Review of the Delta Green scenario, Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, written by Adam Scott Glancy.
In Short: A (potentially) fantastic and horrifying procedural investigation stuffed into a railroaded straight-jacket that needs to be surgically removed to allow for any player agency, unless the table prefers a scenario that plays itself.
Spoiler-lite for Players and Handlers
Before getting into the review at all, any potential Handlers should go listen to the RPG Reanimators episode about this scenario. Many of my complaints are the same as their’s, and much of the spoiler section is building on the changes they suggested as well. In a way, half of the spoiler section of this piece is almost as much about the RPG Reanimators’ Holly’s version of Puppet Shows as it is the vanilla scenario.
Many of Puppet Shows’ issues stem from it being a purpose-built ‘introduction’ scenario. As the first of four scenarios (or three, if you lump The New Age parts together) in the original Delta Green sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu, Puppet Shows’ main job was likely to onboard player and Keepers into Delta Green, before letting them loose a bit more with Convergence, then into a longer run of The New Age. Unfortunately, while Puppet Shows gets across the vibes of DG almost perfectly, it awkwardly fumbles through the investigation, giving little room for player or Handler agency or paradoxically opening up so wide as to give nothing for the Handler to hold on to.
There’s a reason Puppet Shows still sits in a central spot in the pantheon of DG scenarios; setup, atmosphere, and setting are pitch-perfect to an aching degree. A string of disappearances brings in DG attention to the San Carlos Apache Indian Reserve in Arizona, putting the Agents into the lead of an investigation with the Apache Tribal and Arizona State Police across the hilly desert. Horror ensues. The scenario covers 26 pages, looking great as per modern DG standard and awkwardly laid out as per modern DG standard. Pretty, but you need to flip around more than necessary to find the information you need (or find out the information you need doesn’t exist).
Nicely detailed map of the San Carlos Reservation, which unfortunately doesn't get as nice of a description in text form.
Just reading the first page was enough to hook me in, and even if the rest of the scenario wobbles between inspiring and unuseable, the promise of the setting and setup was too strong to ignore. The three sessions ended up being one of the best Delta Green/Call of Cthulhu runs I’ve done. By the end it might have only vaguely resembled what was written on the page, but those pages did contain the bones, heart, and skin of a great scenario, it just needed major, major, surgery to get the meat and fat in a workable state.
Going more into the scenario, and how to rejig it, requires major spoilers, so we’ll end it there. If run as is, I would not want to play Puppets Shows. But with lots of work, or some intense improvisation, one of the best Delta Green scenarios can be dug out.
Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays is available on DriveThruRPG digitally or in Print on Demand, or for preorder in the (eventually…) upcoming 90s scenario anthology Incursions.
Before getting started, the version of this scenario I ran was based off of Holly’s ‘reanimated’ version of this scenario, as described in the RPG Reanimators episode on Puppet Shows, as well as her run of it for the Into the Darkness actual play. I’d highly suggest at least listening to the ‘Dissection’ episode for more detail, as I’ll try not to repeat what they’ve already explained in detail. In the end, as with any run of any scenario by any GM, what I ended up with strayed from both the scenario as-written and Holly’s ‘reanimated’ version.
The main structure of the scenario has the Agents going around the various crime scenes, discovering clues, or more often than not, having the clues be discovered for them, until they can track down their suspect. This is a major recurring annoyance with the scenario – it is supremely unconfident the players can uncover, or the Handler can lead them to, information. Either the police, a Delta Green contact, or Nyarlothotep in the form of a mythological Coyote, do all the work and dump whatever is needed to move the scenario along at the Agents’ feet.
Eventually they find one specific clue, some weird sand from one specific cave, that leads them to the suspect’s hideout. I also find this silly and bad design. All the previous investigation is largely moot, as long as they notice (or again, some rando cop notices) the sand. From there they find a little egg shaped space ship in the cave (assuming they pass a basically mandatory Search roll to find it, and the Handler isn’t a dingus and has the ship self-destruct without warning – again, super weird adventure design).
Depending on how the Handler runs things, the scenario then likely ends with a manhunt across the desert as the suspect-alien flees. The text gives very little guidance for this, besides a quick list of the manpower available, and the rather hilarious suggestion that, quote, ‘it should be thrilling and tense.’ Ah dang, I was going to make it boring and lame.
Once the Agents (or the police, once again doing all the work for the Agents) track down their suspect, they find it's a body-hopping alien parasite. Or rather, it is the body-hopping alien parasite from Michael Shea’s The Autopsy. A bit of bald-faced ‘inspiration,’ to put it lightly, but there are certainly worse matches for DG, and it makes for a great villain and final showdown. The possessed host, a SOF vietnam-vet, is tough enough as a purely human opponent, but all hell breaks loose as it starts ignoring fatal bullet wounds and wire-thin, whip-like tendrils burst out of its face.
This fight, along with the ensuing standard-procedure DG coverup shenanigans, is where most runs of the scenario would likely end, but the text seems to weirdly anticipate an autopsy of the body, allowing for an admittedly cool scene as the presumed-dead parasite once again bursts out of its host to possess one of the examiners. What DG player in their right mind would not burn the corpse immediately, much less hand it over to a non-DG coroner? And even if they somehow let the corpse go, possibly via Majestic-12 (more on that later), the Agents quite possibly won’t even be present to witness the elaborately written scene. It all kind of comes across as Glancy really wanting to make an even more blatant ‘reference’ to The Autopsy.
This all encapsulates the main bit of the scenario, or the ‘Puppet Show’ half, with the ‘Shadow Plays’ referring to optional background plots that can introduce new players to three of the deeper Delta Green metaplot shenanigans. One of these is done well, two are… not. The first is, of course, Delta Green, with suggestions on how to use the scenario as an onboarding for totally new Agents, via the annoyingly vague, ‘Mrs. Green’ contact prodding the Agents along before dumping the entire scenario background at their feet. I get it’s going for a X-Files-esque Deep Throat character, but it both doesn’t make much sense from a ‘plot’ perspective (why would DG use an entirely uninitiated group of FBI agents for this when they already know its an alien?) and is once again lazy design-wise (don’t just give the players the whole backstory unprompted!).
The second is devious old Nyarlothotep as Alzis not-at-all-problematicly using a native american Coyote trickster as a disguise. Originally, the CoC-based version of the scenario just straight-up had the Coyote as itself, while the new version I guess tried to make it less weird by instead having Nyarly do it as a gag. Once again, weird as a plot device, bad as a design device. Coyote-Nyarly only serves to point out missed clues to the Agents. All of this is made weirder as Alzis is barely used in the new Delta Green. I actually did still use a coyote in the scenario sort of, with an Agent stumbling onto one of the corpses in the desert, partially dug up by a coyote. I was going to leave it intentionally vague if there was anything supernatural about the coyote, but the players never thought twice about it so whatever. Weird plot element, well worth ignoring.
The last ‘Shadow Play’ is good ol’ Majestic-12, and they are actually used well. An MJ12 team is also tracking down the alien, and can be used as a background element up until a good time to obstruct, confront, or maybe even aid, the Agents. They have the same goal, roughly, of stopping the parasite, and so could cooperate right up until MJ12 tries to take the parasite, alive or dead, while the Agents likely want to completely dispose of it. They’re a great tool to keep in the Handler’s pocket to ratchet tensions and difficulty up or down as pacing dictates.
NRO-Delta doing NRO-Delta things, a useful tool for GMs to make things as messy and irritating as needed for the Agents.
As you may be able to tell from my overall snobby tone, I do not think highly of much of the actual game play bit of the scenario. It’s extremely linear and hand-holdy to the point of nearly just being a short story, right up until it completely lets go of your hands to throw its own up in the air for the nonexistent ending, simply exclaiming to ‘make it exciting!’ The setting, threat, themes, and overall vibes are immaculate, though, and go a long, long way to help forgive the lack of a proper ‘play’ bit (that being said, there’s weirdly zero detail given on the San Carlos and the Reservation itself as setting besides descriptions of the desert – what is the town like, what are the people like, what do they think about all the this madness? Who knows, who cares, certainly not the scenario text…).
Luckily, it also has all the pieces in place to make for an amazing run, but the Handler does need to excise a lot of flab and rejig some of the plot-bones. As I mentioned earlier, I took the main ‘plot’ of the murder order and clues whole-hog from Holly’s version of the scenario. In short: the Agents arrive earlier in the killing-spree, just after the last murder of some tourists clues the cops into previous missing-persons cases being connected. The Agents lead the investigation, searching for the crime scenes and corpses, with each having clues as to the parasite’s previous host. As written, the parasite switches hosts as soon as it arrives at the San Carlos Reservation, but this version has the parasite keeping its cop-body for a few kills before switching to the hermit-veteran. This allows for a very fun twist if the Agents track down the cop-body via his car/badge/whatever-clues, only to find the cop’s corpse and thinking they either had the wrong guy, or realising something is hopping bodies. For specifics, do listen to the RPG Reanimators episode on Puppet Shows, it’s very good.
For my run, I wanted the scenario to feel more ‘alive.’ As written, the Agents have basically arrived after everything is already finished, and just need to be led by the nose to the parasite. In Holly’s reanimated version, the Agents lead the investigation as the murders continue. What I wanted out of the scenario was to focus on the factional tensions that only get a passing mention in the text, but which feel like should be the natural centre-piece of the action. The Agents represent an FBI team sent to ‘assist’ the San Carlos Apache Tribal Police and the State Police, with those two forces having a tangled co-jurisdiction and being led by two very different men. This is all criminally underwritten in the text, with only lip service given to inter-factional and interpersonal friction, leaving both groups as yes-men clue-dispensers and literal body-shields for the Agents. Balls to that. Here’s how I used the four main factions of the FBI, Apache Tribal Police, Arizona State Police, and MJ12 team.
The Apache Tribal Police chief, Alejandro Colorados, is cooperative but desperately wants to get all the attention off his reservation, as he knows the citizens of the reservation are not at all pleased to have scores of State Police and FBI taking over their town. I also had him be a an overall skeptic, not at all receptive to any ‘skin-walker’ talk the Agents might be thinking about. With the ‘reanimated’ version of the scenario, one of his officers also witnessed the last murder, including seeing the alien-possessed-veteran (though cloaked in darkness) sucking dry a victim with his face tentacles, and fired off some rounds into it without doing any damage. Initially the officer, in a wailing panic, did tell Colorados what he saw, but after calming down (and after talking with an MJ12 agent disguised as a psychiatrist), he recanted his story, saying it was just nerves and he must have shot at a coyote (wink wink). Colorados’ skepticism, along with not wanting a local of his reservation (as the silhouette of the veteran may suggest) to be behind the killings, leads him to believe his officer, but as weirdness and bodies pile up, if he trusts the Agents, he may think twice and clue them in. He also does not at all take well to learning of any sort of conspiracy, and if he gets a whiff of the truth of Delta Green, he can quickly become antagonistic. On the other hand, he is professional, and if he is convinced the Agents are equally professional and can get all this over with, he’ll help to the full of his abilities, even if it means putting himself in danger.
The Arizona State Police liaison, Major Frank Garrett, is gung-ho and excited to make use of all his toys, sending out trucks, ATVs, and his helicopter out all over the place seemingly at random. He’ll gladly assist the Agents, as long as the Agents play up to his ego. He will not abide being big-dogged, especially if the FBI does not have proper jurisdiction here. He likewise isn’t particularly inclined to follow Colorados’ advice, preferring everyone to follow his lead. I downplay the text description of Garrett being ‘charming but racist,’ and instead just have him think he is the best man for the job, and suggestions otherwise make him not want to share his toys. If the Agents play nice, though, he’ll take their advice as they give it and allocate his resources as they need it. Should they piss him off, he starts cutting them out of briefings and decision making, potentially leading to him uncovering bodies and messing up crime-scenes, with the Agents only finding out by seeing him talking on the nightly news. As bodies and weirdness piles up, though, he starts losing his nerve, and if the Agents manage to get official authority over the investigation, he is clearly relieved to no longer be responsible, and becomes an easy-going lapdog – at least until MJ12 starts yanking his leash.
Majestic 12, meanwhile, has its own objective. Find and retrieve the alien. If any of the Agents are not yet full DG agents, they contact them directly and ask to be informed if they come across anything unnatural, while also contacting the Phoenix FBI office to request the same. They’ve also sent an agent in disguise as a police psychiatrist to the Apache Tribal Police officer who witnessed the alien, convincing him what he saw was just a trauma response. While an NRO-Delta or BLUEFLY team scouts the reservation in their helicopter, giving occasional spooky sightings for the Agents, they also can yank the State Police or Apache Tribal Police around as they feel necessary, should the Agents be using them in ways that obstruct MJ12’s objective of retrieving the alien. For example, should the Agents for whatever reason entrust the alien ship or even its corpse to either police force, MJ12 should swiftly swoop down to demand they turn it over. Depending on how the Agents have interacted with Colorados and Garrett, and according to their own objectives, the police may be more or less inclined to follow MJ12’s orders, even if they are completely legitimate.
The Phoenix FBI office generally does not play a direct role, but I like having it be a backup resource for the Agents. For example, rather than have the Delta Green contact dump the entire backstory unprompted at their feet, if the Agents request their FBI contact to run the name/badge number/license plate of the first parasite-host, who happens to be a Texas police officer, they can find the newspaper article about the officer, and from there the Phoenix office can feed the Agents more background information as the Handler feels is appropriate. Once the Agents are certain this is a cross-state-lines case, the FBI office can also get them full jurisdiction over the case, making it much easier for them to maneuver around a potentially obstructive Garrett or Colorados. Conversely, as I mentioned earlier, MJ12 could also get in the Agents’ way by contacting Phoenix and having them manipulate the Agents to do MJ12’s bidding.
A final change I made in my run is following some advice I saw… somewhere on the internet, to have a chance of the final confrontation with the possessed-veteran being at an off-the-grid cabin off in the wilderness. The veteran is well armed, and has laid First Blood-esque traps around his cabin. I had pungee-sticks, bear traps, caltrops, door-tripped shotguns, and a trip-wire pipebomb all hidden around the area. Minus the shotgun and pipebomb, all only had a max of a D6 damage, and I only used the pipebomb against NPC police the Agents sent in ahead of them. The shotgun could have taken out a blundering Agent, but luckily for them they had a few surviving NPC cops to face-tank it for them. While I just had the veteran use the weapons given in his statblock (excepting assault rifle he nabbed off an MJ12 trooper after he ‘revived’), but I had considered giving him an M60 light machine gun to really play up the First Blood atmosphere, but only one of the Agents was properly combat-focused, and only a handful of NPC cops lived to help in the gunfight. If I run this again with more fighty Agents, I’d go for the deadlier option.
In totality, I find Puppet Shows to have some of the bones of a fantastic scenario wrapped in the skin of an immaculate scenario, but utterly flabby underneath and with badly-set fractures throughout, somehow being overly-written and scene-dressed while also lacking much for the players to actually do. On the other hand, it’s not all that difficult to suck out the fat and rejig the bones, allowing for a properly freeform procedural wracked with tension while still being a relatively ‘easy’ introductory adventure. My run of it ended up being my favourite single chapter of our Delta Green campaign, despite on paper being my least favourite scenario to read of the nine we used. Watching the players piece together information, their Agents struggle and wrangle the other police factions, the multiple realisations and twists that hit them, and the absolute carnage and ambiguous ‘did we win or make things worse?’ of the finale, all soaked in the sun-drenched atmosphere of the Arizona desert, made for a quintessential Delta Green story. Too bad that’s not how the sessions would have gone if I’d run the scenario based on the text.
You can find Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays in the original Delta Green sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu, in its updated form by itself for the standalone Delta Green Roleplaying Game, or in the (hopefully) soon to be released
90s’ scenario anthology, Incursion.
