The Stochastic Game

Ramblings of General Geekery

This is what’s going on in the Mitchester Arms TTRPG pub tonight… don’t ask.

The Spider-Man / Sauron meme with a few tweaks:

Spider-Man: "You can compute Strike Ranks on the fly, and you're using it to turn people into dinosaurs? But with tech like that, you could cure CANCER!"

Sauron: "But I don't WANT to cure cancer. I want to play old-school fantasy RPGs!"

These past couple years I’ve been writing “timetables” for my convention one-shots, so I can better manage pacing and not get rushed at the end. Here’s the one I have for Delta Green’s Operation FULMINATE. Comments welcome!

Delta Green
Operation FULMINATE

Introduction (00:05)

•Social presentations, make name signs
•One break or two? Content Warnings?
•Who knows about Delta Green?
    ◦“Call of Cthulhu meets X-Files”
    ◦Deadly, the truth is often costly or inaccessible
    ◦BRP-based, percentile dice, etc.

Characters (00:10)

•Let people pick their character
•They can change the gender/backstory/etc.
•SAN rolls, Willpower, Bonds, etc.
•Remember this is a convention game:
    ◦We don’t know the difference betweenyour character and yourself. Telegraph your roleplaying.
    ◦The adventure is straightforward!
•Pick a Delta Green cell letter (E to V), pick a codename.

Mission Briefing (00:20)

•Case information, time limit
•Reiterate mission orders

Trailhead Ranger Station (00:30)

•General area information, lake, trails, dam,ranger station, etc.
•Meet the Rangers, meet Brandon
•Foreshadow the strangers

Freeform Investigation (01:00)

•Explore the trails, look for the strangers, fight some zombies, etc.
•Brandon has powers?
•The rainstorm gets worse!

Break (02:00)

•Check-in with the players

Showdown at the Station (02:10)

•Try to get everybody back to the station before night
•Brandon’s parents arrive?
•The strangers attack?

Outro (3:45)

•Wrap up, answer questions

I forgot to watch this but it’s a little bit interesting, at least for fans of Ultima like me: Richard Garriott should be able to get the Ultima copyright back next year. It’s not much (all the juicy stuff is in the trademark, and I think it’s all only for the first game) but it’s still something.


My plans for @KamCon are coming into focus: I’ll be running Delta Green (Operation FULMINATE, plus two “demo games” of LAST THINGS LAST), and Call of Chtulhu (my own scenario The King’s Daughters). Also somehow I’ll be a guest on two panels, for some reason?


This week is the last game before everybody in my Friday group is back from summer holidays and we can resume our Pendragon campaign (Uther period!) I’m lazy, so we’ll probably just play through another one of the Dragonbane adventure sites we didn’t get to before.

Dragonbane Misty Vale map (cloth version) along with the booklets and boxed set.