Project CAMPAIGN

**Project CAMPAIGN** was a community-driven effort to write a full campaign for Delta Green. What follows are the products of the brainstorming phase.

## Proposal 1 (by Davide)

When: Around 2001

Main Threat: Disceples of the Worm

Acts:Intro + 3 Major Acts (Afghanistan,US CITY,DOW HQ)

Resumed Plot:

* Players go for something in Afghanistan
* Found Ghouls helping Talibans fighting Coalization Forces and a Taliban leader that got contact in US soil for drug (a DoW drug dealer)
* Back in US Soil, investigation over DoW and a brain cancer is diagnosticated to a player close person (Wife?Brother?Son?)
* Temptation of corruption over the player to let the close person become a DoW to save his life.DG destroy major DoW branch in the designated US City.Found documents on south america DOW HQ
* Attack DoW HQ with major DG op.
* No win-win situation: probably best is a win with high costs.

## Proposal 2 (by Rodrigo)

When: Pre - Rules of Engagement

Main Threat: MJ12 / Agent BLACK / Stephen Alzis / DG

### Intro

* Some agency (or even DG if dealing with an already existing cell) get to investigate odd event (perhaps series of murders?)
* Found mad ex-MJ12 fugitive doctor evidence. (found himself with protomatter and is in a crazy attempt to remove the affected organs for new ones from victims?)
* NRO Delta finds the defector before players can reach. Fight between players and NRO for some good old pulp action
* If they players are not DG, DG contacts them as soon as they find out, recruits them
* Basics are set for new players. DG\* Good guys. MiB\* Bad guys. Simple, right?

### Act 1

* Opera: Find more on the doctor. Starts classic investigation prone to make a lot of noise
* NRO Delta starts their hunt on this cell. Doctor spoke too much, they are still making questions and someone has to pay for the dead NRO guys at the previous encounter.
* A-Cell tries to reach an agreement with MJ12. Player Cell will be free game while A-Cell assings a NPC Cell to conduit the same investigation. Player Cell sacrificed as smoke screen
* NRO puts up the preassure on Player Cell. Agent BLACK (as described on DG Dark Theatres : The Fast Track) contacts player Cell and warns them on how convenient it is that the MiB suddenly know their adresses and other supossedly secret personal details. The doubt is cast

### Act 2

* Alzis enters the stage. Claims only he can actually protect them from DG. He does not mention or consider NRO as the main threat.
* Agent BLACK recommends avoiding Alzis (in case the group didn't know) and suggest going against the NPC Cell on the case. If they didn't believe BLACK when he suggested betrayal they might after they find them.
* BLACK comments on how many times A-Cell sacrificed lambs in the past and points them toward further evidence to be investigated, including how DG is not even a legit goverment agency while those MiB are. A-Cell activates ANDREA to deal with the very troublesome Player Cell
* Good and bad fade to grey, if not turned upside down

### Act 3

* Preassure on the players get to max. They won't hold much longer on their own hiding and living on Green Boxes
* BLACK hints about trying to locate A-Cell and blackmail them to stop the hunt to keep their personal details secret
* Alzis steps up again offering protection. Suggests that, if the MiB are legit goverment agency, then someone in the goverment could stop them. That, or contact MiB directly as DG wont dare touching them under Alzis protection
* Multiple ending options depending on how much they screw up from that point. Narrow possibility of survival. Keep to DG values and try tell DG about BLACK? Go after A-Cell as Agent BLACK suggested? Fall into the lies and try to defect to MJ12? Try to blackmail/attack A-Cell? In big N web of madness, treachery and deception there is so many ways to blow up your last chance and so very few ways to survive…

### Notes

The main ideas behind the proposed scenario, in case you do not agree with some (or all) of the points above are:

* Show the game basics. Who is DG, MJ12, PARIAH and hint the Greys
* Discard the idea of DG being white shinny knights on their fight against evil and MJ12 and mindless fuckers trying to get all humanity killed, narrow the distance of the two. This is not a game of paladins, boys
* Give a glimpse on how big is the tangled web of lies up to the very top
* Making a hell of the characters existence. Have them cornered against the wall. Try to provoke desperation on the players for their characters to live another day. Be the prey, not the hunter
* No Mass Effect 3 ending.

## Proposal 2b by Ludo

This proposal attempts to solve a few problems with the original Proposal 2:

* Add some scenarios/investigations under the storyline.
* Make it look like the players are screwing up on their own before they get chased by NRO DELTA.
* Make it possible for them to still be DG agents at the end.
* Not have both Alzis and BLACK at the same time.

### Intro

* The PCs investigate the curious death of 2 people, found in their car on the side of the highway. They exhibit weird decomposition/skin-rot.
* They follow a trail of bodies until they catch up with a guy that apparently carries some unknown pathogen that he can release on a prey, like a chemical attack.
* Phenomen-X gets involved, to add more opportunities for the players to screw up something in public.
* The PCs hopefully catch him and contain him/kill him.
* The PCs get in contact with DG, if they are not agents already.

### Act 1

* The PCs must find out where chemical-boy came from.
* They find out he was a homeless guy — or something like that — who went into a "medical trial" to make some quick money.
* The company running those trial is very dodgy: just a few employees, and the only doctor is some crazy scientist kid with not many credentials and probably some problems with the medical authorities in his past.
* He happens to be the protege/son/whatever of an ex-MJ-12 scientist. That scientist is either dead or imprisoned or interned or whatever, but somehow managed to pass on his notes. The crazy scientist kid is effectively continuing some MJ-12 project (BOUNCE/RECOIL or JOSHUA?).
* When they start getting close to this kind of information, the Men In Black show up and take the kid away along with all his notes. OMG, the government is covering things up! Thank God DG is watching!
* Phenomen-X may come back at some point during this adventure, too.

### Act 2

* One of the PCs gets contacted by somebody who claims their brother/friend has some similar condition to what the first chemical-boy had. That somebody also claims to have tracked down the PC from his appearance on one of the latest Phenomen-X show.
* The players probably won't resist going all A-Team and help that person (especially if it's a cute looking girl?). If they somehow get the idea to contact A-Cell, they don't get an answer right away… and they get pressured into following the damsel in distress.
* The brother/friend of the damsel in trouble lives in a town where MJ-12 runs some experiments based on the Deep Ones. Recently they grew suspicious of the Greys, and they want to explore other areas to find more ways to fight their alien allies in case something goes wrong… and one of the only other solid alien/paranormal leads they have are the Deep Ones they captured back during the Innsmouth Raid.
* This would be your usual "half the town is a bunch of crazy mutants, and somewhere there's an MJ-12 group that orchestrate the experiment".
* Likely ends with scientists running away, and an NRO DELTA team carpet bombing the town to leave no clues behind.
* The problem is that the damsel in distress is fake: she's police or FBI or something. What happened is that the freak town is the playground of either Ringwood or Lounds (the 2 pro-Grey scientists in MJ-12's Steering Committee). Gavin Ross (who may now be the new Agent ADAM, depending on your DG timeline) wants to get them removed from MJ-12. He thinks he can expose their human experiments in a way that would force the Steering Committee to get rid of them. He may be manipulating the PCs (and DG) from the outside, or, if he's indeed part of DG, maybe he had Alphone agree to sacrifice a few agents towards that goal. Alphonse will probably try to save the PCs if possible, maybe going the extra mile by sending a friendly to help them from the sideline.

### Act 3

* Ringwood or Lounds is furious about the interruption in their experiments.
* The PCs are directly targeted: they are rounded up by Men In Black in order to be escorted to a military base. But a group of armed men arrive just in time and help the PCs escape. Their saviors belong to some mafia organization that was given very specific orders. They don't know much else, but they were given a message from Stephen Alzis who will expect some show of gratitude out of the PCs — after all, they were going to be either executed quietly or sent to prison without much of a trial. A good way to say "thank you" would be to acquire some of Ringwood's experiment notes on Deep One hybridization… otherwise… you know… he would let MJ-12 have their way with the PCs.
* They are directed towards a chemical laboratory that is really a front for some of Ringwood or Lounds' operations.
* The adventure will involve mostly observing the lab, sneaking in or somehow finding another weakness (like an employee taking some notes home, or even leaking intel to a big pharmaceutical company or something) and figuring a way to get their hands on what Alzis wants.
* They will also have to avoid the NRO DELTA guys, who are actively looking for them —- maybe they have limited time, as their friends and families are targeted.
* If the PCs are stuck, maybe Alphonse sends some off the books reinforcements.
* In the end, Alzis probably gets what he wants. Ringwood/Lounds will intervene in person, and in the chaos, either the PCs kill him or some NRO DELTA agent working directly for Ross will send a "stray bullet" his way…. so Ross should also get what he wants.

### Conclusion

* If everything went according to plan, there should be one less pro-Grey member on the MJ-12 Steering Committee.
* Alzis managed to snatched something valuable for him in the middle of all this chaos. He will probably contact the PCs again for some other task.
* If the PCs did well (given the circumstances), Alphonse may come forward (either through some encrypted phone call, or using some other high-ranking DG cell leader representing him). "I'm sorry you had to be thrown to the wolves like this, but although you may not realize it, you helped achieve great change"… "Yeah, but what's in it for us, you crazy old man?" would ask the players…. "Well, the most valuable thing there is: information". The players can ask 3 questions

to Alphonse, and he will answer.

## Proposal 3 by Rodrigo

Suicide / Immortality

When: Between Rules of Engagement and Through a Glass Darkly

Main Threat: Reinhard Galt / MJ12 Project RAINBOW / Quantum mechanics

Acts: Hard to say. Took me 5 months total at very slow pace and with lots of other details added to the mix

Resumed Plot:

* Reinhard Galt, through the works of Dr. Willem Eisenbein, gets knowledge of the Eisenbein/Tillinghast resonator

* Dr Gunther Frank models a plan to use the resonator to achieve quantum immortality on a full body level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum\_suicide\_and\_immortality). Further explanation later and no, I was not on acids that day

* Galt gathers a small group of ritters to gather the necessary stuff to pull it out

* Characters get the call about an armed assault on the docks. Assailants, unidentified, used automatic weapons and got a massive cargo hold of rare earth elements (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare\_earth\_element). Very professional work. Cameras got shot. Fear for a Dirty Bomb (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty\_bomb) in the works gets most agencies into the work

* Despite lack of cameras, a photo arrives at the investigators. Reinhard Galt is on it as well as the ritters. A-Cell gets into berserk mode to get Galt shot down

* Investigation ensues. While the characters investigate this and that, a few other armed assaults by Galt happen, ending with the big one at March Industries to get a necessary Hi-tech electromagnetic generator or whatever other mumbo jumbo derived from Eldridge investigation we want. MJ12 mobilizes NRO Delta against Galt. Gavin Ross (ADAM) finds himself in a rough position having to keep Lepus/NRO in check as well as his own DG guys. DG is now caught in the middle of a war not their own

* More investigation happens. Chance to uncover Project RAINBOW and ability to expand the campaing further in the future from that link

* Galt assaults electric power plant to get the first prototype to work with ritters and expendable bauer. Fails misserably and some plant personel are found in grotesque fashion. They are basically a meatball of several iterations of theirselves. Several heads, arms, legs, et all. As a reminder, Wackenhut Corporation handles security for a large ammount of electrical power plants, specially nuclear plant. Chance of a shoot out between NRO / DG depending on how long it takes both of them to arrive to the scene.

* Galt assaults nuclear plant and makes a second attempt with increased power output. Investigators get a chance to stop Galt if they arrive to the right place in time. If they are late (or wrong), Galt gains quantum immoratality under certain conditions

Fine, as I said, this is a weird one. First of all, quantum immortality. I am going to make a very brief explanation that will be terrible for anyone actually knowledgeable on physics but rather simple for the rest of us to understand. Lets assume multiple universes. Lets assume you shoot a gun against Galt and you may fail or not under infinite number of circumstances. Universe A -> Galt dies, Universe B -> Galt lives. You shoot again in Universe B and again, you might kill him or not. And again, and again, and again… There is an infinitely small chance that you ALWAYS fail and he ALWAYS survives on Universe XXXX even if you killed him in all infinite prior universes. According to Everett's Many Worlds interpretation, Galt is always alive and dead at the same time, but we only perceive Galt in one of those two possible states.

HP Lovecraft's From Beyond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From\_Beyond\_%28short\_story%29) explains how the Tillinghast Resonator was created to affect the Pineal Gland to allow us to see beyond our normal senses into the terrifying overlapping reality of the Mythos. If Galt can manage to change the machine into making everyone perceive Universe XYXJALKS where every attempt to kill him fails, then he will have achieved quantum immortality, which added to his ability to not age, well… deep shit at its finest

Well, when I ran all this I mixed a hell lot of other things to the general plot that made this quite a memorable campaing for my players, even with them failing and Galt getting what he wanted. I made one of the ritters a CIA agent that could pretty much block files from the agents and make their life more difficult. I had NSA yelling at FBI as my players were mostly in FBI/police. I had Alzis screwing things up and putting up threats/suggestions as he is not particularly happy with Galt's obectives. Armed aryan supremacist to shoot (bauers). Since Galt had to move heavy hardware (and hell lot of guns) Tiger Transit made a cameo too. One of the ritters was one of my players brother, since the familty (and the agent) were right-wing extremists. Lepus showing up in the middle… Well, about everything was in it. It was one hell of a mess and funny as hell

## Proposal 4 by Ludo

The Alumni of Seal Team 5

When: anytime

Main Threat: various groups of Ghouls and related creatures

Acts: somewhere between 3 and 5

### **Background:**

Back during the Vietnam war, the US Army encountered ghouls during their fights against the vietcong near the Cambodian border. Those "cave cannibals" demonstrated so much stamina and strength (not even counting the tactical advantage given by being able to dig your way around an enemy) that PROJECT SUBTERRANEA was funded by MJ-12 after the war, based on the couple of subjects they managed to acquire.

Seal Team 5 was formed by all the solders who volunteered for human testing of this new "super soldier"-marketed project. That project was a failure, however. Some subjects died horribly, some others went insane, and the rest didn't seem to show any signs of ghoulish abilities.

### **Overall plot:**

When the son of a Seal Team 5 member starts eating his girlfriend, DG gets involved and unravels a web of consequences for a 30 year old project… it's up to them to clean MJ-12's mess, but in doing so they end up facing dangerous enemies, forming impossible alliances, and getting knee deep in the conspiracy.

### **Overall goals:**

This first scenario is pretty easy, especially since at least 2 NPCs can help the players. This is so that a new group can find their groove (especially when players are not used to investigation-based adventures) and slowly get into the DG conspiracy (at the end, the players are enlisted as friendlies or agents, depending on how well they performed). The other scenarios slowly ramp up their involvement in DG, and the last act is a big free-form scenario with lots of factions and NPCs with various agendas. The goal is to establish DG as a bunch of "good guys" fighting evil, even though this often involves morally difficult decisions. It would take a second campaign for the players to actually realize DG is not official and can be pretty evil sometimes too.

The campaign can be stretched or shortened according to your needs: scenarios can be added (each one focusing on a different Seal Team member or related individual) between the first and last scenarios, and each scenario can send the players in a different area, on an adventure with different themes and moods.

### **Act 1: Teenage Wasteland**

One of the Seal Team 5 members retired from military service to raise his family in a nice suburban area, but after a few years he started experiencing "changes" in his behaviour, physical abilities and, above all, eating habits. It culminated in an unforgivable event that sent him running away — and he's been hiding ever since. Unknown to him is the fact that his son is also experiencing the same changes, only he mixes everything up with the emotional rollercoaster of being a teenager.

When a couple of mutilated bodies turn up in the same area, and the wounds have human teeth marks in them, some flags go up inside DG. If the players are already DG agents, they are sent to investigate the case, if possible (depending on their profession) by replacing the current officials in charge (e.g. the FBI taking over a local police case). Otherwise, they just do their own parallel investigation. If the players are not DG agents, they are the actual people assigned to the case, but a mysterious "Agent Osborne" may contact them at some point.

The Seal Team dad can also contact the players, acting like a "shadow informer".

For added complexity, a test sample of the saliva found in the victims' wounds could have been sent to the FBI lab. The synthetic compound would raise alerts inside MJ-12, which would then start watching the players from far away.

### **Act 2: Your First Opera**

After the first case, Osborne contacts the players with a list of Seal Team members, and some leads to find one of them. He was last seen in one of the Bible Belt states. The player soon realize he's built a Christian-based cult around him with a very literal interpretation of "eating the flesh of Christ" (most members have "offered" one of their limb to their messiah). There's an unusual pattern of kidnappings around the cult's farm, too, spanning all the way to the neighboring states, as the cult members try to hide the fact they feed on travelers.

The cult leader (the Seal Team member) actually tried to understand more about his transformation, and during his travels he learned about the magical abilities ghouls can get access to. He is currently attempting to shift his farm — and his cult — somewhere half-way to the Dreamlands in order to stay hidden from the authorities.

This mission results in the players getting more information about the ghouls, especially with the books and notes their can seize from the farm (if they didn't blow it up before searching it first). Of interest are some of the cult leader's contacts, which include other Seal Team members, but also a couple other ghoul communities elsewhere in the country, and a few other Mythos-related factions (if needed for future scenarios).

### **Act 3: The Untimely Death of Mr. Osborne**

When Agent Osborne calls the players once again asking them to meet him in a quiet part of New Jersey, they think it's gonna be another quick briefing with lots of omitted information, a cryptic manila envelope, some paranoid recommendations, and the code to a greenbox for them to use during an upcoming investigation on a 3rd member of the Seal Team 5. But instead, Mr. Osborne is missing.

After a bit of searching, they find Mr. Osborne's body: he blew his brains out with his own gun. Finding his notes, they realize he was indeed gathering intel on a Seal Team member, but the trail ends abruptly after he started looking at a few funeral homes scattered around the state, all owned by the same people.

It turns out this is the first occurence of any DG agent outside of Cell-A and Cell-N to discover about ghouls being able to take the appearance of another human being (see the DG sourcebook for info on Cell-N). Cell-A kept that information to themselves, like the assholes they are, to help keep cell N's integrity. They figured they would share the info with the other cells when necessary. But when agent Osbourne realized it, it was too late — he was in a tight situation with another hungry ghoul. No time to ask Cell-A for information. He knew, however, that DG would be compromised and decided to sacrifice himself. The players will realize soon enough that this kind of sacrifice is pretty useless, and that Cell-A is really a bunch of assholes.

Anyway, that's when the players get all promoted to full DG agents, one of them being also promoted to cell leader with a phone line to Cell-A and all the headaches that come with it. Time to grow up.

The case itself is what you would expect from ghouls: they own cremation houses and cemeteries where bodies are fed to their community, but also sometimes sold to a special clientele: humans that want to indulge in cannibalistic activities, either because they're fucked in the head, or because they have a ghoul-fetish somehow (which means they're also fucked in the head, by the way). Also, the ghouls have links to the local organized crime families in a way that leads to believe that ghouls may have infiltrated one of the nearby New York crime families.

This one will be a lot trickier to solve, obviously, and even more difficult to actually win: the enemy is not a self-contained organization like the previous case, and there's just too many ghouls and ramifications to hunt down. This is where the player's actions will start to have likely consequences in future scenarios, and this is where they learn the hard reality of fighting the Mythos: you can never completely win.

### **Act 4: The City That Never Sleeps**

The previous case brought a whole new world of problems to the players — chief among them is that ghouls can look like anybody, and may have access to the Mafia's resources.

Following the lead to one of NYC's crime families confirms the players' nightmare: there are indeed ghouls in one of them. Worst, they realize that those ghouls are the "pragmatic" branch of a group called the "Heretics" — ghouls that believe they shouldn't have to hide and feed on rotten corpses, and instead should hunt humans and be their masters. Those guys are engaged in a secret war with the "Keepers of the Faith", old-school ghouls that live in NYC's underground, and could be made into allies (check Countdown for more info on all this, minus the Mafia connection). And then again, there's the problem of Stephen Alzis, who will be all too happy to mess with the players in order to stir this whole ghouls situation going on in his city one way or another. Or maybe he doesn't care and just wants to have fun… but even that could backfire.

This last scenario is obviously very big, and unlike the first couple ones, totally non-linear. It also probably ends with the situation blowing up in some way, and either half of the players dying, or Cell-A telling them to get the hell out before they do any more damage. In any case, it should have interesting ripple effects throughout the DG-verse, especially depending on MJ-12's involvement (I envision MJ-12's role in this campaign to be limited to optional sideboxes, for GMs that can handle more complexity).

MJ-12's optional involvement: they will find some interest in the players at some point, seeing how they seem to follow the trail left over by an old project of theirs. They are also newbie DG members, and those are the easiest to turn — or use in some way. In my game, one player became an unknowing spy for MJ-12, and this paved the way to a full front clash between MJ-12 and DG that happened in the second campaign… but as far as this 1st campaign goes, they're mostly in the background, with an occasional muscle intervention from one of their strike teams.