Author Topic: Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot  (Read 6038 times)

Henry Hankovitch

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Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot
« on: April 13, 2012, 11:00:07 PM »
I've been running a Delta Green game set in the early 1960s.  So DG is still technically legal; they're just so secret and undercover that they don't have "call in an airstrike" resources.  I have the general premise, but my biggest problem is that I haven't figured out what the Big Secret Plan at the end is.

Essentially, I've got two mythos factions that the players should get caught between.  The Anasazi are barely-refluffed Serpent People:  an ancient race of sorcerer-priests who ruled some of the pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, and since then have been infiltrating government and industry.  They're evil cultists--blood magic, all that jazz--but they generally prefer the status quo, ruling the humans behind the scenes.

On the other side are the Mi-Go and MJ-12, with the full force of the Cold War arms race behind them.  My idea is that the Mi-Go are developing some kind of Big Bad Apocalyptic Event using all the industrial resources at their disposal.  The Anasazi want to stop this, but their methods involve all kinds of morally-reprehensible sorcery.  So the investigators may have to walk a tightrope between helping evil cultists, and fighting evil aliens. 

My biggest problem at the moment is that I haven't thought of what form the Big Bad Apocalyptic Event should be.  I suppose I could just rip off Divine Fire and make it a not-a-nuclear-reactor that summons Elder Gods.  But I keep thinking there should be more to it than that.  Something more complicated than "this is the machine that causes the End Times.  Blow up this machine."

On a different note, I have one PC who was crippled in the first couple sessions; I'm planning on giving him a "how would you like to walk again" deal with some sort of Bad Thing.  Not really sure what sort of consequences I'm going to throw at him if he accepts, though.

So anyway, any sort of wild-ass theories or general spitballing would be helpful. 

SageNytell

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Re: Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot
« Reply #1 on: April 13, 2012, 11:30:08 PM »
Activation of Project MKULTRA to enact a nationwide summoning in order to awaken Cthulhu/Azathoth/Yog-Sothoth for shenanigans. Activation includes drugging water supplies, using number stations and strange arrays of paranormally powered satellites all combining to drive the massive conspiracy to its' horrifying conclusion.

And so help me if you do this and don't record it and post it on the Community Actual Play site there will be hell to pay.   >:(

Henry Hankovitch

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Re: Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot
« Reply #2 on: April 13, 2012, 11:37:19 PM »
Hmm, I've already got fungal mind-control grubs...

SageNytell

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Re: Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot
« Reply #3 on: April 13, 2012, 11:38:02 PM »
Also a dude over on the Something Awful Forums just finished a Let's Play of Call of Duty: Black Ops - the actual game showcases a few of the real-life struggles that were going on during the 60's, and the LPer goes over some of the various anachronisms along with some of the game mechanics. What might be of more use to you is the historical writeups that he posts with each update - could be a cool way to flesh out the period a little better for your players.

Edit:
Hmm, I've already got fungal mind-control grubs...
Exactly! You're already partway there. Caustic Soda did a show on just this very topic, if it interests you.

clockworkjoe

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Re: Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot
« Reply #4 on: April 14, 2012, 12:22:13 AM »
The Mi-Go in Delta Green experiment on humanity. They don't want to kill us all. We make good lab rats. Do you have DG? I would recommend looking at Targets of Opportunity. Replace MJ-12 with the Cult of Transcendence, a super powerful cult led by totally batshit insane sorcerers that are mostly useless.
 


Henry Hankovitch

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Re: Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot
« Reply #5 on: April 14, 2012, 11:22:46 AM »
Quote
The Mi-Go in Delta Green experiment on humanity. They don't want to kill us all. We make good lab rats.
  The point is a good one, though I suppose using phrases like "apocalyptic event" oversimplified things.  I'm not going for a "and then they killed us all" kind of plot, just some kind of really big event that nobody wants to see happen.  Like all of America getting stuffed into Matrix-tubes to serve as a giant intuition-computer for the Mi-go, or Missouri getting turned into one big, festering portal/spawning pit.  Stepford towns filled with telepathic grub-parasite victims.  Or something.

As to whether that's too overt for the Mi-Go...well, fuggit.  Nobody in my group is so in-depth to the mythos that they're going to start shouting THEY WOULDN'T DO THAT.  And besides, this is the 60s rather than the 90s--plenty of rationalizations to be made for the Mi-Go having attempted a more big-picture project back then.  Maybe its potential failure is what causes them to tighten up security and go deeper underground, etc.

For this game, I'm a bit attached to the Mi-Go and MJ-12 because I want the players to have that moment where they realize (even though they're still "legal") that they are not the big boys from the government, here to kick ass and call in an airstrike.  The big boys are actively working for the other side.
« Last Edit: April 14, 2012, 11:29:16 AM by Henry Hankovitch »

clockworkjoe

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Re: Fleshing out my 1960s Delta Green plot
« Reply #6 on: April 14, 2012, 02:45:14 PM »
The Mi-Go might want to infect all of humanity with protoflesh - make them easier to work with for experimentation. All humans become subservient to the fungi. In other words, a mythos version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.