Delta Green #2 — Snake Oil

 

Part two of a series of reviews and notes on the scenarios I ran for my Delta Green group. This one is set in scenic Saskethewan, just across the US-Canadian border with Montana. Snake Oil is another shotgun scenario (2021 contest, by David Guenther) introducing one of Delta Green's antagonist organisations. It's also the first scenario I made a table build for using Dwarven Forge, and this scenario caused one of my players to ask for a slightly lighter tone for future games!

Couldn't resist building the biolab out of Dwarven Forge! The glowing vats are plastic bottles with strips of coloured felt and an led inside. They blew out the camera, but in person it gave a great impression of horrible worms swimming in liquid.

TEASER ON OPERATION MAP

My group has access to a Google Map with all operations that are available to their Cell. This is the text for Snake Oil:

Snake Oil

A mass grave in the Canadian wilds points at organ harvesting - or something darker. Do our northern friends a favor and investigate, eh?

Tier1 #Protomatter
COOKBOOK

Tier1 means this is available as an opening scenario and the #Protomatter tag refers to weird biotech experiments. COOKBOOK is the codeword hinting at the involvement of the UFO wranglers at Majestic-12 and the shady company March Industries.

REASONS FOR INCLUDING

Snake Oil does a great job showing what kind of experiments the Majestic-12 conspiracy is involved in to try and apply the knowledge they get from the Greys. In this case, we have a disgruntled scientist and her overachieving MSc student breeding alien worms. The healing slime those befanged beasts secrete is certainly useful, but it's less optimal that their prefered breeding ground is the local homeless population...

The scenario can easily be ported to other places. There's nothing tying it to Canada specifically, although it does make sense to perform horrifying experiments like these in a deniable location.

HIGH POINTS

Snake Oil is another shotgun scenario introducing one of Delta Green's antagonist organisations. It consists of a bit of light investigation followed by a discovery of revolting Unnatural experiments. In this case, the in-your-face bio-experiments on people are a great contrast with the more nebulous evil of the previous scenario I played with my group, which was all about disovering that Those Nazi Sorcerers Are At It Again.

WEAK POINTS

Shotgun scenarios are short by design; with 1500 words, there's enough space to sketch the antagonists and the shape of the investigation but not to detail them. Same goes for the illegal lab space. Nothing you can't improvise on the spot; the notes give enough of an outline to wing the investigation if you're good with creating contacts or sketching a map on the fly.

WHAT I ADDED AND CHANGED

I ended up jotting down a few extra notes about the investigation part, and added a mobile Green Box, one of Delta Green's storehouses of the possible useful, definitely weird.

Since my Cell was going in under cover identities as FBI investigators, I added liaisons on the Canadian side; one Royal Canadian Mounty officer at the border patrol, and one Saskatoon police lieutenant investigating the disappearance of homeless people.

I also added Majestic-12 operative Adolph Lepus under an assumed name, keeping tabs on his pet scientist and interrupting the break-in at the lab with a van full of special operatives to keep the pressure on my players. Had Lepus introduce himself and drop one agent's real name, which was a great way to trigger my players' paranoia.

HOW IT WENT DOWN

A nice short investigation, a steathy intrusion into a warehouse-turned-secret-biolab, players getting creeped out by the human experiments, and running from Majestic-12 spec ops while burning evidence. It won't be the last time.