Mayday Plays - 🕳️The Dead Drop - "A Delta Green Halloween", October 2023

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Sergio and Vince wear their spookiest costumes and discuss the upcoming 2023 shotgun scenario contest. We speak to Kevin Ham, the contest coordinator, and try to devise a shotgun scenario of our own. Finally, we discuss one of our favorites and the perfect Halloween scenario: Music From A Darkened Room. Delta Green Wiki https://fairfieldproject.fandom.com/wiki/Delta_Green_Wiki To submit an entry for the 2023 shotgun scenario contest, email [e-mail] Emails must include: A link to your scenario A title and short, one-sentence teaser description How you would like to be credited after the contest is over Cheat Sheet for Operation IAGO: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lorOgPmvaR_DbNp6w0cj4h1XvOfYmBHAKfkGRojKADM/edit?usp=sharing 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 including Vegas By Night 1-on-1 sessions 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! 00:00 Intro 01:49 The 2023 Shotgun Scenario Contest w/ Kevin Ham 12:15 Let's design a Shotgun Scenario 53:45 Scenario Discussion: Music From A Darkened Room 01:15:24 Happy Halloween!

Well hello friends and welcome back. My name is Sergio and I'm the handler for Mayday's Delta Green campaign Doom to repeat. With me again is Luonero himself, Black Project Gaming's Vince. How you doing buddy? Hey man, good to see you again and of course good to be here glad to have you all tuning in. If you're enjoying the show, please consider liking and subscribing to us on whatever platform you happen to enjoy us on. Reviewing us on Apple podcasts or Spotify helps boost our visibility and helps

us grow. If you want to help us out further there is always our Patreon where you can find extended versions of these episodes and even more Patreon exclusives. The candles are lit. The ceremonial dagger has been retrieved and the human sacrifice is thoroughly strapped down. Time to say your prayers and meet the dark man baby because you have found the dead drop. Vince, it's that special time of the year when even the terminally online begin to notice that the leaves are changing, the temperature is dropping, the pumpkin spice is flowing, and folks are actually looking forward to being frightened.

That is right, it is October, and what a perfect season to run Delta Green. In this monthly edition of the show, we will be speaking with Kevin Ham about the upcoming October Shaken scenario contest. We will try to design a Shaken scenario our own and we'll have a scenario discussion about the perfect Halloween one shot music from a darkened room. As always those of you who are tuning in, if you have questions or comments, if you want

to discuss a session of yours from music from a darkened room or any other game, please let us know. And if you want us to discuss certain topic, reach out. So, sirge, kind of writing on the back of your interview with the amazing night at the opera folks, Will, Melan bread, Kevin, Chief McLean, all those guys. Turns out you did another interview with Kevin to discuss this year's

shotgun scenario contest. For those of you who may not be aware, one of the longest running contests in the Delta Green community, and probably one of the more popular ones, has been the annual shotgun scenario contest, in which even the illustrious Caleb Stokes author of God's Teeth and one of the role-playing public radio gms has written, submitted, and won for his shotgun scenario. So absolutely a great contest, so much fun. What kind of stuff did you learn, man, getting to sit down and talk with Kevin about this? Well, I learned that the contest has kind of settled into a very specific style. It's a

1500 word or less contest. It begins October 31st and the last submission can get in by December 31st. So you better believe at the end of December or maybe in the new year we'll talk about the winning entries. But yeah, I sat down with Kevin. I just asked them some basic questions about the contest and for new folks what they can expect. There's a lot simpler than you'd think. It's a Delta Green scenario contest. The idea is that you write a very small scenario, so very condensed, very lean.

There's a lot of like apocryphal ideas of where the term shock incident came from, but I always think of it as like, some of you can grab off the shelf in an emergency very quickly, you know, pick it up and run it. So it's a 1,500-word or less scenario. So there's really no fluff, there's no, not a lot of room for like complicated lore. It's a very simple like here, some cultists or here is a interesting thing to chew on. Let the agents go deal with it. Veterans taking on a threat, like you can create pre-gents and it still works. It doesn't kind of against you, so it opens it up a little bit there. But generally the 1500 word thing has been there for most of the contest life. It goes back pretty far.

So an interesting thing about Kevin is that he has both submitted to the contest and now he is running it. He's taken it over from the person that ran it before. So I asked him what is the typical judging process, who decides it, and how do they come up with the decision? Yeah, I just picked my favorite, no, I'm just kidding. There's essentially two kind of parallel tracks there. So one is that anybody in their mother can vote on their favorite scenario. And that's just the popularity vote We call that like the people's choice vote people's choice award. It's just what what do people like that might be

They might look because it's got a cool name where it's it up Maybe their favorite their friend wrote it the favorite you know member of a little podcast wrote it Whatever that's the people's choice and it's pretty much a free for all and that's kind of how it used to be And then everybody who submits a scenario gets the cash of vote and that's a ranked choice voting. So that basically means you know if you're willing to put in the work to create a scenario you get of vote because you're you're qualified in the sense that you wrote something so you can decide what is good. And obviously we use ranked choice so otherwise everyone would just vote for themselves and nothing would matter.

So really it's like what is there an agreement on second choice? That's what wins the contest. Now during this interview, while you were talking with him, did he happen to mention what they specifically looked for in a winning entry? Like what are some of the factors that really push it over the top for them? I don't know, it's going to do well. It's always a surprise. But I think personally, a good entry

is something that I can quickly read through and run. So, well formatted in terms of character names or bolded or interesting things are bolded or if there's a clue, it's called out. So that picture of the scenario, you show up to your Dundas and Dragons night and the DM didn't show up or he's running it or he can't make it. You're like, hey guys, you've always wanted to play Delted Green Dragons night and oh the DM didn't show up or he's running or he can't make it you're like hey guys you've always wanted to put your green right let's do

something now you're on the spot you're like crap I don't want to run some complex things so you basically just pull one of these off the shelf you know what I've always loved you know last year's contest winner or whatever it's always a favorite you grab it you know it because you read it before but like you don't remember it so you you quickly say able to skim it. Hey, let's all take five minutes and make your head, check your pre-juns out real quick, you know, and then you're able to start running. So it's got to be runnable. And in shock and scenario contest, they have to be a little, they got to be a little zany,

not like over the top, but it's in terms of like, this is not a campaign you're going to best months in, where you need your character to survive and slowly uncover the myth of. So this is like a big, huge fight in the downtown, in Central Park, or trying to stop a huge monster, or this is a running shootout on a subway train. This is like really frenetic action packed.

So the second thing I had scenario has to give me those set pieces, those things I can do. So you know, we hear of the dead drop, we want to help those new handlers, those folks who are new to Delta Green, and so I had to ask them for anybody that is new to writing a shotgun scenario, what is some advice that Kevin has for them to write a solid first one? Yeah, the best thing is our friend will always cause the attitude of a knife So like write your idea down. Don't worry about word count right your idea down and then just see how long it is and then just start cutting Because if you write 10 sentences like Gantt, you can say it better and five and maybe even in three

If you want to show like if you're sending your scenario in a in a in a deli New York City and you want to like corner deli flavor, you could write three NPCs. That's a lot of work. Or write one really good one. You know, like talking about the guy who's like leaning against leaning up outside or the guy who's leaning on the counter inside talking to the manager. We're gonna talk to the owner and he's talking about, you know, whatever the owner's like, get out here, you lazy bum, like that's a vocative. And he do that in a lot of words,

and I'm explaining that there's three people who own the place, and they have two cats, like that. So like, right, and then just start cutting, and keep cutting until you're lean. And you feed less than 1,500, right a little more, and then cut again. So just cut, like, don't be afraid to cut things. And again, you're not writing your magnum opus.

If you get to like 5,000 words, you're writing a whole scenario, do it somewhere else. You're writing a 1500 words scenario that's very tight and focused. So keep it, you know, keep your knife sharp and use it often. Now, did Kevin have any specific places he recommended folks go to for inspiration? I know way back, there used to be the Fairfield project and there even in the process of rebuilding the wiki for Delta Green. Yeah, yeah, fortunately Kevin had a bunch of good suggestions for where to get inspiration.

Yeah, if you're interested in working on your own, there's the wiki which I'm sure you guys will link, which has them all. If you google does a green shotgun cut scenario contest, you'll find them. You know scroll through the last couple years winner, second look, scroll through the ones that didn't win, because you know maybe you have a different tone. You know scroll through the last couple of years winners, take a look, scroll through the ones that didn't win because you know maybe you have a different tone. You know people will take a new story like the F-35 that we're missing. They'll just post the article and they'll be like Dr. Green better send a team in there like and it looks like they'll just like no effort posted as if it was like the cool scenario ever. It's like guys you gotta put a lever into it but like that's a start right? Take that after 35 missing and be like okay

If this one of this thing didn't crash but it like went Somewhere else or did something what if it did something interesting that the players had no best of it And now you now you start to have something So start with like again troll your local news troll your interesting, you know stories of last year One of the quotes from Mel and Brad was always like, like find your favorite atrocity, right? And then figure out how to set a scenario adjacent to it. They happen to mention what the rewards are this year.

Yeah, I mean, obviously fame and fortune will follow you if you win. I actually throw some of a couple of draw-through RPG gift cards at folks. Every now and then, Arc Dream will give a couple. If there's something out, they give you no sign, like, need to know as before. They've given out a couple download codes for recent books before. So every now and then, I beat up Arc Dream

to give you a few rewards. But I mean, I'm running this, for fun, I'm not a huge, like, you know, operation that has all these resources. So, you know, usually give the winner like 20 bucks and the second place 10 and it's like, like, you're writing this because you want to write a scenario Like you've got it in your head and that's what it's all about Surge once again amazing interview man. Great work as always always great here in from Kevin and those guys But I'll tell you what just listening to that definitely motivates me to kind of dig in and want to come up with my own scenario

So why don't we put our heads together see what we can come up with. I'm ready to let's do it Now taking inspiration from this month's shotgun scenario contest We thought it'd be a fun exercise to see if we hear at the dead drop could come up with a scenario seat of our own Now as a warning to everyone there are many many years worth of shotgun scenarios that have already been written. So if our final idea ends up sounding a little bit like your scenario or a scenario you've read, please don't think too much into it. There are only so many mythos, entities, and ideas. Recycling ideas is kind of a part of the community, so we're just doing this for entertainment purposes.

We assure you we aren't trying to steal ideas or ponder them off as our own. And we should also point out that there are two great resources, at least in our opinion, for coming up with a scenario, me personally, especially when dealing with my players' backstories, I love to roll on that table that's provided in the briefing documents, which are what you want on Drive Through RPG and kind of go on off of that using that to be built a spine of a scenario. There's also the Handlers Guide, which has a whole section on how to build an investigation, so check that out. We'll make sure to put the page numbers in the video. For the purposes of

our exercise, we're going to try and keep a few things in mind from the Handlers Guide and their suggestions. One of the things that he suggest is there needs to be a consistent level of uncertainty or a lack of control, a certain level of risk, and it needs to be scary. I think that's an important part of any good Delta Green campaign is the agents should be on the back foot and they should feel like at any moment they could be exposed. Absolutely. Most operations begin in media arrests as well. The agents have been brought into investigate further or have been brought into put together the clues. If this were a campaign, this might be part of an ongoing series of investigations that are linked, but

we're going to keep it simple for now. So without further ado, we'll just go ahead and start rolling on this incursion table here in the briefing documents It's actually on page seven if you already have a copy. Okay. Um, so I'm gonna read off the prompts and then Our boy sir, just gonna do the roll-in. So let's let's see what we come up with. I got the dice. Hell yeah So with beginning with environment we roll a D4 So okay D4 I was expecting D hundreds, so let me grab a D4 real quick. Yep I was expecting D hundreds so let me grab a D4 real quick. Yep. Yeah, we get with this one used D4's D6's D8's D10's and 12's coming. You're gonna start the game. All the D4 for our environment. I have a 2. All right, so that's suburban or X urban. Okay, sub-urban or X urban. Do you know what X urban means? The X urban I believe is like on the outskirts of a city or out just outside of it.

Let me uh yeah a region or settlement that lies outside a city and usually well beyond its suburbs and that is often inhabited chiefly by well-it-do families. Got it so it's kind of on the perimeter of a big city. Got it. Yep. Yep. Next we have our vector. Our vector. Yep. That'll be a D6. Okay. I've got my D6 here. Oh, that is a six. A bystander exposed accidentally. Bystander exposed accidentally. All right, now we decide on what Delta Green's covered investigation is.

That'll be a D8. D8, I have my D8. Roll two. Two? Terrorism. That's always a good one terrorism amazing This is going to be very interesting to come up with yes And last but not least the actual nature of the incursion so that'll be a D12. Okay Where's my D12 there Okay, where's my D12? There it is. A six. Six. So an unnatural entity or phenomenon taking physical form through human infestation. Taking physical form through human infestation

was kind of fits nicely with the bystander exposed accidentally. Yeah, it does. Clearly we have a patient zero in that bystander exposed accidentally, right? Absolutely. Yep. Okay, so I'm recording my screen right now so that the listeners and viewers, most of the viewers can see what we have here. All right, so immediately the first thing that comes to mind, right? So we've got the bystander exposed accidentally to a unnatural entity that physically manifests through infestation with a terrorism cover.

Having a terrorism cover is like the best thing you could possibly do. So the first thing that comes to mind is a joint terrorism task force investigation involving a biological agent or some kind of, you know, disease or chemical exposure or something. So that that warrants federal law enforcement involvement. Right.

Or yeah, so it's almost like you could decide whether the terrorism is something that Delta Green is making up as a cover cover, or whether there is, in fact, some kind of public terrorism, or they say it seems like that on the face of it. Yeah. And it's taking place suburban or ex-urban background. So that's interesting. I mean, typically when you think of terrorism acts or acts of terrorism, they're in a big city. You know, New York comes to mind, things like like that to have it be in a suburban place is interesting It just makes me think if maybe I

Almost wonder if the the bystander that has been exposed the patient zero if they maybe returned home from work Or if they are in a unique place like a like a rink, you know, in a suburban, like some place that you would find in suburban, like a skating rink or a public park or something like that. Yeah, yeah, and even that, or like they work in a city, they work in a lab. They're exposed to something during their day-to-day work in the city, and then they commute back

to that suburban, ex-urban environment and bring it home to the neighborhood, to the family, and it spreads from there. Now I think of virus is too easy. It totally. How do we put it? How do we twist it on its head? You know, when you think of a natural virus of mythos-related virus, you know, is it a virus of the mind? Is it a virus of alien origin and that it has some other kind of effect besides just people being sick or appearing sickly? Now, quick question, what are the ones that project their consciousness through time? Is that that's not the my go? That's no, those are the the great race of Yif. The great race of Yith, yeah. Okay. So one of the first things I thought of, especially what your agent does not remember

some of what happened, and then like the missing time, the gaps in memory is potentially something involving the great race of Yith, whether it's a projected consciousness type thing. But other than that, like absolutely, we could probably do some sort of alien parasite or, you know, extraterrestrial slash unnatural parasite that takes control of the human for periods of time and in which the individual would potentially lose consciousness.

And that could be a potential avenue for the agents themselves to become infected. Yeah. I am just going to spitball here because I like, you know, kind of trying some more wacky off the wall things, especially when it's like just kind of like a visual or an or a or a intrusive thought is melancholy bread likes to put a like something that feels creepy. And I had this idea the other day of what if a song, what if you listen to a song all the way to the end and it killed you? I don't know why I had that thought. I don't know how we can interpret that. But what about a situation where he brought home a song or he brought home something that is difficult

to to trace. It's not just like an alien inside his body. It's a almost a got mimetic thing. Yeah, hell yeah. I like that. I like that a lot. So it's it's a series of tones that you know, almost like an unnatural ritual in itself, certain actions, words, you know, length together are the equivalent of a scientific formula. Yeah. I like the way you what you've just added to it, which is that it could be like a part of a ritual or maybe it's an incomplete ritual and because it's incorrect or incomplete, it's having an unnatural effect on the person that is messing with it. Yeah, and one entity that I haven't seen explored a lot of because they're just so nebulous and they're so tough to kind of figure out are the loyger. And these are entities that latch themselves on and they

they cause depression and cause these you know this overwhelming negative cascade of emotions. Almost like a cancer, maybe that's a vector through which they infect. So is he studying a lawyer song? Is he studying a lawyer language? A lawyer crystal. A lawyer crystal. Yeah. And the crystal, like, hums at a certain frequency or something? Yeah.

And maybe like through some of the experimentation that they're doing on this crystal. Because I believe in the handlers, guys, they say the lawyer manifest in or around these crystals. They're hitting it with lasers, they're doing something and it generates this specific harmonic frequency that becomes essentially like an earworm. What immediately comes to mind, the image that comes to my mind is that this man is studying this crystal

and either awakens a lawyer or causes some kind of depression kind of a ripple effect to happen and I imagine him going to a little league baseball game to watch his child and I just have this image of the agents pulling up to this baseball game and everyone on the field is crying and like you know maybe attacking each other I just have this like image of chaos on like a little league baseball field I love that as we are talking about this so maybe we can pick that as our suburban or ex-urban background instead it's like a little league baseball event maybe there's a dead body on site maybe as as he was, like I imagine him walking up the diamond

as the games in the middle and a referee is like, hey, hey, you need to get out of here and he just blows the guy away. Oh yeah. I think we need to kind of zero in on this crystal and its effects on the guy. Yeah. How can it spread if it's some kind of mimetic thing?

I would like to take it back to like the song. Like maybe it's, kind of mimetic thing? I would like to take it back to the song. Maybe it's... What I originally had in my head for the song is that if you hear it to the very end, it kills you. But if you can stop the song, you're safe. I don't know if that still applies in this situation. But it would be interesting if we could...

I was like a good mechanic in a scenario, right? Like whether it be with the monster or whether it be something unnatural. If we can come up with a fun mechanic that involves this musical vibration meme type idea that we're playing with. Yeah, I like that. And to your point, you had a great mechanic and that looks could kill one shot that you ran with that one entity which was really fun. Well what's fun is that Gatana Thou is a very real entity that has all been his thing.

If you look at him, you turn to stone. So I thought a modern version is you just get the little mini-interversion of him. So yeah, coming up with something that is along those lines that is easy to understand, but you know, again, something as simple as if you listen to the song all the way to the end, you die. That kind of thing. So I, so I'm thinking the song itself is the vector for the infection, right? So it's knowing the song and becoming obsessed with the song is what lures, you know, is what leads that connection with the loyager because it is that harmonic frequency that that that crystal operates on or what have you. Maybe it's a matter of if you if you complete it, if you say it enough or sing it enough, I mean first it almost maybe has almost like that that yellow sign type

taxonomy where it needs to be spread, you need to spread it. You need to make everybody listen to it. But then if you say it enough or you sing it to yourself enough, it opens your mind up to the point where the lawyer can take control completely. So it is death in a sense. It's more about being completely taken over by this thing. So then does that look like, you know, not only is our patient zero singing the song,

but maybe as it spreads, others are singing the song. So you have this weird situation where you're trying to interview somebody and they just can't stop singing the song over and over again. Exactly. Does that spread to the agents? That's, and that's, I think, the risk. That's the, that's where a lot of the tension and terror will come from, is that how do they,

how do they prevent themselves from becoming overwhelmed by this? And honestly, like maybe it's, maybe the, the, the, the patient zero isn't holding these hostages and doing this because he is completely surrendered. Maybe he's doing it because he knows his family is now infected and he's trying to stop the song from continuing with them. Interesting. Yeah, he doesn't want people to come close. He doesn't want people to hear him so he would be in a muffled place.

Like maybe he's got the windows and everything shut in the hot dog stand or whatever he is. Yeah. So, if it was a case of the agents just hear the song and then have to make a role, it might happen too quickly, too easily. I wonder if it's like, does the song have to be sung at a certain volume? Does it have to be at a certain pitch? Does it have to be sung at a certain volume? Does it have to be at a certain pitch? Does it have to be? Maybe there's like a willpower cost involved and like every time you hear it or say it or something it diminishes your willpower more and more and more to the point where once you hit a certain threshold

like a certain percentage of your willpower you surrender to it completely. Yeah maybe you have to make either a power roll or a sanity roll, and if you fail that, you've been bitten by the bug. Yeah, by the earworm, yeah. By the earworm, yeah. That might be a good title for the... Earworm. The thing, earworm. I'm gonna write that down right now.

Could you... Maybe the scenario suggests the handler pick a song that is easy to sing along maybe an old 50s do up song or something that has like a slightly weird you know connotation or tone to it. Oh yeah. But just like a good phrase and maybe we can come up with one. I don't know anything by tiny Tim or Ray or boy or was in you know, I don't think the tulips Those are the suggestions for sure. So we have our point of contact Do we want to call them man or woman? Do you have a name in mind? Oh God Dekeven Kevin. Well, no, we just entered the Kevin. I'm sorry Kevin Play pull up we pull the random maybe you're right. What the fuck? Yeah pull the random name generator. What the fuck? Yeah pull up a name generator. Yeah Regular American person names

All right using my handy dandy name generator. We got Tessa Collins so Tessa Collins calls in She's the point of contact and she says what that There was a shooting Yeah, she calls in that there's been a shooting at the today's little league game and you know the

The crazy scientist has taken his family hostage and the fucking snack stand I think she would just basically know him as a guy, and I think part of the investigation could be learning who he is and his connections and stuff. So the crazy guy has shot an bump and taken his family hostage in the hot dog stand. His name is Wyatt Hale. Wyatt Hale. The guy's name? Yeah

Well, it's some kind of crystal that they were studying that they thought had some kind of special frequency Maybe there's a god of music or a god of sound or a god of thunder. Yeah, god of god of music There's a god of music and it's probably the god of follow up. Yeah, okay, but like it would would delta green really by key be keyed in by somebody saying Apollo right so So we maybe come up with a special program name So music back then the liar I think was his, is his common attribute. So project, cobalt liar. Cobalt liar. Okay. The family would probably be, I would imagine be dead ends except for maybe like

you mentioned, the, you know, the impending divorce or the, the marital counseling. That's what I was going to say. The only clue that maybe would be useful from Karen is, if you search public records, it's on record that they're the process of divorce. Yep, and which is a great avenue for the agents to cover this up, they just make it look like it's a, he broke bad because he was getting divorced

and went crazy and took a hostage. I'm trying to think of just like different kind of setups to kind of understand what's going on. Maybe there's a parent who tried to stop a hail and was like infected because he heard the song. So he's maybe in an ambulance isolated and he keeps repeating himself. But then it would be very creepy to have a bunch of children in unison seeing a song over and over again.

So I feel like I want children. Witnesses who aren't infected. Maybe there is some kind of authority on site, whether it be the not the EPA, but who who who make local police local police, yeah, local police. Like another local police chief type deal. Maybe who'd been the it a possible chemical spill or something like that. Because of just the mass hysteria angle, you know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Who deemed it some kind of, it's not like, what's the right word? Like an airborne, like an airborne agent or something like that. Airborne agent, the gas leak. Yeah.

Gas leak is what I was looking for. I guess really the set, the main challenges, they're going to try to talk down, hey, so what does that look like? Are there any mechanics involved in talking him down? Oh, probably I would probably just make it like a successive series of persuade and human roles with maybe offering bonuses based on how good of a job the player is doing or any like novel approaches they take to it. Now if there's a success is great. If there's a series of failures, maybe things get more intense.

I think the threat of him actually killing his wife should be very real. And once that happens, the players basically have no choice, but to run in there and start blasting, right? So the hope is that I don't get the child. And then there's the cover up. You think that like the agents could probably just pin this on terrorism?

No, not either. Maybe not. Like, if it was to be an overarching, more branching investigation, yeah, you could do it under the auspices of terrorism, like he was radicalized. But I think the cover up is, you know, yeah, this guy was, his wife was leaving him. He just found out. He was just served papers. He went apeshit and took his family hostage. They should also, the agents should also be forced to make a role to hide the crystal if they take it with them. Or potentially even get it away, right? Because they'll give the cops walk off with it, that could be a whole other complication, right? Where they got to get it back from the police. What to do with the crystal is kind of the resolution

and the cover up there. OK, this sounds like a lot of fun. I think I would want to play on that diamond field, on that baseball diamond. I would want to try to solve this problem. It makes a lawyer actually kind of interesting and understandable. It's the beginning of a lawyer's story

if you want to go down that path. Not to get too punny, but it sounds like home run and I'd love to take a swing at it. I'm so proud of you for finally contributing to the ridiculousness. The guys, I hope that you all got something out of this. If you have ideas for your shotgun scenario, let us know what you're working on.

But as you can see, it's really just a matter of batting some ideas around between you and your friend and making some rolls and just sticking to them. It's really like Kevin said in the interview, it's not meant to be to arduous. It's not to be something meant to be something that you take a lot of time out. Just have some fun, it's really more of a writing exercise. And as you can see, with just a little bit of time, you can come up with a fun scenario to run for your players.

So like we said earlier, it's October, it's fall, it's Halloween time. And if you are thinking about running a scenario for your friends in this time of the year, we cannot recommend enough the scenario music from a darkened room. You can find it as both a standalone and in the night of the opera scenario collection. But we're going to talk about it today. As a warning, there are a lot of spoilers ahead

for the scenario. If you are a player who doesn't want the scenario spoiled for yourself, then you should make like Arthur Donnelly and have a sharp exit. So, let's get right into it. Vince, can you T.S.U.B. what is music from a darkened room all about? Alright, yeah, so music from a darkened room is a personal favorite of mine. Written by Dennis Detwiller, one of the first scenarios to come out for the for the for the new game. Definitely one of the earlier scenarios released long story short It is a haunted house scenario it takes place in the town of Meadowbrook, New Jersey Specifically at a house located at 1206 Spooner Avenue That is a long and sorted history of mysterious and violent deaths surrounding it what gets the player characters involved in their agents is that a Delta Green

agent by the name of Arthur Donnelly, who was also with the FBI, recently committed suicide in the home. And the agents are called in to try to investigate the circumstances surrounding it. What really gets Delta Green's attention is the fact that Arthur Donnelly had kind of what's the one I'm looking for petitioned Delta Green to look into this this residence before. But now ended up dead looked like his throat was cut but of course no suicide weapon no no no nothing was found. So as a result the agents are called in to see if there isn't a natural presence and if there is do what they do best and take care of it.

It's really such a solid scenario. I've run it twice now. I enjoyed so much. One of the reasons I enjoy it and we can get right into the pros of the scenario is that it's a scenario that cannot be solved with guns. So often, you just pull out some guns and you start blasting at things and you hope that it kills whatever's coming at you. In this instance, it's not that easy. So it's a great challenge especially for those trigger-having agents. As far as scenarios go, it is definitely I feel

one of the more atmospheric ones. It's just such a, it's really just gripping with that scary haunted house type atmosphere. It's great for players that really enjoy haunted houses. And I feel like a lot of players who maybe don't necessarily understand the lore surrounding Delta Green or Call of Cthulhu or anything else, they may be looking for a ghost oriented or haunted house type scenario and this is a perfect entry point for players like that to really kind of expose them to this unnatural sign of things that could manifest as something that we're familiar with like ghosts and haunted houses. Yeah, that's a good point that it although there is a mythos entity involved at the end you don't necessarily have to know everything about the mythos to really get a kick out of this. Right.

So maybe we transitioned to some of the challenges that we both found when we ran this. You had an interesting challenge that you weren't able to complete this scenario in your first run, but eventually you did and you're in your second run. Right. Something that I found was immediately obvious, which is that if your agents, if your players are overly cautious, it might keep the scare factor to a minimum. The scenario could drag a little bit if they are overly cautious. You might want to tell players to really engage with the scenario, don't be afraid to meet it head on,

and also getting the players to come in night could prove kind of challenging. Another thing I found a little challenging was the manifestations that happened in the house. So whenever you go to the house, things happen both in the day and in the night that are creepy and weird. And what seems obvious is that at night, the more intense things should happen during

the day, maybe the more subtle things should happen. The book also suggests that you try to track the will power threshold for all of the agents because different manifestations might happen for different will power thresholds. I really had a hard time tracking that because you literally have to know what every player's willpower is at that moment. So I actually let that go. I ignored that whole willpower thing. And I just organized the manifestations from least intense to most intense.

And just kind of one by one started dropping them as the players explored the house and kept coming back, et cetera. I've also found that that if players don't seek out Elizabeth Tucker, they're going to have a much harder time finding the bowl, the knife, and the book, all three of which are kind of, are not even kind of, are essential to resolving the scenario completely.

Can you give a little bit of context who Elizabeth Tucker is and why they're searching for this bold knife and book? Yeah, so Elizabeth Tucker is a Delta Green friendly who at the start at the start of the scenario was specifically called out by the case officer as being a local friendly that they could they could make contact with. She's a nanteak's dealer who was able to track down furniture that was sold from the Wheeler House at 1206 Schuynir Avenue, specifically this end table that actually

contains this ritualistic bull knife and this diary of Isabelle Wheeler who resided in the house and who, you know, was a played role in the consecration of the ground to Nair Lathatep and the dark man. And you need those in order to be able to deconsincrate that ground. They also, I found, may go down a rabbit hole, there's this, you know, obviously the name of the scenario is a music from a dark and groom. There are some manifestations in which they can hear the music for a dark and groom. There are some manifestations in which they can hear the piano play. And I found that that could draw them down a rabbit hole that by going after the piano. Really obsessing about finding the piano versus the end this end table. Yeah.

In two scenarios that I ran, one of them, them the players split up enough that at least one team went to look for the antique table. So I was able to put the bowl the knife and the book in that. In another scenario, my players became very obsessed with the piano because they heard the music, they found the sheet music. So I suggest that if your players do go down a rabbit hole, it's okay to put the bowl, the knife, and the book in that piano. Maybe there's a secret hutch or a secret compartment, because what you don't want is your players to be frustrated where they just did all this searching and it comes up with nothing. And they're thinking, what the hell? We thought we looked down every avenue, you know. That's a great idea. Yeah, I didn't even think I didn't even think of that put it in the piano It's that easy sometimes you just have to you know roll with the punches of what the players are throwing at you right?

100% So there are some suggestions we have for this scenario one of them that I would suggest is you might want to consider putting a time crunch on this session or on this scenario. The players will need to expend their willpower to stay up doing research. The reason I'm suggesting this is because the more they whittle down their willpower, especially when it's happening in the house, the stronger the house becomes. Every time they fail a sanity check in that house, that house is eating up that willpower. So you want to consistently hit them with manifestations, even if it

is the middle of the day, if they split up, if they go into a new space, I think there should be some kind of manifestation to trigger a sanity check so that that house can feed. And the time crunch just forces them to be at their widths end. That way the climax is even more intense, especially when the house attempts to take over somebody. If they've got low willpower, it's going to succeed and then all hell's gonna break loose. I would also maybe have the real FBI show up after 72 hours, you know, give them, give them a timetable to work on where, you've only got this finite window of time

to operate with impunity. And after that, other people are starting coming around asking questions. So it kind of forces them to jump in feet first and really keep that form momentum going, which is of course going to carry them into the house eventually, sometimes more than once, and kind of removes that safety net

where they feel like they have this, they have as much time as they want, and they can proceed as carefully as they want. Puts a little bit of added strain and pressure on that. And I've never had the FBI actually show up. I have put this time crunch both times where the real FBI are coming in 72 hours or whatever if you don't solve this. It would be very interesting to add the wrinkle of now you've got two or three

legitimate FBI agents snooping around. What I did always have is that at the end of the ritual the cops are coming from the sounds of screaming, coming in the house as people murder each other. Oh yeah. Also, I think you should consider making donally someone that is closely Associated with one of the agents. I really like tying the agents into the back Story of the narrative. I did it with my playthrough with Mayday where we Didn't report this unfortunately, but agent Tug was Arthur Donnelly's almost like Prodeche and I think that gave some weight to both his death and the

Investigation so you might even want to consider Donnell some weight to both his death and the investigation. So you might even want to consider donally being a former case officer of the agents. A meal, Yaro, is probably one of the more fun NPCs I've enjoyed portraying because he's just a parapsychologist at a local college, right? Yeah, yeah. And he's supposed to be full of shit. And so you can really play that up like, this is a guy who thinks he's not, he knows what he's talking about, but really has no fucking clue what he's talking about.

So like my advice would be maybe watching episode or two of Ghost Hunters or something or one of those other paranormal investigation shows. Really like adopt that parlance and some of the lexicon and incorporate that. If you haven't seen it, 28 days haunted on Netflix has some of the biggest heaping piles of bullshit on ever just watch that and get to the part with the God Helmet

and just use that. And your agent's willing, medley no, Emilio era was not someone to be relied upon for accurate information. And if they don't pick up that he's bad, it's just going to get really crazy, really bad. So he'll probably suggest that they separate in the house, and then you can go on kinds of fun things to them. Yeah, that's his big advice, right? Go into the house at night, go in alone, which are like the exact opposite of what you need to do

to survive this frickin' scenario. Yeah, so play a play-y arrow with a straight face to see if you can trick the players. Definitely. A lot of this scenario is about seeing how you can trick the players into making mistakes or doing things isolating themselves. Trick raise a big part of it. Yeah. There is the very fun climactic end where

the agents have collected all of the items and they have to create a human sacrifice. They have to kill somebody that they take a life to end the the that the Dark Man, the Luomo Nero has to this house. I would suggest, and I've seen this suggested in other places, that when the Dark Man appears make it memorable. And one of the ways that you can is that you can start having the Dark Man like the devil in many mythology tales. Start talking to the agents about their back stories, their motivations. Maybe he offers them something that they can't get, that they've been struggling to have. Maybe he offers to help them reconcile with somebody who was a bond formerly. Play that up because if you have a moment where you've got an agent actually considering

it, the other agents are going to lose their mind and suddenly it's going to be this crazy standoff. What do you think are some of the best scares that Hamler should make sure to include this scenario? Oh man, there are so many. Read Throne, find your favorites and go with those. But like for me, there's a sequence where during the day they can be in the master bedroom and there's like a penny on the floor and one of the agents kicks it and rolls across the floor, then it goes through the mirror, through to the other side. And even something so small is

that creates the living hell out of my players, you know. One of them drank this reins and coffee in the living room, not into their own power, the puke-dup maggots, Isabelle Wheeler's manifestations in the master bedroom, the monster on the floor, oh, fucking so creepy. So, so many good moments, the Moonlight Sonata for sure is great. I like to end a scenario where,

you know, as they're walking up to the house, they can hear the music. Something I did that is not a manifestation, but through understanding the history of the house, I was very effective. We had a kind of technology specialist and they put cameras all around the house to watch if anything weird happens. And when they collected that footage, I basically replayed for them what happened in what is it 1927 or whenever the house was consecrated where

They literally witnessed the the the divotellos and isabel Wheeler of sacrifice another cat in the bowl with the knife Which is added to the clues but was a fun one for the Technology person to kind of lose their mind over that is cool. cool as shit. That's a good idea. I like that. I think this is a fabulous scenario. Anyone who is not run it should definitely try to run for their group. If you guys end up running a memorable home game for Halloween, let us know how it went. Yeah, and if you've enjoyed today's episode, please make sure to like and subscribe. If you're not yet a patron, we're offering extended episodes with even more content. So sign up at patreon.com forward slash MaydayRP, where any patron level any at all can get access to these exclusive episodes. So you all know we're going to take a short break in November for these

monthly installment episodes, but we'll be releasing still the possible landscapes walkthrough, and then we'll be back in December with more monthly episodes. In the meantime, I want everyone to stay safe. We'll see you next time. See you folks. Have a good one.