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Saturday, May 30

Chapter 39: Dead Letter - Introduction

This story hour is a combination of “Dead Letter” by Adam Scott Glancy from Delta Green: Countdown and “Come for the Reaping” 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)
• Joseph “Archive” Fontaine (Dedicated Hero/Acolyte) played by Joe Lalumia
• Jim “Jim-Bean” Baxter (Charismatic Hero) played by Jeremy Ortiz (http://jeremyrobertortiz.blogspot.com)
• Hank “Guppy” Gupta (Smart Hero/Field Scientist) played by Joseph Tresca (http://www.eyeballistic.com)
• Kurtis “Hammer” Grange (Fast/Dedicated Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster

When I first started this campaign, my original promise was to deliver a game filled with zombies. It took nearly 40 sessions to finally deliver on that promise.

My primary issue with Dead Letter was that it provided a host of details without a clear plot to follow. It’s entirely possible to conduct a raid without encountering any zombies whatsoever (a crying shame!) or the Karotechia. So I of course manipulated the plot to ensure both Reinhard Galt, the Neo-Nazi cannibal, released the Sapphire pathogen just as the agents arrived, ensuring zombies of all types. What I didn’t plan on was the forethought of the players, who so energized the plot with their role-playing that they convinced Fiona Lin-Wei, an irritating hippy activist and one-note NPC, into a full-blown radical eco-terrorist. She became far more important than I ever imagined, and suddenly the entire campaign revolved around her: Hammer’s relationship with her, Archive’s Elder Sign, and the very future itself.

The only thing more shocking thing than delightful turn of events was how close this scenario mirrored the plot of the new Terminator movie. We all went to see it afterwards, and the similarities are eerie: the protagonist meets an exotic woman of mixed Asian/European descent and teams up with her, special forces raid a processing plant, encounter mindless humanoid killing machines, and finally a heavily accented and indestructible Austrian stalks our hero through a dangerous industrial site.

Defining Moment: When Galt is temporarily incapacitated by Archive’s spell, the agents have seconds to take him out. Jim-Bean knows just the solution. [MORE]

Labels: d20 modern

posted by Mike Tresca at 8:42 AM

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