Subscribe to Talien's Tower on Facebook, Twitter, email or via the Site Feed

Tuesday, June 17

Chapter 13: Grey Matter - Introduction

This scenario, “Grey Matter,” is a from the Conspiracy X sourcebook, Nemesis. You can read more about Delta Green at http://www.delta-green.com. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!

Our cast of characters includes:

• Game Master: Michael Tresca
• Jim "Jim-Bean" Baxter (Charismatic Hero) played by Jeremy Ortiz
• Kurtis "Hammer" Grange (Fast Hero) played by George Webster

Sometimes my players throw me a curveball. In this case, I found out that one of the players couldn’t make it the night before the session. With only three PCs in total, this could have been a disaster. Fortunately, I had been planning to commit one of the agents to insane asylum, so this fit right in with the rest of the plan to make Guppy disappear.

The mission the two agents participated in turned out to be perfectly suited for their talents. Jim-Bean’s smooth-talking disguise (if you can call it that) and Hammer’s fast guns were precisely what was needed. The original scenario assumes the agents will basically sneak into the place, but once I saw how that the team was going to go through the front door, I decided their rivals would do the same. Overall, it was a fun if a little odd scenario.

I used footage from the real alien autopsy online to kick off the mission. Then I realized that, since Hammer had actually seen the aliens close-up, he was in a unique position to confirm the authenticity of the body. I also got the chance to introduce rival Majestic-12 agents into the mix and let the team know that even though they’re supposedly all on the same side, they can be wiped out at any time.

This is another one of those scenarios that, although it provides a means for the agents to walk through the front door by acting as one of the so-called experts, blithely assumes they will break into the place. It’s surprisingly light on details, such as where guards are placed, how security responds, etc. In fact, it’s much more focused on what the various NPCs will do rather than the response to a breach in security. Since there’s no map (a problem neatly remedied by Critical Locations), the scenario becomes even more confusing.

I had the script from Terminator 2 ready to use as a template for a rival team’s raid on the office building. But since the agents walked through the front door, I had to change tactics mid-stream. I decided the agents’ cover was so audacious it required a suitably ridiculous response. So instead of a stealth mission in the cover of darkness, the rival team was a covert op in the bright light of day. And I had a chance to test Jim-Bean’s capacity for fast talk. After all, why have a Charismatic Hero if he never gets to be Charismatic? [MORE]

Labels: d20 modern

posted by Mike Tresca at 9:23 PM

Want more? Please consider contributing to my Patreon; Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and the web; buy my books: The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games, The Well of Stars, and Awfully Familiar.

---