"I'm with the CDC -- Division 13."

[athelind]

If you're looking for a Government Organization to use as the basis for a modern-day Monster-Hunting/Weird Science/Exotic Phenomena RPG, have your PCs work for The Center For Disease Control. They've cropped up as the "go-to guys" in several recent movies of that nature, and it makes sense: weird pheonmena that threaten large segments of the population, requiring specialists to control and contain; a well-established infrastructure for such tasks; and, for the ever-popular "secret war against the supernatural" genre, a convenient cover story that will keep most people as far from an "infected" area as possible. After all, vampirism, zombie outbreaks, or alien parasites can be treated as an infectious disease in many ways. A sewer full of flesh-eating mutant cockroaches is a disease-vector problem.

Comments

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

Yeah, don't forget FEMA as well.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but FEMA's not nearly as good a cover story. Reporters want to know what's going on behind a FEMA barricade; when the CDC has the Saran WRap and the moon suits out, reporters are more than happy enough to attand a nice, sanitary press conference -- preferably in the next county.

That said, I once used FEMA as the Big Bads in a campaign where the PCs got super-powers from a UFO crash. One of my gaming group was a Marine MP who'd worked with FEMA before. "If anyone had plans for this sort of thing, FEMA would." "DO they?" "I can't tell you that. But they'd probably do THIS..."

[hossblacksilver.livejournal.com]

"That's good. But it won't scare everybody. There's always some joker that thinks he's immune. I need something so scary that it will clear 500 square miles of every living christian soul."

[terminotaur.livejournal.com]

Why do you think I'd love to work for the CDC. :) Ahh, but I'm canadian and the local version isn't quite as well established.

The other reason they are and would be the go to people is that most of the top epidemiologists would be working there and they are the people you want to go to to figure out how something is spreading, where it will spread, and how best to head it off.

[silussa.livejournal.com]

Actually, the last time I'd run a "Bureau 13"/STNF game, I used a much more ubiquietous, more funded, and much more boring agency for cover.

The Department of Agriculture (http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/2006_United_States_Federal_Budget-Department_of_Agriculture_(proposed)).

The DofA has offices in every county in the United States. As well as major food processing plants.

Has lower key reasons to be almost everywhere. Ranging downward from mad-cow disease to potential plant infestations. Food-stamp program. Protecting the food supply against potential attack.

A discretionary budget (open) of $19.4 billion. Lots of potential divertable fees to support "other" programs.

And generally is considered sufficiently boring that nobody would look twice.

What more can one ask for from a secret government program?

[iridium-wolf.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't that be Division 6?

[paka.livejournal.com]

And CDC guys do die in the line of duty, sometimes, may they rest in peace - or at least did back when HIVIII was new and strange and Reagan's government was practically ensuring its spread.