Mayday Plays - How to run Extremophilia | The Dead Drop | July 2026

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

A secretive research company has developed a miracle drug, only to learn that every miracle has its price and YOUR Delta Green agents may be the ones to pay it. In this episode, I'm joined by Ross Payton from Role Playing Public Radio. We mask up to discuss the infectious scenario Extremophilia by Shane Ivey. You can view Ross' run of Extremophilia here: https://youtu.be/ziqBxUNQ?si=46Uz5xmez-_lqRTw For the full version with over an hour of ad-free discussion plus show notes (a detailed breakdown of the scenario) join our Patreon at any level: https://patreon.com/maydayrp Special credit to u/tombonator30000 on reddit who created some of the handouts shown. https://imgur.com/gallery/XlPxDwi Extremophilia is part of the Night At The Opera collection and can be purchased here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/222155/delta-green-extremophilia Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this podcast are © Mayday Roleplay, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property. -- 👕 MERCH: http://ko-fi.com/maydayrp & https://mayday-merch.printify.me/products 🌟 Other Socials 🌟 🐦 Twitter: http://twitter.com/maydayroleplay 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/mdrp.gram/ 🔴 Website: http://maydayroleplay.com/ 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maydayroleplay 👾 Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/maydayroleplay Thanks for your support! #mayday #roleplay #thedeaddrop #deltagreen #rppr #roleplayingpublicradio #rosspayton #horrorgaming #ttrpg #extremophilia

Hello and welcome to the Dead Drop, where I sit down with handlers who have run Delta Green's most classic scenarios. And I ask the only question that matters, did any of your players look a battery during the session? Hey, it's Russ Payton with Robley and Public Radio. Picture this, you're a cop. It's rating. A confused stranger is on the side of the road and throws up all over you. You go home because everyone laughed about it at the station. Then, six days later, you're dead from heavy metal poisoning.

Ooh, talk about hazards of the job. Yeah, that's why I prefer to work from home. Well, buckle up. Maybe pack a hazmat suit because you have found the dead drop. Ross, I am very excited to have you here. Last year, I was lucky to have you in a Delta Green one shot called Looks Could Kill. I ran that as part of a cross-promotion between our channels, but it was important to get you on the dead drop. So welcome back to May Day.

Yeah, glad to be here. For those not in the know, Ross is an award-winning writer, podcast producer, and TTRP designer. His channel, role-playing public radio is, in my opinion, a fundamental cornerstone from which the masses were first introduced to Delta Green

with classic games, such as the first recorded run of God's Teak. Now, the word is that a shotgun scenario that you wrote is going to be featured in the upcoming Ark Dream release. Is that correct? Yes, it's called Under New Management. It fits a niche in Delta Green that not a lot of the scenarios covered. So I'm very proud to get it in the book.

Hell yeah. Well, I can't wait to read it. And today you are with me to discuss a classic, one of the OG Delta Green scenarios, extremophilia. It can also be found in a night at the Opera Collegiate, Now, what you at home are watching is the public version for a thorough breakdown of extremeophilia. Consider subscribing to our Patreon. We're joining at any level gets you access to the complete discussion plus the show notes that make running it even easier for you at your table. Well, as a warning, spoilers ahead for a nearly nine-year-old scenario, granted.

But players look away now. Okay, now that the kids have left the room, Ross, I want you to take it away. Please explain what is extremophilia? Extremophobia is a very interesting scenario because it really leans into the medical and body horror aspect of Delta Green, which isn't as heavily explored as some of the more occult theme. It's very scientific. You could run this. you could you could run this in a strip a few elements and it could run perfectly well in a totally

sci-fi setting and but at its core it is body horror it is about the fear of your body being corrupted from within and a contagion spreading and losing control of your own mind and body and it's written by Shane Ivy I got 2017 boy I can nine years old though Oh, man. It's been a while, but I wanted to cover it because it is such a, in my opinion, intimidating a scenario because like you just said, there's so many elements, whether it be with the fungus and with the EPA and all these government agencies, it can be a little daunting, I think, for a handler.

Yes. Yeah, it really leans into some of Delta Greens key aspects of what makes Delta Green, Delta Green, in my opinion. And part of that is the idea that each scenario, each really good Delta Green scenario is as grounded in reality as it possibly can be, except for the unnatural, the element that makes it, you know, Delta Green. And this showcases that element. It's also written in a way, in a bit of a ruthless way, because it has a lot of elements.

It kind of assumes if you want to have like a good quote unquote ending in the scenario, you kind of have to be grounded in the players that have like the sensibility of actual investigators and have foresight good procedural like the key. It's not just making skill roles. It's like being able to interpret the information you gather to make rules because there are a lot of missable elements in this scenario. This way this scenario can run very shortly. If the players just miss everything. Or if they treat it like D&D, like you really have to think about it like you would if you were a detective and really go beneath the surface. Let's go to the beginning, though. Let's talk about kind of how the agents get introduced. They have a briefing like most agents do. They're asked to visit Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. And what do they learn when they get there?

So they're here to investigate a mysterious death that has peaked Delta Green's interest in specifically the deputy, Deputy Fred or Jacob Wright, has died of toxic shock from massive heavy metal poisoning, Academium arsenic zinc, and very sudden onset, systematic contamination. And this is not something you would get normally outside of an industrial accident. Like how it's, this is, you know, a very X-file slash fringe kind of hook. Oh, and the main thing is obviously there's unknown gut flora in the replacing normal bacteria, thriving amid heavy metal. So that's like this kind of alien biological contamination is a big red flag for Delta Green. It should be noted also that, you know, this is also sort of written in a way that agents can be from the program or the Cowboys, even though it takes place, the briefing takes place at an Air Force base in Montana. We have a timeline after kind of the initial briefing that kind of goes over everything for you as a handler. I think the important thing to note is that the agents kind of start Tuesday the 7th, which is a couple of days after all this has kind of really started.

And there does appear to be a very clear kind of countdown. The agents basically have about a week to either find Dr. McCaslin, reach Devil's Tower, or stop Benthic Corporation. And once Benthick is aware of the investigation, they start kind of getting rid of their stuff. So it's challenging in that way. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about, missable events. Like, it's so easy to miss both of these, especially Benthick, because they have so many ways of getting clued in, that people are investigating them because they have so many moles in the local area.

So yeah, this is, this is one of the classic kind of Delta Green tropes of like, you got to be a lot more paranoid than you think you are and a lot more active than you think you are. This is not going to spoon feed you any cool things. You have to earn them. The scenario has a very interesting green box that will talk about in more detail, but it's very interesting too. Yeah. I like this green box because it's not in the stereotypical storage unit. And it's more integrated into the plot because, you know, there are a lot of plot heavy clues in there.

But it also has like, I don't know if you were ever on the Delta Green email list, but years ago, people made a green box generator. And that's always been fun. Yes, I love the green box generator. Yeah, right. Yeah. I remember when Caleb ran the first time he ran Lover in the Ice, he used the green box generator to random. might as well was in there. Wow.

And that included, you know, we're going to check out a green box that was damaged. And there's like a parrot in a cage and it's just alive. And it's been in the snowstorm and left in the storage unit for years. We're like, how was it alive? And it was too effective because we got,

you know, it derailed the investigation of this. I got to stop paying attention to the parent. Yeah. But this is this so that you can make it too weird and you can kind of like throwing these red herrings like, oh, here's this book bound in human skin,

and the players start messing with that instead of the actual plot. But this one has a nice variety of things that are useful and things that give them like plot hooks. And then maybe the most important thing, a 1980s tape deck with the Star People tape in it. Did you find that your players often went back to the green box, or was it kind of like a one and done situation? I think it was one and done most usually.

I think that the typical thing is to grab everything in case we need it and we can always like return it at the end of the mission, you know. It makes sense too, since it's so in the middle of nowhere. I just don't think they'd be having meetings there and stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the, you know, the important thing about that tape is that Dr. McCaslin is physically, psychically, kind of drawn to the tape. And so he'll eventually steal it, even if the agents take it, which is, you know, kind of an interesting. wrinkle because it will lead him to the agents if they take it.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that became a big scene in my play-through of it. I did tweak that encounter a little bit. But we'll get, yeah, when we get to that. Okay, okay. I do, yeah, part of Delta Green is also like knowing when to tweak things a little bit to have, like when the players are just close enough to something like, okay, we'll have the big scene. We'll do this, you know, a lot of confrontation here or something.

Yeah, yeah. So the scenario then talks a little bit about Helena, Montana, gives you the population, the type of police force that you can find there because it is very important to have a good understanding of way the local sheriff's office works because there are a lot of characters in that sheriff's office that the agents could theoretically interact with. And it says, you know, like the sheriff himself is in league with bent. So like, you know, it's compromised at the very top. So it's going to be very hard to avoid Bintick getting totally paranoid or jumping the gun to evacuate. I mean, they're not going to do it immediately just as soon as like, obviously a weird death like this is going to spur some kind of investigation. Is this kind of the first thing your players did is go and start investigating and talking with the deputies and the sheriff and stuff? Yeah, because again, they're supposed to use their real.

names and credentials and embed themselves in the investigation to get access to the body. I mean, the one thing in order to do an autopsy, you're going to need that. And also, like, I know when they went to the widow, they were accompanied by deputy because, you know, this is, it's a, what is the 50,000 people? Yeah, or 28,000. Like, people know each other. It's easier to make those kind of connections when you, have the backing of the local police. So, yeah.

The scenario then gets into talking about deputy Jacob and maybe one of the most, I think, pivotal pieces of evidence is his video, his on his dash cam or body cam footage. It talks a little bit about his background where the other deputies and stuff can, you know, mention that he has a wife and she's seven months pregnant. They can mention that the incident happened three days before his death. But the body cam dash cam footage is really important because that is where if the agents are smart and they ask for it, they see an interaction with a stranger, a vagrant of some kind who turns out to be Dr. McCaslin. I'm curious how your players handled that or how they reacted to it.

Yeah, I know they wanted to get the body cam really early, and I think that's a pretty obvious move. for any modern day, any contemporary scenarios, like look at the bottom, look at, look, where's the camera? Like, you know, it's not if there's a camera. It's like, where is the camera? And just in general. And the, it has a lot of clues. It's one thing they can grab that face. And because they have federal, you know, Delta Green definitely has access to all these federal facial recognition programs, stuff like that.

They can run that face and get a match, which is one way of finding out the doctors. true identity. But it's also like the behavior too, right? Like it's something that the locals would just like think is kind of odd, but like Delta Green agents are going to like, oh, that's a real bad sign. You know, the man tells Jacob to forget about it and let him go. Jacob's stand stood weirdly silent and still for, you know, while the man walked away after two minutes, he gets back in his car.

So like standing in a trance for two minutes is like a big. red siren that this is something unnatural is happening for a Delta Green agent, but like other people would be like I don't understand what that is. Oh well, guess it's nothing, you know. So that's that's the real confirmation

that like something unnatural is happening. This is bad. This is where there's smoke, there's fire. Another kind of, I guess was a character and then becomes kind of like a challenge is the coroner. Dr. Brian Holsey who investigated

and looked into Jacob's body. He is basically dead by the time the agents get around to him unless they're very, very fast. But he is a whole vector for infection. The players, I remember the players totally missed. That's, again, talking about missable things. Oh, he's out sick. I'm the assistant.

I can help you. And then like, here's his report. And the players, all right, we got enough on our handle. That's fine. Why is he sick? Don't worry about it. Yeah. But if the players are really on the ball, like, that's bad.

We should check him out. They can go to his house and encounter some horrific stuff. So, yeah, very missable, very optional stuff. And that's the thing about Delta grade. You're never very hard to get everything clean. Like, you know, yeah. Now that we're at the corner, we can talk a little bit more about the infection stuff. How quickly did your players start to realize, oh, this is not just.

like aliens and monsters. There's a there's something very infectious going on here. Yeah. I think I mean that was almost like the even the most like if you just watched like cop shows like it should be obvious to examine the body right and like the agent and the way Delta Green works even if you fail skill checks you should give them some information. And so there's a couple of bullet points they have in this area about like what what they what you can find. and like just any one of these bullet points of information should be enough like oh this is bad we need to burn this body we need to get rid of this and like um so it's a core it's it's you know a core clue and i think it's a pretty obvious thing um and uh yeah so if the video isn't enough to convince them something's freaky the body certainly will and uh and thinking back i said like why didn't they think about the coroner who called out sick and is it there after doing this examination uh but well they're distracted They had a lot of other things in the right. Sure, they got a lot on their plate.

But, I mean, even examining the body opens them up to becoming infected. So I really, I feel like this is another one of those fail states that the scenario is really rough about, which is all of your agents can get sick almost immediately. And so I'm wondering, you know, I guess there's really nothing to do other than to hope that your players do their due diligence before the scenario starts to, you know, not make these kinds of mistakes. because it's going to happen. Yeah. Well, to be fair, not every agent's going to be in the room, right? And so like, and the initial briefing mentions this guy had heavy metal poisoning

from like something that shouldn't make. And they like should know, even before they get there that like unless that guy bathe in toxic waste, he shouldn't have this. And so it would be like, that's again, the core thing. interpreting limited information. All right, this guy got sick in a way that doesn't make any sense. Maybe I should protect myself when I look at his corpse. Maybe I should get a hazmat suit.

And they have a whole section on where you can get a hazmat suit. That's not assuming the players like, I'm playing, I'm going to bring a hazmat suit from the Air Force base. You know, like that's, that's, it's a minefield, but there's a sign saying warning minefield. Like, you know, they should like, oh, yeah, there's landmines. that maybe I should be careful. Like, it's pretty well signposted, I think. Well, then we get into, I think, everybody's favorite part of this scenario, the Jacob family. The players might want to go talk to his wife, his widow, Christina Jacob, who is supposed to be seven months pregnant.

But the scenario describes things are a little unusual at the house. I'm curious how you ran this situation. Yeah, this is, like, a core, like, classic delta grain, very, just as aside, is it okay if I use profanity? Of course, yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah, this is, this situation is super fucked up. And you need to, this is going to be like the memorable part of this, one of the most memorable parts is going to hook the players.

This is probably going to wind up as an action scene because, and the extent of the blowback and the fallout depends on, you know, luck of the dice and the players sort of quick thinking. You know, she's super infected. See, what did she, she gave birth in there, right? She's not supposed to have the baby yet. Yeah, so it says that she's actually a couple of months early. She gave birth to the baby. The baby is alive, but it's also like a fungal hybrid infant. There's a wonderful photo in the, in the scenario that I think handler should use to show this is what the baby looks like.

Yeah. So yeah, this is where the content warning of this scenario comes in. You're going to, like, there's no good in for this baby. It is not a baby. It is a monster. It is, it looks like a baby, but it's heavily infected with this mingu, a fungal messed up,

you know, contamination. It's, there's so many different ways this can go. This whole scenario could, like, you could end this whole thing right here. If the players go really bad,

because it's in a suburban neighborhood. If they start blasting people, other cops are going to show up. And the cops can shoot the player, you know, random neighbors could shoot them. They could get infected. The baby could escape.

Well, the baby probably isn't fast enough to escape. But maybe the baby hypnotizes someone into saving them. A lot could happen with the baby with the creative handler. There's so many ways this could, this is a good pan out. Yeah, I think you're right that for the most part, it will probably be somewhat violent because Christina is so clearly infected. The baby is clearly a monster. But if no violence takes place, which I, I agree, it's not likely.

There is a future for Christine and the baby. She flees the Devil's Tower. In pursuit of McCasklin, they're somehow kind of psychically connected, and they end up. But you make a good point. Again, the crazy thing about the scenario is that it can spiral into crazy places. If Christine and the baby get out loose in the public, now they're affecting people. And so it really feels like so much of this scenario is or can be less about the plot points that are listed and more about, more about containment, you know?

Containment's a good word. Like that's this whole scenario is the players are trying to get ahead of this contagion and this spreading contagion, which fortunately can't spread super, super fast, but like it can get bad. And so they're trying to contain it

and like contain knowledge that there's, you know, aliens messing with us. and a lot of other things and also trying to contain themselves from getting infected. So yeah. And speaking of the infection, we come to the section in the scenario where they talk about the contagion, the different rules they have

for it. Anything that is really worth remembering about the contagion? Because as a handler who has not run this, I am a little intimidated by geez, how do I remember all of this? How do I make sure that it feels realistic that it's being spread, but not so fast that the players don't have a chance?

I mean, running at rules as written is a pretty good, like, just keep, it's only one role every 24 hours. And just roleplay the symptoms, you know, you have a fever, headache, etc. Let them, you know, you take this damage. A lot of the heavy lifting is going to mean the players. Once they know that something's wrong with their character, it's just going to be like, what the hell am I going to do, you know, because they don't know what it's causing it. And so it's just a little check, you know, make a Kahn Times 5 roll. And then like, all right, we'll just see what happens.

My favorite part about the contagion is the PICA, the involuntary eating of heavy metals, whether it be batteries or nickels. The scenario lists a couple different things that are, you know, involved in that. The PICA is what you do to the other players. Like a player, let's say PCA has this, this. symptom, the pica. And they, you just say, all right, everyone else, roll alertness or with plus 20 or just, or don't even have them roll alert. All right, you see, um, uh, Bob, uh, take out a double A and eat it. And he just like puts in his mouth and swallows it. Make roll sand. Uh, and play

and, and, you know, then just sell player A is like, you, you don't remember doing that. Uh, and it's like, well, I use myself to bomb. Well, there's a double A battery. that you just threw up. How'd that get in there? You know, like, that's the thing you do to mess with the player is the weird visions. And I have fun with those.

Elicinations and visions are always fun to, like, bleed in. Because you can work them into the scene they're in, you know, where they see high towers in the distance while they're interviewing somebody or something like that. I like that angle.

Instead of it just being a dream or an unconscious moment, like, yeah, they literally see devil's tower in the background where it wasn't there, or something that's great idea. Yeah. I did want to make mention of, you know, the scenario mentions the investigations handbook

that is recommended for handlers to read. It's very dense. I downloaded the PDF. I mean, I didn't even begin kind of breaking into it. But I did kind of try to figure out through asking Google and asking around on the internet, like what would be the point of reading that handbook? It says, or at least the consensus was that it's useful for making the EPA. the FBI and the CDC bureaucracy pressure feel authentic,

the most actionable pieces being the overt slash covert framework, the WMDOU credibility assessment as a hard countdown, and the Quantico Lab pipeline as a leak vector the agents have to manage if they're like sending out samples of this stuff. Yeah, I mean, again, it depends. This is one of those things you kind of have to read the room. Like I met, I met player groups that would like really, really, be into that, you know, people who are like, oh, yeah, obviously they, the EPA would react this and the

FBI would do that and I can, I can doctor these reports and I can do this and, you know, like, the same kind of players who would like, you know, design siege engines in their games, like, you know, with diagrams and stuff like that, like, but if your players are more casual about it or, you know, you don't want to have time, if that, it's, it's a tool for helping engage with the players. I think the Delta Green fan base is a little closer to the former than the latter, but like there's variation in any of which I don't use it when I ran it. I think I may have referenced. I may have,

I may have skimmed it and referenced it, but I didn't draw on it too deeply. Yeah, I don't think most handlers would. Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. And I don't think most handlers would, but it was useful to at least kind of understand if I'm going to read this, what am I getting out of it? And it looks like it just kind of really makes it,

it crystallizes. what the process, the government process in a situation like this would look like. So it's useful in that way. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, eventually after a couple of days of putzing around, maybe making some progress, maybe not. The agents do get new orders from their case officer. Yeah, you need to get the dead body of the deputy and store it safely in the green box.

So they do have to go back to the green box. So once that happens, you got to grab the body. You know, that's a complication in and of itself. sneaking that out? How did your players handle all that? I think they just did a break-in. I can't remember, yeah. I think they just went in after hours and grabbed it because it was understaffed, right? Like, it's only the assistant, you know? Yeah. Well, that always works.

Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, I think they put in a hazmat suit and just took it, dropped her off at the green box. So, yeah. So everything we've just discussed is kind of a, definitely the front end of the scenario. and now we're getting kind of closer to the back end of the scenario, which is that eventually the agents are going to hear about the benthic company, they're going to look into it, they're going to learn that it's in the state, and they're going to start investigating it.

And there's just a whole slew of things they can do, whether it comes to visiting the actual location or speaking to doctors that worked there. I'm curious what the interface was for your agents when it came to benthic. Yeah, I mean, the main, the main lead is Dr. McCaslin, the guy that the deputy meets and is the one who hypnotizes the deputy. And so, like, once the players got the face ID, they looked at Benthic. Oh, and then there's just another huge amount of red flags that Benthic is, what is, yeah, what is their public facing?

They have quite an ownership trail because if you do a couple accounting roles, in fact, it insists you do multiple accounting roles. I mean, it goes all the way to the Netherlands and Singapore, the Channel Islands, and eventually to our old friends at March Technologies. And this is where the bureaucracy comes in because they had to have, you know, licenses and permits in order to get a lot of the specialized lab equipment they have at their main facility. And that's going to all, yeah, and then they can talk about like all benthic employees know that Dr. Gannon and Dr. McCaslin use underwater hazmat suits and the research into extremophiles at the Oakland pit. And like the fact that they're diving the Oakland pit, that should be like something that would be, you could find out with a bureaucracy check. And that that leads to the pit later on. But like, there's just all these kind of red flags that like would indicate, you know, oh, extremophiles.

Oh, heavy metals. Oh, okay, well, that's clearly where that guy got infected with whatever killed, you know, we got to find this guy, we got to find that doctor. And we also need to look into Benthic. It's a confluence of things. And this is where it gets complicated as a handler because, you know, you have McCastellan out there. He's after the tapes. The agents probably have that tape.

I think one thing we missed and or we forgot to mention is that Christina makes mention of the star people. So that's an instance where they might hear that star people reference. Oh, yeah. And that's the tapes. The widow. Yeah, that's right. That's where the, so yeah, you have that, you set it up with the, the players listening to the tape early on and then like, and it works either way.

Like they talk to her and she mentions the star people. Then they go back and listen to the tape and it says the star people. I'm like, oh, shit. And that creates a lot of new leads. Maybe because, yeah, this is also a scenario, once the players get to this point, they're going to have more leads than they have time to investigate. So, again, this is sifting and interpreting clues, like interpreting information to come up with a working theory of what's happening. And so the players can, like, act accordingly to counteract it, to stop it. And, yeah.

So like we said, one of the possible climaxes is at Devil's Tower. this incredible, you know, kind of natural monument in Montana. It talks about how to get up there, the fact that Christina Jacob might show up, what happens to the doctor when he's up there. I really, I feel like it'd be just so much fun to be able to orchestrate it to where the players are there as the me go dramatically come down and take McCaslin. Yeah, especially if the players can pick up on McCaslin's trail. They do have a lot of information on like how to find him.

And yeah, but like if you get to the devil's tower in time to see, uh, the fun guys show up, uh, like it is, um, like that, that, yeah, that scenario. And once you encounter the megu, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're kind of like, uh, I've done. I'm done. I'm out. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. More more sand loss for sure at that moment. Yeah. It's even interesting though, if, if they don't make it in time, because what they find is the, doctor's body missing a brain. And that's a weird what the fuck moment too. Yeah, better burn this body and tell Delta's agreeing about it. Or maybe not. So besides Benfic, besides the devil's tower, like we just said earlier, there's the pit. It talks about what the pit is based off of and what can be found there, a whole bunch of information.

But specifically that there is a sample in the bottom of this pit that needs to be destroyed. and this is where those demolitions from earlier come back into play. Yes, it is. And this, yeah, this was definitely the finale was like figuring out how to do this underwater hazmat scuba stuff and like, which they go in pretty like, not excruciating detail, but pretty like, like enough to run it. Like what's in this area and like what are the game mechanics for being in the suit and like setting charges and like, and this is something you can scale up or scale.

down pretty much as GM. Like if you want to, you can handwave some of the technical stuff. And you can also make it more dangerous by having like Christina or or someone else. You can introduce NBC's who've been infected who show up to defend it if you want to. That's a great point. Yeah. I like that idea.

Yeah, the scenario is pretty strict. I mean, like you said, you don't have to follow everything. But I mean, if they don't have skill in scuba diving, it's going to be really tough. they're setting charges underwater. There's a whole bunch of situations where I feel like this is a good moment where an agent sacrifices themselves or something to get this done because it's a dangerous situation.

Oh, for sure. It's extremely dangerous. But yeah, it's also like an extremely memorable way to resolve a Delta Green scenario is going into like this pit, you know, with all this trying to take out an alien extremophile with demolition charge. is in a hazmat suit.

Like, it's just a little different from your average shootout with cultus in a warehouse, right? Like, it's a great way to cap it off after two to four sessions, depending on your pacing. Now that we're at the end here of discussing the scenario, I'm curious if there's any, like, overall tips or suggestions that you would make for handlers to run this smoothly. Yeah, I mean, like we said at beginning, the content warning is super important. Because again, like baby-looking monster that, like, there's, it either gets, either you let it go and it goes home to the megu or you have to kill it. And so that's pretty intense. There's also the body horror infection mechanics. You should, this is definitely a scenario you take notes on running it, like keeping track of when players are exposed, when they're infected.

How many people, other people get infected? a lot of moving parts a lot of moving parts you kind of have to think about like this is like this whole kind of ecosystem right like where everything's when one part changes everything else reacts to it

like it all it ripples through and so if the sheriff does this then that affects all the other cops and they affect these other people I would probably put this as like a second or third scenario on a campaign I would I would do you'd start out with something like

Last Things Last which is pretty simple as DG goes. Maybe then Convergence. Convergence is pretty lethal, though. Victim of the art, that would be a good one. Those are pretty standard classic openers. And then, like, before you get to the end game,

whatever, this is a good middle chunk scenario. This is like Hardy, the players know the stakes are real. You know, they know they could die. And there's a lot of meat on the scenario. They're quite affected meat, but there's a lot. But it's a pretty challenge. challenging thing as a starter. But if your players are hardcore and no,

and have been solving simpler scenarios, then, like, this is a way to challenge it. But it's not impossible. It's not like, I mean, there's more lethal scenarios too, right? Like Artifax Zero. And, or, you know, the only thing I don't think you would pair with it, you can't do that. Technically, you can't really do this in, like, impossible landscapes.

I mean, you can, but it's not thematically, you know, Well, I mean, what I'll say is I think when we, before we started our conversation, I was very hesitant and intimidated by this scenario. But I think after talking to you, reading it a couple of times, it's much, much more doable. And like you said, if you've got a group of agents who are hardcore or are into the investigation and the paranoia aspect of it, I think you can really knock it out of the park. So I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me about it and illuminate. us on this. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it is a really good scenario.

It has some really memorable parts, really unique set pieces, you know, like the Oakland Pit and meeting the widow. And there's a lot of, a lot of potential that to spin it off and make it your own interpretation. It's just, it's definitely a way to challenge players without being overwhelming. But like, it's, yeah, there's, it's like a whole, not like a, it's, it's, Not a full campaign, but it's close. It's, yeah, a lot of...

I could easily see it get up there in terms of sessions to complete it, so for sure. Well, Ross, thanks again for, you know, lending your insight. We here at Dead Drop always love to hear from our viewers or listeners and their experiences at the table running Delta Green. Please be sure to leave a comment if you've had a memorable time running or playing extremophilia. Let us know if there's a scenario or a handler that you'd love for, for me to invite on the show.

But Ross, thanks again, man. Yeah, no, it's fun to talk Delta Green, you know. It's one of my favorite games of all time, yeah. Well, it was a pleasure to have you, and we'll see you all next time. Bye.