<br /><br />Chapter 53: Grace Under Pressure - Introduction

Subscribe to Talien's Tower by Twitter, email or via the Site Feed

Thursday, March 25

Chapter 53: Grace Under Pressure - Introduction

This story hour is from "Grace Under Pressure" by Jeff Barber and John Tynes and "Project Pi" by Peer Kroger from Worlds of Cthulhu #1. You can read more about Delta Green at http://www.delta-green.com. Please note: This story hour contains spoilers!

Our cast of characters includes:

Game Master: Michael Tresca (http://michael.tresca.net)
Joseph “Archive” Fontaine (Dedicated Hero/Acolyte) played by Joe Lalumia
Jim “Jim-Bean” Baxter (Charismatic Hero) played by Jeremy Ortiz (http://jeremyrobertortiz.blogspot.com)
Hank “Guppy” Gupta (Smart Hero/Field Scientist) played by Joseph Tresca (http://www.eyeballistic.com)
Kurtis “Hammer” Grange (Fast/Dedicated Hero/Gunslinger) played by George Webster
Sebastian “Caprice” Creed (Fast/Charismatic/Smart Hero/Techie) played by Bill Countiss

Grace Under Pressure is a perfect fit for Project Pi, combining a deep sea submarine expedition with the excitement of heavily armed SEALs. While I was really attracted to running Grace Under Pressure with miniatures, time didn't allow for it. Events moved quickly, as the agents are still in pursuit of Cho Chu-Tsao, there's a giant submarine tumbling into the depths behind them, and they're about to descend into R'lyeh.

In R'lyeh, our old friend Dr. William Davis Ko is back – turns out he's a traitor to Majestic-12 and continued to fund his Deep One research in conjunction with the Pi Virus. John Powers, also a traitor to Majestic-12, was icing on the cake. From there, it was just a matter of having Cho Chu-Tsao, Ko, and Ko's bodyguard duke it out in front of Fat Dragon's nifty temple which my two-year-old son helped me put together.

I knew this scenario was trouble though. I even mentioned it on Nebulos' story hour, who ran it as a d20 Modern game like I did. The problem is that the scenario doesn't really have a survival conclusion. Basically, the PCs have a very high chance of getting "Deep One on them" with the only solution being a tradeoff with the final villain in front of the Cthulhu shrine. Assuming the agents sell out to save their lives, it leaves the little matter of Cthulhu awakening.

The resolution, as implied by the scenario, involves nuclear subs might firing a missile at Cthulhu. We didn't have a nuclear missile because I changed the scenario around. But I did have a nuclear-powered submarine.

Both scenarios are concerned about avoiding awakening Cthulhu, which just seems silly to me. I mean, seriously, you can't beat a Star Spawn of Cthulhu in combat, so if you're going to blow one up with a plot device, why not just use the Big Guy himself?

So I used the Star Spawn as the Big Scary Monster you THINK is the final boss but isn't. My brother even asked, "why do they call this game Call of Cthulhu? Do we ever get to meet him?"

And then he did.

I had my Call of Cthulhu action figure from SOTA toys, which I used in my Arcanis story hour. It's been a couple of years, so the players completely forgot about it. In fact, I was careful to bundle him up in a plastic bag so that nobody accidentally discovered him before his big reveal. It had exactly the effect I hoped. more

Labels: d20 modern