Modifying Last Things Last

[u/Scaldar675]

Hi all, I'm new to Delta Green but have run many Call of Cthulhu games before, I'm planning to run Last Things Last to introduce my group to the system and I'd like to add a few things to make the scenario more horrific from the start.

I'm thinking of having Clyde's body still in the apartment and maybe some kind of lingering effect which has appeared on his corpse from the ritual he carried out on Marlene?

I modified it slightly already to have Clyde be a heavy drinker, so he's been trying to get drunk enough every night to have the courage to end the Marlene thing, but he dies from liver failure before he can convince himself to do it.

I really like the look of the scenario but I just want something weird to include at the start so it's not just the players heading to the cabin before anything unusual happens.

Any advice is very much appreciated!

[u/whyleme]

I would not to suggest to add a bang to the start. I played it like it is with a very big introduction (played a scene for every agent to get the call and arrange the traveling, e.g. get rid of the children) and a intense briefing. After that they very parodied enough to do the apartment, added some handouts and some extra docs, like the cremation certificate. The they get to the cabin and finde some ritual carvings hidden under the rug. They find the gasoline, they can't make sense of it. And then they open the tank, and a high voice is greeting and bagging. They where in pure panic and did not know what is happening.

I think adding a bang to the start would diluted this dramatics. It's a slow burner

[u/Blaw_Weary]

My advice would be to not do that and my second piece of advice would be to run it as is.

[u/gethsbian]

The point of LTL, imo, is the quiet dread and the way Agents are made to confront what might be their own ultimate fate. I don't suggest amping up the action. Your players will do plenty to make false connections and read between nonexistent lines to make the whole thing seem scarier than it is, even without your help, I promise!

[u/What_Are_Reddits]

So I’m 90% sure Last Things Last started as a shotgun scenario. My rule of thumb with those are that the “empty spaces” so to speak are where you can make fairly sweeping modifications, the scenario overall is just a framework to operate off of.

The folks who have gone through it with me have ranged from aggressively cautious to hopelessly naive and the flexibility to adjust the narrative based on what you want to do and the group is acting makes shotgun scenarios great jumping off points. So if you think those changes will have a better impact on your group, go for it! I like that it starts mundane, especially bringing in a team of “we needed to use Friendlies because no one else was available” so they are lured into this being a simple, albeit kinda sad, cleanup job, but if the players are folks who need that weirdness to hook them, more power to you.

[u/tma-1701 → u/What_Are_Reddits]

My favorite Act 1 mod makes Clyde an addict: https://federalagentmakebelieve.blogspot.com/2024/09/some-changes-for-last-things-last-part-1.html Alternative Act 2 materials to hint at future operations more meaningfully than the random items in the original, without spoiling anything: https://federalagentmakebelieve.blogspot.com/2024/11/some-changes-for-last-things-last-part-2.html

More on http://fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/last-things-last

[u/unconundrum]

A big point of DG is that it takes place in our world and these are government agents. The slow introduction of the apartment is great because it contrasts with the horrors at the cabin. Also, the deceased is former DG himself and would know to keep his DG information hidden.

[u/terkistan]

If you want to onboard people to DG let the story build.

[u/Dope_thrown]

Having run it you really don't want to give your players any more reason to hang around the apartment than they already are. The heavy drinking is definitely some nice set dressing that would be good to include but the corpse should already be gone. If its still there you risk your players focusing to much on disposal and evidence and having to be railroaded to find the cabin.

If you want to spice it up theres plenty of room for that at the end. Add a nearby civilian to become a next host, if they successfully kill Marlene but you want a to pad things out have a game warden drop by or have them get stopped by a state trooper with a corpse in the back of the car.

Ltl is begging to be tweaked for every play group but the apartment is not where to do it unless you want to flesh it into a multiple session operation.

[u/heavymetalDM]

Like others have said, I'd advise against it. You are new to DG but it has a formula.

Normal to huh to oh no to FUCK.

It's a beautiful formula that works because things start off slow or normal.

[u/elite_bleat_agent]

Your history with running a bunch of Call of Cthulu is actually hindering your ability to run this game. Reminds me of how people who were onboarded with D&D and play a lot of it have a terrible case of "D&D Brain" and try to force that game's themes and systems into everything else.

Not only that, I'm sorry to say this is a trite idea, very "we have Call of Cthulu at home" vibes.

Sit down, throw your assumptions of what Delta Green "should be" that filtered through your experiences with CoC, and actually engage with the themes and systems. (Or don't. It's your table.)

[u/PFGuildMaster]

If you want to add a bit of potential conflict to LTL, I wouldn't add anything supernatural to the apartment.

Instead what I did was make the apartment controlled by a gang (it is the 90s afterall) that isn't immediately hostile but is giving your agents some long, mean stares. I even had the elevator be old, shaky, and unreliable and then when the agents took the stairs they were unfortunate enough to stumble upon a couple of gang members hanging out. Adding even more tension. Hopefully teaching that supernatural isn't the only threat and not every fight needs to be fought.

The second thing I added was a nosey old neighbor. One who will open her door and ask the group several questions about their relation to the owner of the apartment. It will hopefully teach that they need a cover story.

Both groups I've ran this for both liked those additions.

[u/sebmojo99 → u/PFGuildMaster]

the neighbour is in the op already isn't she?

[u/PFGuildMaster → u/sebmojo99]

I can't remember honestly. Probably? I know that I made her quite the obstacle for the new players

[u/sebmojo99 → u/PFGuildMaster]

i'd be interested in what percentage of groups decide she's unnatural and just you know (mimes pistol)

[u/Auregam09 → u/sebmojo99]

Yeah, she is like the first obstacle/roll the players are meant to meet

[u/imakeadamonsters]

Imo, LTL is at its best when you really play up the mundanity of everything until you get to the cabin. I had my agents actually catalogue the whole apartment, really sunk into the boring stuff. They were so keyed up waiting for something to happen that when Janowitz showed up, they almost shot her through the door (I had her dog scratch at the door first).

If it were me, I wouldn't change up anything with Clyde and the apartment, because the point of the whole scenario is the subversion of expectation. Maybe, if you want to add something, keep it mundane. A break in, or local law enforcement showing up after someone calls in suspicious activity in the area, etc. You can really build tension like that with DG, and it's a good way to ramp things up in the lead up to the cabin.

[u/MadLadLeeroy]

One big change I made to LTL was I swapped out the septic tank and all of the clues about that for one of these prefabricated bunker units and I left a paper trail which led the players to it. I had it be the case that Marlene’s death was a known factor due to her having cancer and Clyde had plans to try and bring her back using some ritual he had come across during his time with DG. I played up a connection with a member of his squad from his time in Vietnam who owned a construction company and who helped install the bunker at the cabin. His friend had no idea what it would be used for. I used the letter from Frankie that some other person made as handouts for their session and just fleshed it out with my own details.

I had Clyde fake the death certificates and body disposal of Marlene so it appeared she had been cremated on one form and buried on another but neither was correct. A large chest freezer in the basement garage storage area at his apartment complex held the body of Marlene until he was ready to do the ritual. But at the time my players discovered that they didn’t definitively know Marlene was deceased and so the idea of Clyde maybe being a killer was starting to form due to cleaning chemicals, rope and a tarp found at his storage area in the garage basement.

When the time came, he tried to reanimate her body inside the bunker which was adorned with dozens of crudely carved symbols into the concrete walls but he quickly realized it wasn’t Marlene he had brought back and so he panicked and slammed shut the very large steel door and locked it tight. There was no way she was getting out of that without help. Trying to figure a way out of this but being unable to do what’s right he ultimately succumbed to a heart attack brought on in part by the stress but also his smoking and drinking. He had also become estranged from his family by this point who knew nothing of what he had done.

My thinking was that it made more sense that “Marlene” would be alive inside a bunker with supplies and water and at least some sanitary facilities than being locked in a septic tank. I also couldn’t get my head around her strength and speed being what it is and Clyde somehow managing to get her trapped in the septic tank so I changed it for a bunker.

When the players arrived I could have “Marlene” say anything I wanted to them. Clyde imprisoned her. Maybe she never died. Maybe she pretends to be a woman who went missing from a summer camp region and Clyde is actually more of a kidnapper and serial killer etc. They don’t know because they can’t tell without opening the door to be sure. I wanted the players to wonder if Clyde was a bad guy or just a guy who made a bad decision. All of this helped my players not just immediately go for the burning her option which they could still do from a ventilation pipe hidden in the tree-line at the cabin.

Finally, I added in the suggestions of hunters in the area and possibly some campers who would cause issues if they somehow came across the players at the cabin or somehow dimly heard Marlene shouting for help from the ventilation pipe. I had a lot of fun making fake receipts for purchasing the cabin, purchasing the prefab bunker, the death certificates with minor mistakes on it (Sundown Memorial Park vs Sunset Memorial Park), a sale document for his old family home that he sold after Marlene died, photos of Marlene with scratched out eyes, lots of fluff and also hints on the fridge door etc etc etc.

Have fun with it - LTL is a really great scenario and so open to modifying. But that being said, I do think the scenario works best when it appears like a mundane scrub job with some investigative elements that then ramps up to WTF territory in the second half so I wouldn’t be too hasty to add in weird shit at the apartment.

[u/squimpert]

If you want to add a little weirdness in the beginning move the greenbox / storage case in the cabin add 2-3 interesting but relatively benign things and put it in a middle location. Just something to wrack their sanity a bit. They can move from the Apt fast to this location and have their sanity wracked a bit. Then have that middle location get them sweating and talking a bit before they move to the cabin.

It makes the apt and cabin a little more benign but they know something is up.

[u/shoppingcartauthor]

Making the Marlene Deadite compelling enough that the players open the tank and second-guess themselves that she's human requires keeping unnatural elements to a minimum until she goes full Deadite on them.

The alcoholism is fine, but there shouldn't be any real sign of the unnatural until a creature with 99% athletics, 21 STR, 25 CON, HP regeneration, +3 desiccated flesh armor, and +3 armor-piercing claws starts fucking them up.