Déjà vu, alien artifacts, mad scientists, and the lord of primordial chaos; Delta Green’s Observer Effect has it all.
We’re jumping back into the Delta Green role-playing game after The Last Equation; unlike that relatively simple adventure, Observer Effect has rather a lot going on. There is a set sequence of events, so making things up on the fly risks the game losing coherence. Unfortunately that means prep. As always, do not read this if you are going to be a player.
Story outline
Array pulses
Important NPCs
Player Options
If they fail
Handler tips
Observer Effect timeline
Scenario playthrough
Conclusion
Story outline
The Olympian Holobeam Array recently went online. Designed to test the theory that reality is a 3D reflection of a 2D universe, this new facility houses a crystal-matrix quantum supercomputer and a customer laser array. Technology that sounds out of this world? Absolutely the case. Extra-terrestrial equipment once studied at Nellis Air Force Base has made its way into the private sector.
The laser array exposed the minds of the staff to Azathoth, the eldritch God at the very centre of the universe. Bad news bears – perceive this horror and it will stare back, causing one to perceive it more deeply, and thus be perceived. This vicious cycle warps spacetime, resulting in either a loop or an alternate reality slide.
Wherever they may be, the agents start screaming when the Holobeam array is first turned on. Perhaps they get vague glimpses of their near future, perhaps not. Either way, Delta Green find notes of the agents’ involvement at the lab – notes that nobody remembers writing. Following a briefing, investigators head to the facility and things get weird.
Moments of mind-bending déjà vu occur at set times, as do the actions of various NPCs. When things occur is important, as they tie in with timestamps on the computer. They are also points to which the agents will be thrown back if the clock hits 22:03:37, having less time to play with in subsequent iterations. Yup, it’s groundhog day without the feel-good ending. Players only get a few bites at this cherry before their reality collapses.
Array pulses
The array detects pulses regularly throughout the day, roughly an hour apart. Their strength varies, but the exact time of their occurrences coincides with most of the key events. The supercomputer (Dee) has a record of their time and intensity, and is the easiest place to start putting things together. The facility’s CCTV will show static for a few seconds when the pulses kick in.
The first strong pulse causes the array’s power surge, knocks the chief engineer unconscious, and sends a researcher into the void.
Important NPCs
Dr Klinger, Black and Takagawa are probably the most important Observer Effect NPCs – at least for granting clues and progressing the story. Black is a little unhinged, has written many strange notes, and has several books on mythology. Helen Klinger flat out disappeared when the power went out. While the staff may think she’s around somewhere, she was effectively trapped in an interdimensional hell. Klinge babbles nonsense upon her first reappearance, but quickly kicks it up a gear by trying to kill everyone in the building.
The scenario suggests that she tries to isolate and deal with individuals, which makes sense for a single combatant. You can have plenty of fun with a deranged, teleporting lunatic who thinks they are doing people a favour by ending their life. Perhaps she is.
Takagawa is the first physical manifestation of weirdness. He goes blind, glows, and screams a lot shortly after waking and stumbling into the bathroom. He wants to talk to his family, and he will probably want medical aid. How the agents deal with Takagawa will probably set the tone for the rest of the adventure. If they immediately terminate him, it is less likely they will be hesitant about killing everyone else. If they are soppy and take him to the hospital, containment has been breached and there will surely be a media circus.
Player options
Players can be creative, but the main way to stop the world ending is destroying the equipment and dealing with those exposed to Azathoth. The staff will not willingly stand by and let agents trash the computer or laser array, so there’s a good chance of combat unless they get creative.
It’s human perception that is ultimately responsible for the folding of reality. That means fewer and fewer exposed minds are required to keep the incursions going as time ticks on. If the agents trash the place prior to 18:46:16, there can be no more than 4 witnesses/observers left conscious. At 20:57:50 it drops to no more than 2, and at 22:03:37 there can be only one.
The scenario states that agents are included in the tally of observers. That’s a tall order, especially when you have a large group – I’m probably not going to count the players’ characters. I also think it’s unlikely that players will even suspect that the number of observers matter unless they happen to incapacitate one of the NPCs. In such a case, the characters feel a slight sense of relief; that’s their clue. The Observer Effect literature suggests that Klinger can allude to the connection, but I’d recommend she be as vague as you can get away with.
If they fail
Solving the problem after 20:57:50 results in part of Azathoth breaking through. It trashes the buildings, any staff still standing, and then hunts the agents down. It’s still a win – they just need to stay alive long enough for it to disappear. The stats and abilities for the ‘extrusion’ are pretty hardcore, so deaths are likely if it comes to this. It really depends how many staffers are around to die first.
Hitting 22:03:37 on the third iteration is complete failure; reality gets sucked into the abyss to live forever with Azathoth. It’s not the end for the agents – they appear at 10:00 in an alternate reality, screaming. This is an excellent segue into whatever you plan on running next. The scenario material says that it should be a universe in which the holoarray didn’t exist, but you can pretty much rewrite the world.
Perhaps an agent returns home to his wife and kids, only to discover that he never settled down. Maybe this reality already contains a doppelganger living his life.
Handler tips
You’ll want to read the Observer Effect scenario a few times. Focus on the NPCs that have events, such as Klinger, Black, and Takagawa. The personalities of the rest can be made up, and their actions can be whatever makes sense.
Keep track of where your agents are on the map, because their position dictates what they see and hear at key moments. I am normally pretty lose with player positions, but this is a very structured scenario.
Make the progression of time obvious to your players. I put a piece of folded paper over my GM screen with the date and time, switching it out as it seemed appropriate. The Observer Effect material suggests breaking the time up into 30 minute chunks, allowing players to achieve only so much before the next iteration. You can speed things up or slow them down as you feel appropriate.
Observer Effect timeline
Events run on rails in this scenario. The following timeline may be of some use to handlers prepping their session.
Scenario Playthrough
This is more for my benefit than anyone else, but it might be useful for Handlers planning on running this Delta Green scenario. Every group will do things differently, but here’s what happened at our table. This was over three sessions, although almost all of session one was character creation and shooting the breeze.
Character creation
We’d previously gone with scenario pregens, so it was about time we had a go at generating our own characters. This was very quick and easy, and we ended up with a criminal gang with members of varying backgrounds. Brad loves roleplaying criminal gangs, so this was no surprise. Al arrived a bit late, so we gave him Inspector Hua and got the show on the road.
Adam – Billy Butcher (former soldier)
Brand – Henry Le Mills (career criminal)
Brad – Dwight ‘numbnuts’ Bolton (ex CIA)
Al – Inspector Hua (DoE)
The briefing
The 10am screaming pain kicked in whilst the gang were visiting Church; Butcher went to confessional, Dwight waited in the car, and Henry liberated some valuables from a nearby estate. They got their shit together over breakfast at a local diner, where the call from Delta Green came in and they were summoned for instruction.
Eve Carpenter got a grilling at the meeting, eventually admitting that DG had uncovered notes detailing the team’s visit to the Holobeam Array – something that had yet to occur. Issued with their cover identities and a DoE-registered vehicle, the group head out to the Array. A bit of research and cover rehearsal happened on the way.
Making the cause of the investigation known will cause your players to immediately suspect time travel. I’d recommend holding it back regardless of their persuasiveness.
Arrival
Director Jamie Campbell had little time for an unnecessary inspection from the DoE. She summoned Kozak to show the agents what they needed to see and headed back to her office. The party split up, with Hua being shown the array while the rest poked around.
Campbell was convinced to show Butcher the facility’s employee details, but nothing much of use was gleaned. Hua and Kozak got their geek on, leading to the discovery of the blips in the data collected. Hua confirmed that there were no reported power surges at the time of the array going offline.
The computer
A talk with the cooperative Jingfei demonstrated Dee’s prowess, allowing them to ask all sorts of questions. The agents now know that the spikes vary in intensity – and that it’s going off the chart at 10pm. Hua examined the graph and saw Dee’s prediction of a pulse that’s off the scale at 22:03. He listened to the audio interpretation and lost a little sanity. Nobody looked at the actual computer, despite Jingfei’s description.
CCTV footage
Checking the footage showed that pulses were having an effect on more than the data readout. The gang sped through the recordings and discovered than Klinger was nowhere to be seen after the power surge. They assumed she had left the site.
Dr Takagawa
The poor doctor was escorted to the bathroom, went blind, started glowing in the dark, and was generally very upset. The gang eventually threw protocol to the wind, called an ambulance, and medics collected the whimpering Takagawa from the guard house.
Black holes and revelations
I had agents glimpse possible memories on a failed power roll when the larger pulses struck. The first couple were bland, such simply seeing themselves walking down a corridor ahead of themselves. The flashbacks became more gory and disturbing – such as a blurry recollection of someone in a lab coat cutting someone’s neck open, or being slumped against a wall while desperately trying to staunch a stomach wound. These aren’t premonitions, so you can flavour them however you wish.
Helen Klinger
Klinger appeared in the lab whilst Henry was talking to Jingfei. She screamed ‘the drums, the flutes; I have seen the face of God!’ and ran out into the corridor. Bumping into Dwight, she uttered further nonsense such as ‘it has happened before, it will happen again’ – then promptly disappeared.
Klinger is supposed to hang around for quite a while before vanishing. I thought it was best to have her disappear at a dramatically appropriate moment.
History repeats
Klinger reappeared in Campbell’s office and murdered her brutally. Dwight found her office dark, with bloody footprints leading out of the door and round the corner. The spoor ended abruptly.
Butcher decided that the computer was to blame and attempted to unplug the power. Jingfei wouldn’t stand for it, so he tied her to a chair before yanking the cords. Jingfei screamed, and a guard came running; butcher managed to subdue and tie her up, too. The second guard wasn’t taking any shit, and put butcher down with a cracking shot. Realising that they might be overstaying their welcome, Hua ran to the array and attempted to configure the laser to emit diametric pulses at the predicted times. It didn’t work, and agents were once again screaming at 18:46.
The plan to oppose the pulses was a good one, and I might have let it succeed if there had already been a time shift. It was right at the end of a session, so rolling back was a good point to pick up the following week. I told the players that their characters felt ‘lighter, less stressed and oppressed’ every time a PC or NPC went unconscious or was killed – regardless of whether they were around to see it. Hua did not reappear – Al was on holiday the following week.
Forewarned is forearmed
The agents decided to kick things up a notch. They left Takagawa tied up in the bathroom and had another discussion with Dee. Butcher asked for a printout of the diametric frequencies, then tied Jingfei up again. Henry examined the server rack and quickly realised that this was not a machine from our world. Butcher’s classic light touch with a 9mm obliterated the egg-shaped supercomputer, and Dwight scooped the fragments into his pockets.
Aware that the guards would probably have seen this happen on the CCTV (a luck roll said that they did), they moved Jingfei into the corridor and ambushed the guard (Karen) as she came round the corner. Butcher backtracked, used another exit, and made a break for the laser array. At the sound of the main entrance door opening again, the Henry and Dwight dragged an unconscious Karen and a struggling Jingfei into a storage room.
Here was a standoff with both the security and the agents being equally intractable. Dwight held the terrified computer technician at the door as they shouted demands back and forth. He fired several shots into the air to let them know he was serious.
Meanwhile, Butcher manhandled Kozak and tried to convince him to enter the frequencies into the array. Kozak turned back towards the main building upon hearing the gunshots, but was persuaded to get on with the task if Butcher would go back and check. Butcher did not go back and check. Butcher followed Kozak and hid in the corner of the room to make sure the deed was done.
From bad to worse
After exclaiming ‘but this is nonsense!’, Kozak threw the papers to the ground and walked out of the door. Butcher shot Kozak in the back and headed back to the main complex. The security guards heard this shot, and one of them left to investigate. Dwight heard him leave and decided to take a pot shot. He fumbled the roll and caught the side of Jingfei’s neck.
A fountain of blood erupted from the poor girl and she hit the floor like, well, like someone who had just been shot in the neck. Gunplay ensued but Henry and butcher managed to finish off the two guards. Henry headed off of to help Butcher while Dwight rounded up Cambell and Black. Henry and Butcher dealt with the last security guard and discovered that Kozak had disappeared. They checked the CCTV and saw him stumbling towards the main gate.
Butcher went back inside while Henry went on the hunt – eventually finding Kozak slumped over. He could find no pulse, but stomped on his head just to be sure. With Campbell and Black tied up, they gathered everyone in the main lab; including the unconscious Karen. Klinger popped back into existence and just stood in the corner with her back to the room. Upon approach, she turned to greet them with blood dripping from her eyes – muttering further nonsense about a king on a black throne.
The end of a bloodbath
With minutes remaining, the agents decided that they would need to knock everyone out before the final pulse – including themselves. They pistol whipped the staff and executed Takagawa as he lay moaning in a pool of his own piss. Butcher dealt with Henry and Dwight before running headfirst into a wall.
They woke to a bassy trembling just seconds after the final pulse. Running from the building, they turned to witness a tear form in reality and a giant black tentacle push through. A fumbled roll caused the car tyres to dig down into the gravel, and the group attempted their escape on foot. The Lovecraftian horror swiftly mangled and then flipped their car into the air, but a critical roll from Henry allowed him to hit the fuel tank and blow the creature off balance.
That delay was all they needed, and they ran until their legs gave out. Their pursuer had gone. All that remained was a call to Eve Carpenter, who gave her thanks and instructed them to lie low.
Conclusion
This is far from my normal kind of scenario, it’s got a fairly strict structure. That said, I think it works really well. The iteration jumps build a sense of urgency, and there’s plenty of scope for player initiative.
Klinger is definitely best played as a wildcard and she has some cool abilities if she gets into a fight with the agents. After a ton of combat with the security guards, I didn’t feel any more was necessary. I was pleased with the game’s progression, although I had to stop and go over the facts a couple of times. That could have been down to assumed knowledge after reading the scenario three times – or it could have been too many cold beers on a hot summer’s day.
Sanity loss is really, really heavy. Heavy even for most dramatic of Delta Green or Call of Cthulhu encounters. The characters are potentially losing SAN right off the bat when 10am hits. The pulses, and realisations keep that going throughout the entire adventure. If the agents decide that they need to kill the staff then it goes to a whole new level, with 1d10 sanity loss when killing an in innocent in cold blood. You may want to tone down the sanity rolls for an ongoing campaign, but it’s fine as a season finale or a one-shot.
I give Delta Green’s Observer Effect the thumbs up, especially if your players don’t mind their characters dying. Let’s face it, this is probably the wrong system if they do.
You can grab this scenario for $5 on DriveThruRPG ($20 if you want a hard copy).