Delta Green #4 — STOP REPO

Part five of a series of reviews and notes on the scenarios I ran for my Delta Green group. The scenario we ran is STOP REPO, in which the cell needs to clean up the Green Box of a recently deceased operative. The scenario was first published in the 2017 shotgun contest, then picked up for publication in the magazine The Unspeakable Oath.

After the previous scenario, two of the characters are under the microscope for running an op without proper Delta Green instruction. ("A trapped Mi-Go tricked us" goes over less well than you'd think.) The cell get a stern talking-to from their handler, and two of the the Agents get summoned to court over the disappearance of a high-powered lawyer during their last operation. Ah, the joy of working without a cover identity. It seems like the pair are going to jail for a long time. But one payphone call to the Marshal's new friend Stephen Alzis, and opposing counsel gets a phone call that turns their hair white, after which the case is dropped immediately. The rest of the group took careful notes on the shenanigans their fellows unleashed.

TEASER ON OPERATION MAP

My player group has access to a Google Map with all the operations that are available to their Cell. This is the intro they had for STOP REPO:

 

STOP REPO

A forgotten Green Box stash is being auctioned off. Get back anything that can't fall into civilian hands.

Tier2 #OddJobs

Tier2 is the kind of scenario you get after cutting your teeth at least a bit; #OddJobs are miscalleneous ops without a specific opposition or theme. The rest is pretty clear, no? I always agonise over how much information to put in these teasers. Has to be enough to whet the appetite, but not enough to spoil the scenario.

REASONS FOR INCLUDING

A good palate cleanser after the madness of the previous scenario. Also a nice op that DG could test these unruly operatives with.

The premise: an older DG agent has suddenly passed away, which means that the Green Box (clandestine storage) they were maintaining in the long-term parking at Boston airport needs urgent love and care. Seems there's also a clean-up of the old junk in the parking, which means a lot of cars are getting auctioned that might have unnatural materials hidden in the back seat.

The scenario keeps the reason that the previous Green Box guardian died completely ambiguous, which was an excellent loose thread to have the characteres worry about. Did he skip town? Die of natural causes? Or something worse?

HIGH POINTS

Having to convince frat boys, three-job single moms and crazy car collectors that yes, the junker they have their eyes on will need to be inspected by highway patrol / health and safety / airport security before leaving the premises.

WEAK POINTS

None? Honestly, this scenario is great and you should run it for your group.

 

WHAT I ADDED AND CHANGED

• a schedule of when which NPC would buy what car (and what Unnatural or illegal contents were in the trunk)
• two Tcho-Tcho gang members looking to get back the brick of drugs that their friendly neighbor stored for them in one of his junk cars
• a black helicopter with a Majestic-12 team to harass the half of the cell who were doing a nightly break-in at the auction lot. As one of the players (whose character was miles away) said: "tick-tock bitch!"

 

HOW IT WENT DOWN

One high point was a chase across a gated community in golf carts and a sandwich delivery van. Another was two low-level Tcho-Tcho gangsters following the group via blatantly unnatural means, while being insufferably stupid thugs. Loved to add cut scenes to the pair, it both added tension and some much-needed levity.

Finally, one of the players payed off his debt to beloved wacko sorceror Stephen Alzis. In return for giving Alzis an artefact from the Green Box, the character asked for one favor for themselves, and a healthy trustfund for his daughter.

Alzis, who I've been playing as an insufferable fop, to his off-screen accountant: "Michael, is a trust fund something for poor people? Would 87 million dollars do, or is that too small an amount?"

Only after closing the deal did the player wonder out loud whether it had been a good idea to hand over this weird pack of cards to a powerful sorcerer. But hey, what could possibly go wrong?