2022 Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Reviews

The 2022 Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Contest wrapped a few weeks ago. I've largely lost interest in Delta Green over the last year or two, but I sent in three scenarios anyway.

 

Reviews of all 53 submissions under the cut.

Unknown Armies Play Report: You're Not Alexander! Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Pseudanor ran up the hill, quickly scaling the ruined foundation of the Citadel and vaulting the wall into the sacred precinct of the Temple of Athena. He ran around to the portico of the temple, and was about to shake Jocasta awake before he thought better of getting within arm's reach. He tossed a small pebble and she instinctively lashed out with a foot, before realizing where she was. Pseudanor explained that soldiers were coming up the hill, and one of them was among the four who attacked her last night.

By Peltast

Pseudanor was interrupted by the Priestess Tritogenia, second in command at the Temple. She told Pseudanor to get the hell out, then told Jocasta that the place had better be spotless because the Hipparch of Hellespontine Phrygia was on his way to the temple. Jocasta got up to make sure the sanctuary was clean, but was interrupted by a shout from the High Priestess' hut. The old lady Atrytone needed help getting ready to receive a visitor, and her demands trumped those of the younger Tritogenia. Atrytone's mind was still sharp, but her failing body necessitated Jocasta's assistance as a mobility aid. Atrytone needed Jocasta's help dressing quickly, but refused to be carried out to meet the Macedonians, using a staff to support herself.

The Hipparch, clad in a robe and cape and wearing a flat cap over his mostly gray hair, entered the precinct with eight of his elite soldiers.

Unknown Armies Play Report: You're Not Alexander! Part 1

The story was a strange one. Because the Thessalian hero Ajax had murdered the prophetess Cassandra at the end of the Trojan war, oracles had ordered the nobles of the Hundred Families of Locri in Thessaly to send two virgins yearly to the Dardanelles and leave them to make their own way through to Troy. By tradition, the natives would come out to catch and kill them, armed with axes and stones, and only if the virgins escaped would they enter Athena’s temple by a secret passage and live there in safety, dressed in a slave’s robe and shorn of their hair until a replacement managed to relieve them. The rite was to last for a thousand years, but at some point in Alexander’s life, it is known to have been interrupted. As ruler of the Thessalians, it was perhaps Alexander who first dispensed his subjects from their duties.

(The text says Ajax "murdered" Cassandra. Anyone familiar with the lore knows the details are more graphic. Ajax the Lesser raped Cassandra on the Altar of Athena after she claimed sanctuary in the temple, turning the Goddess against the victorious Achaeans.)

 

Enough of that. The time is the fourth century BC. The place is the ruined city of Troy, four miles inland from the West Coast of Anatolia - modern day Turkey. For centuries, a small temple of Athena squatted in the ruins of the Trojan citadel, receiving occasional pilgrims come to pay homage to the heroes of Homeric lore. Then the Great King Alexander crossed the Dardanelles and liberated Troy from the Persians, opening the city to tourists from across Magna Graecia. He dedicated his armor and weapons to the Goddess at the shrine and promised to build Athena the largest temple in the world.

 

Our story begins with three people living in the Trojan Tourist Trap, a decade after its "liberation" by Alexander the Great:

• Jocasta, virgin sacrifice offered by the Locrians in a thousand year ritual to cleanse the sins of Ajax the Lesser at the end of the Trojan War. Survived the bloodrites and was allowed to live as a slave at the Temple of Athena. Champion boxer, serves as the town's police force.
• India, snake handler and devoted worshiper of Dionysus. Sells tourists a "kykeon" made from opium, wine and snake venom. Gains supernatural powers from handling snakes. Deals drugs to Jocasta in exchange for protection from ruffians.
• Pseudanor, India's son by a wealthy tourist who disappeared long before his birth. Incapable of casting snake based magick, but blessed with innate snake abilities. A teenage hellion who loves pranks and mischief.
  

Pseudanor was up late and creeping around town, as usual. His infrared vision let him see at night, and the dark held no terrors for him. What it did hold, which he saw when he left the house he lived in with his mother, was a group of men waiting in ambush. The five figures were watching the house, and conferred with one another when they saw Pseudanor leave. The snake boy pretended to leave, then hid on the terrace above the house to observe the strange men. The strange men must have spotted him, because one raised a burning object to his lips and emitted a cloud of smoke, obscuring the group from Pseudanor's heat vision. He reocgnized the smell from his mother's drug collection - the strange man was burning hempseeds in a clay pipe.

Pseudanor climbed onto the roof of the house to get a better look, concerned that the men were approaching through the smoke cloud. He was right, a hand reached up from the cloud and tipped the heated residue from a clay pipe onto the thatched roof. Pseudanor brushed the hot embers off the roof to prevent a fire, shouting at the arsonist to identify himself.

Dune 2d20: The Spice Melange

I ran a few sessions of Dune 2d20 and found it to be basically a serviceable tabletop version of the Dune setting. The big omission from the game's voluminous gear list is the Spice Melange. This is an absurd omission, Spice is the entire reason everyone is on Arrakis in the first place.

 

By Sketchphase

 
Spice can't be acquired via momentum spend to create an asset. It can be bought from legitimate sources on worlds where the ruling House doesn't restrict the supply, or from smugglers at a markup on the already high market price. Either way, the cost is prohibitive to all but the wealthiest Imperial families. Spice can be looted from the treasuries of Great Houses, or stolen from Nobles who have it on their person for private use. Diluted Spice is easier to acquire, by the time of the Regent Alia Atreides "even the vast middle class of the Imperium ate diluted melange in small sprinklings with at least one meal a day." Spice of any kind is much cheaper and easier to acquire on Arrakis, without the Guild monopoly on shipping and Imperial tithes driving up the price.

Consuming a dose of the spice Melange restores a point of Determination.

Consuming even a single dose grants the complication: Spice Addiction. This is permanent, although it only becomes relevant after the character has gone without Spice for an extended period. Severe withdrawal is fatal. Diluted spice staves of withdrawal but provides no other mechanical benefit. Spice addiction is a great way to control someone, if they can't afford a fix or live somewhere the supply is tightly controlled.

Prolonged, excessive spice consumption grants the trait Eyes of Ibad, tinting the iris and sclera a total blue so dark as to be almost black. This is an unattractive trait anywhere except Arrakis, and most people wear contacts to make their eyes look "normal" in polite society. Fremen consider the Eyes of Ibad a desirable trait, though this alone is not enough to overcome their distrust of offworlders.

ICONODULES Masterpost

 

ICONODULES is a oneshot for Unknown Armies 3e. Cabals across the Fertile Crescent converge on the oldest megalithic site known to man, hoping to steal the living fertility statue unearthed by a University of Istanbul Dig Team.

• Scenario Folder - Including scenario, pregens and a new avatar path.
• First Playtest
• Second Playtest
• Music Post

ICONODULES - Music Post

Music post for ICONODULES

 

Unknown Armies NPC - O'Saa the Yellow Mage

Based on the character of the same name from Fear and Hunger 2: Termina.

By orange

Baron Samedi and Papa Gede. Kali and Shiva and Yama. Edward Teller and J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Gods of Death. The Destroyers of Worlds. Every pantheon has ‘em, but there’s no ascended archetype to match. Someone should work on that.

O’saa is a Yellow Mage, a member of a decentralized avatar cult created by an unknown Motumancer who wanted to uplift the archetype of the Destroyer to the Statosphere. You get this type of Motumancer singularity sometimes - guy spends a major charge to inspire other flagburners to do something. They flame out fast, because by definition they can’t constructively participate in a social movement without losing their powers. Yellow Mages get around it by being an antisocial pyramid scheme. It never rises to a real community, just a shared bad idea that the “members” pursue for personal reasons. Everyone wants to be the Destroyer.

Nobody knows why they're called Yellow Mages. Whatever meaning the name had to the original founder of the sect has been erased by time and distance.