two manuscripts -- "Wisdom of the Hyperboreans and their Magicks" and Wasserman's "The Occult Foundation."

I gave Ophilia an Occult check to see if she'd heard of either of the books, and she made a roll for Wisdom, so she knew it had to do with "portals and higher realms."

Only O'Grady was able to get through his reading material, which he discovered was a program that tried to solve complex topological paradoxes by creating even more paradoxes. He only lost 1 SAN for making his check.

Nov. 2, 2000
Before dawn, O Cell set out to find "THE SPOT." They found Valladares' car not far off the rural road, and it was in a state of chaos much like her motel room. They followed her tracks in the snow through the forest to find a clearing in which she'd created a large circle (20 feet in diameter), outlined with some sort of powder. That's when they noticed none of their electronics were functioning in this area.

They looked at the circle and noticed that Valladares' footprint walked up to the circle, but her footprints inside had been put out of skew, as if the spot had been rotated. SAN checks all around, with only Ophilia blowing it. Ophilia and Jack both lost 1 SAN, while O'Grady and Ozwald took a loss of 2 SAN each.

Finding a sextant and a starchart resting just outside of the circle, the PCs got a little too wrapped up in trying to figure out if there were any specific oddities in the stars that night, which there weren't. Based on the information about portals they'd found, O Cell decided Valladares had opened a gate to elsewhere and had gone through it.

Surprisingly, it was Jack who entered the circle. I figured it would be Ophilia. He walked into the centre of the circle, where the tracks stopped and then spotted a larger set of tracks (bare feet, with talons on the end of the toes) walking from somewhere in the circle out of it into the forest.

They followed the tracks and then came across a dimensional shambler. I tried to describe it as the flavour text provided in the CoC 6E core book -- as something not wholly ape nor insect. I called for SAN checks. Jack, Ophilia and Ozwald all made their checks. To everyone's surprise, they lost 0 SAN for that. O'Grady, on the other hand, failed his check, rolled for SAN loss and took the maximum amount of SAN loss (10 points). He'd lost more than one-fifth of his current SAN that quickly, so I told Eric his character was going to be go indefinitely insane. He failed his Idea roll, so temporary insanity didn't become an issue.

As we began combat, I handed Eric the book so he could look through the different types of phobias and insanities. Eric was over-joyed at the prospect of his character taking on some kind of permanent insanity. So was I, actually. This was the first time anybody had taken such a hit to their SAN. We'd only had one (maybe two) temporary insanities prior to this, but nothing permanent.

The battle was short. Even with its 3 Armour, the dimensional shambler was cut to pieces by gunfire before it could even react to its enemies. Part of the problem, I discovered, was Jack's Handgun 80% skill combined with handcannon capable of doing 1d10+1d6+3 points of damage with each hit. His first hit did 9 points of damage (minus armour was 6) and his second shot did 18 points of damage (15 after armour reduction).

O'Grady took a snapshot of the creature and then fired his gun. He'd already decided on his phobia by this point, and his character immediately tossed the gun away when it "failed him." Ozwald was toting an SMG, but he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Ophilia had her sidearm, but she's not much of a shot, either. Basically, Jack took the thing down all by himself. :eek:

For reference, Jack's gun is the IMI Desert Eagle Pistol with .50 AE ammo. Looking at the description, I suddenly realize he shouldn't have gotten that second shot in the first round. Its ROF is 1, not 2. I need to keep that in mind next time. The fight shouldn't have been over that quickly. :(

However, with that frickin' handcannon of his doing stupid amounts of damage, he could have feasibly downed the shambler in one shot. Unfortunately for O Cell, this means I'm not going easy on them when it comes to Mythos monster encounters anymore. I chose the dimensional shambler as the creature that came through the gate because it was weak enough that it was unlikely to kill anybody, but such a short combat just isn't dramatic enough for my liking. Next time, they get something more powerful. :p

The op rounded off with the PCs dragging the shambler's corpse back to Valladares' car, stuffing it inside and lighting the car on fire. They tried their best to destroy any evidence of what the creature was and then they returned to take a sample of the powder around the gate circle and then destroy the circle itself.

Ozwald reported to Alphonse via text message (they were supposed to report to Agent Adam, but whatever). They informed him that Valladares was, to quote: "Best guess, another dimension. Portal destroyed." Alphonse's response: "Leave no traces. Vacate the area."

They stayed around the area for the rest of the night and then left the next morning.

Nov. 3, 2000
Ozwald took Valladares' journals to read over, while Ophilia claimed the two occult texts.

About this time, Eric handed me a note, telling me he was going to bug Ophilia's cell phone. I asked him to make an appropriate roll, which he succeeded at. Nobody knew anything about Agent O'Grady's private directive from A Cell. Again, I don't want this to become a habit, as it means players could be missing out on various fun elements of the story.

Nov. 5, 2000
Operation LOOKOUT (I need to come up with better op names) was a success, but I wasn't quite done yet. I randomly determined between the members of O Cell (except Ophilia, who's already had her bit of the spotlight) who would be in the epilogue. The choice was Agent O'Grady.

A couple of days later, O'Grady received a call from someone claiming to be the Lord of Aeon ("Lord of Ean?" -- this name got a few chuckles, I'm afraid). The Lord of Aeon told O'Grady his organization had come into possession of an item related to Isabelle Wheeler and the house on Spooner Ave. (from Music From A Darkened Room, which had been a failed op -- the house has been re-built). He was interested in trading for this item.

O'Grady convinced him to send information so he could make a better decision, and the next day, a small package arrived. Inside, there pictures of the house on Spooner Ave., as well as some basic information regarding a diary written by Isabelle Wheeler. A phone number was included so O'Grady could call the Lord of Aeon back.

O'Grady tried to trace the phone line to a real name, but aside from being connected to a place in New York called Club Apocalypse, there were no names actually attached to the number. O'Grady emailed Alphonse for further directions, and received this in response: "Contact source. Determine if trade is worthwhile. Be very cautious. More information on its way."

When O'Grady called the Lord of Aeon to talk about a trade, the Lord told him the price was that he would be allowed to watch "the exorcism of the spirit" (thanks for the idea, PTiKachu). O'Grady told him he'd think about it and get back to him.

As a reward for actually defeating a Mythos monster, I gave everyone +1d10 SAN -- perhaps a bit too much, but that's what the dimensional shambler is worth in a loss. If they return to the house on Spooner, I'm sure I'll have opportunities to reduce their SAN again. Ophilia gained +8 SAN, Jack gained +4 SAN, O'Grady gained +6 SAN and Ozwald gained +9 SAN (which actually puts Ozwald at a higher SAN than he started with).

As for O'Grady's indefinite insanity, he looked through the mental disorders and chose Amok as a psychotic disorder that would endure. He decided on a specific desire to burn things. While it will play out a bit as pyromania (as it did during the scene where O Cell burned Valladares' car), Eric thought it would be more interesting because it would be tailored more towards psychotic violence (that might not end with just the enemy, as he pointed out).

Obviously I'm working on introducing the characters to the Fate, which I think should be interesting. If anyone has any further advice for using the Fate, I'm all ears. :)

Chris

WinstonP

04-16-2008, 07:30 AM

I'm glad your players had a good time with "Whereabout Unknown"- I always enjoy hearing how a run of one of my scenarios (shotgun or otherwise) go. I never considered players would take such an approach to getting into room 137 :)

I'm afraid I've not made use of the Fate, so I don't have any good suggestions on using them in a campaign- I think the Eyes Only Volume has some helpful tips though.

WalkingDead

04-16-2008, 07:35 AM

I never considered players would take such an approach to getting into room 137 :)
My players seem to take some ... uh ... interesting approaches to solving problems.

They also tend to ask some of the weirdest questions. They started out by trying to look into Migdalia Valladares' history -- like where she was educated, whether she was an American citizen, how old she was, etc. I had to make a lot of things up on the fly. But that's my players for you. :confused:

I'm currently doing some bluebooking with Rawl and Eric. With Rawl, we're simulating a phone discussion between Agent Ophilia and Adolph Lepus via email. With Eric, we're going through the paces of Agent O'Grady's attempts to do surveillance on Agent Ophilia. Once we've finished with them, I'll post them here.

Chris

kinnygraham

04-17-2008, 12:48 AM

Enjoyed the write-up as well.

One thing though - it's been a while since I checked out their abilities, but I would have thought that the Shambler might have been a tougher 'opponent' if it was able to use its ability to phase in and out of existence to get the drop on investigators......Then again, I might be wrong about those capabilities.

Could be an idea for Bret to put together a little handout on Valladares history / what Delta Green think about her as a friendly / what ops she's been on (suitably 'redacted' in sensitive spots :) ). I had the same issues with players asking lots of questions about her, 'trying to get into her mindset' etc - ironic because she has flipped out somewhat :) ).

Not trying to create more work for you Bret - know you are a busy man ;)

WalkingDead

04-17-2008, 05:48 AM

One thing though - it's been a while since I checked out their abilities, but I would have thought that the Shambler might have been a tougher 'opponent' if it was able to use its ability to phase in and out of existence to get the drop on investigators......Then again, I might be wrong about those capabilities.
That would have made more sense, I think. I had the PCs just come across it in the forest. They all had their weapons at the ready, so they got to open fire on it and cut it down before it could act. I didn't really expect it to die so quickly, though. It has Armour 3, but it was that damn .50AE handcannon that did it (I really hate Jack's Desert Eagle -- I think the player only chose to play a friendly so he didn't have to take a standard sidearm :p).

Chris

EvilBrennan

04-20-2008, 10:35 AM

I've been using the Fate recently in my regular CoC game.
One of my PC's is psychic. She's "Sensitive" as in she touches things and gets mental flashes. Lots of glove wearing after her stint in Arkham Sanatorium. The fate want her to be an underling of the lord of sleep (Merriweather), so they created further dissent between the faithful ghouls and the heretical ones who hunt for food as Delta Green (In my world anyway) are reluctant to use Nancy by herself anymore due to her growing erratic behavior. Due to my players history with the ghouls, (she was allied with them in the dreamlands against Gugs in the ruins of Mordiggian's corpse) Delta Green picked her up to go with them to New York to try and stop an all out war between the two factions of Ghouls.
Now that she's in New York, the fate give initial contact (Mostly just making sure she arrived and who she arrived with) to a crazy dude who was tasked with giving a marble to "The prettiest bird on the block". My players name is Raven. Of course, Nancy who is riding along with our PC gets pissy and hucks the marble out into the street where the crazy chases it and gets shmucked by a car.
After the crazy makes his "Report" by scribbling on the side of a building downtown, only then will they actually send out an emmisary from the Fate. Someone who actually has met Merriweather to talk to her. They'll tell the DG agents to piss off or they'll evict all active cells from NY for a week.
Then they'll talk to Raven.

I see the fate as something that you don't even find out about until they have a gun to the back of your head or you're getting a fate tattoo in some unspeakable ritual. I'm not even going to mention why the Fate want her (It's a Sekrat. Shh.) until it's way too late to back out. No one's going to even know there's such a thing AS the fate at all until they meet the lord (Only after weeks of induction).
They're a secretive group. They're not sticking their heads out for any reason and that's why they are so successful.

WalkingDead

05-12-2008, 07:47 AM

I'm behind on my session reports, so here's the next update. This session took place a couple of weeks ago.

Between sessions, I did some bluebooking with two players -- Eric (who plays Agent O'Grady) and Rawl (who plays Agent Ophilia). We communicated through email about their PCs' intentions. During the previous session, O'Grady had been tasked by A Cell to keep tabs on Ophilia and report on odd behaviour.

O'Grady bugged her cell phone after borrowing it from Ophilia during the last session. Between sessions, Eric gave me instructions about how O'Grady would bug Ophilia's phone lines, email and even break into her house to install a keylogger on her computer.

While O'Grady learned a lot of information about Ophilia, including her real name, he didn't come up with anything out of the ordinary. The reason for this was because he had no idea that Ophilia had been given a cell phone by Adolph Lepus of Majestic-12 to use exclusively for their private conversations.

Meanwhile, talking with Rawl, he decides Ophilia will contact Lepus (how do you guys pronounce his last name?) and offer him information about their last operation, which was the Whereabouts Unknown op. As she discovered, Lepus didn't care about Delta Green's occult studies, but instead wanted to know the identities of other Delta Green members.

Although Ophilia did know Agent Ozwald's real name (they work in the same FBI office in Phoenix and worked together as prior to their induction into Delta Green in PS&SP), she chose not to give out that information.

With all that done through email, I laid out the whole story for the group at the beginning of the next session. I don't want to get into the habit of passing a lot of secret notes and doing stuff off-screen. I think it's more fun if everybody can share in the entirety of the story. So I told them what was on the secret notes from last game and what happened between sessions.

After that, we got started with our next session.

At the end of Whereabouts Unknown, Agent O'Grady received a call from someone calling himself the Lord of Aeon. What happened can be read in my previous session report, so I won't repeat it here. O'Grady wasn't sure if he was going to play ball with the Lord, though, so it was up in the air whether O Cell would return to the house on Spooner Ave. or not (MFADR adventure -- again, see my previous session reports).

With that uncertainty, I didn't want to plan for a revisit of MFADR and then be left with nothing if O Cell chose not to deal with The Fate, so instead I used another shotgun scenario -- specifically, Last Things Last, where the PCs are sent in my A Cell to make sure a recently-deceased Delta Green friendly and former member hasn't left any evidence of the conspiracy.

Four players showed up for the game -- Eric (Agent O'Grady), Rich (Agent Ozwald), Rawl (Agent Ophilia) and Logan (friendly Jack Stevens, aka Mr. Grim). Because one of the PCs was a friendly and I didn't want to cut him out of the story, I made some minor modifications to the adventure (the biggest change being removing A Cell's directive of "no friendlies").

The story picks up a few days after the last session.

Nov. 8, 2000
Since two of the PCs are based in Phoenix, Arizona, I set the events there. A Cell contacted each of the members and put them on a priority assignment that involved making sure one Clyde Baughman hadn't left any traces of his involvement with the Delta Green conspiracy after his death a few days prior.

With family expected within 48 hours, the O Cell had to work quickly. As always, we just wrote the black ops/contract killer Jack Stevens into the story as being in the area, but Agent O'Grady had to hop an afternoon flight out to Phoenix to help on the assignment.

Things went smoothly at Baughman's apartment, although as usual, the players went out of their way to make things more difficult than they really needed to be. They went into the apartment under cover of fumigators, set up a fumigation tent outside Baughman's apartment and were lucky enough to make their Luck rolls and not attract any attention. I guess the thought of posing as family never occurred to them.

The team spent the entire evening going over Baughman's apartment. Except for the office, it was fairly Spartan, but the office was filled with papers and files. It took them hours to go through everything, and they really only had to make a couple of items disappear. However, they turned up a deed to a cabin in Baughman's name.

Checking keys by the door, the group figured out which key would be the one to the cabin and took it (Idea rolls are handy). Then they made the four-hour drive up to Baughman's cabin to check that out.

They searched the cabin thoroughly and finally came upon a locked footlocker. O'Grady picked the lock (successfully, for once -- Eric was quite happy about that) and then everyone looked through the contents, which included several Delta Green- or occult-related items and a letter addressed as "Urgent: Mr. Green's Eyes Only."

The letter instructed whatever Delta Green agents finding the letter to go to the garage, get a bunch of jerry cans full of gasoline and then use them to fill the buried septic tank full and light it. It was best not to look inside, the note stated; so of course, someone was bound to look inside.

It was O'Grady who went out to search for the septic tank. He found it padlocked and broke into it. Then he opened it up, took out his flashlight and looked in. The PCs had already spotted the pictures of Baughman's late wife, and O'Grady immediately recognized the undead creature inside. He failed his SAN check, which cost him 3 SAN.

"Clyde?" the creature said as it moved towards the light.

Slamming the septic tank shut, O'Grady started shouting for help. While Ophilia and Jack came out the front door and around, Ozwald went a little overboard. Drawing his pistol, he dove through a cracked window in the cabin.

Things went well here. O'Grady suggested nobody else look into the septic tank. They could hear something down there, though. Getting a garden hose, a funnel and the jerry cans full of gas from the shed, O Cell filled the septic tank full of gas and lit it. Once the screaming and shambling of the thing inside finally stopped, they threw in a lot of the papers and such they'd taken from Baughman's office and from the cabin.

Then they buried the lid of the septic tank with dirt.

O Cell did take several items from Baughman's footlocker, including several reel-to-reel tapes (which they listened to over the next day or so; that cost Jack, Ozwald and O'Grady 1 SAN point apiece). Ophilia took the various books and manuscripts found. Anything useful was divvied up. Jack swiped a highly-magnetized 3cm diameter sphere they'd found in the footlocker.

I think I need to flesh out the sphere. Jack was going to take it home and put it on his fridge. :p I think that should cause some Mythos-related problems for Jack, but I don't know what to do about it yet.

After listening to the tapes, O Cell decided to torch them.

And that was that. Last Things Last was a nice diversion. I'm tempted to come back to that style of Delta Green assignment once in awhile. I think it could be fun cleaning out the contents of an O Cell member's home if/when they get killed or committed.

We're not playing again until the end of May. We're getting into that time of year when it will be difficult to get the group together. Additionally, we may be losing one of our group members, who will be moving a little ways away for his job.

Chris

kinnygraham

05-12-2008, 07:57 AM

Nice one.

Last Things Last is definitely a scenario where player over elaboration and fatal curiosity always leads to needless complications ; when I ran it two players bugged out when they couldn't resist looking in the tank. One of them ran off down a mountain road and got hospitalised by a speeding pickup - the other managed to scorch himself with lit gasoline as he entered in to a state of what can only be described as napalm frenzy as he became suddenly obsessed with destroying you know what..............

Looking forward to hearing more.

WalkingDead

05-12-2008, 08:13 AM

kinnygraham

05-12-2008, 08:28 AM

Before the session, I was worried that Last Things Last might be overly simple and that the PCs would just fill the septic tank with gas without looking in...........

I was prepared for this eventuality in that I was just going to describe some extremely loud, extremely pained and extremely human female screaming. Only the hardest of hearts would resist that - and if they did, my guess is that they would then be left wondering if the 'secret' of the scenario was that Baughman was nuts and had locked a human being down there.......... :eek:

PTiKachu

05-12-2008, 08:53 AM

Before the session, I was worried that Last Things Last might be overly simple and that the PCs would just fill the septic tank with gas without looking in -- or maybe just ignore the cabin entirely. I was worried over nothing.

I'm still deciding what to do for the next session, but I'm thinking I should probably get some closure on MFADR -- y'know, just get it over with and be done with it. The group seemed to make a decision to deal with the Lord of Aeon (who now needs stats and such), so I guess that means they're up for going back to the house on Spooner.

I recently acquired a couple of other CoC books -- the Dreamlands hardcover and Secrets of New York. I've been toying with the idea of getting a Dreamlands adventure or two in, but I really want to get the PCs to New York for fun with ghouls and The Fate. :)

Chris

Glad to hear you got a lot out of that dead agent's laundry. I myself ran with a dead agent's dirty secrets a while back in my old Delta Green campaign, the session right after ANGEL CRATER version 1.0, actually. Dead agents always have fun stuff locked in their Green Boxes. :)

I haven't read those other two books (OK, flipped through Dreamlands and wasn't impressed - I have my own vision of the Dreamlands for my games) but if you want to make it more than just a rehash, here's what you do:

Go with the Spooner place. Have it be relatively easy to clean up - after all, the manifestations don't show as much when there are multiple PCs in the same room. But lay a clue or two in the house about its past. From there.=, have the PCs track down one of the previous residences of The Crone from before the time she hooked up with Wheeler at Spooner Avenue. It turns out that she created another abode of horror consecrated to Nyarlathotep in her wild younger years. This gives you a new location to adventure in (instead of going over old ground all over again).

What you think? You could set it in New York or any other place that fits your mood.

WalkingDead

05-12-2008, 09:31 AM

What you think? You could set it in New York or any other place that fits your mood.
That's a good idea, but I'm not sure my group wants another house to explore. We'll see what happens. I want to give them one chance to put things right with the house on Spooner Ave., and then if they show more interest in the residents' past, then I might pull The Crone out for something else.

I figure MFADR Revisited probably shouldn't be any more than one session. They know about the manifestations. They'll have a fairly straightforward goal -- meet with the Lord of Aeon, learn of the ritual to get rid of the evil (which should be fun :D) and then deal with the evil (or maybe not, considering what the ritual requires -- but then again, they have already considered offing the Lord).

Chris

Newbunkle

07-15-2008, 12:43 PM

I enjoyed this thread a lot. Did the campaign come to an end at this point?

WalkingDead

08-28-2008, 11:48 AM

The campaign isn't dead, but it's been on summer hiatus. Although we were supposed to play in May, some personal problems put the game into an early stop for the summer.

We're going to start up again on Sept. 21st, but after talking with my players recently about returning to Music From A Darkened Room, I've decided to nix the plan to start with a return to the house on Spooner Ave. Most of the players continue to talk about how frustrating the adventure was, and they're expecting more of the same.

So the only reason to go back to it is to wrap up loose ends. It doesn't sound like anybody will have fun doing that, so I'm just going to write it off completely. A Cell can send in another team to deal with it -- or fail to deal with it. I'll leave that ambiguous. ;)

Chris

WalkingDead

09-16-2008, 12:57 PM

Sent to my players via email this afternoon to get them thinking about the campaign's continuation on Sunday:

DIRECTIVE FROM A CELL (received Nov. 17th, 2000)

TO: AGENTS OZWALD, OPHILIA & O'GRADY

SUBJECT: STATUS OF O CELL

Agent OSWELL has been indefinitely reassigned to another DELTA GREEN cell. The agent's expertise is needed on another project. Do not try contacting him outside of appropriate channels.

Re: appropriate channels. O CELL has become too accustomed to using the telephone to contact A CELL. For security purposes, O CELL is directed from here on out to adhere to DELTA GREEN communications protocol -- sending email through DELTA GREEN's secure router. Voice communication is becoming a higher security risk, so it should only be used under the most dire of circumstances.

Re: the continuation of Operation IAGO. The operation has been reassigned to another cell with more experience in this area.

-ALPHONSE

WalkingDead

09-17-2008, 06:03 AM

And another email sent off to my players:

In the months following the November clean-up operation at the home and cabin of former Delta Green agent Clyde Baughman, communication between the members of O Cell and A Cell was limited to one directive from Alphonse. The often unavailable Agent Oswell had been indefinitely reassigned to another cell -- or so claimed Alphonse -- and the team had found itself removed from the operation regarding the haunted (or possessed?) house on Spooner Avenue they had first visited in March.

It had been a busy year for the re-formed O Cell. From its first operation in November 1999 in Knoxville, which claimed the lives of three agents (including the only surviving member of the previous O Cell), to the busy autumn of 2000, where the cell had followed a series of deaths to a teenage boy, tracked a friendly to a gateway to another dimension and destroyed whatever Clyde Baughman had kept alive in an old septic tank, the dangers and realizations of the Mythos had begun to take its toll on O Cell's members.

FBI Special Agent Martin Gray, known as Agent Ozwald to the rest of O Cell, had been called away from work to help Delta Green on so many occasions that his case load had begun to pile up on his desk. Knowing what was out there and wondering what else might be possible, Gray had also started to take a closer look at his case files just in case something suggested he may need the services of Delta Green.

Dr. Michelle Amber, otherwise known as Agent Ophilia, had been torn between her loyalty to Delta Green and the promise she had made to Majestic-12. So far, she had managed not to pass on any crucial information about Delta Green personnel to the Majestic-12 agent she knew as Adolph Lepus. She knew her Majestic-12 contact was getting impatient, though, and she had started to worry that not only would her career not advance because of the conspiracy, it may be doomed.

The time Dr. Amber had spent working for Delta Green, either in the field or studying the books and manuscripts she had obtained, had not only created a backlog of cases but had also begun to drive a wedge between her and significant other. Her relationship hadn't hit rock bottom yet, but the doctor knew there were problems -- and she knew those problems had started because of Delta Green and Majestic-12.

Meanwhile, the newest member of O Cell, Peter Fitzgerald (aka Agent O'Grady) had become more distant with his friends and family. When his phone rang, there was a good chance Fitzgerald sat back and ignored it, allowing his friends and family to speak with his machine. He had started to lose touch with his friends, and even when he did see them, the relationships seemed off. On several occasions, friends had asked him if he was doing okay, and he'd responded curtly in the positive.

He was not okay, though, even if he believed it. The appearance of that monster in the forest, not far from where Migdalia Valladares had disappeared, had scarred his fragile psyche. The nightmares had begun not long after that operation, and even though he saw the creature cut down under the other agents' gunfire, he had not recovered.

Finally, there was Jack Stevens, a man with many identities but who was most commonly known as Mr. Grim. Stevens had been working black ops for many years, but not even his more twisted jobs compared to the operations he had participated in as a Delta Green friendly. He knew little about the organization, even though those in charge seemed to know a lot about him -- something that bothered Stevens a lot.

He had worked on and off with Delta Green agents for some time, but when he returned from an operation, he often questioned his motives. Why was he helping? It wasn't the money. Delta Green worked with volunteers, and he rarely walked away with anything more than a pile of bills and maybe a trinket or two (like that small, magnetic glass sphere he had picked up the last time out). But each and every time he got a call to "a night at the opera," Stevens packed his bag, checked his ammunition supply and met the organization's agents wherever was necessary.

As the millennium came to a close and a new one dawned, O Cell found itself with a reprieve from its work with Delta Green. The weeks came and went, and for awhile it appeared as if Alphonse had forgotten about the agents. Then, just as April 2001 was beginning, O Cell once again received an invitation to a night at the opera.