This is my play-through summary of Night Floors, the first part of the Impossible Landscapes campaign for the Delta Green RPG. I started running this campaign in November 2021. I am writing this entry in December 2022, so over a year later. This means that my memories of the events in Night Floors are a bit hazy. And since my notes are also quite sparse I expect that I got some things wrong. But the important things should all be correct and I don't want to describe every little detail anyway.
Let's get into it. First, I will introduce our player characters, then I'm going to describe the details of our play-through and how I handled certain things. And finally, I will tell you how I resolved some of the loose ends and what I thought about the scenario overall.
The Agents
We started Night Floors with five players. Their characters are members of the newly formed K-Cell. Agent KATE is the only Delta Green veteran and the cell leader. The other Agents are all Friendlies. Operation ALICE is their first official Delta Green mission together.
The Agents are:
- Julia Bates, aka KATE. She works for the Criminal Investigation Division of the FBI. She has been on multiple DG missions and is adapted to violence.
- Cornelius Bryand, aka KIERAN. An Author and expert for the occult. We used the Media Specialist profession from the Agent's Handbook to build this character.
- John Wesley Boregart, codename KRATOS. A diplomat, working at the UN. For this character we used the Foreign Service Officer profession.
- Eli Walker aka KELLER. A criminal, specializing in burglary.
- Harold Cooper, aka KONSTANTIN. A US Army physician.
I gave each of the characters a small backstory about their first contact with DG. If your players know the DG lore you can ask them to do this themselves, but my players are mostly in the dark about this stuff. It also gave me a chance to foreshadow some of the things in Impossible Landscapes, e.g. Agent KIERAN has met Purson before, who accosted him on the street and asked him if he had seen the Yellow Sign.
Night Floors
I asked all players to describe a short scene of their Agent interacting with one of their bonds and what happens shortly before they go to the briefing in Washington Square Park. I wanted to feature the bonds prominently in this campaign, since the idea of personal horror is quite important in Impossible Landscapes, in my opinion.
The meeting with Agent MARCUS proceeds like described in the book. Agent KATE has the highest starting Corruption, because of her adaptation to violence. Thus, she sees the dancing clown in the distance. She tries to approach it, but it disappears in the crowd before she has a chance to get any closer.
After the briefing the Agents meet Detective Giuradanda at the Macallistar and have a brief chat. Giuradanda will make a short second appearance later, but he wasn’t terribly important in my campaign.
The Agents start cataloging items in Abigail’s apartment and find several clues. They see the sigil of Purson, which is accompanied by the noise of a loud car horn. When Agent KIERAN looks out of the window he sees a familiar homeless man crossing the street.
Agent KONSTANTIN finds the sheet with the Yellow Sign and is affected. He feels compelled to draw it on a wall, which Agent KATE sees. She is affected as well, but when she shows the signs to the other Agents they just see an unremarkable symbol.
After dark, Agent KELLER hears a noise from outside Abigail's apartment. The noise is Thomas Manuel playing with the Dog upstairs. KELLER goes to investigate the noise and ends up in the Night Floors. He goes exploring for a bit and encounters some of the manifestations, while he searches for a way out. I chose “Hors d’Oeuvres”, “Like Clockwork” and “Get ‘Em, Boys!” as initial manifestations, because they are weird but not dangerous or too sanity blasting. Since this was only the first session I wanted to pique the player’s curiosity, so that they don’t immediately blow up the building.
Eventually, KELLER found his way back and shared what he found with his comrades. He had a chance to talk to Mark Roark in the Night Floors, but decided against it.
The Agents decide to come back the next day to explore the Night Floors further, equipped with ropes and handheld radios.
The next day Agent KATE wakes up, but not feeling very rested. She finds that she has drawn the Yellow Sign with lipstick on her bathroom mirror.
When the Agents meet up at the Macallistar they immediately head for the Night Floors, but since it is daytime they only find the roof.
One team of Agents continues the search of Abigail’s apartment. They also find Thomas Manuels painting in the basement and talk to Michelle Vanfitz and Louis Post. The latter mentions the night manager.
Meanwhile, the other Agents do some research on the building. They visit city hall to look at the city records and find out about Asa Daribondi. Through the handwritten note that is attached to the Macallistar blueprints they learn that the Night Floors might only be accessible after sunset.
The research team also visits Artlife and learns that the Macallistar residents stopped paying rent. They do some further research into Daribondi and learn about his child murders. They asked Giuradanda about Daribondi’s diary, which is in the possession of the NYPD. Giuradanda promises to give it to them, but it might take some time (which gave me the chance to prepare a handout). Agent KATE once again shows KIERAN the Yellow Sign, but he remains unaffected.
When night falls the Agent’s enter the Night Floors. KIERAN and KRATOS decide to stay in the smoking lounge, while the rest explores the hallways. They want to stay in contact via their radios. They also want to use their long rope to always find the way back to the smoking lounge. KRATOS holds one end of the rope, which stays in the smoking lounge. The other end is tied around KELLER, who is part of the exploration team.
After they depart into the hallways they soon find that the radios don’t work as expected. Whenever they speak into them they get no response. Minutes or possibly hours later they hear their own voices over the radios.
KRATOS and KIERAN talk to Mark Roark, who tells them that they are in the Broadalbin and that Abby is gone, to attend a masquerade in the palace. The exploration team goes pretty deep into the Night Floors and encounters many of the manifestations. They don’t seem dissuaded by the weirdness, but determined to find Abby. At least until Agent KATE hears the voice of her son Jacob over her handheld radio. He begs her to come home to save her from the “yellow man”. The Agents try to find their way back, but discover that the rope does not lead them to the smoking lounge. Instead the other end is held by a large, but friendly looking dog. They try to navigate back and run into David Langford. They manage to calm him down and take him with them. Finally, they find the smoking lounge, at which point Langford successfully flees the Macallistar. When they leave the smoking lounge Agent KATE has a bout of temporary insanity and tries to flee as well.
KONSTANTIN uses his Psychotherapy skill to successfully calm KATE down. She immediately leaves and goes to the home of her ex-husband Bob, who is currently taking care of their child Jacob. She finds that everything is alright and that there was no “yellow man”. KATE is relieved, but then is overcome with an unnatural urge and shows Bob a piece of paper on which she drew the Yellow Sign. This was entirely the player’s choice and I did not prompt her to do this. But I was pleasantly surprised, because it gave me some ideas for later.
The next day the Agents decide to investigate some of the other buildings that Asa Daribondi designed. I did not expect this and had to improvise some of the buildings and their tenants. Agent KIERAN got drunk at a party with some college girls, but ultimately they found that the other buildings were all perfectly mundane.
Afterwards, KRATOS and KIERAN visit Michelle Vanfitz. They pose as literary agents and get access to her apartment. KIERAN notices the Red Book and steals it while KRATOS distracts Vanfitz. They notice the Yellow Sign on the cover of the book and are finally also affected. KIERAN spends the next few hours reading the play, increasing his Corruption further.
The Agents are unsure what to do next and decide to explore the Night Floors once more. While on their way to the smoking lounge they are attacked by Vanfitz, who wants her book back. The Agents defend themselves and almost kill her. She is badly hurt, but still alive. They debate if they should finish her off, but ultimately decide to bring her to a hospital.
They abandon their plan to explore the Night Floors a third time and decide to burn down the Macallistar building instead. They plan to do this in the early morning, when the Night Floors are inaccessible. With KATE’s experience as an FBI agent and KELLER’s criminal know-how they manage to start a fire without leaving any evidence. In the meantime, the other Agents try to evacuate the remaining residents of the building, but they refuse and try to flee to the Night Floors. The Agents resign and leave the building to save their own lives.
Loose ends
Later that day the Agents learn that Michelle Vanfitz has fled from the hospital. Now the police are looking for her, because she is a suspect in the Macallistar fire.
Agent KATE gets a call, apparently her ex-husband Bob has not picked up their son from school. When KATE checks in on Bob she finds him sewing a clown costume, which he claims is for their son. The TV is running but shows only static. A VHS is in the player, the label says “The Yellow Phantom” and “Property of NBC Philco Television Playhouse”.
KATE hastily leaves with her son. When she returns with one of her fellow Agents, Bob is gone. He only left the clown costume and a note that says “See you at the masquerade. Love, Bob.”
After the operation is done Agent KIERAN feels compelled to start writing his own version of the play. He finishes it, but is not satisfied with the end result. I had him roll his Art (Creative Writing) for this, which he failed. In search for inspiration, KIERAN wants to read the play again, but he finds that his copy of the Red Book has disappeared.
The Timeskip
During the 20 years that pass between Night Floors and A Volume of Secret Faces most Agents focused on increasing their SAN, by going to the therapist or going back to nature.
Agent KATE’s player decided
that her ex-husband Bob would be the bond that gets estranged during
those 20 years, which made perfect sense. For Agent KRATOS I decided
that he would lose his bond to his lover Isabelle Ortega, a successful
Broadway actress. I told him that in 2007 he got a call that informed
him that Ortega died in a car crash in Chicago. She was there for the
premiere of an indie film in which she played a major role. The movie
was called “A Song before Travel”. KRATOS will see her again before all this is over.
My Thoughts about Night Floors
It took us five sessions to play through this first part of the campaign. Everyone had fun and my players were intrigued by the Night Floors. However, this meant that they went exploring there quite a bit and forgot that their mission was not to rescue Abigail, but to contain the Unnatural. I had to remind them about this out of game, but I wish I had tried an in-game method to dissuade them from exploring more. Either through increased danger or an NPC (like Castaigne) telling them in no uncertain terms that Abby is gone for good.
The Agents encountered almost all manifestations that were suggested in the NF chapter. That meant that later in the campaign I couldn’t draw from those whenever a manifestation was needed and I had to invent my own. But I think that this was actually a good thing, because it allowed me to make the manifestations very personal to the Agent or to bring in stuff that they had missed previously.
The fact that my players were so curious and kept investigating also meant that I could use most of the great handouts, which was fun for them and for me. It also means that they all have quite high Corruption scores, especially KIERAN and KATE.
You can find the next part of this series here.
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