I asked all of the players to come up with character concepts. I didn’t want to limit them at all, and in fact didn’t even talk about the D20 Modern rules. This game was going to grow organically. So I gave the players free reign. Here’s what they came up with:

• My Brother: Hank Gupta, an Indian-American (not a Native American) who was a brilliant weapons engineer that believes he was abducted by aliens. Very nervous and not good with guns but great with bizarre gizmos.
• Matt: Jake Iron Shirt. Matt wasn’t sure what he wanted, so I based a character off of him: a big Native American who once was a Ultimate Fighting Champion, but lost the title and his movie star wife to alcohol and depression. He has a son with his ex-wife. All of this background was an opportunity to seed the campaign for future scenarios.
• Joe L: Joseph Fontaine, a private investigator who works for an agency that pursues occult cases. In D&D terms, he’s a cleric and has some medical training. In role-playing terms, we weren’t sure what his religion even is yet.
• George: Kurtis Grange. That guy from 24. Only he’s a black guy who specializes in torture, speaks many languages, and wields two Glocks.
• Jeremy: Jim Baxter, an ornery Brit who works for Special Forces and is also psychic. A smooth-talker who can charm the ladies.
• Bill: Sebastian Creed, an aerospace engineer who lost his brother in the Sudan. Knows a few languages, enjoys running as a hobby.

And there you have it. Looking the characters over, a few things occurred to me. First, this group is the United Nations of gaming. Did I mention the players are all white? Second, some of the characters were clearly story-oriented (Joe T, Matt), some where there to fill a role (Joe L), and some were simply whatever the player felt like (George, Jeremy, and Bill). That was fine, I could work with it.

I decided that since George wanted a 24-type setting, I would give it to him. I liked the idea of Delta Green agents, but disliked the conspiracy cell-type activity, which didn’t lend itself well to a post 9/11 world wherein monolithic government agencies act with impunity. I was much more fond of the notion that DESPITE all the resources of a huge agency, the characters are still helpless. I really enjoyed the idea of making that bureaucracy a hindrance, with constant backstabbing and competing amongst the various organizations. I read an article by Adam Scott Glancy hinting at what a modern Delta Green might look like, and one suggestion was that Delta Green was reabsorbed by Majestic-12 and became the new paranormal fighting force.

I loved it. Sold. I didn’t sweat the details. Everyone was about to be drafted into Majestic-12. Its official cover was the Counter-Intelligence Field Agency (CIFA). The agents would have badges and assignments, but would constantly struggle with internal government politics, the pressure of their official and unofficial jobs, and of course their personal lives.

I needed more details about how their super-secret training worked and I found it in GURPS Black-Ops. Black-Ops seems much more interested in character background (pages are dedicated to training) than the actual game play itself, and that was just fine with me. I searched some more and found that Conspiracy X has a lot of great ideas and scenarios worth mining.

I set finger to keypad and wrote up how each character joined Majestic-12. In each case, it was at a low point in the character’s lives. And every weird event would eventually have repercussions later.

I got my hands on Delta Green: Countdown, which contains the lovely and varied “stress tests” known as Project Outlook. I planned to put them through the tests, unique for each character; it was largely a role-playing exercise and to get the players in the mood. This was the “horror” part of the action horror game, as I subjected the characters to a nuclear strike, being buried alive, amputation, and worse. All a simulation of course.

I didn’t want to start off slow though. I needed the game to start off with a bang. I decided there would be a danger room of sorts, a danger room with ridiculously dangerous weapons that their grizzled mentor would scoff at, shouting, “you think this is bad? Wait until Cthulhu wakes up and the world dies screaming!” There would be no introductions, just someone thrusting a weapon in the PC’s hands, a wall sliding away, and being shoved into Satan’s Playroom.

I had all kinds of miniatures, specifically the neat trap miniatures from Mage Knight. And, in conjunction with Green Ronin’s Mutants & Masterminds introductory scenario, Doom Room, I would torture the agents until there was only one standing. And that was just the beginning.

In the end the guy who survived best was Joe L. One challenge with Delta Green is that it breaks a bit when it comes to including magic, and of all the PCs Joe L’s character is eventually going to pull off some pretty impressive healing miracles. So I couldn’t have him be a proper part of Majestic-12 without inventing a magic division out of whole cloth. Instead, I opted to include him as a “friendly,” Delta Green’s way of saying, “you’re too kooky to be a federal agent but if you want to kill yourself protecting humanity we’ll gladly accept your help.”

And then it was time to pick codenames. This was action horror, after all, and I likened the group not unlike G.I. Joe the cartoon, which had everything from Egyptian gods to mutant snakemen. This was an important moment, because the names the characters picked would reflect on their attitudes about the game. It would also help distinguish between two players named Joe. I asked them to sound off. Some had clearly thought about it, others hadn’t.

Joe L: “Archive” This fit his scholarly persona perfectly.
• George: “Hammer” A little gauche for my tastes but it certainly got the point across.
• Bill: “Caprice” This has become a running joke. The case agent for the team talks like Sean Connery (I love me some Sean Connery accent), so he has difficulty saying “Caprice.” It sounds like Capri, as in Capri pants. He has thus earned the moniker “Hot Pants” from Hammer. It fits.
• Matt: “Blade” Since this PC’s specialty involves traditional Native American weapons and he often fights with two state-of-the-art hatches, Blade fit just fine.
• Jeremy: “Jim-Bean” Here we go ... Jeremy’s saying volumes about his character already. Anyone want to take bets on if he eventually becomes an alcoholic?

And my brother? My brother named his character: “Guppy”

At that moment I saw my entire campaign fall apart. My action horror campaign had been reduced to slapstick. I just needed Suppy and Tuppy and we’d have a Three Stooges yuck-fest. The characters laughed. The players laughed.

I pretended to laugh. But I was crying on the inside.

Lesson Learned: What’s in a name? A hell of a lot.

References

• GURPS Black Ops
• Conspiracy X
• Delta Green
• Delta Green: Countdown
• Mage Knight Dungeons Trap Pack