The interlude between “The Night Floors” and “A Volume of Secret Faces” (AVoSF) is a critical interstitial period. Whether you opt to playthrough, montage, or shimmering shift the intervening 20 years between these two acts, the fleeting Carcosan imagery from “The Night Floors” should linger in the minds of the agents and their players. The campaign provides valuable advice and modified mechanics to enable this weighty transition. Here, we will delve into the advice and share our table’s interlude experience, which hinged on haunting dreams powered by Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa, which I previously reviewed.
Replace the Lost:
If agents die or completely lose their minds in the first act, they must create new characters. Encourage players to link these characters to the events and aftermath of the McAllister Building. Perhaps they helped mop up some peripheral messes, worked with Agent Marcus on a follow-up mission, or chased down a bleeding edge, like the Bookshop or a creative work released by one of the tenants. They could have conducted follow-up interviews with tangential NPCs, like Carun’s editor, Post’s agent, or Abigail’s dad. This allows the exploration of untapped fields of investigation and personalizes the lingering mystery for the new agent. Be certain to hold on to those lost agents for future use as disturbing elements in Carcosan visions and encounters.
The Schism:
Delta Green fractures between “The Night Floors” and “AVoSF,” and the campaign requires the agents to side with the Outlaws. This alliance facilitates some character development. Whether fast-forwarding or dedicating extra game time to additional operations, ask players to consider why they inevitably chose to side with Outlaws or defect from the Program. Did they lose any compatriots along the way? This allows the Handler and player to integrate Bond deterioration with Delta Green History. Players could be encouraged to select a fellow Delta Green agent as the broken Bond due to alienation, betrayal, or death, as described on page 113. Perhaps their new Bond is someone they encountered in their years as Outlaws.
Breaking Bonds:
The poisoning of Bonds is unique to Impossible Landscapes and requires the Agents to assign a symptom to each Bond. The campaign helpful prescribes some suggested symptoms to reflect the ongoing dissonance and decay related to psychic residua from the McAllister Building. To provide some variance, here are some expanded Bond symptoms for each type of relationship (select or roll 1D8 for each Bond):
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- Romantic: abandoned, accusatory, addicted, apathetic, cheating, desolate, jaded, miserable
- Custodial: addicted, cynical, hopeless, hysterical, infantile, manipulated, vanishing, victimized
- Familial: addicted, alienated, anxious, bleak, grasping, obsessive, shattered, untrustworthy
- Collegial: avoidant, deluded, dismal, impatient, in the way, isolated, scheming, suspicious
The Lost Bond is a unique opportunity to engage an agent in a brief side investigation. This tragedy occurs in 2007 after the Bond encounters A Song Before Travel in Chicago. Involve the players in this event, by offering them the choice to decide the ultimate fate of the Bond. It’s more impactful to tell them they last spoke to the Lost during the Bond’s visit to Chicago piquing their interest to investigate. In many cases without an intentional lure, the Lost Bone may simply fall flat and be forgotten. Again, consider setting aside this particular Bond for future Carcosan encounters.
Establish New NPC Connections:
If desired and/or players seem driven to continue their investigation, feed them additional NPCs they did not uncover during Night Floors. This could be as simple as tying up loose ends and checking boxes at the request of Delta Green or self-directed by the Agents. It’s another great opportunity to demonstrate the infectious danger of the Yellow King on reality as they stumble upon downstream suicides, madness, and interpersonal deterioration.
Aging Agents:
Each Agent must take one new “Damaged Veteran” option as part of the Interlude. Ask the player to describe the most disturbing thing they did or witnessed during their service to Delta Green in the intervening years. Have them reflect on the impact of their Delta Green tenure on their mundane career. Did they struggle or excel? This initial discussion provides a nice framework for selecting their three Home pursuits. The campaign suggests the Handler should summarize the outcome of the pursuit, but I chose to make this a collaborative effort with a quick back-and-forth.
Staying on the Case:
If agents choose to “Stay on the Case,” critical successes and fumbles unlock a dangerous lead. This provides another avenue for revelation. It works best to streamline this by setting aside the preferred dangerous lead and developing a plan for how this enters the game and potentially influences the agent. This lead serves the Interlude well by yielding information about A Song Before Travel in Chicago. This potentially builds synergy with Agent suffering the Lost Bond and strengthens the investment in this Interlude sidetrack.
Dreaming of Carcosa:
Finally, I employed Heinrich’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcosa to create haunted dreams for my players. This provided a satisfying, varied, and interactive means to foreshadow and Carcosan terrain. This solo guide can also be used to great effect for 1-on-1 play. Thanks to the similarities between Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu mechanics and skills, it is nearly effortless to adapt for your campaign. The weird, illusory symbolism and similar motifs allow the Handler to adjust the Guide for their Delta Green campaign on the fly. Inserting puppets, slightly altering the Carcosan landscape, and incorporating Impossible Landsapes’ demonology easily create a vaguely consistent world. It doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfectly aligned…in fact, it’s a feature. The players and the Agents will question the dissolving world and its symbols while imbuing their experiences with meaning that you can then leverage for future dissonance (or amplification).
I ran single sessions for each of my five players using the Guide. Each dream sequence took between one to two hours, and each Agent had a substantially different experience thanks to the nature of the Guide. During their exploration, they never progressed beyond the doors of the Palace into Act II.
After each player died, I gave them a few moments of uncertainty before asking: where do you wake up? We then explored the impact of the dreams on their life with the following questions:
- How often do you have these dreams?
- Are they always like this?
- Do you tell anyone about them?
- How has this affected your life?
These haunting reveries have informed their decision-making in “A Volume of Secret Faces” as the Agents grasp for answers and clues. They have created meaning from their experiences and transferred the archetypes from the Guide into the Impossible Landscapes campaign. This works best when you do not reveal they are playing a completely different game. Allow the lines to blur. It facilitates the disintegration of reality critical to this experience.
The purpose of the Interlude is to create a sense of space and then fill it with pervasive dysphoria. Agents may progress in a mechanical capacity, but they should remain tethered to their experiences from “The Night Floors.” Even if you choose to run additional Delta Green operations in the Interlude, never let them stray too far from the realm of the Yellow King.