Welcome to RPG Reanimators, a podcast for GMs where we dissect horror scenarios and campaigns and offer our experiences and advice to reanimate them at the table. I'm Lex.

I'm Alex.

I'm Holly.

And I'm Nathan.

In this episode, we're continuing or perhaps starting our deep dive dissection of Impossible Landscapes, written by Dennis Detwiller for Delta Green. If you haven't already listened to our prologue discussion, my feelings are only slightly hurt. And I'll mention that we each will be discussing the changes that we made to this and future chapters through our own lens of how the King in Yellow and Carcosa work, so it might be helpful to start there first. We are continuing this Discussion Assuming that GMs have read this chapter and are generally familiar with its contents. If you would like a by the book summary and primer for this section, Bud's RPG review has several wonderful videos that we will link in the show notes. Otherwise, I will give one last warning that there are massive spoilers for this campaign ahead. So if you have any interest in ever playing in this excellent campaign, please do yourself a favor and stop here. Then share the yellow sign and this podcast with your GM so that they can consider running Impossible Landscapes for you. Okay, now, I promise I'm done. Without further delay, let's continue our dissection. In this episode, we will be covering chapter one, the Night Floors, as well as the bookshop. So, overall, what is the overarching focus of this chapter?

This chapter is your introduction to the yellow sign. Everybody's gonna see it. You get a look into Abigail Wright's apartment, all the residents, and I think this is kind of the. You see the drowning person in the lake, and the rest of the campaign is now you have become the drowning person.

Yeah, I would 100% agree with that. You should really use this chapter to plant the starts of lead subtly so that the players have clues to be curious about, really drive their curiosity and lead them into madness. Right. This is the beginning. You want to just, like, give them the starts of leads. Right. And I definitely agree with Nathan there.

So then what would you say is the beating heart or the key themes in this chapter that we want to emphasize while we are trying to see these clues and odd details that will become all too relevant later on?

Yeah, for me, it's. You're kind of juxtaposing your agent's real life and the night floors being so strange. Because this is the start of a campaign. You really need to make sure that both are established so that as they kind of meet in the middle, you have a base point to touch on. That's really important for this, to make sure your agents have at least one bond that they interact with and care about, because that becomes important later.

I think that one of the beating hearts of this chapter for me is wild intrigue. There is so much strangeness going on that the agents really can't help but be curious about. To some extent, Abigail's apartment is weird as fuck and it's just a smorgasbord of crazy items that they can discover. Some of them are mundane and don't really lead anywhere. Like a photograph of Abigail's parents with the eyes scratched down and a clown arm going across the backs of their shoulders. But that doesn't mean your players aren't going to be going, what the fuck? What the fuck? And you can find all sorts of clues inside Abigail's apartment and outside that are going to distract them from the main. I'll call it the Delta green prerogative to go in, take photos and get out. But there's so much temptation here. Maybe temptation is the word that I'm looking for, for a theme, because things are going to be too weird. They can't just let it be. Or if they do, then, I don't know, you have other problems. And then they discover the full surrealness of the night floors and kind of begin that plunge into the lake that Nathan mentioned. I also agree with Nathan, too, that it's essential to give them an anchor of reality to. To start, because you are giving the player sort of, this is the context. This is the normal world. Then this is the batshit wonderland. And then once they leave, that world just doesn't feel quite the same anymore after what they've seen and experienced.

I'm concerned with you calling that photograph mundane. I get what you're saying, but that's worrying, to say the least.

That's definitely one in the games that I have run, that's the one that stops all of the players in their tracks, because it's like finding a map that doesn't really make sense. That doesn't add on. Okay. Oh, that. Oh, my God, the napkin. Whenever I'm dishing out clues, the napkin and then going missing. And the next time that they show up, like, those are some of the key hallmarks of now. Your agents really cannot just leave this alone. So overall, then, how do we feel about this chapter as written? Again, doing very broad strokes over review of the book in terms of what do you think are some of the main strengths of this chapter?

I think, to me, I think it's the strongest of all of the chapters. The one that feels really like an investigation.

Yeah.

Agree.

Yeah. You really have a lot of time to play around with it because there's not an immediate ticking clock on this. I mean, not really. Like, you can kind of fudge it as the GM to make it more or less immediately a problem.

Yeah. I generally give my players kind of a rough business week for them to catalog the apartment that way. Like, once you start getting into the weekend, Marcus is like, all right, we got to wrap it up. Because you're right. There isn't a real ticking clock. And sometimes players will stall out doing all sorts of investigations. And I want to be able to have them keep it going because then everything kind of falls out from under them. I think that the vibes are so good in this. It really hits that back rooms, whenever you're exploring the night floors, there's just vibes everywhere. And that there's so many clues and weird details that it's super tantalizing for any players that are going to be in it. And I fully agree. This is the strongest chapter in the book by far. And I feel like your players are going to be hooked and at least on some aspect that you're running for it.

I would say that this, this chapter is the perfect size. It's like a small size sandbox because you have the McAllister Building, you have the offices and then some other places that you want to check out, but it's mostly centered around the McAllister Building. So really, really great size. They're not going to another state, they're not leaving the country. They're going to be in this, like, New York.

Yeah. The majority of NPCs you need to talk to are right there and they'll always be there. So it's easy to get a hold of somebody.

There's no one in Florida that you have to fly down to see.

Little asterisk on them. Always being there

with the. And I, you know, I like the NPCs, too. Like, they're weird, they're kind of unhelpful. Like, it's probably pretty counter to what players are going to be used to coming from investigative games where it's like, yeah, they're all kind of aggressive to you and they're all very strange and they're not helping you at all.

It's very Jekyll and Hyde.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Depending on what time of day it

is, especially if you have the NPCs memories change with it. Like that mentions it in the text in terms of they don't know anything about Abigail in the day. Then at night everyone just says, oh, they moved upstairs. But being able to really showcase that like they don't remember talking to you at night if you've only talked to them during the day, that it really is kind of a different person. Sit. I think another huge strength in this chapter is that the agents can really become saturated with the unnatural without it posing an immediate life threatening danger to them. It's something I'm exploring a lot in my current run because the agents, they discovered the smoking lounge. They explored, they got a little stuck and couldn't get out spoilers. But then they did and now they're wondering like, is this so bad? Why shouldn't we use it? Like do, do we have to close this off? And then that will inevitably lead them back into temptation to go in a second time. And that's when you can really put the screws to them and it just leads to a really fun experience for role playing and everything else. Okay, well, I think that we've said enough positive things now. Are there any limitations that we want to cover for this chapter in particular?

Yep,

go for it.

So Nathan has a point here saying that the agents should take it slow and rushing through this chapter really defeats a lot of the clues. You're not going to get as much of an impact. So you could very well have an agent that just goes crazy and burns down the building. Session one or two and we'll talk, we'll actually address that later.

Yeah, it's different than the other Delta Green scenarios in that a lightning kind of strike force response is going to be really boring because that's exactly it. If you are going by this, you go, oh, this is weird. Everybody's infected. Bang, bang, bang, bang, burn. Da da da. Here we go to 2015 and they're suddenly in the future, I guess. And yeah, that's not very satisfying right there.

I think that that's something that GM should think about discussing with their players sort of in a session zero and just saying you are going to get as much out of this as you search and investigate. There is a lot to explore and so that way your players can at least be primed that they're not. John Delta Greed that says, oh, that's weird gone. Because yeah, that's a way to shortchange a lot of fun in this investigation.

Yeah, I'd say just the the pacing of it is probably pretty challenging for the gm. I've only been a player and I know myself, I tend to rush through scenarios for whatever reason without even trying. And, you know, that's, I think, part of the challenge of it.

Yeah.

Something that was interesting to start and then got a little old a little fast was the night floors. Just the weird encounter after encounter after encounter. And it's like, I don't. There's no connections here. I'm just opening doors and seeing weird shit and I just want to leave. And I can't even figure out how to do that. Like, it's like it almost a test of your players patience after a while.

Oh, I remember that very well because literally you and Dan were like, I open every door in the hallway. I'm like, fuck, okay, here we go. It's like, well, that's. That's one way to go about it.

Just to explain how the night floors work, to open a door, you roll sand. And basically if you want to go somewhere, you have to fail that sand roll or critically fail it. So really getting out of the night floors is just a test of rng.

Yeah. And you have to meet a certain number of encounters before that RNG like kicks in and fully works too. It because you can go. And for a while it's like, oh, you failed your sanity. Yeah, you failed your sanity, but you haven't hit that other secret number that you don't know about. Yeah, I'd agree. You really got to balance that.

I just feel like maybe for the purposes of this. And yes, I realize I'm getting into the deep dive section just a hair. It's like, just pick your favorite encounters, make sure they see those, and then let them fucking leave.

Yeah, the GM has permission to just change whatever they want.

I feel like in the creation of this scenario and others, there is an inclination to provide rules and recommendations that can be just generally applicable to any GMs. Because just saying, the GM does what they want to do. Like, they can wing it. But in this case, I'll make a comparison. I really think that GM should give the night floors the music from a darkened room treatment. It has lots of rules that are based on. Based on their pal. Based on this, you can show these things. Don't fucking do that. Like Holly said, pick the manifestations that either you like best or that will resonate with your players the best and have them do that also the longer that they're in there. Make this more personalized. This can really be an exercise in improvisation. And creative horror making on the fly to really try to torment your players with it, especially if they start to get separated. I think that it really comes down to a kind of a GM's barometer of are the players kind of freaking out because they can't get out and they want to get out and are they sick of it? In my first run of it, as Holly said, I tried to do that. Well, you got to fail a sand roll to open a door and do that. And at this point it's just kind of a combination. I will still ask for those roles to see how much of a manifestation I may give. But generally it's. I'm aiming for a more cinematic of this world is not acting like you want. You don't actually know any of the rules here, but let's go ahead and open another door to go back through time because that is something that you can do in the night floors and get into our actual deep dive section going through a general kind of series of events that we expect Most players and GMs would kind of go through and then discussing any sort of edits or recommendations we may make at each step. Starting with the briefing for Operation Alice under the Washington Square Park Arch.

Yes, yes, it's under the arch which has a very interesting inscription if you go and look at it. Something about reputations being repaired. But at any rate, yeah, they meet up with Agent Marcus who I assume in all of your guys games is a super helpful, super friendly guy.

Oh, he's just rosy.

Yeah. He wants to know everything. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean he's really there to be the. Don't ever talk to me again. Figure this out yourself. And he's very handy for the gm, which I've had to do before. If you ask the question of how do you stop this? Sometimes. Sometimes Marcus just has to show up and be like, I'm shutting this down. I'm shutting this down right now. And everybody dies if I. Oh no. That Marcus got set on fire. Well, maybe we should shut it down.

Ain't that just the way. Yeah. I think in many ways Marcus can be used to exemplify this is actually what an ideal Delta Green agent would be. And he's kind of an asshole.

Yeah.

Like I don't think the players should really like him at all. He should be rude and snippy and cut them off. Be like, I don't fucking care. You are here to do this. Get the fuck out of my way. And then he is gone. Because I think that it disincentivizes your agents to just do what he says. They're going to bow up and kind of resist his orders a little bit and may be more inclined to explore while they're there.

Yep. It's important too, to have him be a little unreliable because in the next act you have a very unreliable handler. So it's bad if the first one's like, oh, yeah, sure. All of us handlers are completely normal, well adjusted human beings that you can talk to. No problem. It sets a little bit of precedent. So you have some gap there when you start seeing paper eating guys where you go, maybe this is just his way of dealing with it.

Do you. How do you guys play Marcus if you have players that are trying to lean too heavily on him? Like, calling him? Is it. Do you just like, don't fucking call me. Call me when this is done and don't answer? Yeah, don't answer. I guess so. Yeah.

I make him hard to reach. I give my players a pager that they can call and he might get back to them. I just do a secret luck roll. Like, he might get back to them within an hour or within a day. Usually he will call when the agents are not around. So that way it's difficult to get a hold of him in the best of times. If you ever make him wait, he's extra pissy whenever you next meet. So he's just a really difficult guy to get along with. Because also, I mean, he's a physician, so he is super busy at the hospital at most hours.

I like having him be a good reminder of, like, agents when they come to him. If they're asking him, like, what should we do? He doesn't want to know all the details so they don't have to spend a lot of time recapping, which is great. And also he could remind them, you don't care about Abigail. All you care about is documenting and finding out if something is unnatural and if it is, stop it. And then make enough cover up where it's like, yeah, we cataloged everything we go. That's all he really has to care about. Because if your agents are like, probably most of our agents have been. They're going to be like, oh, we got to find Abigail. Nope. No, you do not.

You know, I kind of kept forgetting that that actually wasn't our mandate.

Yeah.

And I think a bunch of us did where it was just like, we got to find her. Like, no, that's not. That's not why we're here.

Yeah, we've played too much call of Cthulhu, where that probably would be the goal. Right?

Yeah. I think that that's something I have tried to emphasize a lot more in my subsequent run, that Marcus is really just there. In a recent session, I used him to liken if the unnatural is in this building. You know, there's roaches all over the place in New York. If you find a building that's got a roach infestation, it's in the walls. You can treat them in a room and they just keep coming. Sometimes it spreads throughout the whole building. Do you know what you do? You take care of all of it. And just telling the agents like, I don't fucking care about Abigail. I don't care that someone is missing. You are telling me that this entire building is saturated with something unnatural. It's bound to spread. So why are you wasting burn it. It's just. He straight up just told them to burn it. But then the players are going to repeatedly get a lot of kind of tantalizing clues or requests that will keep guiding them to Abigail. But I think that it is important to Holly's point that you really should emphasize to Marcus and Delta Green. They don't care if they go after Abigail. That is of their own prerogative. And if they want to go back in.

And thematically that's perfect because Abigail is a. Basically a lure to bring people to the King.

Exactly.

So it makes complete sense that your agents will be like, well, we got to find her. We gotta go deeper. We just gotta.

And this can also be accomplished with usage of if you want to get your agents in for a second run through. I really recommend kind of a catch and release system with the Night Floors that giving them various breaking points for like an obsession with either finding more copies of the King in Yellow, finding out some information about something they encountered in the Night Floors that seem to pique the player's interest is that can be a way that the player knows this is a bad idea, but their character really want to go back in. So then, boom. That's how you can have fun in a play session. But back to the beginning again. Agent Marcus will meet with the agents. He'll explain the kind of convoluted history of Abigail. This may be something that I recommend preparing some box text for you to read through. Because the story is a little convoluted and your agents are bound to ask questions about it as written. There are several NPCs that will kind of reiterate the chain of events, which feels redundant. If you can just get it done. Your players can have those notes. And then he will instruct the agents to meet up with NYPD Detective Graham Guidadanda, who is, I think, waiting for them at the McAllister Building to actually kind of introduce everything that's going on. To me, this is a kind of odd aspect because, bless his heart, Detective Gwetadanda really doesn't matter or do much. He doesn't have any unique information he can offer the resources of the nypd, but what are they like? There's no guidance for what he could uniquely provide to give extra information or resources that the agents couldn't get through Agent Marcus or pursuing on their own.

Yeah, I read Impossible Landscapes cover to cover in about five days. And when I saw your note about Graham, I had to go back and reread the book. I was like, who?

Well, and that's even in my run through with you, I completely forgot to include him because I was so caught up in Marcus getting all the details right because y' all were asking a lot of questions. And I'm like, okay, you get there and there's a box like, wait, how did they know that we were coming here? Why is there a box with the date on it? And I'm like, oh, fuck. Because there was an NPC standing up front that was going to be helpful. Yeah, it's. It's just tough because he's one of the few kind of supportive or friendly NPCs of color in the whole book. And so I would like to be able to include him more, but I just don't see a strong reason or way.

Oh, I've used him a fair bit as a way to introduce the, you know, what are we doing here? If they have questions about, well, how would you go about looking at this place? Like, he's a detective, he can give them pointers of, you know, maybe grid it out, spend the time, don't spend too long in the epoxy. And he's a good backup character if you need it. And, you know, he's one of those kind of floating ones too, where if your players decide not to engage, okay, he's not really in the campaign. I've had another campaign where they really engaged with him a lot and dragged him with them kicking and screaming into hell, basically. And it didn't end great for him, but I got to use a lot of the Catholic imagery that he's related to, so, you know, that's fun.

Could actually use him as deterrent for them doing any, like, as an obstacle for them Doing anything illegal.

Yeah, yeah, because he is a police

officer, and he's seen their faces and knows that they're in the building. Yeah, good point.

Like, what's like a perfect obstacle than them trying to blow up the building? And then, oh, well, he's made a surprise stop. Why do you have all that fertilizer?

I brought snacks.

Do you need a generator for all that gasoline you're trying to carry inside? Yeah, I also just kind of had an idea that if you wanted another way to kind of signpost that Agent Marcus is not the most reliable. He could get some of the convoluted details of Abigail's case wrong, particularly with the initial investigation. Like, he's not very interested in it. He's like, yeah, this girl went missing. Whatever. They found a car, and then ba, ba, ba, and bing, bang, boom, now she's gone. You take pictures and then you have Graham be more thorough and say, oh, no, no, no. That's not actually what happened. So there's a little bit of he said, he said, and maybe that can be a way to make him more useful. I'm really interested in your groups that actually used him a lot because. Yeah, this time around, it was just, like, who.

I like that, Lex. Because now by doing that, you're priming your players to, like, know that information's not going to be reliable or clear or.

Yeah, I like that as a. You're still giving the information, but if they want good information, they can't go through Delta Green. They have to go to the people that know it. In this case. Right. Like, the detective might have the records that say, oh, she was mugged in the stairwell. Oh, she was. You know, this happened. Her credit card was found and followed up on, and there's nothing to do. Stop following the credit card. Don't bother.

I've never had anyone follow the credit card. They're like, oh, okay.

It's. It's happened because it's like, oh, we got to go over there to where the credit card was used. You'd have to completely improv something there because there's no lead.

Oh, I think that in that case, then maybe that's why I've never had a player pick it up, because Marcus just straight up says that that was a dead end. Like, it's a Ford signature. They must have dug a card out of the trash. It was just enough to get our attention.

Yeah, I make him say it's a dead end because they followed up. Because otherwise. Yeah, it's one of those of, like, we'll Talk about Ophelia C3 later, where they can go all the way to Vegas and completely leave the campaign for a while and come back. It's kind of the same sort of thing, but with zero payoff.

Well, how about they go into a place that's right next door, in this case Abigail's apartment. After they have this handoff, they're going to enter into Abigail's bizarre collage. Let's call it decoupage. Maybe a shrine. Yeah, sure. The shrine is a word that is all over the walls. It's tons of great weird detail, along with a cardboard box that has the supplies that they will need to do the main job that they have tasked in front of them. So how do you all tend to run or what did you really latch onto from this section? Kind of as written for Abigail's apartment versus running it?

In practice, I usually, I mean there's good rules for searching for something and making it take a while, right? Is I think they have to search for like basically a four hour stint, half a day somewhere in there to get a clue. So that's one way to make your agents not just try and do it all in 20 minutes. Not that every group will do that, but some will. So you can kind of space it out. And I like to also be like, she used a lot of epoxy. It smells in there. Take it slow. You know what? Like, you don't have to try and get this done in two days.

I really like that note for some environmental storytelling too. If you say that the epoxy is making the apartment very fumey, that it provides a plausible explanation for they hear voices and kind of whisper if they stay in there too long by themselves. That oh, it must be these fumes getting to me. Not something unnatural. Because that. That is a little bit too quick of a giveaway in my opinion. So I may steal that for next time. In regards to the searching though, I. I think that this is also a case of Arc Dream loves to write Delta Green Investigations on a much longer timescale than most players will be interested in. I usually cut it down to for every hour that you're taking the photos, you can give me a search role. Unless you have agents that are really like nailing every single role, there's a lot of handouts that you can go through. You also don't have to give them super relevant handouts and can space them out sort of over time. That way you can give them a little treat. If only one of them passed a role Give them that butcher paper map. But then if they get a bunch of rolls, give them the photo, give them this, give them that. Because it helps them feel a sense of progress. But also just noting there's still a lot more that you need to take before the official job is done.

I love the play, the one that says at the end, enter federal Agents, because it's so. It's so surreal because when I encountered that as a player, I'm like, holy shit, we're in over our heads.

And that's also one. If you are recording these sessions, whether or not you post them to YouTube as APs, it's very handy to record your sessions, as we mentioned in the prologue, not only for you to review it, your players to review it, but for you as a gm, to create some fucking weird handouts by either isolating their voices and have a recording of their voices get played back to them or creating another page of that play, like Alex mentioned, but it is verbatim what they said to each other at some point. That was a very. I don't like this one bit moment with my group that. It's so much fun.

I like that with the. The script. But then put in things that the agents didn't notice. Like, I'll have. They're, like, going up to the door, and it'll be like, Mark and Asa are behind the wall that, you know, they didn't look behind. And it's like they'll be whispering to each other, and they're like, we gotta leave. And then they leave through a door that couldn't be there. And then the agents are looking like, did this happen? Did this not happen? Did we just miss it?

And if that's their first time encountering those names, who the fuck are they?

Yeah. Yeah, that was 100% what they did is. I don't know any of these people.

Are there particular items that you feel like, I want to make sure my agents find this versus some that are like, eh, doesn't matter.

I always start with the diagram on the napkin. Whether they roll or not. That's just something I point out that's kind of odd. Is it showcasing how eclectic all of these items are to be sure that they see it, because they're not gonna just blaze through the whole apartment in a whole day. And that way, the next time that they go back, I can emphasize that it is now gone. It's a way for the players to feel like this is not a closed room. This is not under our complete control. If someone was able to enter under our noses. So I feel like that one is almost essential to capture a feeling. And then the butcher paper McAllister map I think is the clearest signpost to get them into the night floors.

Yeah.

As written, you should have the seal with purse on because that's the thing that actually tripped them off the whole time. But then, yeah, I think everything else is just cheddar. You can include as literal or as much as you want.

Once you introduce the seal of person, then I think it's appropriate to introduce all the demonic elements. Like demons start showing up, but only after they see the seal.

Yeah. And I'd be careful about giving some of that away too early because, yeah, I agree. Like the butcher paper map is great, but also if they're just in, don't give that to them right away because they'll immediately go, oh, the night floors are there at night. Cool.

Yeah, exactly. That's like on a second or third round of them going through it. Definitely not something I would give on their first round of searching.

Oh, even as meta information, I would try and not call the chapter Night floors to my players. Like even before the session begins or the chapter begins, like, oh, we're playing night first now. I'm just going to be like, okay, well, we're just going to.

Well, that's clearly where we need to go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think this is also a great place for you to pick up any number of handouts and things that tons of people have made online or you can find on the ilhandler server. If there are any notes that you want to seed in clues for things that you will have occur later on, this is the time for it. This is the room whenever the players are going to be truly blitzed with random information and go, what the fuck is this? And thus begins hindsight 2020 the campaign. Because being able to see the weirdness kind of slot in later is really important. And I see, Nathan, you have a note with one of the clues in here that I want to kind of bring up. Are there any clues that are written in the book that you would be apprehensive to show to your players?

I personally, I debate on the Witwer ticket. So one of the things that agents can find on the wall is a future Delta Green agents plane ticket from 2015 where he's going someplace doing something. You know, he ties into all kinds of stuff, but it's one of those where they'll look at it and go time travel stuff. Like it's so on the nose That I kind of worry that it's too much. What do people think?

I think that's a really fair and valid argument. I think whenever I showed it to my players in the second run, I have two player characters who are very much affiliated with the theater. And, you know, also pointed out that's not the United Airlines logo. At the time, someone shared a really nice handout of how the United Airlines logo has changed over the years. And so they were like, this is some kind of a theater prop or something that, like, if she's associated with all of this random stuff, like, there's costume dresses that are tacked to the wall over there. This is clearly some kind of theater prop. As an easy way for their characters to rationalize why this here. Something that you could do, potentially, is remove the date just with a little bit of Photoshop, make it look like the ticket is ripped or something, or smudged. I don't think it's a terribly important ticket. I don't think Michael Witwer is terribly

important overall, but he's as important as you make him. Yeah. Yeah. That particular clue, I think the. I want to circle back to the diagrams that are on the napkins. I'm interested. When you say they disappear, do you usually have agents? I'm always assuming they're peeling these things off the wall, bagging them and documenting that way. Right. Like, part of that is. So you're just saying they're taking pictures. And this is clearly something that couldn't have been removed without damaging or leaving traces. And that's.

Yeah. When I describe the room, everything is hard epoxied to the wall. There's also the Grenadonda that they tried to take one of the Sony Walkmans off the wall, and the back plate was ripped off whenever they tried to extract it. So, like, that's the only thing in the room that's damaged, but it's also there to indicate that you can't remove anything off of these walls without damaging them in some way. And that their job is just to take the photographs. The baggies are there to put the photos in as they're kind of documenting in quadrants or something like that.

Interesting.

And then whenever the napkin is missing, I'll say, like, you can see the remains of one of the back pieces where it was clearly ripped off of the wall. And it's like an absence. After they took the photo, before they can see the space where it was,

who do they usually think took it? Then do they start accusing, like, people in the building or, like, how does that usually play out for my games?

They have no idea. And that's what's all the more unsettling to them. They just think someone fucking came in here. But they have no real leads to go on because it could be a resident, it could be a random person. After they discover a certain little item, they might want to point fingers at Thomas Manuel, maybe to get into our next item.

Just because Thomas Manuel is bugging the apartment and it's an incredibly easy bug to find and the fact that no detective noticed it, maybe the detective that's standing in the room should probably have a search over 40 and be able to see it. Yeah. Thomas has been recording the apartment. Right. Do you guys. I don't have him do that during the day. Right. Like, to me, that's a nighttime thing. He pushes it under, sets it up. If they're staying overnight, they can notice it otherwise, at least from my things. It's so early to be like, you walk in the room, you see the shrine, you go, oh, this is nice. Well, it is late in the day. Let us go home. Ah, there is a wire. Looks like we're beating up somebody. And then they absolutely rip into Thomas, which is fine. Like, you can do it. But again, pacing wise, same as, like the pacing of clues, right? As I don't want them to find everything.

Day one, strong disagree here.

Day three or four, I always have

them find that wire because that is the most oh, shit moment you can drop on them in the early sessions because they're just getting brought in on all this. As they get into Abigail's room, they assume this is a safe space and they're talking delta green stuff. They're talking about how weird and bad all of this is. And as they turn around to leave, maybe not on the first time, maybe in my second run, it was on the second time they went into the apartment and then they look down and see that wire, because that is in. Holy fuck. Someone has heard everything that we have been saying. And, like, that's a great gut hitting the floor moment. And then as they go, like, kind of snaking it across the carpet, it's a great desperate mystery to find out what's going on. I have them find it during the day because if they go to Manuel's place during the day, he doesn't know what the hell they're talking about and is generally, like, really withdrawn and just painfully awkward and, like, he is just aghast and he's like, who could have put that there? And, like, whatever you're human. He is being honest, he's being genuine. And if they find it and go at night, well, he's pissed off to the night floors. Like he isn't around for them to accost. And that way there's this kind of unresolved tension of is someone spying on everyone in these rooms? Is someone setting Manuel up? Or what's going on? So with a little bit of. It reminds me of that game where you kind of shuffle the cups with a ball underneath. So if you kind of shuffle where the NPCs are around for cinematic moments, it can really leave your players kind of desperate for more because they no longer know what to expect.

Makes for a hell of a cliffhanger.

Absolutely.

Wire. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll agree with that. I think I just don't like having day one or day two being that oh shit moment. I want to let it build a little bit more. And at least as written, the wire is pretty easy. Like, I don't even think it's a roll. Right.

I think it's another. The GM could pop it out whenever they want.

The agent who succeeds at searching. Yeah, I. I don't know. That also feels a little like. Yeah, right.

Yeah, I agree with Lex there.

Right. The.

The fusing, it gets diffused with the successful human role. And mechanically.

Right.

The role tells you you succeeded. So that kind of gets players to back off, like, oh, I'm right. Because the Dice show.

Yeah, right.

Which kind of works against them.

Yeah, yeah. I guess to me that becomes such a point towards having the residents be unreliable from the get go. And I actually like having the daytime people be generally pleasant enough to them that at first, like.

So you don't want to drive the moment down.

Yeah. Like they meet Roger and he's a pretty cool dude. Like, he's just this science fiction author that wants to show you.

Love my Night Sea book.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. He's fun and you get this feeling like, oh, maybe he's just a normal resident. And then. Right. The more you go, you're like, ah, these guys ain't normal. There's something deeply wrong here.

That's something. And I think that this is a great moment to kind of segue into discussing the other residents, sort of as written by day and by night. Something that I have emphasized a bit more this time around that my players sort of hand wave. Because I agree everyone should be kind of generally pleasant during the day except Louis Post. He's a fucking asshole no matter what, which is out of character for him. That's Funny, but like, yeah, Thomas Manuel seems kind of painfully shy and like he's trying to be pleasant but like really just does not want to talk with people or be touched by them. And then Roger Carron, he is a slob, but you know, he's a writer, so maybe that's just what writers do. And everything can be kind of hand waved as are these people. Just eccentric artist types. Like, I don't want to be too mean or profiling for them that you create some doubt in. Are these people too weird until you then get to interact with them at night. And I'm curious how you want to try and introduce certain NPCs to players. Because I feel like everyone interacts the most with Thomas Manuel because of the wire generally and he's on the same floor. And in my games, it's really questionable if they're going to interact with anyone else because they typically need to go to the room to talk with them or they need to interact with them in the smoking lounge at night floors. What are your thoughts?

I mean, I think, you know, you can always just have the moment of like someone is just leaving their apartment or just coming into their apartment. You kind of catch them in the hallway moment, like going up the stairs or something. That's easy enough to do.

Yeah.

But you know, and I thought it was interesting that the, the, the chapter kind of gives this whole thing about Roger and like you can talk to his agent or publisher or whatever it is and. But like, does anybody actually do that? Like, I don't. Does anybody look into these people? Because I'm. I was, we didn't care. I was like, okay, yeah, the book

is chock full of. I think that it was just kind of a contingency plan by Det. Willer. Be like, if they look into this person, here's a weird thing they can find.

He's not even the one person you'd look into, though.

Yeah, exactly. Weirdo. I think everyone has like Manuel with his parents. It's really weird to try to get a hold of them and talk with them. So I don't know, would you want them to interact more in that way or not so much?

I think the assumption for a lot of these is your agents will deep dive on somebody. Right. Like it might be Thomas for one game, it might be Lewis on another. Right. It depends on who the, the handler is doing and what they're interested in. So same with the, the Dorchester. Right. Is there's probably somebody that they're going to be like, I want to know what they're doing, why are they doing this? And to be charitable, that's the reason you have such a big backstory on some of these. To be like, ah, they got some weird stuff. But also. Yeah, I kind of agree. Just having a list of like, here's something weird they could be doing.

Yeah. I think overall, as kind of GM advice, don't sweat the backstory stuff. Do not try to shove it in. Otherwise, just kind of. If your player happens to be intrigued, flip to that section of the book and then kind of riff from there. But it's not something you need to take up active brain space with.

I feel like an interesting tidbit that you might want to make discoverable to your players is that all of these people, like, o rent.

Yeah.

Like, Cynthia Lachance hasn't seen any of them in forever. Like, you know, because then it's like, you know, maybe not too early.

Right.

But then you kind of get that like this, this whole building is just weird.

Yeah. I think that there is very much a tendency for the McAllister to kind of. It keeps stacking on weirdness until it reaches a critical mass of. This is just too much to be plausible because in isolation, each of the tenants are. They're maybe eccentric. It's just kind of weird, but not criminally weird. Then, yeah, I think that it's extremely likely PCs will talk with Cynthia Lachance. That's where she can mention that the building is set for renovation soon. That's where she has that line. As I've never had to evict an entire building before. They haven't paid renter utilities. This can also be done. I have the agents receive Abigail's mail key and that Abigail can have tons of late notice stop service on electricity and water, what have you. And that's when you get that sanity ball drop of how is there electricity in here? Then that you can keep reaching weirdness there. Holly, to your point, something that I really recommend with GMs. I'm having a great time with my current run. Let your players come up with some kind of a diner or a coffee shop or something across the street maybe down the block from the McAllister that they can see the McAllister through a big window and feel like it is a safe spot for them to gather. That way you can note that no one ever leaves the building and, you know, have other weirdness get seated in through there.

I think there's in Nathan's run that I played in. He had Manny's Deli.

Yeah. Exactly. And it's in the book. It's in the book, yeah. Is exactly that. And there's a. A video store if you want to use that. There's a laundrette if you want to use. Like, there's a lot of fun kind of locations to just exactly have the people be like, yeah, we haven't seen any of those residents for a fortnight. But also make sure you note when they're last seen, because that was the question I immediately was unprepared for of like, ah, crap. When did Abigail go missing? When did these guys go missing?

Yeah, generally, as a rule of thumb, I just say, like, haven't seen them since. Oh, what is it? May, April? Yeah, it's been a few months. Because, like, also, who the is going to log that?

Nobody's noting the date.

It's not the day, but even the month. I was like, ah, crap. Did like, she went missing in July.

Something that I mentally latched onto and felt like as a player, I expected it to go somewhere and it never did. And it kind of doesn't matter. They all call her by a different name, all of the residents. What is this? Why are they all calling her something different? And it just, like, never pays off. I don't know. It was just weird.

She wears many masks, I guess.

So I think that that's another point in favor of just weird eccentricity. Like, again with Manuel, it's a way that it emphasizes this guy's kind of weird, but it doesn't seem dangerous. But yeah. So this is how we're talking about them by day. How do we want to try to portray them differently at night? And where do we want the agents to try and find them? Personally, I have Manuel kind of be a coin toss on if he's going to be in his apartment or painting by day in the basement as a way to get them into the basement or potentially upstairs playing with Abraham if necessary. I know that we mentioned that there are profiles for how they act by day or by night, but are there any tendencies that you have found effective in role playing?

Them definitely change their posture. There's a very much of a difference between during the day, you know, Manuel's more timid. He's kind of shrunk into himself. But at night, he's more like larger,

hunched over, t posing to assert dominance.

Alex is leaning forward. For those that aren't watching, he's leaning into it.

This is different than. I'll put sound effects.

I usually have Manuel be a lot more. He has a lot More bravado. And everyone. It's a tendency that is described in the book that's really hard to capture as a gm, is their emotions tend to fly off the handle in any number of directions. Generally, everyone is kind of muted during the day. But God help you if you disparage Manuel's masterpiece in the basement, because that will always cause him to fly off the handle. But then it can be kind of hard to showcase that, oh, this character's super angry. And now he's not. Both as a GM with your acting, but also as your players are going to be like, oh, he's angry, Cracks knuckles, this. And then they just start combat.

It's just worrying that I've never found that to be a problem. It's always super fun to be like, how can you not see this? How can you not. You know what? Fine, I get it. You don't have any sort of idea of what goes into making a masterpiece like this. You don't even have the patience to look at it. You buffoons.

It's just a blank canvas.

Yeah, just normally, though.

Exactly. That's fine. That's completely normal. I agree, though, is, yeah, they're unstable at night. Right. Like, Thomas, he's super into his art. And I do like starting the. Why can't you see this idea of, like, okay, maybe there's something hidden. Have you seen it? Have you seen it yet? You know, that might come back later. Roger, he's a party animal. I usually have him in the smoking lounge. He's drinking. That's a nice kind of point of contact of like. Like, you've got Rourke as completely night floors. Roger's in both. If they're in the same room, you kind of have a nice, like, icebreaker. Louis is a psychopath. See, usually during the day, he's like a nice, quiet little guy that apologizes for his mess. And at night, he's stabby. So he's probably the most violent. At least in my runs for my

runs with Lewis, I tend to consider the different residents as being closer or further away from kind of ascension to moving upstairs in the night floors, and that they need to kind of pass some sort of a brink of dare. I'll just call it sanity. In order to move upstairs, Abigail was able to do this in spades. But then, considering the rest of them, how close are they to some kind of a breakthrough that. That would kind of promote their king and yellow status, Give them an extra yellow sign badge on their scout sash. And I feel like Thomas is kind of middle of the road, Roger, he's at the bottom. He is only ever going to be a lush. That is already capped out. I think Louis is the closest in terms of he has the mirror. He's drawing these drawings of Asa's drowned children and can actually influence the drowning room. So because of that, I feel like if the agents try to attack Lewis, he'll dive into the mirror and be gone. Like that's his escape. And you can show that, like Lewis straight up is right on the cusp. So because of that, his personality is the only one that's consistent day and night. He's just super aggressive and violent if you ever get in his face. And then Michelle is always kind of withdrawn, but she's just a little more loosey goosey at night whenever she's reading in her library. And just like I. I really dislike the way that Michelle Van Fitts is written in this. And I just make her more. She doesn't put up with bullshit. And if you are halfway pleasant to her and don't. Just like, she hates cops. So as long as you don't try to say, oh, no, we're cops, you better open the door for us. She told her to go fuck yourself. But yeah, she can be a generally pleasant person to interact with because no one else is really pleasant in the building.

Yeah, I like that gradation of them. In my mind, Van Fitts is past Lewis in knowledge. Like, she gets it. She's going in the library, she's researching, she's looking into this, right? She's short with agents because they kind of suck. And she's not wrong. And then they show up at night in her library and she says, get the hell out of my library. You're not supposed to be here. And she is a presence, right? She is there. She is aware. She's much more helpful for clues. So in terms of at least the way I play it, maybe not as it's written, at night, she flips and is more helpful than during the day.

I always have vanfits be actually helpful if you aren't abrasive with her in some way. Because none of the other NPCs are actually very helpful in giving you information. And I have her have Abigail's copy of the red book in her library. That's a way that she can lead agents deeper into her library, into the night floors again and give them a copy of the red book. Easy peasy. I like that conception of it. And I agree. I think that to me, Michelle has the potential to be a Phantom, if she is allowed to continue kind of reflecting on the story and maybe take that role. If that's something that you want to do with the role changing that I talked about in the prologue that I do in my games.

A real Fitzroy sort of candidate. I mean, she's got the book. Yeah.

Is there anything else that we want to talk about here in terms of the McAllister Building, either by day or night, before we officially move upstairs?

The only thing I do is I add a boiler room that has a bunch of Lundin stuff, like old photographs and stuff, because it's creepy. It's a nice way to have that old stuff. And then, you know, I want to slow this down and have agents work at a decent pace. But even I don't want to go library system slow. Like, they need to be able to find something.

So that's actually funny because I thought that that was written with the basement, that I always have a. It's a boiler room sort of towards the back, and that there are cages for storage. As you know, there is basement storage for each of the apartments, and that's where they can find. And Thomas Manuel has moved all of his shit into there. That's why his apartment is barren, because he took everything out. Wright doesn't have anything, so it doesn't explain why it's missing, like a bed and key furniture, because it's not in storage. And if they do any exploration. Yeah, there's like an old piano with a tarp that's put over it. And that's how they can get easy access to the Lundin stuff. Because I love the photograph of Lundin's family in front of the house with Abraham, because it also. It gives them names, it introduces them to Ava, who otherwise does not make any appearances whatsoever. And they've likely encountered an invisible dog. And now they have a. I guess a muzzle to put to the name rather than a face, per se. And, yeah, I definitely think make it somewhat easier for your agents to get at least partial details. One of the strengths of this chapter is that agents can get some information only from the outside and some only from the night floors. And so if you can see that your players are interested in something, be sure to tease little bits of both so that they are inclined to explore more inside and out. There's a lot of really cool clues and information. Don't make it super difficult for them to get as written. You know, we talked about this with music. We talked about it with a lot of different scenarios.

My only other nitpick before we go to the night floors is what the fuck is going on with Cynthia lachance's earrings? I wanted to, like, she's. Get her. She's. She's something. So I don't know, get. Just take those out. Oh.

See, I like it because they start asking questions. But I do kind of agree, like, as she is, there's not a lot to follow up with of her being weird because she's not. Like, her brother was probably the closest to the king in yellow, and he got murdered for it. So, you know, alternatively, you could have

that be a gift from one of the tenants.

I was just about to say, like, oh, yeah, Abby gave me these.

That's usually what I've said. It's just like, oh, Ms. Wright made these for me. Because I say that, like, you know, she works with mixed medium things. I don't know. I do agree that it's too overt because every time I've shown it, my players are like, what? Get her? And it's not a good vibe for another one of the few friendly NPCs they can encounter.

I mean, also, like, you guess you don't have to show her character art. You know, we've talked about, like, there's so many character portraits. Maybe you just don't need that one.

Well, you know, it's getting a little late, so maybe we should go ahead and head upstairs to the smoking lounge and make our way up to the secret fourth floor of the McAllister Building. There is a storm door that leads up to the roof, which they can open, and at night, it will take them to the smoking lounge. A really comfortable room full of tons of weird porn, as well as big comfy chairs, a fireplace, and a fully stocked bar.

And the best NPC in the game, Mark Rourke.

Honestly? Yeah. I was about to ask, like, what are some of your favorite things to include or focus on in the smoking lounge? And. Yeah. Mark Roark. What a dickhead. He's so much fun. Everyone loves and hates him. Yeah, as long as you don't do the racist stuff. I don't really like that. That's in the book.

I was gonna mention. I skipped that. But beyond that, it's great to have an NPC that has really nothing to offer and is just a real idiot. He's great and he's got a bad

toupee, but somehow always around, just like the.

He commentates on the player character's actions.

I think that he is a way to diffuse a lot of suspicions. And he's a very Helpful curveball to throw. Because by the time your players are coming into the smoking lounge and the night floors, they're gonna be like, oh, this is so bad. This is unnatural. Who's this clown? And, like, he's just loud, he's drunk, he's boisterous. So, yeah, I skipped the racist parts, but very much make him kind of, like, playfully misogynist. And, like, he calls every female agent doll and sweetheart, and, you know, he's just a dick that it's kind of fun to embellish for roleplay reasons to emphasize that he's not a good person. But God damn it, he's kind of fun.

But he also recognizes the agents, too. And that's another important way of them being like, yeah, maybe we don't kill him immediately, because now I'm. Why does he think he knows us? That's weird.

I don't remember if this is written, but, Lex, I believe you had him call one of our agents by their actual name.

Yes. Christian name. That is as written, which I really like it. Yes. Is that he calls one of the agents out by name and is just like, oh, my God, I haven't seen you in so long. Not since we had to dive through that trap jaw. Running from the G man and, like, gives this memory. I think that that's the one that's written in the book. But it's a great what the fuck? Moment. Which also leads me into how do you close that loop and find a way to make that happen? Because Impossible Landscapes is full of these recursive moments that you may see an ending and then perform the beginning or middle. I feel like it has to do with the static chase is where it was envisioned, but that doesn't play into the actual chase itself. How do you try to deliver on this?

Could make it happen. Like, yeah, during the chase, you can see Mark as you enter a door and it changes into a hallway. You can see Mark Rourke running alongside you, probably when it turns into the entrance to the brothel bin. But right before they get into the bridle bin, you can see Mark Rourke running from the police alongside them. And then he disappears or something.

Yeah, I like that. He jumps down a booby hatch that closes by.

Who knows? They might just shoot him in the knee.

I mean, honestly, having him get nuked during the chase and then show up fine in the hotel a minute later. It's funny. Hey, we all made it out. I don't think we did.

Mark, I think that something you can do to deliver on this recursive Moment without having to like, take a note to be sure you include this, you know, a dozen plus sessions later. Is Nathan something that you recommended as a way to kind of close out the night floors is as the agents are hitting this penultimate weirdness, they're desperate to try and get out. You once recommended to me to just have the king in yellow show up down the hallways, have them distort and he sends his static dogs down the hallways after the agents. I think it's a super cinematic finale for them to rush out the door and it could be an easier moment for Rourke to just open the door and go, oh, shit. And then pull someone down into a hatch with him. And so then boom. You can get that done a little quicker.

Hey, that's good advice.

I like that. Yeah.

Hey, I really like that advice. Hey, that's a good looking advice there.

Thanks, Mark.

Yeah, but I think that is the highlight of another issue that we run into here. Right. Is the night floors is infinite. Boy, it can be tough to get people to leave when you really want them to and they really want to.

I just let them leave then. Easy.

Yeah.

I would simply leave the night floors.

Yes. Yeah, I would say maybe if you, if you want to stick closer to the rules, maybe roll for the player's sanity, like don't even tell them, like, roll for sanity. Like you roll their sanity. Because at some point, like pretty quickly we figured out it was a sanity mechanic and it was like, fuck it. It's either we have to pass it or we have to fail it. You have the highest sanity, you fucking open the door. You have the lowest sanity, you fucking open the door.

Yeah.

And that's a huge reason why I did away with that in my second run.

Because that meta like takes away from the immersion.

Yes. I feel like if you mechanics in a surreal horror element, you just pull the plug on the actual surreal horror. Because they're going to try to game it. Because the players are playing a game, it's what they do. I really love the idea of it's all GM secret roles, so the players are like, fuck, it has to do with something. But that way they can focus on staying in character. Or you just totally trust your gut and lead them into weird places, give them a little bit of resistance and they can't quite leave. I generally have an NPC help them out at least the first time around because they can tell that, oh, this wasn't as clean as I wanted it to be. Oh, well, someone can help me out.

Right.

That way, the second time It's a little more dangerous. I think that the biggest struggle for me with the night floors and something that I have since been working on a lot in my GMing, is that when there are infinite options, it feels like there are no options. If you say you keep going down these hallways, you keep taking turns, there's all these doors going this way and another. It can be cool to set a vibe, but the player feels like nothing they do actually matters. They can keep going straight, they can spin around, and nothing seems to give them any indication of progress or a way to go. So something. I think I recommended this in our signal to noise discussion as well. Whenever you get to a point that your players can kind of go anywhere in a liminal space, give them two or three options. Mention that a door down the hall is opened and someone has placed a box in the hallway. Mention someone running across another hallway. They hear a dog barking, they hear some kind of a sound, and that way the player always feels like they have a choice in what they want to pursue and can lean into the weirdness or can try to escape from it. If they've really had enough, they're like, I ain't looking at shit. I am trying to find the exit sign. Then give them an exit sign, but, like, across a gap where the hallway turns straight down and it turns into a chasm that they can't cross. Then let them walk down that chasm as gravity doesn't actually matter. Like, give them all sorts of weirdness that subverts their expectations, but they always feel like they can say what they want to do. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

I think we got it in our heads. I think it was purely coincidental, but we got it in our heads that whatever you were thinking about when you opened a door is what would manifest. Is that as written kinda you have

some control over it. And to Lex's point, that's how I've been running it. The more I play is I no longer just do random. You open the door and this room happens, the player always has to say, like, where are we going? What are we doing? Because then I have a gauge of like, okay, I always show them getting closer to it. And it's a question of do they really get closer to it? Or is it one of those of like, ah, it's just off, but I can keep going. And I think I can find a it, because I agree. Otherwise, what are we doing? Like, oh, I'm a marionette ballroom. I open the door, I am in an infinite Hallway. I open another door, hey, look, we're still inside. There's no stakes or anything to that. There's no progress.

Yeah, that was a stumbling block in my first run, for sure. And I really recommend treating this as something more like a film director than just you are going to give a random output based on what the player says. Something that I have started doing now is not only asking them where they want to go, but I ask the player what they are feeling, what their character is feeling in that moment, what they are wanting. Because the way that I see it, the night floors is almost like an organism. I think of it kind of like a Venus flytrap in that it is trying to give them things that they want or things that it perceives that they need to drag them in deeper. And then sometimes it sucks them into a pit. So if someone is saying that, like, I'm just feeling really lost and scared, they open the door into their apartment, and it's exactly their apartment. And they can find their partner's clothes on the floor, and it smells like them, that it. It feels like some kind of a betrayal, because this is what that character was really wanting to have happen. But then they find that there is a book on the side of the bed with a horse by degrees on the COVID and it's just a way to keep twisting their desires. That much more, I think, can lead to a lot more personalized horrors.

100% agree with Lex. I also run it as what do you want there to be? Or what do you think that there will be? I had a situation where I had a player character get shot by a shotgun down the hallway, bleeding pretty bad. And then another player character is like, okay, I'm gonna try and find, like, you know, some kind of hospital or some kind of, like, med room. And obviously they succeeded it all. So that means they didn't get what they want. But not only did I not give them not what they wanted, I made it ironic. And I made on theme too. So they open the door. It's a morgue.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I like that a lot. I also think that there's a note that you can take from some of Jason Cordova's games and ask them, what are you? Afra is on the other side of this door. As if you keep changing up the questions. It prevents the players from metagaming and it keeps the world feeling slippery around them because you do not want the night floors and Carcosa to feel predictable.

Yeah, speaking of subversions, like, you can also do something incredibly mean where they want to, like, get back to that stairwell, Right. And let's say they succeed in the role. So show them that stairwell. But once they go down to go into the first floor, it's another infinite hallway.

That is a big gut punch I'm saving for my agents. They're in the night floors right now, so I'm gonna have them meet up, and then at some point, they're gonna try to get out. And they're like, okay, fine, I open the door.

Well, I need a stairwell, right?

They'll be exiting, like, Roger Carron's room on the first floor. They're looking. It's like, are we out? Did we get out? And if they run out the front door, it opens into the hallways again. It's a big, like, oh, no.

That.

I think it'll be a lot of fun, I think.

And this is kind of coming from someone who's only played it, never run it. I'm curious what you guys think about, you know, the idea of, like, infinite possibilities and aimlessness. And I think part of it's because there is really no goal for your players when they enter the night floors. There's no objective, and so it feels a little aimless. It's like, I'm. I just wandered in here. I kind of don't know what I'm supposed to do here, except for maybe try to find Abby, you know?

Yeah, that's a really good point. And that I've had luck with introducing the people, talking about the night manager because that gives them an easy person, that they're like, okay, this is a person of authority. We're gonna go find this person. Because I agree, you need to have a goal in this, or else it's, you know, take out your disposable camera, you're at Disney World. Look at all the cool things.

It's just a haunted house, right?

Yeah.

Right.

I fully agree. And before we use that as a great transition into the various NPCs of the night floor hallways, let's say, I think that your players are likely going to go up here one out of curiosity, too, out of a sense of purpose, to find Abigail. And after being told that she has moved upstairs to whatever random floors that you tell them, they are likely going to ask an NPC to take them to Abby. I've always had someone ask Mark to take them up to where Abby is. And, like, he opens doors. He tries to go in an elevator and is confused as to why it doesn't work. Like, they are holding him back. And as soon as they get distracted, he walks through a door. So that way you know, they're stranded inside. But having the various NPCs try to help them out, I think for me, I try to really give a vibe that the players can tell this environment is trying to tempt them. It is trying to give them and show them things that they may want or urges that they may have. And that by knowing that they will have a resistance and will try to fight it and thus get out again. So it's kind of playing on player expectations and giving them reasons to either keep exploring or not. I admit I messed up in your run, Holly, because I did run it very much by the book. And it's why I'm trying to adamantly say, go with your gut, make it cinematic and follow your players instead. Because being a slot machine, haunted house weirdness, it's not the best. But I digress. Let's see if we can hear from another opinion or two or three. Are there any NPCs that we really like to showcase here in the night floors? Kind of starting off with the night manager, Henry Calvados de Castane.

Yeah, he's great. Odd dude who doesn't love playing an old man. Like, he's so much fun, he's doddering. He has enough information that he can give out, but it's not in the right kind of frame of reference that they're looking for. He doesn't know anybody. And he really introduces a lot of the Carcosa stuff that I'm gonna guess your players probably at some point go, ah, this is King and yellow shit. So you kind of gotta be like, look, we get it, it's King and Yellow. He's gonna talk about it. But there's more than just that.

We actually had a great moment of kind of subverted expectations in my second run because one of my players, Jimmy, is very familiar with all of the Robert Chambers stories. And as soon as Thomas Manuel said, oh yeah, Mr. Castaigne, the night manager, gave these to me, Jimmy's eyebrows went halfway up his forehead as he was just like, I'm sorry, what? And yet even whenever they were interacting like he's an old guy, that's very much not the story. So he was still saying that even though it's the same name. He does not know how this character is related or what relevance that may have. So you can always trip up your players expectations of things.

Does anybody ever make him effectual in terms of a fight? Because I really like the whole they find his room in the Crown, and it's like, yeah. I mean, he might try and hit you, but it's nothing. And that's, in its own way, scary to see that, like, level of passion with no ability to enact it.

Yeah. I think that it really highlights that these are not people that behave what we would consider normally. Like, he has no concern for breaking of bones and losing of his life. He is a feeble old man who will shatter that mug and try to slash your throat with the shattered ceramic. But then you take him out. You can hit your players with a stability roll and be like, you just killed this frail old man and you do not feel good about it. And then he shows back up a little bit later to clean up his own body or something. Like, he cleans up the mess of the mugs off the blood. Yeah, exact.

Exactly.

It feels wrong in a lot of ways.

See, you hit us with that. With Abraham when we were ready to torch the whole building. I was like, I'm not torching this building with a dog that I also can't see in it. So we dragged him out of the building.

Yeah.

That was so sad.

That was a really sad moment. I tried to tease it, because whenever Emmaline kind of brought you into her home, I'm like, abraham feels like he's watching, whining and pawing at the door, and, like, he's becoming translucent. I'm like, he can't leave here. But then, bless her heart, someone had to pick up Abraham and tried to drag him out of the smoking lounge.

I'm not lighting a building on fire

without the front door that turns into fairy dust as you cross the threshold.

I would have felt better about that. It's like, well, at least he's, like, humanely. And he's not burning in a building, even though I can't see this dog.

But then you saw his silhouette just a moment later. But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves.

Yeah. Who's Abraham? Dang it.

Abraham. Holly, why don't you tell us who Abraham is?

A delightfully dopey dog who apparently poops everywhere. He's a good boy, Slobbery, and I love him. And I think later in the story, we actually see him, and it was delightful.

I think that he's. I mean, he's a good boy, and it can be really fun. As another weird NPC that is not inherently evil or maligned. He's just a dog who is invisible until, for some reason, he's not. And you don't really like, why you can see him now but not before that. Abraham is a great character. Another one whom I put a lot of emphasis in in my runs of this is I really got attached to Emmaline Fitzroy. She has a really short blurb on, like, page 95 and shows up in a couple of other places. She wrote A World Without Doors, but I wanted there to be more significant female NPCs in this that could really help steer the PCs a little bit more and give some guidance. I can talk about changes I made with her at length later. I've been talking a lot tonight, but, yeah, Emmeline Fitzroy is another one. Really interesting you can tie in, especially because the first time I have agents encounter them, she has a big armload of books, you know, kind of comically stacked up over her head. Exiting a door, says, thanks, Mr. Robert, and closes the door. And then the next time your agents go in the bookshop, let them explore a bit. And then in the far distance, they can hear, thanks, Mr. Robert, and a door close again, as great ways to see these recursive moments.

Yeah, we latched onto her pretty hard. It's. I don't know, there's something charming about the way you portrayed her anyway, Lex. And. And I think there's something interesting about having a child there because that kind of, you know, gives you pause, right? Like, especially a child that is, like, openly not evil, right? Because you can always play the creepy little girl, right? But then you have this, like, sweet little child who is, like, curious and kind, and it's like, it kind of makes your perception of what this all is change a little bit. You're like, well, there's this sweet little kid here. What is she doing here? You know?

Well, and you can always kind of lead out with that too, is the players will probably research her and go, right, yeah, she's not a little kid when she died or disappeared. Rather, she was 26 when she disappeared. Why are we seeing her at whatever age? But, yeah, I agree. I think she's an interesting one. I like to kind of see her as another person that figured it out. Much like Van Fitts, Right? Like, she literally wrote the book about what's happening here. So she is a little bit more helpful, maybe a little bit more knowledgeable, but I don't like having her spoil it, so to speak. Right. She's not going to say outright what you, as the gm, think is happening. She's trying to guide you through it safely.

So what I did is I kind of adapted the description of a world without Doors. And it's very much a children's book. And some of the information that the players are gleaning from it, it's from the pictures that are in the book. There isn't a lot of text, but they're just looking at these pictures of a girl who lays down in a bathtub and then gets back up again in this fantasy world that it looks like she fucking drowned herself there. Did she? And so giving some information from there that they can get an incomplete picture. And whenever the agents first encounter her in the night floors, maybe the second or third time they do, she will be getting a little smarter at different times, especially if they encounter her when she's older. And she will say that, I need you to find me because I won't remember. And that's where she is, wandering around the bridle bin in basically a constant fugue state. And so that was her as a wannabe phantom, seeding a stimulus that would not have happened without the agents. And if they can kind of shake her out of it in the brothel bin, she is a great resource to give them more of a spiel if the agents are feeling super lost in what's going on. But besides that, with World Without Doors, they can kind of get a gist of. Okay. Abigail apparently was fighting against this king in yellow. She took him out, and then the world was breaking, and now it's fixed again, but Abigail is gone. And for Emily and I described it as. She saw it like she was looking at a painting, but couldn't tell who was doing what or why, and wanted to try to deliver this message to the agents to help them out. If the agents ever ask, like, why they made it a kid's book, she'll say, because I wanted to be sure you could understand it, because I love snippy characters. Is there anyone else we want to talk about? Strictly for here in the Night floor?

Be honest. I don't run a lot of NPCs. Besides, maybe Castane.

Yeah, I dropped poor David Langford like the cable guy that's stuck up in there. I. I'm. I. Same with Abraham is like, I get it. It's just not interesting to me. So they, you know, go to the cutting room floor.

Yeah.

And that's okay because sometimes I want to manage how much information my players get, and having another NPC to remember and deal with can overload them. So it's up to the gm.

All right. Are there any issues that we have encountered or could try to predict for GMs who are running at this stage of the night floors.

I think there is one that you brought up earlier that is probably interesting to talk about is the personal manifestations. Particularly when does the agent's life start showing up in the night floors? Because I worry, as with a lot of these pacing things, I don't like doing it right away because that's too on the nose. I like it. If they go in the night floors, it's all the other weirdness, right? Then they go back. Now they're saying, okay, that's my wife's car. That is, you know, that's okay. Yeah, that is a piece of art I made, put on a pedestal and in an artwork gallery that it shouldn't be in. Then it starts to involve them and kind of envelop them. But I'm curious what other people think thing.

I just. I'm not sure how you get the people to go back because once they've been. Why would they go back?

Yeah, that's fair.

I think that this is. We've mentioned pacing a few times, but I think pacing is extremely important. For their first foray into the night floors. We've been jumping around with all of these details and all of these things that are a lot of fun because there is a ton of fun to be had. But you don't want to unload all of this at once. I strongly recommend aiming for a catch and release system. With their first foray into the night floors. They're likely going to stumble into this, going like, well, let's see what's up there. Because this doesn't make any sense. They get in, they get stuck a little bit, and then they can get back out again with a little NPC help, let's say.

Say.

Yeah.

From there they have encountered several NPCs or several scraps of information. They have now heard more about Asa Darabondi. They may have encountered Emmaline, Fitzroy, lots of other clues that they could only have picked up in the night floors that they can then research in the real world. And from there, that should really fan their interest of. This is spanning time. This is a lot bigger and deeper. Like, it should not seem dangerous in their first time going into it. It should just seem weird. And that way it lulls them into a false sense of security that they can go back in again and it will be fine. And that second time is when you can really up a lot of the horror manifestations in it, because that's when the kid gloves come off. It can really depend, player to player, what their buttons will be to get them back in. Some players are just super interested and they're going to go in come hell or high water. Other ones, you can give their agents an obsession of some kind, because they're likely going to hit a breaking point, getting slammed with a huge bout of sanity or stability loss, like right out the gate from their first foray. But that's not a guarantee. Maybe they'll burn it down after they exit the first time and it'll just be a lukewarm first chapter. But. But I think if you just make the night floors seem weird but not directly harmful, they shouldn't do that immediately.

And from a meta side, too. The first time they go into the night floors, remember that these are places shaped by what people think will happen and believe. The first time they go in, it's unlikely that they have a lot of information that it is a dangerous place. Right? They know it is. Abigail's up there somewhere. They know this information. Maybe they meet Asa and they go, ah, what a weirdo. And then they do the research and they start saying, oh, there's a lot of murder. Boy, there's a lot of murder around this place. There's a lot of people that died. And the next time they go in, what are they expecting? They're expecting that darkness to come in and seep through and that influences perhaps, you know, that that can be one way to put it. And maybe that's what draws the king for that chase is he. He's drawn too close. And the agents hopefully go, we're good here, thanks. Time to leave, time to go.

And then, Nathan, to your question earlier about when to bring in the personal manifestations, my very unhelpful answer is kind of when it feels right. I had the manifestation I talked about with the PC who was feeling really lost, and he opened the door into his apartment. That was on their first foray into the night floors. Again, there was nothing harmful in there. If anything, like they had a first aid kid in the bathroom, they, you know, he could pick up a shirt and it was. It was just mundane. But so weird as to why this is here, because I just see the night floors as kind of like this, I don't know, almost like a smoky mirror or something that it can give a reflection of what it thinks that that person wants and then show that to them around them. So then I personally do not track corruption in this. I may just kind of make a note of if someone is really digging into King and yellow stuff. I track it with favors or just in my personal notes and then have them get more personalized representations. But I think it really just depends on what the GM is wanting and what they feel is right.

Right.

Coming from someone who did track corruption. You don't need to track corruption.

Just go buy vibes.

Yeah. Do you have the spreadsheet to prove that, Alex?

I. I do have a spreadsheet and a graph and a chart.

He has the receipts.

Boy.

Yep.

What do you have? Have you guys experienced the group splitting with some going to the night floors and some not going to the night floors? Is that ever a problem?

Yeah. It's a big problem.

I have not. My. My group was paranoid and stuck with one another.

Stuck together.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a real pain.

Yeah. Spoilers for my run of it. But Colin's character is a playwright. He wanted to be a playwright from session zero. That was his first thing. And he wants to use the night floors for time dilation so he can get more work done. So he just goes into the smoking lounge one night and he's like, I'm just gonna rip a typewriter off Abigail Wright's wall and just tic tac away. And so I was having manifestations light come because it's trying to pull him in deeper. And so fortunately he got a little weirded out and left. But the time dilation is really hard. And if you start having agents go in before others, I personally feel like you should focus on the others outside because they're eventually going to find out and then go in later, give the agents inside some kind of glossing overview of what they've been experiencing for what feels like like weeks or months, and then move on. Because otherwise you run into such different amounts of screen time that it can really be a challenge for GMs and something to try to bear in mind. Also something else too. If you have some agents that are going in while others are staying out, the book is more a set of guidelines than actual rules. And you can have some manifestations and doors show up and pop. Pop other agents into the night world. Unexpectedly, they can come across the bookshop they're in. They can find any number of places that you can just kind of have them conveniently drop in to keep everyone on the same page, because it's a pain otherwise.

Yeah. Play with the time dilation. I agree with that Is, you know, sometimes too, you might be like, fine. It feels like you've been in the night, flirts for two minutes and then the guys pop in. It's like we were out there for a Week. I don't care anymore. Like, we have to, like, time works weird here, huh, guys?

At this point, it sounds like we are kind of hitting the breaking point. Some may call it for our time in the night floor. And we've alluded to this a few times. But for the record, whenever it is time for your agents to escape the night floors, how do you tend to do it? What do you think would make for some cinematic or very fitting means to exit?

Oh, I introduce a new element into the night floors that establishes, like, a threat.

Right.

I wasn't quite satisfied with, like, static showing up that early, so instead I made, like, a giant gargoyle creature that was reminiscent of the gargoyles on top of the McAllister Building.

Oh, nice.

And instead of making it super deadly, like, it could kill agents, because I. I have the. I understood that this is the first scenario I made. Hits from the gargoyle actually deduct points of sanity, not from health.

Health.

Yeah. Nice. Yeah. You can always bring in the lion, too. It's early, but they won't know where it's coming from. They've got a diagram of it, maybe.

So I don't know if I would introduce the lion because that's such a bizarre. What, the moment from Barbas's house that I think it would immediately spook them if they saw it. Otherwise, they're like, oh, there's mechanical contraptions everywhere. A mechanical contraption literally tried to kill us 25 years ago. So.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah.

They miss all the clues in there, though.

Well, yeah. Do you want the clues or not? Are you gonna. Are you gonna be brave and put on your big boy pants?

Are you gonna face Dennis Detwiller's TPK machine?

Yeah. I mean, it really is. Know your players, right? Is if your players are really cautious. Yeah, don't. Don't do that. But it is kind of fun to establish, like. Like, you know, this is the lair of the dragon. You gonna go in? There's treasure in there. Also, I've used the paper tiger here because that's a fun. Like, it's a really cool, like, kind of mental design. And it's just, you know, they may not always run into it.

I think for my intentions, I am going to have the king in yellow show up at some point in the hallways. I have a fun image of the king is moving down the hallways, and the walls and floor kind of detach from each other as if each of the hallways are pieces of the tattered cape, and the agents are Just trying to run basically kind of on that Aladdin magic carpet. The floor is moving underneath them. Give them some kind of a surreal bang as they get out that door. And that can be your thrilling, intense conclusion of at least this main section of the chapter.

Yeah. And I've also. I've had one group that just never left the night floors.

Nice.

And that skipped basically the entire second scenario because I'm like, fine, you want to stay in the night floors. I don't want to make four new characters. Let's. Let's fucking go. We're going to the 1400s, and you're meeting Gabriel Castane. Let's go.

That's crazy.

And, yeah, it was a lot of fun, but the other time, I was like. Like, I don't want to do that again. So you know what? They're going in. They're going in the second time to the smoking lounge. And Agent Marcus is there. And you can see the burning room of the hotel room that the agents were staying at behind him as he's waving a gun around and going, what the fuck? I told you to leave this alone. This is not how we do things. You're ruining this. And become a violent threat to them. And that, you know, helped remind them that Delta Green doesn't care about this place and it is dangerous, especially when he got set on fire.

And I suppose as one last question, I presume nine agents out of ten will burn down the McAllister after they get out of the night floors. I'll call it the major time, whether they go in multiple times or not. After this, this thrilling, intense exit of the night floors, they're probably not going to want to go back in unless they want to live there. I just assume they're going to burn down the building. Have you ever had groups that would do something else? And for those that do burn down the building, how difficult do you make it? Because at this point, I feel like we've. We have had the main course of the fun night floors experience. Let's wrap this up and move on to the next thing. I don't make it challenging for them to commit massive acts of arson.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. It depends on the group and what their plan is, I think. Yeah, arson is one of those. You could probably write it off. I've had people buy the building and shutter it, which I loved. I was so happy with that because then it gave them a place to go back to. Fantastic.

They can still go back to the burn building.

Oh, yeah, sure. But it's more fun if it's, you know, a graffitied place and everything, or worse, everything around it is graffiti, and this is, for some reason, not. Yeah, it just looks like they just finished boarding it up, that kind of thing. But adventures and lollygagging played this and they blew up the building nice. And they didn't do a good job, which led them to being wanted criminals. Kind of like an Oklahoma City bomber thing, because they killed some people on the street too, which, you know, kind of watch your agents plan because that was really a very cool way to get the chase aspect moved into the next few parts. Right. They were wanted criminals. People knew them. That might be a case where you don't want to make it easy for them, but otherwise, you know, maybe you've played seven sessions and you're like, we gotta get moving. I set on fire. Great job. Great job, guys.

Seven, my man. We're on, like, session 11 at this point and still going strong with it. This group is having a blast in the night floors, man.

I'm setting the match myself at this point. Outside that door. Let's get out of here.

I think you should have more fun with your players.

Nathan shows up in game.

You guys are taking too long.

Just leave that bit of the script under one of the doors.

And speaking of having other characters show up, are there any extra characters that we may want to incorporate in this chapter? Specifically, either inside or outside of the night floors? I know Thomas Wright is written in pretty significantly in a chunk of this. I've kind of had a hard time introducing him in this second run. The players weren't very interested in bringing him along.

I feel like Thomas Wright is, you know, you can take or leave him, not a crucial person. I know the game keeps trying to sell us on NPCs that can also be turned into player characters. And we talked about that in our first episode. Just let your people make new people, you know, I don't know what he could tell them that would be helpful and just make your life harder making up shit. Because, you know, they might have questions there's just no answers to.

Yeah. And worse, he might make it. So when your agents are going, let's leave the night floors and never go back. He's gonna be pushing of like, no, we got, yeah, we gotta keep going. And, yeah, then you start having half of us wanna go in, half wanna burn.

And, well, you know. But that could be a good way to spur your characters to go back if they're feeling hesitant. Like, he wants to go back. This is his daughter now you have a. You have to face a man and tell him, no, we are not going to continue looking for your daughter.

And honestly, that could be a very cool conclusion for this. If you have a player as Thomas Wright, who is saying, no, I need to keep going, you can just let that door close on them. The player then gets to make their own actual agent so that they really don't miss a beat for the second chapters going forward. And then they can encounter Thomas later. Head maybe, maybe not on fire. You give a sense of permanence and a lived in world around the agents by having some of these NPCs drift in and out. What's.

What's everyone's opinion like introducing Asa a little early because they learn a lot about him if they're researching the building. Maybe just like seeing bits of him, but not being able to interact would be the most appropriate.

Oh, I. I have him show up in the second time they get into the night floors. The first campaign, one of my agents absolutely hated him. He literally wrote the opening of Supernatural as his character backstory. And so it's like, well, that person standing over your baby brother was wearing a lavender suit. And then he just had like, all eyes on kill for Asa later on. So he just kept killing Asa. Asa would then show up with guns. He's just like, not this time, motherfucker. And the second run, I have an agent who is an architect. And so, yeah, he is interacting with Asa right now and kind of trying to become his protege until he hears splashing bathwater in the room behind him. We're gonna see how that shakes out next session too. In terms of other characters, your agents are bound to encounter Persson by some point in going through Abigail's apartment, there's a fun little snippet where he looks like Forrest Gump running across the country with a big snake on his arms.

And.

And that's it. Do you really use him that much afterwards? It really depends on how much your agents are interested in demons.

If your players seek them out. Right. If your players seek out and are interested in the demonology aspect. Right. Then, yeah, I would introduce more NPCs that are demons. Yep. But the purpose of this first chapter, I think, is for me as the handler, to gauge the interest of each. A clue I like, feed out to them.

Yeah, that's kind of a critical part of this that I don't think we've talked about is give them a chance to research this stuff.

Yeah.

Because I have a really hard time otherwise. When they're in the night floors. It's kind of a fire hose, right. Of like here's all this stuff. It can be tough to tell what your players care about once they're back in the real world. Be like, hey, what are you looking up right now? And it's usually the first couple things. That's probably what you want to spend some time fleshing out.

That's a huge reason why I advocate for the catch and release style with the night floors. Because there are some clues they can only really encounter there and that should really pique their interest to do research in the real world. It's informative for them. It's helpful for you to know what they are interested in. In there is one more NPC that is written. He's not even much of a non player character. He's like a non character that I think it's an illusion to another story. Nathan, you can help me out here. The encyclopedia salesman with the white wingtip shoes. Is this supposed to be JC Lin's? Is this someone else? It's truly never said. It's kind of a weird detail. I don't think there's much you can really do with.

I think it's like a. In Joker cameo of some kind. Yeah, I don't like. I like the imagery of it, but I. I don't think it's necessarily important who it is. If you want to make a jc, I think that's perfectly fine.

I just. I remember reading the book and then at the end being pissed off that they never told me who the fuck that dude was.

Yeah. I think if you go looking through the subreddit, I'm sure there are plenty of theories, but you know, he's just a guy. He's just dragging people into Carcosa with his seductive encyclopedic ways.

Stupid.

Well, I think that we've covered kind of everything in terms of the real meat of this chapter. Before we close though, is there any sort of overall GM notes and advice that we would want to give any listeners as they are preparing to run this?

I would say take good notes for callback because the first chapter is really about seeding things that you're going to call back to. So that's just my two cents.

Totally. Totally. And with that kind of tying back into the thing of what do they research? You don't really need to use all the tools in this toolbox. If you do, it's probably too much information to try and loop back on. So yeah, see what they kind of hook into and what you care about is the gm. You have a lot of power, obviously, to say, like, oh, you know what? This time I'm doing demon stuff because it's fun for me right now. But the next run, I may do barely any demon stuff. You know, it's very adaptive.

Yeah. So as I mentioned before, this is the time to analyze what the players bite. Right. So if they're super interested in demons, go for demons. This is also the time to review after Night Floors is done. You want to link and match player behavior to story elements in the future. If I have a very violent agent who's quick to. Quick to anger, quick with his fists or whatever, I'm gonna link them to static, right? I'm gonna give them more static. If I have someone who is super into, Is an occultist and is more into demons, I'll give them more demons. They might show. Get the. The demon book in the future. So, yeah, analyze the player behavior.

Actually have a question for you guys, because I feel like, you know, what do you do with the player, the character that doesn't want to engage too much because they understand, like, what Delta Green does to people who are engaged too much? Like, that's what I kept trying to play my character as while still engaging with the plot. Right. But it's like, I fucking don't want to know more about any of this. I just want this to be done kind of situation. I don't have any advice about that.

Then I would show them the failings of DG by inputting, like, a. A counters another cell that is, like, rough and, you know, no nonsense, and have them fall to the machinations of Carcosa. Right. I believe in Nathan's campaign that I played in. He had M Cell, but they all, like, went missing or they got corrupted by it. Right. You could even corrupt the Handler. Oh, you know, a good DG agent listens to the Handler. Well, what if the Handler gets corrupted? One of the best moments in that chapter that I believe Nathan did was we had an injured agent we called the Handler. Handler's like, all right, go to this vet's place. We're gonna patch you up. I have someone. And it was. It was one of the demons, Bauer, that showed up to heal. And, like, while I was in the waiting room waiting for. For Bower, who we didn't really know was a demon at that time, the Handler steps out of the dark with this fully isolated agent. He's like, draw it. Draw the sign that you saw. And like, that agent just completely folded and drew it. And it's like, holy shit, that happened.

That's really interesting.

I like that. Yeah. You can really subvert expectations by corrupting the elements where you think you can trust.

I also think highlighting the horror, the violence and dehumanization of Delta Green can be another way to maybe dissuade an agent from being too much of a good little soldier and have an agent encounter a manifestation of the agents in Operation Luna that I have them massacre the NPC station and then plant the photos of the dead children and Gary Topchik's folder. So like seeing this, seeing them wiping out that apartment block and start causing them to question are we really the good guys? Like, is this really the way that they deal with this? Because that's going to be me. I think that this is something I didn't do very well in your run of it. That I would try to emphasize a bit more now because you're right that if your character has solid reasons for not interacting with this, it's directly opposed to the player who just wants to, you know, explore stuff and have a good time. It's a very unique problem to try and address.

You know, I think we kind of had that in an interesting dynamic way when you ran it for me anyway. Like I was trying to be very straight laced by the book. Good soldiers follow orders. I'm not going to engage. I'm not going to read the fucking demon book because I know at the end of this I'm just going to get a bullet in the head for that. And. And. But then like my two counterparts were like, let's go. I want to read everything. I'm calling demons.

Well, they were. But also that was something I did with your character was I had like Doppler's sister gets wrapped up in all of it. And like her fiance. I have. Your bonds will get wrapped up in it. And that is a very deep feeling of unsettled. Whenever you realize it doesn't matter what I do. It is still coming.

It's still coming for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're. You're making it. Where you have to engage in some fashion. Right. Is because otherwise you're completely right. Is the right Delta Green thing to do for this is go. Yep. It's weird. Never engage. Burn it down. But that's not fun. And if you have one agent. Yeah. And if you have one agent that's like, no, stop looking at it. Stop it, stop it. Then they're playing babysitter. And that's not fun for. Well, most people. I Don't know. Some people like it.

That's. Yeah, I. I think that we mentioned this in the prologue. I'm not trying to throw shade, but if you want to listen to an example of how this can be challenging for a gm, listen to the first couple episodes of Black Project Gaming's run of Impossible Landscapes. They had an agent who entered with meta knowledge who wasn't engaging with anything and was just violent and kind of trying to end it very quickly. And it is very much anti. Fun. I'm not passing any judgment on, you know, the player, the GMs. Like, it was a. It was a choice that just really didn't pan out, in my personal opinion.

Yeah, it's hard, you know, Like, I was definitely not trying to be the Killjoy, the person that doesn't engage, because we talk about that all the time. And I agree, like, people need to engage with your plot. Right, Right. And it's just hard to balance that. Like, I know what my character should want to do versus I know what this scenario kind of is asking me to do. And it's. Yeah, it's. It's a balance.

And maybe just like, how would you feel if the GM just was kind of outright with it? Like, like, your agent is doing everything right. Like, how are they feeling? Like, what do you think might make them stay? And just ask the player, because that, you know, I think you. You said you were using the fiance, the bonds. Total, like, total sense that may not work for everybody. Some people might go, well, I guess I'm not married anymore.

Yeah. Lex. Using my bonds as a way of, like, there is no escaping this. If you do not engage, it's going to engage with the people you care about. And like, that's very effective. It is. Yeah.

And then. Yeah, exactly. That drives you to that drastic, like, okay, like, I have to take this to the building. I have to do something. We can't just ignore it.

Yeah. And I think just as a final kind of closing thought for overall GM notes, my sincere advice is to not rush this chapter and let your players explore and really make the most of it. This is, in my opinion, the best, most interesting part of the campaign. Tons of great weird stuff you can throw at them. Again, I'm going to have a dozen sessions in just this chapter alone because my players are exploring so much. That's more than Nathan wants to handle. They're having a blast and I want that for them because then you can really emphasize that pacing later on where things will move faster than the agents really can explore. And so this is the part where they feel like they're in control before you take it away from them.

I noticed the crack in the bowl after I made the soup, but I ate the soup anyway. Near the end, I felt a small piece of glass in my mouth. I chewed it, I swallowed it. Nothing happened. The ball is gone now. Now I broke it all up and ate it. I'm getting stronger, I think.

So as we close this chapter of the Night Floors, we now move into our first exeunt, if I'm saying that properly, the bookshop. This is a liminal space that you can kind of drop in anywhere you want, but mostly it's going to be in this first section of the game. It has more fun NPCs and an exploration. But I'm really curious what you all think about the bookshop overall. Do you like to use it? When do you like to use it? How do you like to use it?

Oh, I use it in the first chapter or the second chapter or the third chapter,

but never the fourth.

Never, Never the fourth.

I kind of like giving players somebody in this craziness who is either benign or even, like, helpful and nice. Like, that's why I liked that Lex put in Emmaline so many times. Like, it kind of almost makes you feel a little bit better about it, which is not like you shouldn't. You shouldn't feel at peace here. But that's like a way I Like I was reading Robert, Robert Roberts, and I was like, oh, this is a nice man. Like, what a nice individual. And, you know, and. And it kind of lulls you into that sense of, like, false security. But also, like, makes everything, like, maybe just a little less scary sometimes where you can engage because it's like, oh, you know, this is such a nice guy.

Yeah, exactly. At a certain point, the night world should feel safer than the real world. And it's. If you're okay with this little bit of weirdness. Yeah, there are some just kind of. Oh, they're peculiar, but they're nice. And yeah, I like making Robert just kind of a helpful guy who's always around. Also, I just. I love Robert. Robert, Robert. The dumbest detail that makes for such a memorable. Every time I've run this so far, its players are like, that can't be real. Is that a real. That's not a real name.

Yeah. So I mentioned that I would like the bookshop to show up in chapters one, two and three, because it's easiest to introduce it in one if they're on the same street going to the McAllister building, back and forth from their hotel or from the deli or whatever. They can then notice a bookshop. Maybe the second or third time they pass by that street, street that wasn't there before instantly piques the player character's curiosity. They go in, they meet him.

My system for the first introduction of the bookshop came because I thought of a pun and I really liked being able to deliver on that. Usually after their first brush with the night floors, agents are going to want to learn about Acidarabada. They are going to try to find the Devil's Craftsman and. Or a Darkness at the Corners. And I have the library will have Darkness at the Corners. That it's more just kind of a blog of a bunch of architects and things. But they can't find a copy of the Devil's Craftsman so they need to go looking for it. And I mentioned like, maybe some old bookstores may have it in town. As they are going around when they aren't expecting it. I mentioned they're kind of looking down at the street or something. And they walk through a cloud of fragrant smoke from a Turkish cigarette. As they're kind of like. And fanning. They see that there's. Robert is smoking a cigarette in front of a used bookstore player. Feels like, oh, okay, it's convenient. They just don't know how convenient. And they can go in. Robert gives them Devil's Craftsman and then that's when you can introduce weird shit going on inside of the bookshop itself. But then it's after they leave. Whenever they turn around, I say, and the bookstore is gone as if it just disappeared in a puff of smoke. Because that was. Because that was how they found it. You got it. You got it. But that's how I introduce it the first time around. You can then drop it in anywhere else that you want. I was chatting with Xander on our Discord server and he had a really great idea that anytime the agents are looking for a location that is hidden in the real world, like the brothel bin or looking for Dallin's house or something, they can find the bookshop there. It's one of the few reliable places that they could spot it if they happen to be attuned to it. And I love that idea because it never made sense how the buildings just grew together. This isn't Harry Potter. What the hell.

Yeah, no, I like having the bookshop be annoyingly easy to find. Like they'll say, it's down the street, it's down the street. It Never disappears. And in fact, it's in your city too. And Robert. Robert. Robert is happy to get you his book. You want another book? Have this other book too. Here's a third book.

Mr. Bob. Robert bringing a location nearby you exactly

like he is a whirlpool. This whole thing is just a whirlpool of it gives you everything you want and more. And you don't want any of it. Not really. Really. So when they're like, oh, we want the red book. Ah, damn. We actually gave Michelle our last red book. But we have the libro sectorum that is based on. With the official, like, Brotherhood of Doors thing that you're looking into. Would you be interested in this with

the Brotherhood of Doors, Dakota Ring?

Essentially, yes.

So a couple of notes on that one. Whenever I have Robert lead them to the. The devil's craftsman, he will usually throw in the libro secretora manifesta, as he will say, oh, I believe I have another book of Mr. Darabondi's. I'll try to, like, quickly go past the of not on. And then he will give them the libro secretura. Easy way to give them kind of a tldr of the king in yellow to pique their interest. But one of my favorite manifestations in the whole book as written is if you have Robert lead them to the trapdoor that he turns out the light, light, and the hand appears in the dark to give him the book. My players were floored when I went through that. And after the session, they were like, that was the coolest thing. I'm like, I didn't come up with that. But it's really satisfying. I highly recommend getting around to it if you can. Yeah.

The only thing I suggest changing in that is make an agent go down with Robert, Robert, Robert. And have the hand pass it over their shoulder. I just did that. And like, yeah, it's like, there's enough space for you and Robert and that's it. So there's not enough space. And of course, everybody else is watching from upstairs, and they just see a hand from the shadow just pass them this book, and then bail. And it's a little bit more immediate to the person that got it.

I actually use Robert to. I think in the third chapter, when they were running from the police, he actually gave them a copy of the Necronomicon because, like, you can find any book in this bookshop. And I. I thought it would be an interesting experiment just to see what my players would do with it.

What'd they do?

Did it end well, for them, they.

They summoned something during the finale, that's for sure. I mixed up the names of the spells too. So like a summon spell for let's say a hunting horror or it's just like union of the wing servitor. And they're like, what the fuck does that do? So they were scared to cast it until the finale when all the. That's for off.

Oh, that just makes me want to have an aathoth first king in yellow Kaiju fight is that's how you close out il. They summoned him at the very end.

Thrilling, intense.

Yeah.

Fun fact. During the chapter three, they were able to use the bookshop as like a place to hide from the police for a bit.

Yep.

And like it actually went. I had a SWAT raid on the bookshop with the agents in it and it got a little pulpy at that point, to say the least. I had Robert act like Sharon from John Wick, you know, the concierge.

That's the way I always role play. Yeah.

He crosses them a handgun and starts firing at the SWAT officers himself. He says, go.

Yeah, but that's. I mean, that's perfect for what this is, right?

Exactly.

This world wants them to act like that.

That. Yeah.

And so it is a place that is ultimately friendly to the agents and it would be better if it wasn't

because it wants you to engage with it. That's also. This is jumping ahead a little bit. But if any agents are going into Trivelino Mall to prevent it from being just a straight up killing floor, I will have some of the children dance around not only to foreshadow something's happening, but. But like a bathroom door or something will be slightly ajar with a light on and agents can run from the mall into the bookshop as a way to seek refuge. That like, it's a good way to tie that back in and give them a safety line.

Also, having a gunfight in a. In a bookshop is very John Woo Hong Kong action movie. So.

Yeah, it is.

I love that.

Especially like the collapsing, horrible bookshop because it's a mess in this there. I also like when for one of mine, they were maybe thinking of assaulting the bookshop. And you know, it's a way in. We'll get in there. It's like, okay, well, there's a. A bit you can steal from the Dorchester chapter where they go into a terrible V library and encounter the paper tiger. And that's real fun. If they're looking for a fight, you can give them a fight.

Yeah. Are there any other manifestations or NPCs that we would really like for our players to encounter in the bookshop because they can really encounter anyone here. I've mentioned mine with Emmaline I think is that's most players first recursive moment for them. Like oh we already met her and now we hear her on the other side of the door kind of exiting in that.

Maybe the red door for Marbus could be fun, you know, know since those kind of connect there.

But that's one of my favorites. I found it kind of hard to get players to find it because usually they're going to follow Robert around because it's narrow, twisty, kind of corridors from all these books smashed together. So that's on my list for them to find later.

The Pazu, I think it's the first in the list of manifestations that they suggest. That's a good one if you're just like. If you just want to have one one because it highlights some stuff that'll come up pretty soon for the agents and has a fun clown jump scare which is just funny.

This brings our first chapter discussion of impossible landscapes to a close. In the next episode we'll discuss the 20 year gap between the night floors and the following chapter, a volume of secret faces as well as the missing room. Be sure to check out the show notes of this episode for links to purchase a copy of this campaign for yourself. Bud's RPG review overview for the sections that we discussed, other RPG resources that we mentioned, as well as an invite to our lab's Discord server to discuss more reanimations. We also post these episodes and resources to our Patreon that's free to follow. Or if you like, you can make a charitable donation to help us stock more copies of Leroy and Jean at the H. West Memorial Mortuary and Laboratories. We'd also like to give a shout out and thanks to our Patreon, Beth, Xander Sawyer, Scott, Chance, Jan, Born to Be Wrong and js thank you so much for supporting us. So until next time, thanks for listening to RPG reanimators where your games can

die or live in the McAllister. You know, I saw a guy get hit by a car the other day. The nurses pulled up and there was confetti coming out of him. He's okay now.