Advice for running Black Madonna

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

The city did get flattened by a Nato siege with plenty of artillery and airstrikes.... If that didn't do it, then the nuclear demolition charges probably finished of the city's tourism value.

Fair point, my knowledge of the module is vague at best so I didn't know what state the city was in. Considering this however, if some part of the city did survive it could be seen as further evidence of the Black Madonna protecting the Polish people?

[Legbreaker]

From my reading of the module, the city is basically flattened rubble which then got nuked.
And that be a ground burst too, not some weak arsed airburst from above!

[HorseSoldier]

The key to making it work is bumping up the atmosphere, which can be a little tricky since the idea is horror and creeping the PCs out with their powerlessness and a lot of T2K problems are either easily handled by head on confrontation with big guns and skill, or are clearly too much to chew.

If I were going to run it these days, I'd probably start foreshadowing the horror angle a couple scenarios out by working in some inexplicable stressors -- like a Soviet patrol coming out of Kalisz that seems specifically intent on killing the PC's group, follows them long after it makes any sense to just go after stragglers, is obviously too big to fight directly, and seems to have an uncanny ability to stay on their trail. I'd mostly make them a nuisance, and eventually reveal a mundane explanation (like they're a special unit with RF direction finding gear and other surviving high tech stuff and think the PCs are somehow involved with Operation Reset or some other super important deal). The trick would be to make them a problem that seems somewhat uncanny, and have it in place before the PCs get on the trail of the Madonna, otherwise the dots connect themselves too neatly.

Second, I'd conspire to have the PCs end up having some extended contacts with refugees -- camping with them outside a town, or do some extended contact interactions with them while trying to research the situation in the area. Along with information that directly advances the scenario's plot, hit the players up with the sort of stuff hungry, cold, terrified people with no sense of personal power are likely to by into. A mix of sort of plausible ideas coupled with downright strange ones, all featuring fear of unknown areas and the dark. Basically, the sort of stuff the locals would be saying in a good Hammer horror film set in Eastern Europe. Throw out some crazy stuff about vampires and zombies or werewolves, whatever, but have the locals buy into it 100%, and throw out some bodies to maybe/maybe not corroborate it (Y2K Poland should always have the occasional dead body laying around, and most of them would surely be predator or scavenger gnawed, but that makes for a whole different story after some frightened refugee told them the last night about a secret government lab that had a biowarfare agent that turns soldiers into unstoppable, psychotic cannibals . . . ).

Anyway, the trick, I think, is to shift gears from sort of mil-combat simulation game to horror story without being so sudden and heavy handed about it that the players think they've just warped into a whole other universe, but also to make sure the air of terror and unease is thick on the ground long before they get down into the monastery catacombs.

[pmulcahy11b]

You can almost describe the underground area as (if you're a good DM) the way you describe a dungeon or cave. The dank atmosphere, the fetid smells, the strange noises just within earshot but you don't know where they come from, the movement you see out of the corner of your eye but when you look, there's nothing there -- that sort of thing. Even on night vision, things look really weird on IR in a very dark place -- and with a starlight scope, you need some sort of light to see anything.

[HorseSoldier]

And even with an IR illumination source, the bodies lined up as an honor guard towards the end would be over the top creepy under NODs, with that initial "what the hell am I looking at" moment you get where you'retrying to convert that NVG image into something your mind can recognize, followed by any shift in the point of illumination looking like movement. Probably worse that way than by torchlight in a lot of ways (like trying to do CQB under NODs instead of white light, plus the "supernatural" angle . . .).

[Raellus]

It might pay to have the PCs come across a couple of people who've been inside the catacombs. Perhaps they meet them in a nearby town. Perhaps the town's "mayor" asks the unit's medic to take a look at them. One of them has had his eyes gouged out. When the unit inquires as to who did such a thing, the mayor answer, "He did that to himself." The sightless man refuses to speak and he just grins non-stop. The other survivor babbles all kinds of weirdness about meeting the devil underground or something along those lines. Build up a sense of supernatural dread and forboding on one hand, while presenting very tangible threats (like the Spetznaz team) on the other.

You might also also want to include yet another faction just in case any of your players have seen the module before. One idea I like is a small French team sent to recover the BM so that France has a bargaining chip/leverage in the region. They're neither pro-NATO, pro-Soviet, pro-Polish, nor pro-Margrave. Could be interesting.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

And even with an IR illumination source, the bodies lined up as an honor guard towards the end would be over the top creepy under NODs, with that initial "what the hell am I looking at" moment you get where you'retrying to convert that NVG image into something your mind can recognize, followed by any shift in the point of illumination looking like movement. Probably worse that way than by torchlight in a lot of ways (like trying to do CQB under NODs instead of white light, plus the "supernatural" angle . . .).

I like it. Here's an additional flourish: Once the PCs get close to the honor guard, and believe they are all dead, have one of them open his eyes suddenly and croak, "Kill me!" - like one of the cocooned colonists in Aliens.

[HorseSoldier]

Yeah, having the demented guy down in the catacombs "recruiting" members of his honor guard and dressing guys up in uniforms pulled off dead paras and then chaining them up to the wall with the rest of his "troops" could amp up the final encounter down below, and could be the source for the crazy, traumatized refugees you mentioned above.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Interesting stuff, it makes me think of the guy voiced by Phil Lynott in Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds. The guy has become unhinged and is convinced that digging tunnels under London is the only way to survive, he's so deluded by the idea that he thinks they can rebuild the city and society below the earth.
I'm think that an encounter with someone like that early on in the piece could also help to play up the unusual nature of the scenario. Someone who thinks that he can rebuild society under the ruins of the city so he is frantically digging tunnels. The guy is obviously irrational due to the war but maybe he knows something about the area - or maybe he is just crazy?