Mayday Plays - Doomed to Repeat, Campaign Diary 1 for Ep. 22 "Off The Books"

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

In this supplementary audio covering the events of Ep.22, Sergio discusses everything from the Handler's perspective. Get a refresher on the show's events at the end of Arc 2 and Sergio's goals for Arc 3. Learn behind-the-scenes secrets about each agent and the homebrewed mechanics for Tuck's new abilities. Tuck's unnatural abilities https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kctMUWSxE9p8kVpe3uf_UGrPHepWZKpQ6UOsZ1NEbI4/edit#gid=0 We've got merch! https://ko-fi.com/maydayrp (t-shirts and stickers) Thanks for checking out our channel! We offer a bunch of art, music, and behind-the-screen access on our Patreon; https://www.patreon.com/maydayrp, including access to our discord server! We started as a podcast! Listen to us @: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mayday-plays/id1537347277 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5vdTgXoqpSpMssSP9Vka3Z?si=73ec867215744a01 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mayday-roleplay Here are some of our other socials; Twitter: https://twitter.com/maydayroleplay Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maydayrp/ Website: https://maydayroleplay.com/ Thanks for your support! Broadcasted live on Twitch -- Watch live at https://www.twitch.tv/maydayroleplay

Hey there everybody, my name is Sergio and if you are watching this you probably already know that I am the handler for Mayday's Delta Green campaign doomed to repeat. If this is your first time seeing my face or visiting our channel, thanks for tuning in. I thought it would be fun to start a campaign diary covering Arc 3 since I didn't really do it for Arc 1 or 2, never too late to start, but I'm going to try and release these with every new episode release. I'm hoping these discussions lend some insight into how we produce the show, how I think as a handler when I'm preparing for the campaign and some of the challenges I ran into as we ran it. I know that I got a lot out of watching campaign diaries of people like Matt Covell so I'm hoping to accomplish the same.

Full disclosure, I am recording this months after the session was played, we've edited and mastered it since and turned it into episode 22. So I think this is good because I have some distance and I can talk about it with some perspective, but I might get one or two facts wrong, so bear with me. Okay, so where do we begin? I suppose the beginning makes the most sense. For those of you familiar with ARKs 1 and 2, you can skip to the next section, but in the meantime, I'm going to recap for everybody else.

Delta Green is an award-winning TTRPG about the secret struggle of agents, mostly Americans in the Armed Forces or government, trying to fight back a natural foes that seemingly pervade our world. Think true detectives and ex-files. The Dijkstra Mechanics are deadly, like Call of Cthulhu. In fact, the original 90s version of Del Degrean was a supplement for Call of Cthulhu. It's also the complete opposite of the power fantasy that you can experience playing games like D&D, your sanity and bonds with NPCs a road over time, lending to a dark and nihilistic view of our place in the universe. Thoroughly love crafty and perfect for players that want to win but at a cost. AKA, made a roleplay.

By the way, there's going to be a lot of spoilers for arcs 1 and 2 and 3, I suppose, so turn away now if you haven't caught up or listened to episode 22. So in arc 1 we meet the characters or in this case agents, there's Tuck, Samil, Warp, Merit, Hyde and Boomer. Three of them have been assigned as researchers and the other three have been assigned as the security detail to keep those researchers alive. Those aren't their real names by the way, but aliases that they use to keep their identities

hidden. By the end of our two, most of them learn each other's full names. It just seems like the natural course of trauma bonding between secret agents. We also learn the premise of the campaign. These agents have been assigned by the program to piece together this sorted history of the organization in an effort to learn from the past, in order to fight the enemies of our future. Sound straightforward enough, but as we learn by the second episode, there is nothing that simple in Delta Green. While investigating one Clyde Bauman at his isolated cabin, they find that Clyde was

also intrigued by the program's history and has created a conspiracy court board of his own. This was a device I introduced early on into the campaign, so the players had many threads to pull and many angles to explore. Their discussion of the conspiracy, however, was interrupted when Bowman's wife, Marlene, was found in the septic tank. Those of you familiar with the scenario last things last, know what happens next. Shenanigans ensued, Marlene was released, and then neutralized. The agents fled the scene shortly after, but little did they know that Marlene's soul was still around and would come back to hunt them in arc 2. Speaking of, in arc 2, the story continues, and the scope broadens as the agents

learn that the program is just one of two factions who consider themselves the true inheritors of Delta Green's legacy. Boomer even meets a leader from these outlaws, but Perennial is very quickly distracted when they spend basically the last half of the arc avoiding their own deaths, as Marlene returns for revenge. At the end of arc 2 things are left pretty grim. I wasn't planning on Marlene hurting them as badly as they did. Merid and Hyde have lost their day jobs, Tuck is shot through the chest by a cultist, but does survive albeit now with half a long. Warp has to give up the only sense of security that she has up until this point, in the bone-handled knife, and Boomer is made an offer to join March Technologies, which she has learned, is linked with the program that she is so desperately

trying to leave. Perennial has also effectively been disbanded by the program, but I purposely left that a little ambiguous because it still felt like there was a lot of story left to tell, and the players were enjoying themselves and seemed excited to go for another round. So although I was very satisfied with how ARK's 1 and 2 ended and would have been fine never running another Doom to repeat game, I decided to go another round. And so here we are discussing ARK 3. We ended ARK 2 on 2 things, both related to Tuck, that shaped much of what I think arc 3 has turned out to be. You see,

just before the end of arc 2, Merit agreed to doing a favor for the security director of the program, and this guaranteed Tuck an experimental surgery that might repair her lungs. It worked, and it raised her damaged constitution from something like a 4 to a 6. But more on that in a second. I like to end Arks and Sessions all on cliffhangers, and sure enough there had to be one for Arks too. In this case, it was that Tuck's long-l lost sister Mia, which she has been looking for the answers to her disappearance, has mysteriously reappeared, in the same place where she was lost 30 years

ago, Yosemite National Park. Some handlers and agents might recognize this setup to the scenario, as Operation Fulminate, Sentinels of Twilight. I like the way that we've been able to tee up certain scenarios in advance, sometimes by many sessions. I think this is an effective way to get listeners who are familiar with Delta Green's lore excited for what's to come. Most of my players don't have a lot of knowledge about Delta Green lore, so all of this is just new to them. Okay, so the stage has been set by ARK2, and now it's time to design ARC3.

The first question that seems obvious to ask is, where do I go from here? What do I do with all of this information? I like to start where I think it's best for every DM, GM or handler to start, and that's by talking to your players. Our game is unscripted, but that doesn't mean everything is necessarily improvised. We have lengthy conversations about what the players want to accomplish, versus what avenues I would encourage them to explore, to accomplish those goals. It's kind of like directing an actor, except you're both writing the script at the same time as you film it. I suppose the production of curb your enthusiasm is the closest analogy that I can come to.

So after talking with each player, it's now time to start designing the campaign. And usually I do this by thinking about each character individually and decide what to throw at them and kind of guess at how they might react. Let's start with Boomer. I love Boomer as a character because she is the complete opposite of what you think of when you think of an agent boat in her Manorisms characteristics and the fact that she desperately wants out of the program But she stuck in it in her backstory. It's because she was caught messing around and servers She shouldn't be on and so the program's kind of holding her blackmail trying to get her to do what they want. In the meantime, they've discovered that this algorithm she has created is very effective

and by the end of arc 2, they offer her a job to purchase it outright and to work with March and by extension the program using their algorithm. She says yes in our first episode of arc 3, which kind of surprised me a little bit. She was so gung-ho about leaving that when she decided to play the game, I just thought it was a nice surprise. So I decided to reward her with a, I think, a simple mechanical benefit. She's effectively rich by agreeing to this. They pay her a very handsome 2.5 million dollars. And because she's rich, I just thought it would make sense that she would now have a bonus.

For requisition roles at a major and under expense, I decided that she could do it at a plus 20%. Delta Green doesn't have a lot of advancement. There's not a lot of leveling up. So I like to give the players little bonuses that pertain to their character when they do something interesting or surprising. Stay tuned to see how or if she takes advantage of this bonus in later episodes. We go next to Merritt, who is a wreck. He is clearly not taking his force retirement well. He describes himself as shabbly dressed and unshaven. What happened to Merritt in arc 2 was terrible, and I would feel bad if it wasn't for the fact that Caleb has reassured me on many occasions that he has having a very fun time playing the tortured human calculator.

Caleb is a player after my own heart, who has fully embraced the dark tone of Delta Green. He purposefully played an obnoxious character in arc 1 with the intent of breaking him in arc 2 thereby redeeming him in the audience's eyes. This is advanced roleplay here folks. It's one of the reasons why I love sitting at the Mayday table, watching players willingly take abuse to kind of reinforce a character arc. Again, speaking with Caleb, we wanted to create a situation in arc 3 where Merit could finally redeem himself. That's his theme for this arc I decided.

Merit sits on a fence. Is he a cold-blooded killer who is just another cog in the wheel and does the job that the program asks of him, or is he a person just looking for direction, just looking for purpose and is willing to break the rules when it means for the greater good or for the people that he cares about? It's why there are three instances in his opening where I challenge his sense of following the rules. If you missed it, listen to his section

again to notice. They're mundane, but they're meant to, I think kind of elicit the thought in the player. Do you straddle the fence? Do you do the right thing? Or do you always follow the rules? I can't wait to reveal what his last choice is in this arc. We then go to warp and hide, and I wanted to at first make it seem like warp was in trouble. I described her as panting and sweating, and also in the same room as hide. In arc 2, the two characters earned a history with each other, where warp was taken hostage by Hyde's second personality Seeks. Warp managed to knife her with that bone-handled knife I mentioned earlier, and escaped. Both players decided that that event grew them closer together.

I was hoping for a kind of fake out moment here, but I'm not sure if it really worked. Let me know what you thought. Last dark, I felt that Warp had kind of gotten the short end of the stick. She had taken custody of the bone-handled knife, and I had homebrewed that it was quite deadly, and ended up being integral to Marlene's demise, but not in the way that you might expect. Just thinking about harming somebody with it meant that it would kind of move on its own, and it would give you a bonus to the attack. Its abilities were revealed to grow test effect when a home invader forced warp to use it against them.

I think warp made the right moral decision to destroy the bone-handled knife, but I also noticed that it not only made her vulnerable, but I could tell that Zach was disappointed. It was a great item, and I could see the gears in their head turning about, oh, all the ways that I could use this and maybe make it become more of an aspect of my character. Maybe an obsession about it could grow. At the end of arc 2, Warp attempted to gain some skill in melee weapons and unfortunately had failed, but Eli brought up a very interesting proposition for arc 3.

Hey maybe Warp and Hyde are together and Hyde has been giving them knife lessons. I love the idea so much that I decided you know what, let's do it. I had Warp roll some dice and increased their melee weapons roll. I also thought it would be fun if Warp just had a bonus for being near-hide as they have gained a kind of camaraderie with them and so I said plus 20% to all melee weapons attacks while you are in the vicinity of hide. Sometimes you just have to be generous to make sure that things still feel fun for players, even in a game like Delta Green. Now Hyde is an interesting character because from Arc 1, Eli and I discussed

that we wanted to reveal their backstory through a historical scenario. All the characters have backstories, but talk and hide have very particular special backstories that are tied to specific scenarios. It's really been one of the funnest parts about designing this campaign for Mayday, finding ways to weave all of these excellently written scenarios into the framework of our story. Even with a very clear cut premise and expectation of where scenarios are going to come from, I do think we managed to surprise the audience with all the ways that we tie the relevancy of a scenario into the first two arcs.

Then there's Tuck. As I thought about arc 3, I realized Tuck was very important. Not a main character important. Obviously we want to avoid that in tabletop RPGs. But her character and her morality had very clearly become a kind of linchpin that Perennial operated on, where they would make a decision that was usually morally in line with what Tuck wanted to do. And so I realized I needed to kind of poke Tuck morally in order to see where Perennial might stand

and if they could survive not having a moral compass. If you've already listened to episode 22, you can tell that there's something different about Tuck. At the end of arc 2, Merit was able to get that experimental surgery for her and it did heal her. Tuck accepted the surgery knowing that March Industries was involved through the umbrella corporation of Ansel. So as the handler, I believe that the players were agreeing to the obvious repercussions.

I also discussed this with Lev at great detail to make sure that they were fully on board. Up until Caleb had made this suggestion, I had not really thought about doing anything special with Tucker at the end of arc 2. I figured that we would just retire her and Lev would roll up another character. But Caleb's idea sat in my mind for a few minutes and I loved what it inferred, that for a price, bring Tuck back. Tuck would unnaturally heal and then I would have a great material for arc 3. Let's discuss this price that Lev has agreed to.

The surgery is meant to be like a skin graft where some artificial flesh is grafted onto tux lung and it heals. I think of it as the compound begins to replicate the localized cells becoming like them. What the agents don't know is that this compound is made from ARD15. Those of you familiar with Delta Green lore know that it's basically boils down to alien tissues.

So that got me thinking. Okay. It should have a benefit in the short term, but then be negative in the long term. This is Delta Green, after all. I did want there to be some kind of mechanics that the player could figure out, so I work with Vince on designing it. It all basically hinges on the sanity check. If the agent fails from this point on after the surgery, they must roll a D10.

That number is then permanently added to whatever attribute feels appropriate. Naturally, this excited Lev, once they learned about it, but we haven't yet reached the other side of this mechanic system. Because you see what I didn't share with lev is that there is seemingly no limit to the attribute progress. You could easily reach over 18 for multiple attributes, and the moment that that agent reaches 18 on two attributes, the real fun begins. Agents with two attributes over 18 begin mutating and growing wildly misshapen. Subsequent sanity loss and attribute gain will further disfigure the agent. The attributes selected also grants the agents further bonuses. If strength is increased then they have 40% bonuses to all strength based skills.

The downsides are first, not that bad. Exhaustion for a time, extreme hunger where all you want to eat is raw meat, painful migraines, that sort of stuff. Depending on which attribute was selected. I'm sharing a Google Drive link to the mechanics that we devised in the description below if you want to spoil what will happen to Tuck. Feel free to steal it to use it at your table as well. So I've just revealed to you a major plot point about where the arc and Tuck's fate are going. I'm sure half of the handlers are probably saying why would you give an

agent such an OP ability, let agree to do this, and it does seem like they're having fun using the mechanics. They've made mention in the first episode alone that there's definitely going to be repercussions, so they're well aware. With talk, I wanted to see what would happen if the moral linchpin of the group was given unlimited power. Would they wield it responsibly? I totally recognize that Delta Green is not a power fantasy, like I said earlier, yet these mechanics clearly give one agent a significant advantage over the others. Again, in the short term.

In the long term, this almost guarantees their demise as they mutate and change and lose their identity. I'm looking forward to the audience finding out what happens next with Tuck. Now you'll notice that there is no mention of Sam Iel. Just to be a front, he's not going to appear in this arc. Unfortunately, after recording about four sessions with Aaron, he had to step down from participating with the show, and we found ourselves with an unexpected challenge.

And sometimes this happens, especially in home games. People move, or their schedules change, and they're no longer available, and we're left with a difficult task of gracefully exiting a character. We debated a lot about what to do. Like I said, we had about eight hours in the can worth of recording sessions, but it would be impossible to keep Sam Iel's audio as it stood and transition him smoothly out of the show. So we chose the harder task of editing him out.

Everyone stepped up to the plate and I think we've done a pretty seamless job of filling in the blanks. As it stands, Tuck simply isn't able to get a hold of Sam I.L. in the beginning of the episode. It kind of works for the character. And it's not like Sam I.L. doesn't exist in the greater context of the story. He just couldn't make it to this opera. And I don't believe that it's entirely over. I'm hoping to find a satisfying resolution to his side of the story.

If you recall at the end of our two, Samayel was flirting with danger by taking out a suspected avatar of Near Lathotep in Dr. Hooks. The Samayel situation was an unfortunate pivot that we had to make, and I decided to be transparent about it in this video, because one, it's a relatively obvious change, if you're familiar with the show, and maybe to somebody who has or is dealing with a similar situation, my gains from inspiration from this. You need to always do what's best for your game and your friends who are at the table, and for us, starting over just wasn't an option.

Okay, so now you see where my head is at and what I want to explore with each PC this arc. What's nice about ending a campaign on a big cliffhanger is that the initial thrust of the next arc is now ready for me to play out. The players know what they're doing, and in this case, they are going to Yosemite to support Tuck. In the original scenario, the missing child is a boy named Brandon McGill. But like I said earlier, Tuck Backstory was nearly a perfect match,

and so Brandon became Mia. I like making scenarios personal. It raises the stakes and always makes for an interesting back and forth between the players as they argue about what is the selfish thing to do over what should be done for the greater good. I think that's a major theme in this arc. And in my opinion, it's important to find a way to always give the players challenging questions to answer, especially in horror games. In this arc, I wanted to see what would happen if one agent was given near limitless power and how the others might react.

There is a lot more that I want to discuss about for this arc, but I need to hold my tongue because it's just the first episode. Look out for another campaign diary once the next episode has been released. Unfortunately, I can't really give you an exact date for the next Doom to repeat episode to come out because the truth is that we are laying the tracks down as the train moves. We are mastering each episode as we go. But rest assured, there are 10 more episodes that we will be releasing throughout the coming year.

Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next time.