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Synopsis: A long-retired agent died four days ago. Delta Green has tasked a team to make sure he didn’t leave any deadly secrets behind. The simple task turns dark when the agents find out he has an isolated cabin outside of the city, with secrets he didn’t tell anyone. What lurks beneath?
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some Delta Green scenarios are just 20 minutes of plot and 90 minutes of PCs arguing and yknow that can be okay too if the table’s feeling upbeat about it, and you guys were
I almost woulda liked more Evil Dead references? I mean Evil Dead is good because it’s fuckin g r u e l l i n g and this is a little abrupt. maybe she coulda run off into the basement after her first kill and we could’ve had something so much Detweilworse than what Sam Raimi came up with as a complicating factor Out in the Woods. if you’re unna run the scenario as is, I’d be inclined to leave her not that dangerous? like, having her be a deadly monster fails to blur the line.
Nice! I’ve run this twice now with mostly similar results(to each other- I still haven’t listened to this AP).
I really hope we get to hear Starchamber and Observer Effect with this group … it will be glorious.
You will! We plan to post APs of Sweetness (a scenario on Dennis Detwiller’s Patreon), Star Chamber, Future/Perfect 1, and Observer Effect, at a minimum.
Glad to see this done by RPPR. I ran it once from the shotgun scenario with a few props and it was pretty grim, a great palate cleanser between deeper conspiracies.
Wow, at about the halfway point, I went “Huh, really? Less than an hour? This is going to end quick I guess?” It ended about how I figured and more than I hoped.
Good job Shawn! (Never apologize for Art.)
Observer Effect is pretty much guaranteed to be a campaign ender, as written. You can hit your breaking point before you even make it to the briefing.
Hey, I’m actually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but never cheated an old lady out of 300 bucks or lit two co-workers on fire… yet. Seriously though, what Shawn is portraying there is not what that particular disorder is like. But that’s no problem, it was just a game after all.
Great fun listening to you guys as always. Just too bad, Aaron wasn’t there.
Interesting game. Mistakes(?) were made. Intentionally? Shaun’s character was just horrible, though. I dunno, friendly fire deaths suck, IMO- especially when he really had the choice to shoot or do something else.
Shaun had a much better chance of gaining (1d4) sanity back by lying to the therapist.
Ross was having way too much Rum-fueled fun.
Can you try running the Operation DUSTBOWL scenario found on the Delta Green website I think? It looks really good and I want to hear how you guys handle it.
Poor decisions were made. Sorry about any offense due to misrepresentatation of real-life conditions. A number of sessions in, I did glance at actual info on bpd and we were way off the mark. Zinczenko is less defined by that than he is by an utter loss of agency after a massively traumatic event. His best abilities revolve around manipulation, so I figured that is how he would attempt to take back control in his life. Meanwhile, his originally thoughtful, kind demeanor was entirely subverted.
This character is in and of himself a desperate quest to see how quickly he can hit 0-San. Ultimately, I was trying to make as many awful decisions as possible to see how soon I could burn him out. He gets what’s coming to him.
@Shaun: No worries, dude, it’s all good. The day I’ll take offense to rpg podcasts will be the day I should quit using the internet.
Still… looking forward to “see” Zinczenko die in a horrible, horrible way 😀
Btw, in the Afghanistan mission, he also came across (at least to me) more manipulative than sincerly kind and thoughtful, so letting this character degrade into a sociopathic asshole after three consecutive breakdowns kinda feels like the right call. My only concern would be how much fun that is for the other players.
I want more games with Grouchy Drunk Ross.
Excellent game. I have played this story before, in Trail of Cthulhu, so I knew what was coming. It was exciting to hear how it would go for you. Salty Ross was great.
Can we get a category tag for “Drunk Ross”? This was great.
Like maybe its because I already read this scenario in the past and judged it poor but..man that was bad. Like the “Let me have my fun Dan!” comment from Ross does clue one in that yes, he is aware he is removing player agency because otherwise there is no drama or plot damn it!” but still, that’s a shitty thing to do.
Allowances allowed, Drunk Ross is perhaps not the most mature DM in the world when it comes to respecting player agency and all that jazz, its certainly not something he’s done in any of the other of hundreds of hours of audio I’ve listened too (or not to this degree that I recall). So, I chalk it up to this kinda weak scenario.
Where in, if the players play smart, nothing interest happens aside from ‘make sanity checks because she sure sounds human”. That’s what I was mostly down on the scenario when I read it (feels like awhile ago now, when was this first published?). Like As a DM you essentially do have to take a character away from a player, re-write what they are thinking/planning/committed to doing and then hand them back.
Yes, when someone does it in the “Let me have my fun damn it!” mind-set its a big negative, but drunkness aside this scenario seems pretty poorly written. It might get newer players, but for an experienced group who play anywhere near competent DG agents, what you get is a series of “Ok I am going to do/think this” followed by the DM having too “Ok but no your really going to do/think this”. Just..meh.
I sure hope the other scenarios you all did are better written and don’t require that level of rail-roading via removing player agency to be enjoyable for DM and Players alike.
I personally LOVE this scenario. Despite a technical issue that delayed it by an hour it went off swimmingly. I didn’t push anyone to open the septic tank, and the instant san loss from staring at the monster pretty much drove it to a sudden violent and awesome conclusion. What is GREAT about this scenario is all the weird shit and the detective work. It’s so mundane, so procedural, but has these small small details that the agents can find and explore that it starts to get under the PLAYERS skin.
And even if they do not open the the septic tank, there is NO possibility of gaining that sanity back. It just ends up being this big open ended question that haunts the agents for the rest of their lives. It’s a shotgun scenario. It’s a jump off point. I’m personally intrigued by the nature of the horror, the “Other.” It could easily be added into a campaign as a reoccurring threat that dogs them the rest of the campaign.
I also ran this with 5 newbs. And one of them came up with the best bit of lore about “the cowboy years” I could ever hope for that led to them opening up the tank. We recorded it and it’ll be posted as well at some point in the future.
The extended noise of sheer drunken incomprehension that Ross made when Dan asked “can I hack to own a gun?” was the most amazing sound I’ve ever heard.
Time stamp for that?
I read this one when looking into DG and loved the idea, and I think you guys pulled it off excellently. I don’t think using the mechanics to push untested agents into looking inside the tank was particularly bad – if anything the metagaming was the agents themselves being so determined to follow through on orders given their lack of experience with the supernatural. It’s almost unavoidable given our knowledge of the genre but the stuff Delta Green calls for is way beyond the norms of anything but the darkest black book operatives.
And you know… I would have enjoyed playing a game where my team never knew if they burned an innocent woman to death. I wouldn’t particularly have enjoyed listening to a 30 minute game where the team didn’t encounter anything weird.
In the AP someone called the LUCK check as POW x5 ,but in the DG Agents Handbook, it says it is just a 50% roll. Were you using an older rule set or borrowing rules from CoC?
Borrowing rules from 6E CoC. Old habits die hard.
I just ran this scenario for the first time, slightly different ending, the DEA agent of the group reversed an SUV over Marlene through the 20 gas cans, into the FBI agent who’d just failed his SAN roll and was shooting at her. Then the fibre glass septic tank gave way. Coup de grace was administered by the CIA analyst who dropped a paving slab on Marlene’s head, then they torched the whole mess just to make sure, leaving behind their poor crushed incinerated colleague and Marlene’s bodies. I fully intend to have the Other possess his body and crawl into the woods…
Not sure about other states, but California has a 10 day waiting period for purchasing firearms. Also, purchasing with an out of state license would be difficult. Taking the 6 hours to find a gun illegally actually would have been the quickest option.