Mayday Plays - Doomed to Repeat, Campaign Diary #2 for Ep. 23 "FULMINATE"

Episode Date: November 26, 2023

Sergio is back with this supplementary video covering the events of Ep.23. He reveals what he altered about the scenario Operation Fulminate and all of the wild twists and turns within. We've got merch! 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; www.patreon.com/maydayrp, including access to our discord server! We started as a podcast! Listen to us @: Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mayd…ys/id1537347277 Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/5vdTgXoqpSp…73ec867215744a01 Soundcloud: @mayday-roleplay Here are some of our other socials; Twitter: twitter.com/maydayroleplay Instagram: www.instagram.com/maydayrp/ Website: maydayroleplay.com/ Thanks for your support! 00:00 Intro 00:44 The Shoggoths 2:30 Operation FULMINATE 3:50 Pacing in ttrpgs 4:14 The O'Shaughnessy Dam 5:36 Means to an end 6:40 Blue Beetle Tuck 7:29 Lucky players 8:13 Negative effects 8:38 Mia's secret 9:15 Encouraging Agents to be scary 11:25 Nice knowin' ya Joe 13:19 Story vs Mechanics 15:15 Outro

Hey everyone, Sergio here with campaign diary 2 for episode 23 of our Delta Green campaign doomed to repeat. I had to temper my comments for episode 1 because there was a lot I couldn't really talk about yet, but in this episode a lot happens and so I can get on with it. In case you didn't realize there are going to be a lot of spoilers for episode 23 and the scenario operation culminate. So if you're not caught up, I suggest listening to the episode before you continue. We return to the story in the middle of a sticky situation. The idyllic reunion of Tuck, also known as Haley, and her long-lost sister Mia has been interrupted by some kind of

eldritch flubber, as I believe Hyde refers to it later in the episode. This gray green goo with white veins has emerged out of Mia after she was exposed to hot water. Now, the scenario suggests that if the players bring hot water to Mia, this is what happens, but I thought things were moving a little bit slow and I needed to speed it up. So I had Ruhi and NPC do it. Oh, Jesus! A little dirty, but it had a great effect

and I think it was a good cliffhanger. In the scenario these flubbers are revealed to be modified shogoths that the strangers have cultivated as weapons. Delta Green and Fissionados know that shagoths are a kind of slave race that date back to alien civilizations that existed before humanity made its mark on the planet.

It's explaining the scenario that certain children, like Mia, have the capability of producing these things, I guess, inside of them. I don't know if that's established lore or just specific to this campaign, but the shogoth is terrifying on its own, and it's also a kind of relic of unknown history, so it felt essential to include in our perennial campaign. I don't think the players or the characters will ever make heads or tails of what these things are or why they are being included, but I did notice a through line between

Fulmanate and some of the other scenarios that we will inevitably play with Shagoth's, so make sure to stay tuned because you will see them showing up again. So let's talk about Operation Fulmanate. This scenario by Dennis Detwiller is infamously deadly, between the flubber and the strangers and driving in the storm. It's very easy for agents to die. I want to say most of my thoughts about this scenario for a future dead drop scenario discussion, but I understand now why it's a popular one. Yosemite is a great backdrop for this scenario, it's an evocative mystery surrounding the strange reappearance of, in our case, Mia, and it is notoriously deadly.

I think especially if the agents are caught out in the open with the strangers, which is something you can probably tell that I actively avoided by leaning heavily on the rain. The only clue to explore outside of Mia in this scenario is the Devil's Chair Monument, where Mia was originally found. In the scenario, it ends up basically being a dead end anyway. I think it's used to lure the agents out into the open so that they can interact with the strangers firsthand. But I decided not to include it. I've watched many playthroughs where the DMs take their time with the storm, letting it trickle in so that the agents have plenty of time to investigate the park, but I decided that keeping it contained to the

Ranger Station would be overall a better pace. To me, pacing is vital for producing a good actual play. Our recording sessions tend to be closer to 3 or 4 hours in length, and we do our best to edit them down to 2 hours. And I do realize that 2 hours is still a hefty chunk of time. So we try to keep everything down to what matters, and what is either driving character growth, or moving the plot forward, and we cut everything else. I did have one thing planned that I didn't get to enact and it involved the nearby Oshanasi Dam. I was ready for one of

the agents to get the bright idea to explore the dam and there I would have revealed to them that they could technically open the floodgates and in doing so they would flood the surrounding valley and the ranger station. I had in my mind this epic moment where some of the agents get the bright idea to break off from the ranger station and get to the dam to open the flood gates. And the strangers that are surrounding the ranger station would be swept away with the water and the agents would have enough time to run to their cars and get out. Of course this moment didn't happen at all and I realized now why.

I think this happens sometimes as a GM where you really hope the players take this very unlikely path in the hopes of a great moment. In the end I only mentioned the dam and passing. I realized now that if I had really wanted them to go to the damn, I should have put something there that they would need to investigate or gather to be relevant. Again, going back to pacing, I think going to the damn would have slowed things down too much, taken away from the Mia story, and ultimately I think the episode works as is. For those of you unfamiliar with the scenario Operation Fulminate, the basic antagonist is a race of human-like eldritch entities who live underneath the osemite

and some kind of alternate dimension. They are known as the kinyani and are typically portrayed as giant Native Americans. They aren't Native Americans at all, but it's clear that they are coded as such. I did have this mental image of the agents if they did go outside, suddenly looking at a tree and a giant person walking out from behind it and then just kind of staring and horror at it. The Kenyani are responsible for the storm, calling it forth like a spell or a ritual, and they are responsible for me as powers. You have to understand, I never really intended on resolving the scenario in so far as the Kenyani are concerned.

I didn't really expect the agents to go after them or to take the fight to their home. I wanted to set up just a surreal situation where Tuck's sister has returned, but then we get to exploring the fallout from her decision to take the child home with her. After much deliberation, the agents finally decide to make a run for their vehicles. Here the Kinyani make their move and attempt to get at Mia, but Tuck fails another sanity check, and when her cons score increases, I let Lev decide. Do you want to regain HP every round or do you want armor? They chose armor and so Tuck became Blue Beetle Tuck.

I'm kidding, but you get what I'm saying. That's pretty much the way I described it and Iridescent Shell grew over their body and they now had an armor rating of three. It was a lot of fun to watch Lev embrace the new abilities and be excited by them. It felt like a real hero's moment for Tuck. I don't think the agents would have had as much success, had Tuck not intervened and use their abilities. Everything was going according to plan.

In this final part of the scenario, the players were just hands down rolling better than I was. Their weapons were doing lots of damage, enough to get rid of a few of the kinyani and that blue bright flash. They don't die, but they are sent back to where they came from. Meas powers got used against one of the strangers, and I think both times I tried to pin the car, I rolled terribly, and the players just rolled better, so they got away. But not without one last surprise, the form of a bunch of children holding hands, keeping

the cars from going past and a kinyani hiding in the woods to attack them. It all ends with one of their cars in a ditch and a bunch of dead children in the street. Man, if somebody was watching this without any context, they would be very confused. Here we get our first glimpse of some of the negative effects of tux abilities. She pukes up blue bile for a few minutes on the side of the road. By now, Delta Green fans might realize I am inspired by the way ARD-15 acts in the scenario visit. And if you're familiar with that scenario, well, it implies a lot of other negative

effects to come. But more about those ramifications in another diary. The agents have effectively completed the scenario, and they now have Mia, a telekinetic child in their custody. In episode 22, the agents noticed a tiny bump at the back of Mia's neck. Little do they know that there is a small crystal embedded in the back of her neck neck. Little do they know that there is a small crystal embedded in the back

of her neck that is granting her these powers. If someone had the bright idea to remove it, well, she would be rendered back to a normal girl, her powers lost. Obviously, I don't want to telegraph this too early as it would pull all the tension out of the story, so I'm holding on to that card until the agents ever decide to investigate the bump further. As an aside, I really want to point out how much I love the way that Lev is showing off some of the more unhinged aspects of Tuck, talking about raising me like a family. I asked all the players before we began recording the very first arc to please find ways to make your characters scary. For merit, it was the threat of violence hidden behind the professional demeanor. For hide, it became the split personality.

For warp, it became her growing obsession with the unnatural. And now Tuck, it's her delusional thinking that she can ever have a normal life with her sister. I recommend for your tables to remind your players that the horror can also come from them. This is a good way of bridging that gap between the handler and the agents and making everybody be a part of the fun. Are we having fun yet? I did have one idea for Tuck that was absolutely diabolical, and maybe I forgot it because subconsciously I thought it was just too dastardly, and I didn't execute it, but I'll tell you what it was now. I think that it's offered as a suggestion in the scenario, but after all of this doting over Mia, I thought it would be horrifying, if Tuck witnessed, stumbling out of the woods another Mia, and then another, and another, and another, a series of clones that throw Mia's legitimacy into question. Instead, I went with the other option that the other children end up being basically

dead zombies that the Kinyani can control. I think one of the reasons I didn't use this idea is that because while the agents questioned Mia's authenticity, it wasn't really a serious sticking point. The agents are mostly all on board with helping Tuck. If I had seen more division between all of the agents, then maybe it would have been a good way of telegraphing to them that they were right. But instead, I went with a flow and decided that Mia was the real deal. If you subvert expectations too much, your players might feel cheated. Lev has gone all in on protecting Mia,

and if she turned out to just be a clone or not the real thing, it may have made it difficult for Lev to care. I could have deflated the narrative conflict too soon. So we come to the end of the session. Jo DeWant is an actual NPC from the supplemental book Labyrinth by John Scott Times, which is great by the way and you should pick it up and add it to your Delta Green collection. Anyway, Joe met his demise sooner than I would have liked.

I say that, but then again, I didn't really leave a lot of room for Joe to accept what was going on. He saw a bunch of dead children in the street and he works for the CMC, the Center for Missing Children. Of course, his motivation would be to get back to the Ranger Station to contact the authorities. And so, Meredith is going to merit and Joe joined those kids in the ditch. He can't keep getting away with it! It's a rough and emotional moment, but also a great place to end the session.

What some of you at home, and I think the agents are beginning to suspect, is that Joe was my outlaws connection. I had introduced them in ARC2, and I wanted to keep dangling that carrot in front of the agents in case they wanted to make contact again. I don't think Joe is a full-blown Delta Green agent, more of a friendly, and I think his San Francisco contact Delilah Sands is who sent him here as a kind of buffer to see just how serious the situation was. In the original scenario, Delilah Sands sends out a team of agents.

And I thought for a moment it would be kind of cool if two or three outlaw agents showed up. But then thinking about it, thinking about the number of agents in Perennial, I thought it would get too crowded. And Joe kind of served that same purpose without the same detriment of suddenly having a firefight with outlaw agents. I didn't want to spoil that connection that they had with the outlaws yet. Stay tuned to see if the Perennial agents ever actually communicate with the outlaws again.

This moment, Joe's death is also pivotal because it is by Marit Hanz, and he hits his breaking point in doing so. At least it's not another child, right? Reflecting on this episode, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some handlers who were upset that I wasn't more ruthless. The truth of the matter is that we have a story to tell that is bigger than what was happening in Yosemite. While I wouldn't say the characters have plot armor, I did prioritize the fact that all

of the agents dying in Yosemite would have made for a short arc. So I decided to tone down the deadliness of the scenario. But my players have become very invested both in our story and these characters. And so instead of perfectly emulating the mechanics of Delta Green, I have to focus more on the narrative structure and making sure that there is a satisfying conclusion. I do think Handlers feel an unnecessary pressure to not pull punches with a game like Delta Green, and while I agree that agents never dying is just as bad as them always dying, I think that there's a balance that needs to be struck, especially when you approach producing a show for an audience.

That is what the historical scenarios are all about. As you can tell, I am much more ruthless in those. In my opinion, horror and dread come from the threat of death and not the actual act. Death is definite, but the threat of death leads to that delicious player anxiety that we as handlers strive for. I want my players feeling anxious, not defeated. And so you have to constantly be ratcheting up the tension without blowing the air out of the room with an unexpected, unnecessary death.

Now I will kill you until you die from it. I've stated this before in our discord, but I'm not really interested in killing the agents. It's just too easy. That doesn't mean it can't happen, but what I'm actually interested in is driving them insane, breaking them, pushing them to the limit. That leads to drama, which leads to a compelling narrative. I'm curious to hear what you all think about death and danger in Delta Green. Make sure to let us know. But that's it for now. We'll meet again at the release of episode 24. Again, no official release state is planned, but we are trying to keep a three to four week schedule. We're hoping to release it by the end of December, but we might also choose to take our holiday break at that time,

in which case we will return in early January. We appreciate your patience as we work hard to release these episodes. In the meantime, make sure to like and subscribe so you can see more of our content. And if you're really digging what we're doing, there's always our Patreon, where just for $2, you can get access to our Discord, and a bunch of really cool behind the screen content. Go to patreon.com forward slash, MaydayRP for more. Stay safe, and I'll see you next time. behind the screen content. Go to patreon.com, forward slash, meda RP for more. Stay safe, and I'll see you next time.