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

Monday, December 15

Chapter 28: Operation Tucker - Introduction

This scenario is a combination of “Operation Ravenheart” from Pyramid Magazine by C.A. Johnson and “Far Voices” by Rich Redman. 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 (http://michael.tresca.net)
• Jim “Jim-Bean” Baxter (Charismatic Hero/Telepath) played by Jeremy Ortiz (http://www.ninjarobotstudios.com)
• Kurtis “Hammer” Grange (Fast/Dedicated Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster
• Hank “Guppy” Gupta (Smart Hero/Field Scientist) played by Joseph Tresca (http://www.creepyportfolio.com)
• Sebastian “Caprice” Creed (Fast/Smart Hero/Techie) played by Bill Countiss

The campaign is starting to take on a life of its own. Drawing from the protagonists that appeared in previous scenarios and the general course of events, I’ve started to come up with natural connections that help suggest new scenarios. For example, Operation Ravenheart is about a company agent pursuing the CEO of a toy company, and in Far Voices a certain person is looking for the toy. By combining the two scenarios, it gave me the opportunity to wrap up Agent Tucker's personal history, as well as provide a warning to Jim-Bean as to what could happen to him if he's not careful. After all, in the last scenario, Tucker should have been dead, but he wasn't. There's a price for that kind of power, and its name is PROJECT RECOIL.

Because this scenario takes place in a toy warehouse, I tried to maximize the tension. In the original scenario, the bad guy is after a specific toy, and "by now, all the customers that wanted [the toy] have one. So the tired, frustrated, angry people have already left." Boring! I preferred instead to have the agents deal with an angry mob of soccer moms battling it out while the two opposing teams of agents try to out maneuver each other without hurting innocent civilians. As inspiration, I used the scene from A Galaxy Far, Far Away, where a seething crowd struggles to catch one Star Wars figures in a toy store.

The second half of this scenario then takes place in the CEO's mansion (and the original target of the first team). Operation Ravenheart doesn't go into much detail here other than to indicate that the house has been modified by Greys to be “a gauntlet.” Cue my opportunity to put the agents into a death trap, as the two rival teams hunt the poor CEO (who at this point must be wondering why he ever got into the toy business) in a series of shifting rooms filled with traps. That's right, this is my opportunity to use the traps from Cube Zero!

The players were a bit confused as to what was going on, so I tried to sprinkle in some clues, such as the CEO dropping his day planner. I played Willy Wonka music every time a trap was activated, which had the suitable effect of making the scenario both wacky and violent. And of course, this scenario ends with a big bang, the kind we haven't seen since poor Blade…

Incidentally, Far Voices was originally going to be the first scenario we played. As you can imagine, it would have set a very different tone for the campaign. Although I didn't originally intend it to work out this way, the scenario pretty much played out like a battle against the Joker in one of his funhouses.

Defining Moment: Caprice, battling Bill in hand-to-hand combat, drops his pants. It only makes things much, much worse. [MORE]

Labels: d20 modern

posted by Mike Tresca at 6:52 AM

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.

---