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Monday, July 28

Chapter 16: Operation Countdown - Introduction

This scenario, “Operation: Countdown,” is a series of D20 Modern missions from RPGObjects’ Modern Dispatch 15, 35, and 43 by Charles Rice. You can read more about Delta Green at http://www.delta-green.com. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!

With SINNER free and several of my own Combat Mission scenarios hinging on the capture of a middle-eastern terrorist, it was time to have Saladin, the leader of Al-Hazzan, finally get caught by Majestic-12. There was just one problem: I didn’t want Saladin to be caught “off camera.” I’ve come to the conclusion that all interesting action should have the PCs at the center of it, and the capture of a major terrorist leader was no exception. So I didn’t just need one scenario, I needed a few to lead up to the capture of the terrorist leader. Searching RPGNow finally turned up what I was looking for.

Fortunately, Hammer is fluent in Arabic and was thus perfectly positioned to track down a terrorist leader. Caprice took care of the explosives (of which there were many). And Archive? Well Archive pretty much got his ass kicked by the bad guys.

I started out with Gun Runners from Modern Dispatch #43. This was a good way to jump into the action quickly. What didn’t quite make sense is that the agents know of a convoy but in the scenario are struggling to catch up. Instead, I had the agents lay the trap. It didn’t make things easier for them in any case. The next scene takes place on a boat involving explosives, which becomes an unfortunate pattern – there’s a 1 in 20 chance of accidentally setting off munitions each round of firearms combat, regardless of whether or not someone actually misses. This rule was…catastrophic, and the players weren’t too happy with the outcome.

Operation Dry Country from Modern Dispatch #15 is much more interesting because it requires some subterfuge on the part of the agents. There’s an interesting moral quandary the agents face in pulling off their plan.

Finally, I ran Leads and Complexities from Modern Dispatch #35. This is the best of the bunch, involving a switcheroo and an explosive finale in a warehouse. It would be easy if it was just about blowing up the bad guy, but the agents were specifically tasked with capturing Saladin alive. [MORE]

Labels: d20 modern

posted by Mike Tresca at 6:42 AM

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