The Things We Do for XP: Delta Green #3

Part four of a series of reviews and notes on the scenarios I ran for my Delta Green group. The third scenario with my main group was again a scenario mash-up. I used two existing scenarios as framing devices for something I wrote myself. Ever wondered how to turn a Mi-Go into a biological quantum computer and use it to win at stock trading? Read on...

I'm a longtime reader and fan of Throne of Salt, an old-school D&D blogger who also ventures into Call of Cthulhu themery. His...scene? scenario snapshot?...Minimalism is a masterpiece of scene-setting, with maximum vibes in minimal wordage. I just had to try and run it. As an in-medias-res opening it lacks a set-up of course, so I added that in via "three days earlier" based on the shotgun scenario Promises (Jon Hook, shotgun contest 2018). I also wrote a weird location of my own to stitch the two together:

Overview of the various platforms floating in the dark subdimension of the Buffer, an extradimensional space I added to this scenario. A cargo elevator takes people from place to place.

Rickety catwalks between metal platforms in the buffer. Handcrafted cargo elevator dangling from rails that should be somewhere above in the darkness. The controls to move the elevator in the XYZ coordinates are on one platform, all the interesting phenomena are on others, forcing the players to split up.

Engineering space in the void of the Buffer, with entropy eating away at the (what should be metal) structure.

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 Promises / Minimalism:

Promises / Minimalism

Report to the court house in Leavenworth to hear about transporting an inmate who - after 30 years - is ready to reveal where he hid the heads of his victims.

Tier2 #Protomatter #TomeRot

PLUTO KOBOLD // COOKBOOK

Tier2 means a slightly more impactful scenario than the Tier1's we've seen so far. #Protomatter is again weird biotech; #TomeRot is a new tag, for the seductive ways in which the Mythos tempts you to use it. PLUTO KOBOLD is Delta Green's codeword for the Mi-Go, and COOKBOOK we already know as a link to Majestic-12.

REASONS FOR INCLUDING

Minimalism gives me an adrenaline rush every time I read its 163 words. I'm immediately trying to imagine how the group got there (see below), what the changing lights in the sky behind them mean (on first reading I thought "enraged Mi-Go", then tracked back to figure out what made it so angry), what to feed the lobster gun (depleted uranium or tungsten shavings, duh).

Promises has such a great hook: someone murdered their little sister and her family, including the state senator husband, and disappeared their heads. They then get caught and incarcerated and spend 30 years keeping quiet until they're willing to talk to Delta Green. The pay-off at the end of Promises I find incredibly weak, but I don't need that pay-off if I can transition into Minimalism!

HIGH POINTS

HIGH-OCTANE OPENING, which immediately supplied the high-energy chase scene I needed to deliver to my players to wrap up the scenario.

One of the characters is afraid (wisely so...) of getting burned because he's in the operation under his true identity. In Leavenworth he spots a person he already saw on his first mission for Delta Green: Stephen Alzis, millionaire philantropist playboy elder god, who is interested in the agent's troubles and offers to help. Alzis scribbles down his phone number and says he'll be in touch. This ends in the player trading Unnatural artefacts to Alzis for help at the end of this scenario, and sets up his demise in a session or three.

WEAK POINTS

Obviously in 163 words, Minimalism isn't a full-fledged scenario. I ended up writing a road trip and inventing a mini-cult of collaborators with the headhunting murderer.

I think the pay-off of Promises is a bit weak, but it has a great hook and framing device. Road trip with a convicted murderer and head-taker? Awesome!

WHAT I ADDED AND CHANGED

Added a hook for one of my players, who runs a US Marshal; they get called by a buzzing voice requesting their presence at Leavenworth to escort a convicted murderer to the site of his victims' bodies. Next up for the same treatment is the group's forensics specialist. It's worth noting that the characters have been very careful keeping their true identities a secret.

Added a lawyer for the convict, to go with the cell on the mission and verify that the terms of the plea deal are honored.

Added backstory for the murderer, as a former Majestic-12 technician who together with three partners in crime had managed to capture an injured Mi-Go. The murderer then figured out from texts collected by Majestic-12 how to use a continuous computer-driven chant from his victims' undead heads to bind and control the Mi-Go. Going mad from the effort, he then blacks out and wakes up a few towns over, gets picked up by law enforcement and incarcerated.

Meanwhile, murderer's allies install the Mi-Go-turned-biocomputer inside The Buffer, an extradimensional space Majestic-12 knows how to access with hypergeometry. The access point is a shipping container constantly shuffled around the railway network. Enter on one side, exit via the doors on the other side into the vast entropic darkness of The Buffer. Here multiple platforms hang in the black, reachable via rickety, pitted metal walkways and a screeching cargo container.

The captured Mi-Go is hidden deep below the cluster of support and infrastructure buildings, and has been quietly getting control of the computer system that keeps it captive. Enough to scour the world for enemies of Majestic-12, synthesize a voice pattern to convince the original murderer it's time to renew the bindings with fresh victims, and rope in Delta Green.

HOW IT WENT DOWN

Absolute chaos, shootouts at a container yard, 150MPH chase scenes pursued by enraged Mi-Go, sweettalking aggressive laywers, paradimensional byways, an extending lobster gun firing depleted uranium making deals with the devil, and that bone-deep feeling of exhausted contentness that comes with entertaining each others with high-energy nonsense for hours on end.

If you read through all that weirdness, here's an alternative Dwarven Forge build for the Buffer, with some scatter from other minis. I made this version to show off in the Dwarven Forge discord community and as a technical challenge: how to suspend platforms without any components touching the bottom plate. Plates ('terrain trays') are neoprene over metal, so you can use heavily magnetised pieces like the Burrows set as supports. Works surprisingly well.