Best Case Scenario Mission - INTERSECT BINARY WAVES [O-E]

Player Intro

A dozen unstable psychics, recovered from the ruins of the Center for Coordination [see archival documents SECOND HAND CLOCK/PIKES GATHER SUNFLOWERS/SYNTHETIC TOMORROWS AWAIT] must be delivered, alive, to a holding/burial facility in Denver, Colorado, operating beneath HealthOne Mountain Ridge.

Two armored vans have been provided - van 1 holds 4 telekinetic, 2 intrusively-telepathic, and 2 energetic/pyrokinetic subjects. These eight are sedated - however, due to the increased metabolism of psychic subjects, they are expected to awaken immediately if sedative injection is interrupted. IV glucose has also been provided, to ensure none of them starve during delivery. Foil helmet-inserts have also been provided, to dampen telepathic interference.

Van 2 contains four biofeedback-specialized psychics. These subjects cannot be sedated due to their immunity to medicines and poisons, and are thus only physically restrained.

Your drive goes just fine, up until you notice the garbage truck flying down a side road at 60 miles an hour…

The Ambush

    Garbage truck “A” - stops side-on in the middle of Pearl St. in an attempt to block the frontmost of the agents’ vans. Assuming all goes well, 2 occupants (soft-armored and rifle-armed driver and front-seat passenger) throw smoke grenades over van 1, then approach while a pair of hard-armored LMG soldiers hop out the back and keep the vans under suppression. The riflemen then cut through the back door with torches and start pulling out psychics’ sedative IVs. Early warning or really sick driving may let van 1 avoid this trap - thus its superposition on the map.

    Garbage truck “B” - flies up the street at 60 and gladly impacts van 2, assuming the biofeedback-specialists will survive. Another team of 4, all soft-armored shotgunners, move to open it. 

Psychic Statistics

All are as average humans except otherwise stated. Psychic Potential rolls are on 1d6 - the result is both the [sum] of the psychic ability (as GLOG spells) and treated as an Attack against the psychic using it. Effects of wounds and death from these attacks occur after the psychic ability is resolved.

Telekinetics can make a Psychic Potential roll to throw [sum]*200 pounds of matter at 30 miles an hour. Assume agents weigh 200 pounds, and cars 3000. Telekinetics can cooperate to lift weights equal to the total of their rolls. Throwing an agent is an attack, as is throwing an agent-sized object at an agent. Dropping a car on someone kills them instantly.

Telepaths take over [sum] people for a [sum] minute duration. As long as they’re wearing helmets, pawns are only assaulted with whispers and shifting shadows in the corners of their eyes. Civilians have no such protections.

Pyrokinetics set [sum] people or objects On Fire. Agents who are On Fire are attacked every turn until they do something about it. When an agent dies of being on fire, if they had any grenades in their inventory they detonate from overheating.

Biofeedback turns psychic potential inside-out, into the body. For [sum/2] rounds their speed and jump distance is tripled, they can run on walls, and they can make two attacks a round (even unarmed, biofeedback specialists can attack without penalty). For this duration, the specialist is immune to injury and death - on a 6, their head may explode, but they won’t stop moving until time runs out. If you miss, it’s because they caught the bullet.

MEASURE STRICT BEHEMOTH & WAX ANGLE BEWARES - Modules for Best Case Scenario

Best Case Scenario is an RPG/skirmish wargame by deus ex parabola - an SCP sort of thing about getting into gunfights with greebly aliens and spider-sponges. Back in 2022 I posted a pair of operations, and now I've finally gotten around to running another set.

In MEASURE STRICT BEHEMOTH [OPEN-EYE GREEN] the agents are sent to capture Thomas Brillo, head of a local ghost-breathing cult, as he travels through the small town of Mt. Orab, Ohio - and, while you're at it, destroy his car. His car won't appreciate that.

In WAX ANGLE BEWARES [CLOSED-EYE RED], operatives attempt to stop a deal between a competing organization and a princeling of the upper mantle - a deal inconveniently taking place inside a packed airliner. Get the 200-pound iridium lotus they brought to trade off the plane before it lands in Vienna, and don't blow up the plane. Last time we had to dredge a spirit of the inner earth out of the ocean, they got rather upset.

RED GRADIENT UNDERWORLD & SLOWLY SPINNING STATUES - Modules for Best Case Scenario

Best Case Scenario is a combination RPG and skirmish wargame by Deus ex Parabola. It has a vaguely SCP/Delta Green/etc inspired setting, and a set of combat rules that I find quite interesting.

One of my favorite parts is how each player plays as a team of 5 agents, similar to a funnel in DCC or similar games. This makes duet games, with 1 player and 1 GM, completely possible. In fact, both of the missions here: RED GRADIENT UNDERWORLD and SLOWLY SPINNING STATUES, are meant for a single player (though enemy counts and other statistics can be increased for more players).

Both adventures are just written in Google Docs and formatted with a little bit of bolding here and there, because why use effort when you can... not... do that? Additionally, RED GRADIENT UNDERWORLD has been playtested, and worked quite well.

In RED GRADIENT UNDERWORLD (CLOSED-EYE), the PCs are sent to sell a Liver to a group of Fleshgod Inheritors - a cult/gang who hope to eat all the pieces of their god Stel Alune, and mutate when these pieces are consumed. After making the sale, their mission is to trail the Inheritors back to their safehouse without being noticed, and then clear it, capturing or killing the Inheritors.

In SLOWLY SPINNING STATUES (OPEN-EYE), a team of bank robbers seem to possess an anomalous artifact, though they don't know how to use it (in Agency parlance, these sorts of people are known as "buttonmashers"). The local police have already arrived, and the PCs have been given cover as FBI agents. Legitimate FBI agents are on their way - don't let them take over the operation or see anything they shouldn't, then defuse the situation before the buttonmashers get themselves, or their hostages, killed.

By Scorpion141, on the SCP wiki

The lore of Best Case Scenario is being put together on the GLOG server piece by piece, in the anti-canon way best fitting an SCP-influenced game. Both scenarios above expect some knowledge of the setting, so here's some needed context pulled from the Discord:

The Agency/Organization is the group you work for, hoping to suppress and contain the supernatural, as well as knowledge of the supernatural. PCs are agents of the Organization - sometimes responding to an unnatural disaster, 

Depending on who's talking, the Organization may be connected to the U.S. government, a branch of the United Nations, or an independent private agency. Similarly, their scale and reach wanders up and down between versions. 

In my scenarios, the Agency is part of American intelligence, but buried. Their funding and tools come almost entirely by hidden means - a CIA accountant puts in an order for 35 rifles instead of the 30 they need, an NSA technician just happens to nudge a satellite on a route where it passes over an operation, et cetera. 

They maintain three containment facilities - a Low Security Warehouse in New York (for objects that do not require constant supervision), the High Security Center buried under a Superfund site in Idaho, and the Village in Oklahoma (for people adjacent to anomalies, and Strangers - anomalous humanoids able to communicate and cooperate).

CLOSED-EYE, OPEN-EYE, and THIRD-EYE are designations for the publicity of a mission. Generally, CLOSED-EYE missions are meant to be completed without bystanders recognizing the Agents are anything out of the ordinary. Agents are usually provided with plain clothes and concealed weapons, but CLOSED-EYE operations in remote areas could allow more equipment.

OPEN-EYE allows Agents to publicly act - in these scenarios, they are generally provided false documentation as FBI agents, SWAT teams, or other government actors. As well as more obvious equipment (explosives, armored vehicles, etc.), OPEN-EYE permits more interaction with the public - interrogating witnesses, procuring assistance from local police, etc.

THIRD-EYE operations are rare, only undertaken when the threat of the anomaly is more dangerous to the Organization than the publicity gained could be. Equipment accepted during THIRD-EYE operations goes up to, and including, small-scale nuclear weapons. The Organization may directly broadcast evacuation instructions and similar things to civilians in the area. 

Importantly, these designations are unrelated to the danger of a mission. Confronting an identical Star-Cult compound could be CLOSED-EYE if it was in the middle of a city with an uncooperative police force, or THIRD-EYE if it was deep in the Arizona desert.

Bits of slang have also sprouted up in discussions of Best Case Scenario - here's a list, curated and defined by deus ex parabola, and included here because Discord conversations about the game use a worryingly wide array of them, and I expect future modules will do the same.

bogey - a human combatant

spookum - a non-human combatant

boojum - a spookum that is much more dangerous than we hoped

spook hive - many spookums in one place

Charlie-Foxtrot - a fireteam op. in normal military slang this is a mission that's gone to shit: any mission a fireteam is involved in is already a clusterfuck

Delta-Mike - the voice on the other end of the phone, your trusted friend who tells you where to go and who to shoot 

trashbaggers - non-combat teams responsible for cleanup of mission sites and lying to the police and media

friendly - an ally 

zendik - a traitor