When the Wind Walks

Something strange happened in Willis, Alabama at 1:43 am on December 22nd, 1998. The temperature dropped from a typical seasonal average of 3 degrees Celsius to -30 degrees Celsius for a total of four hours. Every person, every creature, is dead. Frozen to death. Is this evidence of an extraterrestrial incursion? Is it freak weather, perhaps a recurrence of a local phenomenon known as ‘Jack Frost’? Or it something else. Above all, what can be learned from it? The authorities want to know. Authorities deep with the U.S. government and they will kill to keep it a secret including even their own staff. Scientists, drawn from an ultra-classified UFO research project, are assigned to investigate the freak incident. They are part of the infamous MAJESTIC programme, specifically PROJECT PLUTO from the top-secret labs at Area 51, supported by the pararescuemen and pilots trained to recover alien technology from OPERATION BLUE FLY, with security provided by NRO DELTA, the deadly ‘lethal ‘men in black’ who keep America’s secrets from America itself. On the ground they will come to realise that what they are examining lies beyond the scope of PROJECT PLUTO and as the weather oscillates, sending temperatures unnaturally plummeting and nerves soaring, events around them exacerbate the growing sense of fear and paranoia. Can the scientists of PROJECT PLUTO discover the cause of the frigidly deadly ‘Jack Frost’ incidents and prevent it from escalating before their own security turns on them? Christmas is certainly going to be one to remember—if they survive!

Jack Frost is a scenario published by Arc Dream Publishing for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. This is the modern roleplaying game of conspiratorial and Lovecraftian investigative horror with its conspiratorial agencies within the United States government investigating, confronting, and covering up the Unnatural. In traditional scenarios for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game set in this period, the Player Characters are members of Delta Green, the organisation, at times official, but in 1998 unofficial and regarded as an antigovernmental conspiracy, dedicated to investigating the Unnatural, limiting its effects, and preventing the wider public from becoming aware of it. Not so in Jack Frost. In Jack Frost, the Player Characters are scientists working for MAJESTIC and PROJECT PLUTO and United States Air Force personnel from OPERATION BLUE FLY. This puts them on the other side, though their enemy is not the itinerant members of Delta Green, but a combination of themselves, their own security, and what they encounter on the cold nights in the Yellowhammer state.

Jack Frost is a one-shot scenario designed to be played in two to three sessions with six pre-generated Player Characters, four of whom are scientists and two of whom are United States Air Force personnel. It is played out over the course of three days and three nights in the lead up to Christmas Day. Potentially, if there are any survivors, their experiences as part of Operation WEATHERWATCHER may drive them to switch sides and begin working for Delta Green rather than MAJESTIC. However, Jack Frost is a challenging scenario—in fact, a very challenging scenario—and the likelihood of the Player Characters surviving beyond the events in Alabama, let alone in the long term, is low. Anyone surviving long enough to work for Delta Green following an operation a la Control Group is going to be a very remarkable individual and it is going to take a lot of skill and luck upon the part of his player.

Jack Frost begins with the Player Characters being transported to Willis, Alabama, where the scenario proper opens with a briefing. By the standards of Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, it is an incredibly extensive and detailed briefing, the wealth of knowledge presented to the players and their characters a radical contrast to that normally given Delta Green agents. What it highlights, even as it threatens to overwhelm the players, is the means and resources that MAJESTIC has to hand with its extensive governmental funding, whereas Delta Green is operating with virtually no budget! However, with that budget comes not just responsibility, but also oversight. In the case of Operation WEATHERWATCHER, quite literally, as there will be a two-man team assigned to the Player Characters from NRO DELTA to provide security, obviously to protect them and and the operation, but also to watch over their actions every day. As the scenario progresses and events get weirder and weirder, this need to watch the actions of the Player Characters transforms into paranoia. The situation is not entirely hopeless for the Player Characters though, as a combination of their persuasiveness and their knowledge, they may be able to convince them that their actions are the right ones...

Over the course of the three nights, the situation gets worse and worse. There are some truly horrible moments in the scenario as you would expect, some of which make you glad that it is a one-shot. The threat faced by the Player Characters is Itla-shua, the ‘wind walker’ of the far north, whose presence is felt nightly until the temperatures are cold enough to facilitate an appearance. Meanwhile, his children rise and if not stopped, will go on a rampage that might not end, but occur deep winter for decades to come. Stopping his coming and then banishing him is very, very difficult. The situation has to play out in a certain way and things have to right for the Player Characters. There is definitely no guarantee that this will happen and there is the strong possibility of failure and death for all concerned.

Structurally, Jack Frost feels tightly constrained with its time limits and difficult choices made all the harder by the fact that the Player Characters will often need to get permission to follow them through. The information dump at the start of the scenario is daunting and the two Player Characters who are not scientists, but United States Air Force personnel, may initially find themselves with relatively little to do. As the action picks up on subsequent nights, this changes when they may become vital to the survival of everyone. There is scope for the players to each roleplay a secondary character, again from amongst the United States Air Force personnel, as they are better suited to the action scenes in the scenario.

What marks Jack Frost out as a very different scenario for the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game is not just the fact that the Player Characters are members of MAJESTIC, but that it is a science horror scenario. It is science that drives the Player Characters to investigate the Unnatural and only late into the their investigative efforts do they realise that what they face is beyond science or even beyond the remit of MAJESTIC with its obsession with obtaining the advanced technology of the Greys. Nevertheless, they have to rely on the scientific process, which lies outside the traditional means of investigating Lovecraftian horror and Lovecraftian investigative horror roleplaying games. As a consequence, both the Handler and her players need to make some adjustment in conducting the investigation and reading the majority of the handouts that take the form of instrument and sensor readouts. This is not to say that there are no traditional handouts, such as newspapers or letters, but they need to be searched for whilst under the watchful eyes of NRO Delta agents.

Physically, Jack Frost is very well done. The artwork is excellent, for the most part, and the handouts are all equally as good.

MAJESTIC has always been portrayed as the villain in the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and Jack Frost is no different. Except that the players get to see this from the inside, by roleplaying members of the programme who believe in its aims and know that it is doing the right thing. Their experiences in Willis, Alabama will change that outlook—if they survive. Jack Frost takes Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game through the looking glass to discover just how mercilessly cold it is with a shockingly frigid and fearfully difficult investigation.