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Thursday, December 3

Chapter 49: No Pain, No Gain - Introduction

This story hour is a combination of the scenario from At Your Door, "No Pain, No Gain," by Barbara Manui, Chris Adams, and L.N. Isinwyll, Dinner With Susan by Kelvin Green, and Goddess by Dr. Michael C. LaBossiere. 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) played by Jeremy Ortiz (http://jeremyrobertortiz.blogspot.com)
• Kurtis “Hammer” Grange (Fast/Dedicated Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster
• Joseph “Archive” Fontaine (Dedicated Hero/Acolyte) played by Joe Lalumia

Up to this point, we've established that Dawn Biozyme has been dabbling with "Mother's Milk," that it comes from Shub-Niggurath, and that several of the spawn of said Great Old One have gotten loose. The team barely, just barely, defeated a fully grown Dark Young. Now it's time to up the stakes.

It all starts with Noelle Rand's disappearance, a photographer for Full Wilderness' Ecotopian magazine.

That connection is Cynthia Dexter, and she will be one of the many casualties as the agents run and gun their way through this scenario. But first, we start with the Mother of Pus, replacing the flabby monstrosity in Dinner with Susan. She's more disgusting than difficult, and it set the tone for just how gruesome the worshippers of Shub-Niggurath can get. This scenario was flesh-crawlingly gross, especially when Archive gets infected…

Next is a series of ambushes between cultists of Cynthia Dexter's Sisterhood of New Potential. We also get to see Fiona Lin-Wei back in action.

Finally is the scenario we've all been dreading: No Pain, No gain. The one with the horny giantess, talking dog, "Jennikins" and a railroad ambush. I played it straight – I used d20 rules for an explosion and cave-in and gave the agents a decent chance to escape. But they didn't.

So you know what happens next. In my defense, the only thing I changed was Willie. I changed him from Clifford the Big Red Dog to Rover from the Prisoner. This whole scenario turned very, very strange, but at no point did the players feel it was comical or out of sync with the rest of the conspiracy narrative. In fact, much to my surprise, they enjoyed it very much. more

Labels: d20 modern

posted by Mike Tresca at 6:37 AM

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