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Delta Green seems to be about how members of the military-intelligence complex react and deal with the whole lovecraftian deal of being tiny outposts of random activity in a howling dark cosmos that isn't even godless so much as beyond our comprehension, as represented by - well, okay, the usual gang of monsters. I figure if you want to be in Dale Cooper's FBI and have Lovecraft adventures, you just play regular Call of Cthulhu. Ditto if you specifically want no cops or cop-adjacent individuals. Does Delta Green have some kind of additional layer of "not supporting shitheads" factor, or better rules, that makes it more desirable? Or is it just a case of being what folks talk about? Nessus fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 05:58
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AceRimmer posted:The Fall of Delta Green guy, Ken Hite, sounds like a libertarian based on his views on "big government", Johnson and the 60s. Hite is a centre-right-ish conservative. Elendil004 posted:Yeah it's a common bit of a joke that there's a line in the 2016 Agents Handbook that suggests ICE as a nice low profile, mostly unknown agency to play an agent from. And recommended because they have broad powers of arrest so you can detain innocent witnesses, cultists, and monsters alike indefinitely without trial! Nessus posted:Delta Green seems to be about how members of the military-intelligence complex react and deal with the whole lovecraftian deal of being tiny outposts of random activity in a howling dark cosmos that isn't even godless so much as beyond our comprehension, as represented by - well, okay, the usual gang of monsters. A running theme in Delta Green is how often hubris and human institutions gently caress things up out of greed and lust for power: from desperate cultists trying to unleash powers beyond their control, to the CIA arming the Tcho-Tcho in Vietnam and becoming responsible for enabling genocide, to the US government making a secret pact with the Mi-Go to sell the lives of American citizens in return for military intelligence, to attempt #582 at weaponizing the Mythos. Nessus posted:I figure if you want to be in Dale Cooper's FBI and have Lovecraft adventures, you just play regular Call of Cthulhu. Ditto if you specifically want no cops or cop-adjacent individuals. Does Delta Green have some kind of additional layer of "not supporting shitheads" factor, or better rules, that makes it more desirable? Or is it just a case of being what folks talk about? The writing is excellent, it does a better job than base CoC of setting up why the player characters are all working together to stop something supernatural, and it has rules to enable the former that CoC doesn't have.
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Sep 27, 2019 09:57
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It just occurred to me that an 80's kid themed horror or scifi scenario would be awesome. Like It/Stranger Things/Goonies etc. I have to assume that it has been done before, right? Anyone got one?
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Sep 27, 2019 14:37
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Nessus posted:Delta Green seems to be about how members of the military-intelligence complex react and deal with the whole lovecraftian deal of being tiny outposts of random activity in a howling dark cosmos that isn't even godless so much as beyond our comprehension, as represented by - well, okay, the usual gang of monsters. I can't tell if you're joking or not, but there is no H.P. Lovecraft estate. That is a huge part of the reason why we see Cthulhu plastered on anything and everything in tabletop land. Delta Green is a different flavor than base Call of Cthulhu. Call of Cthulhu is tuned to do recreations of Lovecraft stories - hopefully, the better ones. It's well-suited for period piece games in the 1920s with a disparate team of investigators. It can fairly easily be tuned for pulp adventures; there's a whole pulp rules expansion for it. But it can just as easily do existential horror like he Colour out of Space. Delta Green is meant to evoke more of a True Detective (season 1) vibe. Your characters, as government agents, have a lot of power and authority. But somehow leaning on that power never makes things better in the long run. You tell yourself that the harsh choices are worth it and it's for a good cause, but the nature of your work means that no one is going to know about your sacrifices. At least, if you do it right. (I've seen parallels drawn to both intelligence work and parenting there.) The theme of the original run (in the 90s) was, "what if we can't trust the government?" The theme of the 2015 version is "we know we can't trust our government, we (Delta Green) got everything we asked for, and somehow everything is worse." This isn't me reading into it; it's pretty explicit in the forewords and discussions that the authors have done on the game. Even before the Trump years, the game shifted to reflect the various government agencies that don't really answer to anyone in the wake of the war on terror. I like both CoC and DG, but DG for me really nails the themes it's going for. The rules for "bonds" are a good example. Your character has several bonds on their sheet, representing the most important people and relationships in their life. When you take sanity loss, you can instead put their sanity loss onto those bonds to stay in the fight a little bit longer. You slowly destroy your connections to your friends and family in the name of protecting them. (It's very much like Marty's arc from True Detective.) Players sometimes look at the bonds and see bonus sanity points, mechanically. But that's what the characters are doing, too. They keep justifying the mission at the expense of who they are. Maybe that's not something you're looking for in your game, but for me it's a slam dunk of matching tone and mechanics. CoC is a great game and great experience, but it doesn't have anything quite like that. LatwPIAT posted:
I mean, the writers saw the potential for abuse there. Like a lot of us, they didn't anticipate how bad it would get and how fast.
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Sep 27, 2019 14:42
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Owlbear Camus posted:I follow Detwiller on twitter he strikes me as one of them Mueller Is Gonna Save Us natsec hashtag resistence centerlibs. Err...what? If anything he's 'America is hosed, your constitution is hosed, normality is over.' He once described Mueller as a French General on the maginot line while the blitzkrieg of 'who cares' goes past him. He does, however, regularly incite rage and angry tweets from chuds/alt-right types threatening to complain to his boss because of his posts, and he (and Shane) have said several times 'if you support trump, we don't want you as a customer'. https://twitter.com/drgonzo123/status/1177575603102310400 https://twitter.com/drgonzo123/status/1174365200918540289
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Sep 27, 2019 15:23
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The Dregs posted:It just occurred to me that an 80's kid themed horror or scifi scenario would be awesome. Like It/Stranger Things/Goonies etc. I have to assume that it has been done before, right? Anyone got one? There are some games entirely set up for that (Kids on Bikes, and Tales from the Loop) I know there's an undelivered (late of course) Cthulhu 7th scenario specifically for that, which is apparently 'coming soon' https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/562089942/the-dare-a-call-of-cthulhu-1-shot-revised-for-7th/description
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Sep 27, 2019 15:32
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Jesus H., hasn't that delivered yet? I got refunded on it months ago when I got tired of the long bad-luck litany. I have sympathy for the dude - he's been let down by some artists and he and his entire family seem to get sick often enough that there's probably some sort of illegal medical waste dumping happening in their water supply. But we're talking a 40 page adventure module, not a complex several hundred page core rulebook; if you can't get a little thing like that out of the door in 2 years then either you've been entirely too patient with your hired artists or your life is too disordered to be running Kickstarter campaigns.
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Sep 27, 2019 17:00
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Oh, it looks it it has iterations from previous generations too, shouldn't be hard to adapt. Thanks! Getting ready for our first session tomorrow. I have tried to get through the Haunting several times and I have just decided that, well, I don't like it. I found an old scenario called Mr Corbitt that I think is better, I may try that instead.
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Sep 27, 2019 17:04
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The Dregs posted:Oh, it looks it it has iterations from previous generations too, shouldn't be hard to adapt. Thanks! While not a haunted house, and decidedly on the high end of production values and props etc. and do not in any way think you or your players need to be akin to professional voice actors (and they got a bunch of rules wrong) have you seen the Critical Role one-shot Cthulhu game? I'm not suggesting you in any way try and copy this, but for accessibility on the game in general, it's not terrible (bearing in mind that the level of engagement and props etc. can raise unrealistic expectations) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uhqZdJ8swQ&t=1s
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Sep 27, 2019 21:06
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I will definitely check that out. I like Critical Role, although it is usually just too long for me to finish an episode before I get tired of it. Honestly, their style seems to fit a lot more with CofC than it does with D&D, when I think about it. Thanks!
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Sep 27, 2019 21:28
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The Dregs posted:Thanks guys. That Mansions book looks great! I'm gonna head to the LGS and see if they have it. If not, I'll run that Haunting. I am a little leery of it because one of my players is the curious type and dollars to donuts says he's already downloaded and read the free rules. Pardon if this breaks rules, but I don't believe that Mansions of Madness is in print anymore. However, you can find it here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/1636/Mansions-of-Madness
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Sep 27, 2019 21:28
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Cannibal Smiley posted:Pardon if this breaks rules, but I don't believe that Mansions of Madness is in print anymore. However, you can find it here: I already bought it! I was planning on running it after the Haunting, but like I said a couple posts up, the Haunting is really not doing it for me at all. Mr Corbitt is really cool, however, and it has a great hook.
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Sep 27, 2019 21:36
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The Dregs posted:I already bought it! I was planning on running it after the Haunting, but like I said a couple posts up, the Haunting is really not doing it for me at all. Mr Corbitt is really cool, however, and it has a great hook. Mansions might be the single best scenario book Chaosium ever released. Just about every adventure in there is a winner.
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Sep 27, 2019 21:59
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Sionak posted:I can't tell if you're joking or not, but there is no H.P. Lovecraft estate. That is a huge part of the reason why we see Cthulhu plastered on anything and everything in tabletop land. yea it feels like the 'oh wow so we can play child concentration camp guards cool' critiques miss the point that...yea man DG agents are lovely? Like, DG is not the good guys, when your ICE agent uses his power to try to make investigating things better he's probably actually making things worse because he's some unaccountable government thug with the power to ruin lives and now he's probably against something that isn't actually afraid of his normal 'I'll put you in a concentration camp' shtick. The only way to survive this poo poo is to let your bonds with others break down slowly as you basically walk eagerly into a situation you almost certainly are not equipped to handle, pretty much ensuring your fate will be something to the tune of 'got murdered by a cult in some nowhere backwoods, the few people around you who still cared got a cover story that makes sure you'll never even be remembered for it'. DG has never actually had a good view of the government and it certainly hasn't gotten any kinder in the newest edition
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Sep 27, 2019 23:05
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Never really played DG, but I feel like if the players aren't at least asking themselves "Are we the baddies?" you're probably doing it wrong
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Sep 27, 2019 23:32
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I just bought mansions from chaosium.con . Pay the creators. E: it costs the same, but then they don't have to pay drivethru Dr. Lunchables fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Sep 27, 2019 |
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Sep 27, 2019 23:48
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LatwPIAT posted:A running theme in Delta Green is how often hubris and human institutions gently caress things up out of greed and lust for power: from desperate cultists trying to unleash powers beyond their control, to the CIA arming the Tcho-Tcho in Vietnam and becoming responsible for enabling genocide, to the US government making a secret pact with the Mi-Go to sell the lives of American citizens in return for military intelligence, to attempt #582 at weaponizing the Mythos. And yeah the HPL estate thing was a joke, I revised it to be less sassy
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Sep 28, 2019 00:11
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And then there's The Fall of Delta Green which is set in the Vietnam War and is explicitly about when DG was still a deep-government agency. Specifically what happens is that DG hijacks a not insubstantial portion of the military industrial complex to fight the Mythos in Vietnam and the surrounding countries, sending expendable grunts and Agent Orange by the truckload to solve their problems. The drain of lives and resources on top of Vietnam makes the government sober up and hang them for going so mad with power and resources. The consequences of their actions also sets up a whole mess of avoidable problems to come home to roost 30 years from now which would be a lot more fun to explore or use as plots if they didn't tend to involve the racist portrayals of the Tcho-Tcho. Even in the modern day DG are not the good guys. The Cowboys are American insurgents lead by deeply broken people who think the ends justify the means, but because they're lacking information and resources they tend to approach problems with force and thuggery. The Program is a legit government tool that can't actually leverage its governmental power, and the lack of oversight is brewing an incredibly flammable and volatile environment because they keep poking the knowledge they have. Neither side learns. They collate and collect info, they destroy things, but the only lesson people learn is "there are gods and they don't care about you, everything is inevitable, nothing means anything". And this leads to making things actionably worse, especially when it comes to Carcosa. The official stance on Carcosa is to destroy every single thing that exists because it's an infohazardous memetic virus. It can regrow itself from one cell. And when you destroy everything, you destroy the people who know about it so the info dies with them. DG's hopeful idea is that burying the info two layers deep means it'll die for good. What it actually means is that every time one cell of information bleeds through again, they're not prepared to deal with it in the slightest. It's like anti-vaccination pandemics for mind viruses. This may all sound like knocks against the system. It really isn't. The system is great and approachable. They dropped all the metaplot (mostly). That bit about MJ12 having to lie to GW Bush is great. But it's also kind of a time capsule of a moment that's rapidly passed and doesn't really go hard enough on "just because you're lighting a candle to fight the darkness does not make you the good guys".
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Sep 28, 2019 00:28
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Hostile V posted:The official stance on Carcosa is to destroy every single thing that exists because it's an infohazardous memetic virus. It can regrow itself from one cell. And when you destroy everything, you destroy the people who know about it so the info dies with them. DG's hopeful idea is that burying the info two layers deep means it'll die for good. What it actually means is that every time one cell of information bleeds through again, they're not prepared to deal with it in the slightest. It's like anti-vaccination pandemics for mind viruses. When you put it like that it'd be fascinating to use epidermiology to model Carcosa and look at what a world would look like if it used immunization and/or acquired resistances to deal with outbreaks.
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Sep 28, 2019 00:53
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Hostile V posted:Even in the modern day DG are not the good guys. The Cowboys are American insurgents lead by deeply broken people who think the ends justify the means, but because they're lacking information and resources they tend to approach problems with force and thuggery. The Program is a legit government tool that can't actually leverage its governmental power, and the lack of oversight is brewing an incredibly flammable and volatile environment because they keep poking the knowledge they have. Then you dig deeper and it gets even worse - the Program's the parts of Majestic-12 who were too unimaginative or too enamoured of military/government power to go private. There's strong hints/outright statements in the book that there's a whole network of private companies out there loving with tech that former MJ-12 members strolled out of the program with when they left government work, and they've got enough dirt on/personal connections with the Program that the Program can't effectively act against them.
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Sep 28, 2019 02:46
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LatwPIAT posted:When you put it like that it'd be fascinating to use epidermiology to model Carcosa and look at what a world would look like if it used immunization and/or acquired resistances to deal with outbreaks. I really hope this is a big part of Impossible Landscapes, whenever that comes out
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Sep 28, 2019 02:51
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The new rulebook also goes out of its way to say that there's almost no organized cult activity left anymore (except for MJ12 and its descendants of course) and most incidents are single random outbreaks and lone wolves that tend to burn themselves out immediately with no larger consequences since they're so profoundly alien and lethal. So honestly all the often terrible things being done by the agents in service of "protecting humanity" might not actually be accomplishing or protecting all that much. But they act anyway out of habit, fear of the worst case scenario, to keep their secrets? This is obviously a modern terrorism allegory too
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Sep 28, 2019 03:42
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I respect the effort and themes of Delta Green as a setting, but boy howdy is it hard to imagine getting my friends together on a weekend and actually playing the game as written.
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Sep 28, 2019 04:57
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Lumbermouth posted:I respect the effort and themes of Delta Green as a setting, but boy howdy is it hard to imagine getting my friends together on a weekend and actually playing the game as written. Nessus fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Sep 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2019 05:59
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Lumbermouth posted:I respect the effort and themes of Delta Green as a setting, but boy howdy is it hard to imagine getting my friends together on a weekend and actually playing the game as written. Did your friends never watch the x files or what
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Sep 28, 2019 06:22
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I mean, from the fluff and the way y’all are describing it, it’s more like The Wire With Cultists than the X-Files. Delta Green, especially the new book, is pretty relentless with the “everything is terrible, bad people get rewarded and the hard decisions your characters make only stop the machine of misery from grinding for a second or so.” I just don’t want to end the night with all my players being stone cold bummed.
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Sep 28, 2019 13:45
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Lumbermouth posted:I mean, from the fluff and the way y’all are describing it, it’s more like The Wire With Cultists than the X-Files. I dunno, you're right about the element of 'even in lovecraftian mythos lovely people get rewarded more than not' being a bummer but I'd still call it like the X-Files. Mulder was an FBI goon but he understood that he can't just slam his dick on the table and go 'YOU FUCKERS WANNA GO TO JAIL?!' at Deep Ones so he had to be smart about things. His bosses, more often than not, were either active parts of the conspiracy or, way more likely, just more puppets in it but that just meant his relationship with Scully and others was that much more important. We're kinda talking about DG 'as presented' more than 'the ideal way to play'. Yea the most efficient way to deal with SAN loss is to fray your bonds, but you don't have to. In fact, I'd argue what makes the PCs good people trying their best would be choosing to shoulder the burden themselves at times rather than just ruining their relationships. In the grand scheme yea, they can't stop the mythos, that's kinda the thing in Lovecraft as a whole, but you absolutely can be better people than your peers and try to make things a little less horrible for the next agents who have to mop up your exploded brains. I'd use the cult example as the tone setter for DG, personally. See, it's pretty well known in the DG higher ups that cults aren't actually a big threat, most tend to fizzle out with...minimal...local damage because Chet the dude who found the magic book at a yard sale winds up reading too much and summoning a monster that eats them all and vanishes. Still, DG goes after them because of the 'what if' factor, what if the monster doesn't vanish, what if Chet actually understands what he's doing, what if even if they're not a national threat they sacrifice a LOT of people in town before fizzling? Like already said, it's a terrorism analogy, these extreme outliers do have bad agendas and could possibly be a threat but the feds tend to make things worse with overreaction and a policy of 'fuckfuckfuckfuck burn it all down if anyone says it's bad they're with the cult gotta show strength!!!' That's the setting info, that's pretty grim that the feds are likely more a danger to locals than the cult freaks are, sure but your agent doesn't have to be part of that. Part of the drama in a cult scenario, for my group at least, is having to balance dealing with locals with dealing with your bosses. Yea your players should likely not be on the side of 'boss says to burn the lodge down with everyone inside just to be safe' but they can't just say 'gently caress off boss' since their boss has absolute authority over them and can really gently caress them up if they do it. They have to balance keeping the bosses on their side while trying to be a little smarter than just mindlessly nodding along with their probably really lovely plan, but they also should want to deal with the cult and learn about them and all, that's kinda what makes them DG agents after all. sexpig by night fucked around with this message at 14:11 on Sep 28, 2019 |
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Sep 28, 2019 14:01
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Yeah, I was fine with the original CoC supplement as written, but this is straight up copy-pasted from the first page of the Handler's Guidequote:Delta Green is not about love. Like, man I don't want to run that.
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Sep 28, 2019 14:13
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yea they do kinda lay it on a little thick in their attempt to be all 'ok guys this isn't pulp CoC mode, you probably can't take a shotgun to a star spawn and not at least wind up hosed up in the process even if you're a big dick army boy'
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Sep 28, 2019 14:16
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And that's the thing that I think has changed for the worse in the new edition. Like, yes it reflects current geopolitics well and thematically I respect that, but it's just not as eminently GAMEABLE as the original one was. Having established conspiracy factions like the Cult of Transcendence or The Fate may not be realistic in 2019, but it gives your players something to butt up against and feel like they're accomplishing something other than track down Monster of the Week cultists for their lovely government bosses. I appreciate the original game's tension of "you are trying secretly to do the right thing and your bosses will eventually find out" rather than "you work for something terrible, let's hope that all the other options out there are worse."
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Sep 28, 2019 14:23
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pretty much set to run my first scenario today. Any tips?
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Sep 28, 2019 14:56
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The Dregs posted:pretty much set to run my first scenario today. Any tips? Still planning on The Haunting?
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Sep 28, 2019 14:58
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Nope. I read that thing three times and I just couldn't get into it all, and it didn't seem right for my players either. I decided to run Mr Corbitt. It doesn't shoehorn the players into being some type of professional investigator, has a much more loose structure (I am one of those DM's who prefers to react to players), and has a great initial hook. Also, I suspect one of my players has already read the Haunting.
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Sep 28, 2019 15:20
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Just swapping one Corbitt for another
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Sep 28, 2019 15:23
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Yeah. That was confusing as hell at first.
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Sep 28, 2019 15:30
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The Dregs posted:Nope. I read that thing three times and I just couldn't get into it all, and it didn't seem right for my players either. I decided to run Mr Corbitt. It doesn't shoehorn the players into being some type of professional investigator, has a much more loose structure (I am one of those DM's who prefers to react to players), and has a great initial hook. Also, I suspect one of my players has already read the Haunting. Hell yeah. Mr. Corbitt is also a PERFECT scenario for that 80s kid themed horror vibe you were talking about upthread. My advice would be to give your players the clues easily and let them wildly speculate over them. I don't think any of the newspaper articles printed in the book really give the plot away, so just let them research and let them observe Corbitt doing his weird poo poo from a distance without making them keep rolling to see if you give them the descriptions.
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Sep 28, 2019 15:33
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General rule of thumb: keep rolls to a minimum. Only when there's a chance they could fail AND that failure can affect the story.
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Sep 28, 2019 15:41
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The devs have said many times (though you're right that it doesn't come across in writing or scenarios) to run whatever you want. You can absolutely do a game about being feds taking down cults and bad guys and actually saving the day for a little. You can lean as hard or as soft as you want on the crushing doom.
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Sep 28, 2019 15:54
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Elendil004 posted:The devs have said many times (though you're right that it doesn't come across in writing or scenarios) to run whatever you want. You can absolutely do a game about being feds taking down cults and bad guys and actually saving the day for a little. You can lean as hard or as soft as you want on the crushing doom. Then I'd like that reflected in the book a little more, akin to how Night's Black Agents has Burn and Dust and other little knobs you can twist to reflect certain themes in games. The current DG Handler's book is like 150 pages of detailed timeline of this fictional history and why the cool poo poo from 1e like Occult Nazi Conspiracies or Mythos Crime Syndicate or Hellraiser Pleasure Cult all got destroyed and don't exist anymore. It takes all of this cool stuff away from GMs that want to follow the game setting-as-written and then doesn't replace it with anything.
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Sep 28, 2019 16:06
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Lumbermouth posted:Hell yeah. Mr. Corbitt is also a PERFECT scenario for that 80s kid themed horror vibe you were talking about upthread. Good tip. Thanks.
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Sep 28, 2019 16:36
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