The Hoarfrost Dragon-campaign is episodic in it’s structure. Each mission is thought of as an episode in a tv-show, and each episode plays out in a certain order. In this post I will briefly present first season of the campaign. Presently were approaching the end of second season, and soon I will post episode guide to the second season.
Also I will in a coming post discuss the use of the episodic structure. For now I will point out the different elements used in each episode, as I have described these elements in other posts about the campaign and its specialized rules.
Pilot
Episode 0: Prologue
In Moscow a CIA-agent and his two contacts interrupts a weapon trade between a researcher and Ithaqua-worshipping terrorists. An aspect of Ithaqua manifests, and the agent runs for his life. He is forever haunted by crows.
Background: Each character have an episode, an encounter with something, and that something is the reason the character became an agent of Delta Green. In this episode we see one character’s origin story, while the two other players had NPC-roles. The fourth player was absent.
- Phenomenon: Aspect of Ithaqua
- One Session, origin-episode
- Playing NPCs: The two other players had two NPCs each
First Season
Episode 1: The Man in the House
The agents investigates mysterious deaths amont teens, and they discover that teens accidentally killed a researcher, who had performed mind-expanding experiments for the government in the late 70’ies. As his body died he became a freefloating consciouness tethering itself to the kids.
- Phenomenon: Man turned into a bodysnatching consciousness
- Two Sessions, Story Arc Episode
- Playing Agents and Friendlies
- Relation scenes (Described in detail)
- Threat Level 3 revealed
Episode 2: Black Angels over The Christmas Fair
The agents solves a series of kidnappings at Christmas fairs. The trail leads to a disgruntled veteran from Iraq, who went native and learned to summon Night Gaunts. When his native family were killed, he went back to the states and decided to kill at random to revenge the loss of his adoptive family.
- Phenomenon: Summoned Night Gaunts
- Two Sessions, Christmas Episode
- Corrupted Trait
- Relation scenes (Described in detail)
Episode 3: Burned Bones
The episodes begins with a flashback to a mission before the characters became DG-agents. The NPCs are investigating an area, that is being falsely quarantined to hide something at a factory, which infects people. This flashback partly ties in with a mission, where the agents follow a mysterious case about a young man wanting his fathers body cremated and is returned the fossilized bones, as the crematorium was unable to burn them. This leads the investigators to a series of experiments on fighter pilots in the 90’ies, which is tied in with the experiments in episode 1. As in episode one The Men in Black arrives to collect evidence and it becomes a race to secure the pilots.
- Phenomenon: Experiments on pilots making them more sturdy, and experiments at factory, which causes a least one soldier to become a tentacled horror.
- Two Sessions, Story Arc Episode
- Playing Agents and Friendlies
- Relation scenes (Described in detail)
- Threat level 3
Episode 4: The Subterraneans
The agents team up with other DG-agents in order to search for a missing cryptozoologist, who have discovered troglodytes, or rather ghouls under Manhattan. The ghoul cult of Modiggian is also encountered, and the agents find the missing cryptozoologist, who has turned into a ghoul himself. They kill him and blow up some of the ghoul tunnels.
After the mission one agent goes rogue and is killed by a cell-member in order to stop him from harming innocents.
- Phenomenon: Ghouls, Cult of Mordiggian
- Three Sessions
- Playing Agents and Friendlies
- Connection
- Burned Relation
- Loss of an Agent (threat lv 1)
- Secondary plot
Episode 5: The Red Tears of the Black Madonna
The agents travel to South America to stop a shaman from assisting a drugbaron, and they encounter the permeating presence of an aspect of Shub Niggurath, which makes them call off the mission. They then discover, that they were send on the mission on false pretenses causing a lack of trust among the agents.
- Phenomenon: Aspect of Shub Niggurath
- One Session, Bought Episode
- Connection
Episode 6: A Small Needlestick
The agents finds a conspiracy tied in with the experiments in episode one and three. Again there seem to be some official government-involvement in the conspiracy. They encounter Mi-go and one agent is kidnapped and taken along to Pluto.
- Phenomenon: Mi-go
- Three Sessions, Story Arc Episode, Debriefing episode
- Playing NPCs: The Minor Cast
- Loss of an Agent (no Decline points left)
- Threat Level 3
Roles, Dice and Fun 