Yes, I will get around to discussing the second Edge of the Empire game, The Edge of Despayre, but first, I'd like to tell a story about Megan. I never did learn her last name, and frankly, I'm sorry I didn't.
I don't know Megan's exact age, but I figure her to be in her teens. She came with her family for both days of the convention. She played in two of my games. Apparently, her only previous experience with RPGs was playing some iteration of Dungeons and Dragons. She signed up to play both the Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green games.
She came into the Saturday Afternoon game with a very D&D mindset. She's young, and hadn't played anything else. I explained that while there are some surface similarities between D&D and Call of Cthulhu (they both use dice, don't they?), that Call of Cthulhu is a horror game, with an emphasis on investigation, and that the likely endgame of it includes some probability of character madness and/or death.
She struggled for about half the session before she began to see the differences between the two games, and really began to understand the nuances of BRP. Unfortunately, I wound up running her through a Call of Cthulhu game (Danger Roadwork Ahead), which ended in a Total Party Kill.
I thought, great, here I am, undoubtedly the most horrible monster of a GM there's ever been. I'm witnessing this sweet young lady trying to break out of her D&D pupal stage, and I brutally murdered her character in the endgame. Not only will she never play Call of Cthulhu again, but she'll likely give up gaming, and take up knitting as a hobby or something equally dull AND IT WILL BE MY FAULT!
To my surprise, one hour and forty-five minutes later, she was back at the table to play Delta Green. Who would have expected it? By this time, she understood the system, understood the general feel of Call of Cthulhu, and really just turned loose and had fun. Fortunately, her character survived the second scenario, and the group had a good time.
What was genuinely fun was talking to her again on Sunday morning, as I was preparing to run the Better Angels game. She came up to me and said (and I can only paraphrase at this point) that yesterday was the most fun she'd ever had playing RPGs, and that she learned that she really enjoyed games with more of an investigative tone, where you were interviewing NPCs, searching for clues, etc., and wanted to know of some other games like it. I took the time to point out that while many Call of Cthulhu scenarios are like this, that there are other systems that are also built around it. I particularly highlighted the Gumshoe system as another alternative, but expressed that there were others if one took the time to look for it.
I hadn't killed her in her larval stage at other, and I'd converted somebody from d20 to BRP and others. It felt really good to know I'd helped her learn about another game, and that she really enjoyed it. It was the best compliment I've ever received as a GM. It gave me a real sense, however small, of accomplishment.
If I take nothing else away from MaricopaCon, I'll have this moment. Thanks, Megan.
Showing posts with label BRP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BRP. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Tales of MaricopaCon 2013 III: Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green: Lover in the Ice
I have a soft spot for Lover in the Ice. It began as an actual play recording on Role Playing Public Radio years ago, and was one of the first games run by Caleb Stokes. In its original incarnation, it was run as a Delta Green scenario.
Then Caleb did a Kickstarter entitled No Security for a bunch of systemless scenarios, including all of his previous Call of Cthulhu offerings. Lover in the Ice was a stretch goal scenario for backers of the project, which I jumped on. As rewritten for the Kickstarter, since Caleb had no rights to the Delta Green IP, it was rewritten with generic FEMA agents. Since I'm a Delta Green fan, for the purpose of the Con game, I effectively put the Delta Green serial numbers that Caleb had so diligently scrubbed off, back on the game, and ran it as a Delta Green game.
Getting the balance of the scenario right was something I struggled with. In the playtest, one character had access to an assault rifle (an oversight of mine, which was very quickly scrubbed off for purposes of the convention run through), which made the monsters easy marks.
For the convention run, I ran into two issues. First was time. While we got through the playtest in about 4-1/2 hours, for some reason the Convention game run took longer. I had to cut much of the endgame for the sake of time. If I were to run it again, I'd probably eliminate the Green Box generator (which, while fun, isn't really germane to the main plot line).
The other issue was game balance with the big bad of the scenario. While the monster is more than terrifying enough in Danger Roadwork Ahead (and it is the same creature), the facts are that Delta Green investigators are pretty much always better armed, and better prepared for the use of firearms than a generic Call of Cthulhu investigator.
If I were to run this game again, I'd either give the Amantes a few points of armor for damage reduction, or perhaps lower their vulnerability to bullets (I'm more inclined to do the former than the latter).
In the run through at MaricopaCon, all four Delta Green agents survived, while two of them were mad enough to likely be candidates for the trademark Delta Green 9mm retirement plan. Despite my personal beefs with the scenario as I statted it up, the party enjoyed themselves, and reaction was positive.
EDIT: I should say that for those of you who missed out on the Kickstarter, Lover in the Ice is available for $1.99 on RPG Now. Go buy it.
Then Caleb did a Kickstarter entitled No Security for a bunch of systemless scenarios, including all of his previous Call of Cthulhu offerings. Lover in the Ice was a stretch goal scenario for backers of the project, which I jumped on. As rewritten for the Kickstarter, since Caleb had no rights to the Delta Green IP, it was rewritten with generic FEMA agents. Since I'm a Delta Green fan, for the purpose of the Con game, I effectively put the Delta Green serial numbers that Caleb had so diligently scrubbed off, back on the game, and ran it as a Delta Green game.
Getting the balance of the scenario right was something I struggled with. In the playtest, one character had access to an assault rifle (an oversight of mine, which was very quickly scrubbed off for purposes of the convention run through), which made the monsters easy marks.
For the convention run, I ran into two issues. First was time. While we got through the playtest in about 4-1/2 hours, for some reason the Convention game run took longer. I had to cut much of the endgame for the sake of time. If I were to run it again, I'd probably eliminate the Green Box generator (which, while fun, isn't really germane to the main plot line).
The other issue was game balance with the big bad of the scenario. While the monster is more than terrifying enough in Danger Roadwork Ahead (and it is the same creature), the facts are that Delta Green investigators are pretty much always better armed, and better prepared for the use of firearms than a generic Call of Cthulhu investigator.
If I were to run this game again, I'd either give the Amantes a few points of armor for damage reduction, or perhaps lower their vulnerability to bullets (I'm more inclined to do the former than the latter).
In the run through at MaricopaCon, all four Delta Green agents survived, while two of them were mad enough to likely be candidates for the trademark Delta Green 9mm retirement plan. Despite my personal beefs with the scenario as I statted it up, the party enjoyed themselves, and reaction was positive.
EDIT: I should say that for those of you who missed out on the Kickstarter, Lover in the Ice is available for $1.99 on RPG Now. Go buy it.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Tales of MaricopaCon 2013 II: Call of Cthulhu-Danger Roadwork Ahead
I had four players for this one. Effectively drawn from the background material for the evening's game, it was also informed by two different games run by Caleb Stokes on RPPR's Actual Play feed, as well as one recorded for The Drunk and the Ugly. I basically reverse engineered it, and ran it as an afternoon prequel of sorts to the evening scenario for Saturday, Lover in the Ice.
The basic synopsis of the scenario is this: Counterculture author Ryan Whitehead and his college dropout, drug-addled friend (along with a translator/editor, and assorted other camp followers) travel to Brazil to investigate a traveling tent city following in the wake of the construction crew for the Trans-Amazonian Highway, discover a jungle parasite that reproduces in the most horrific way possible (turning their hosts temporarily into hormone-fueled horrors of sex and violence), and investigate what was going on, and then have to escape.
I ran this one as a playtest several weeks ago. In that playthrough, two of the group survived, the others not so much. One of the characters was infected. However, the run through of the game revealed several problems with my scenario as written, and I made significant revisions to the endgame for the con. These problems mostly revolved around a too quick reveal where the group stayed together.
Fortunately, this run of the scenario had none of those problems. The group split up, and the reveal was more or less simultaneous for all involved. One of the four player characters was infected by a seeder almost immediately, then spent the rest of her all too brief life trying desperately to hold herself together. She wound up getting cut down by gunfire from soldiers of the Brazilian Army.
At the end of the scenario, the players are presented with an Alamo style situation. The few surviving, non-infected civilians, the surviving soldiers who now occupy the camp, and the player characters are surrounded by enough of the young adult Amantes (the horror) that they are presented with a stark choice, stand and fight, or run away and try to get to safety. If they choose the latter course, they have several directions they can flee in (though only two hold any real hope of salvation). The three survivors chose to stand and fight.
Unfortunately, the stand and fight option is effectively a stand and fight and die option. In this way, I effectively narrated the ending, a TPK, as the group was simply overwhelmed by the numbers of the Amantes.
We had a couple of seasoned Call of Cthulhu veterans in the game, along with one player whose only previous exposure to RPGs was D&D. I'll talk more about her later. The game went well, and was a huge success.
The game basically concluded about 15 minutes early, so I timed it perfectly.
The basic synopsis of the scenario is this: Counterculture author Ryan Whitehead and his college dropout, drug-addled friend (along with a translator/editor, and assorted other camp followers) travel to Brazil to investigate a traveling tent city following in the wake of the construction crew for the Trans-Amazonian Highway, discover a jungle parasite that reproduces in the most horrific way possible (turning their hosts temporarily into hormone-fueled horrors of sex and violence), and investigate what was going on, and then have to escape.
I ran this one as a playtest several weeks ago. In that playthrough, two of the group survived, the others not so much. One of the characters was infected. However, the run through of the game revealed several problems with my scenario as written, and I made significant revisions to the endgame for the con. These problems mostly revolved around a too quick reveal where the group stayed together.
Fortunately, this run of the scenario had none of those problems. The group split up, and the reveal was more or less simultaneous for all involved. One of the four player characters was infected by a seeder almost immediately, then spent the rest of her all too brief life trying desperately to hold herself together. She wound up getting cut down by gunfire from soldiers of the Brazilian Army.
At the end of the scenario, the players are presented with an Alamo style situation. The few surviving, non-infected civilians, the surviving soldiers who now occupy the camp, and the player characters are surrounded by enough of the young adult Amantes (the horror) that they are presented with a stark choice, stand and fight, or run away and try to get to safety. If they choose the latter course, they have several directions they can flee in (though only two hold any real hope of salvation). The three survivors chose to stand and fight.
Unfortunately, the stand and fight option is effectively a stand and fight and die option. In this way, I effectively narrated the ending, a TPK, as the group was simply overwhelmed by the numbers of the Amantes.
We had a couple of seasoned Call of Cthulhu veterans in the game, along with one player whose only previous exposure to RPGs was D&D. I'll talk more about her later. The game went well, and was a huge success.
The game basically concluded about 15 minutes early, so I timed it perfectly.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Delta Green: Countdown Review
In honor of Pagan Publishing & Arc Dream Publishing's decision to start making Pagan's wonderful back catalog available on PDF via RPG Now, starting with the releases of Delta Green and Delta Green: Countdown, I thought it was high time I give a review of Delta Green: Countdown.
For those of you looking for a review of Delta Green's main sourcebook, here's a link to my review.
Delta Green's first edition was released in 1996. A subsequent revision, that mainly added support for d20 Call of Cthulhu was released in 2006, and can still be found.
Delta Green: Countdown has something of a star-crossed history. While the Delta Green sourcebook was clearly mining from the same UFO conspiracy/paranoid about secret government conspiracy 1990's aesthetic as the TV series X-Files, and RPG settings like Conspiracy X, and TSR/WotC's Dark Matter setting (first released for Alternity, then revised for d20 Modern), Delta Green: Countdown (to be henceforward abbreviated only as Countdown in the review) was released in 1999, and was seeking to address two main issues: updating the setting for the turn of the millenium; and addressing the parochial nature of Delta Green by providing information about other national government efforts to fight the losing battle against the Great Old Ones.
By and large, it did a decent job of addressing the latter concern, and might have done well at addressing the former if it wasn't for a tiny, forgettable event that took place on September 11, 2001. Unlike what cynical politicians were spouting to get reelected in the early part of the last decade, for Delta Green, it's pretty certain that September 11 would have changed everything. And so, Pagan Publishing was faced with a book for the new millenium that didn't even really mirror the new millenium for more than about the first 9 months. Oops.
Still, Delta Green: Countdown did some good things, and frankly, though still rooted in the 1990's, has enough going for it to be worth picking up. Like the original Delta Green book, it was originally released in hardcover, with a subsequent rerelease in softcover. Unlike Delta Green, Countdown hasn't been updated much since 1999, and until earlier this week, was by far the hardest (and most expensive) Delta Green sourcebook to track down.
Nothing illustrates this point better than my own laying down $105 to pick up a copy of Countdown about 18 months ago off of Ebay, and feeling fortunate in doing so (I'd lost in bidding on an earlier copy that ran up to almost $150 about a month earlier.
Delta Green: Countdown
Copyright: 1999 Pagan Publishing
Page Count 426 (about 90 more pages than Delta Green)
Authors: Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy, and John Tynes
This book is a monster. Even the paperback, in terms of sheer size, exceeds every other RPG in page count in my collection, with the exception of Pathfinder's core book. But what's inside? Why should I part with $40 or $50 to order a Print On Demand copy (or $20 for a PDF) from RPGNow?
Prologue (Of Sorts?)
Just as the main Delta Green book starts off with the last email transmission of Reginald Fairfield, head of Delta Green both in its last days as a legitimate government agency, and after as an illegal conspiracy, just moments before his heroic death at the hands of a Majestic 12 death squad, Countdown starts off with a small article in the form of something that might be printed in a London tabloid, before continuing with copies of pages of report of a joint operation between Delta Green and PISCES (Britain's legitimate equivalent to the still illegal Delta Green) that goes horribly wrong, ending in the killing of several FBI agents in front of the US Embassy in London by PISCES. It sets the grim tone for what is to follow appropriately, and is a brilliant lead in (after a brief introduction) to the first chapter, about PISCES.
Chapter I: PISCES
PISCES is a very different agency than Delta Green. Like Delta Green, PISCES got its start in the post-World War I expansion of UK intelligence services. While Delta Green origins were rooted in the 1928 raid on Innsmouth, PISCES grew out of its own encounters with Mythos entities around the same time. Unlike Delta Green, PISCES has not been disbanded, or forced to go underground. It is still a legitimate (albeit not well known) arm of the British intelligence apparatus.
But PISCES has problems of its own. It got a little too close to the creatures it was studying, particularly a new beast called the Shan, and ultimately, has been infiltrated, a fact that the broader British government is not aware of. The chapter describes the history of PISCES from its early successes to its present role as a Trojan Horse within the British government for certain Mythos entities that have literally taken control, in the fashion of parasites, to its all still too human appearing agents.
It's chilling, it feels real, like everything else about Delta Green there's enough detail and adventure hooks to run a lifetime of campaigns out of, and it would feel like a very different game than being agents of Delta Green.
It also would provide an excellent opportunity for a group of FBI agents liaising with the British government, and not knowing who they can trust.
Chapter II: GRU-SV8
It should come as no surprise that the second European nation to get the Delta Green treatment in Countdown is that of Russia. GRU-SV8, an arm of the GRU (the Red Army's intelligence organization) is that agency. It arose out of the Russian Civil War, grew during the Soviet Union, and like so many of the Russian government's organizations has declined since the USSR dissolved.
GRU-SV8, like PISCES is still a legitimate organization of the Russian government, but unlike PISCES, suffers from budget and manpower shortfalls.
It's a shorter chapter, but still does a good job of detailing the history of the organization, its current struggles, and ways it might be used in a Delta Green game, primarily as a possible ally to Delta Green.
Chapter III: The Skoptsi
Just as Delta Green gave the GM new organizations to menace Delta Green with (Majestic 12, The Karotechia, and FATE), the same goes for Countdown. The first of these, the Skoptsi, which originated as a cult of Shub Niggurath in the Caucasus Mountains (making that joint Delta Green & GRU-SVG mission) more plausible, they have since gone global, arriving in the US in the early 1920's, where the cult has infiltrated the US government, including most notably, the CIA.
While still rooted within the borders of the old Russian Empire, posing a foil to GRU-SV8 in particular. As usual, the chapter is well detailed, with plenty of hooks, and would be an interesting foil for Delta Green.
Chapter IV: The OUTLOOK Group
So what happens when a world leading biotech firm becomes a major supplier to Majestic 12 (and all the evil that entails?) and by extension its sponsors, the Mi-Go (in the guise of the Grays?). You get the OUTLOOK Group. The OUTLOOK Group becomes the Majestic 12 way to "better living through chemistry" creating new poisons, toxins, and other biological and chemical weapons. The organization tests its weapons on live human subjects, altering and ultimately killing them in horrific ways, all in providing Majestic 12's "wet works" squads with more effective, less detectable ways to kill.
It's a chilling organization that really feeds into the government paranoia angle of Delta Green as a setting, and provides the players with just one more reason to hate Majestic 12.
Chapter V: Phenomen-X
Take a little bit of E!, Inside Edition, the Weekly World News, Ghost Hunters, and of course, a liberal helping of Lovecraft, throw them in the blender, and what do you get? Phenomen-X.
Phenomen-X is a syndicated, weekly television show, that pursues all sorts of matters, including much of the same territory covered by Ghost Hunters (and with equal authenticity), but also covers government conspiracies, including problems that would normally attract Delta Green's intention. Their main role in such operations would be to get in the way of a Delta Green invetigation, and their main threat would be to expose the Delta Green conspiracy.
Ironically, Majestic 12 and Delta Green have a history of manipulating Phenomen-X, albeit with very different end goals in mind. For Majestic 12, they represent a way to hinder and possibly expose Delta Green operations. For Delta Green, stretched tight on resources, they often give Phenomen-X anonymous tips to check out an area Delta Green is considering investigating to see if it is indeed worthy of Delta Green's attention.
Chapter VI: Tiger Transit
So what happens when you take a Vietnam-era, covertly CIA-operated airline (like its real-life counterpart, Air America), replace the garden variety drug smuggler operators with cults based on the Great Old Ones, and make it fully owned and operated by the Tcho-Tcho? You get Tiger Transit, the official civilian airlines of horrors beyond time and space.
Very much the fodder of 1980's & 90's American films (and numerous conspiracy theories about the CIA), Tiger Transit has its fingers in organized crime, and everything else in the Mythos. One can imagine a million uses for Tiger Transit in a game, ranging as a red herring, or the vital cog in a worldwide conspiracy.
Chapter VII: The D Stacks
Buried deep in the stacks of the American Museum of Natural History, besides the plot of a couple of Ben Stiller movies, lies one of the largest collections of Mythos knowledge and artifacts outside of Miskatonic University (and probably more, since Miskatonic has been raided of many of its best treasures). This museum within a museum is operated by Dr. Jensen Wu, and is covertly known, by the few that know it exists at all, as the D Stacks. This chapter details the artifacts and knowledge within the D Stacks, and how it could be useful in a Delta Green game.
Chapter VIII: The Keepers of the Faith
From the 17th Century, when New York City was a simple Dutch trading post called New Amsterdam, to the present day, a cult of ghouls has existed in warrens deep beneath the streets of America's largest city, founded by a heretical religious order. Eschewing visibility in the name of safety, they occasionally surface to kill as well as rob graves. If you ever wanted a different take on ghouls in Call of Cthulhu, this is the chapter for you.
Chapter IX: The Hastur Mythos
If there's any single chapter that should convince you to buy a sourcebook, this chapter should convince you to buy Delta Green: Countdown. The King in Yellow, Carcosa, and Hastur all predate Lovecraft, but he liked them so much he incorporated into some of his stories. And then August Derlath, a contemporary of Lovecraft, took Lovecraft's (and Robert Chambers's) toys out to play with and broke some of them in his own stories.
In The Hastur Mythos, Dennis Detwiller does a superb job of turning the various stories of the Hastur Mythos, turns them into a more coherent whole (mostly by leaving some of the Derlath stuff in the historical dustbin), and makes it an ideal playground for both Delta Green, and I might add, regular Call of Cthulhu gaming. It's that good.
Appendices:
As with Delta Green, nearly half of Countdown is actually contained in Appendices. Therefore, it seems only reasonable to detail them.
Appendix A: Psychic Powers.
Yeah, Countdown goes there. Psionics, wrecker of many a D&D campaign dating back to when Forgotten Realms was a place where Ed Greenwood ran his own home game, finally enter Call of Cthulhu, sort of.
The author, John Crowe III, takes pains to point out that they fit most closely with the PISCES chapter earlier in the book, and should, for game balance reasons, be the province of NPCs. Still, there here, if you want them. And in my games, that's right where they'll stay. Psionics (psychic powers in Delta Green) seem incredibly out of place in a Call of Cthulhu game, and the thought of putting them in the hands of PCs seems a tad self-defeating. Still, as I said, there here if you want them, so enjoy watching the players turn your two session investigation game into a ten seconds worth of Precognition as you collapse in a quivering mass.
Appendix B: From the Files of Professor Emerson
A series of research reports written by a Professor Grant Emerson, these are intended to read like the end lab reports from a number of locations. Avoid reading these if you're a player, as they will wreck the secrets behind not only scenarios in Delta Green, but also Countdown. Still, they're well written, and could find their way into players hands in a long campaign, preferably only after the players have finished the appropriate scenario.
Appendix C: New Skills:
This brief chapter (one page) introduces three new skills to Call of Cthulhu, Signals, Survival, and Tradecraft.
Appendix D: Adventures
Here's the heart of the thing. Delta Green is first and foremost a setting for adventures (in fact, the first time the words Delta Green were used in print was in the form of the classic scenario Convergence). I'll attempt to keep these descriptions spoiler-free, but if you expect to play in any of these, may I suggest skipping down to Appendix E below. Countdown follows the Delta Green model of two adventures and a short campaign.
I. A Victim of the Art
The first adventure, I've not had a chance to run this, but it looks as good as anything that made its way into Delta Green. Delta Green is called into investigate a series of bizarre murders on Long Island. As the scenario describes it, the killer isn't human, but the perpetrator is.
II. Night Floors
Again set in New York, this scenario takes place in the floors of a high-rise apartment in Manhattan. This time, the scenario is tied around what appears to be a missing persons case with possible occult connections. Needless to say, Delta Green gets the call.
III. Dead Letter
This one looks like a pulpy one (though it can be just as dangerous as any Call of Cthulhu scenario). Start with aging Nazi Sorcerors in South America, mix in a lot of other bizarre players (including a radical environmentalist, and you have the makings of a great campaign.
Appendix E: International Federal Agencies
Effectively, this does for countries across the globe what Delta Green did for Federal Agencies in the United States. Need to pull an SAS commando into an investigation of Byakhee activity on the Isle of Man? Appendix E will let you do that. This makes for a terrific resource for both Delta Green, and indeed Modern Call of Cthulhu games outside of Delta Green.
Summary and Rating:
While some of the information is dated, the heart of this book is still a winner. Making the needed changes to update it to 2012 is not difficult, and some of the stuff here, like the Hastur Mythos chapter, is essentially timeless.
I can't recommend this one more strongly.
4.5 out of 5 stars, marked down only for it still being rooted in a pre-9/11 world.
For those of you looking for a review of Delta Green's main sourcebook, here's a link to my review.
Delta Green's first edition was released in 1996. A subsequent revision, that mainly added support for d20 Call of Cthulhu was released in 2006, and can still be found.
Delta Green: Countdown has something of a star-crossed history. While the Delta Green sourcebook was clearly mining from the same UFO conspiracy/paranoid about secret government conspiracy 1990's aesthetic as the TV series X-Files, and RPG settings like Conspiracy X, and TSR/WotC's Dark Matter setting (first released for Alternity, then revised for d20 Modern), Delta Green: Countdown (to be henceforward abbreviated only as Countdown in the review) was released in 1999, and was seeking to address two main issues: updating the setting for the turn of the millenium; and addressing the parochial nature of Delta Green by providing information about other national government efforts to fight the losing battle against the Great Old Ones.
By and large, it did a decent job of addressing the latter concern, and might have done well at addressing the former if it wasn't for a tiny, forgettable event that took place on September 11, 2001. Unlike what cynical politicians were spouting to get reelected in the early part of the last decade, for Delta Green, it's pretty certain that September 11 would have changed everything. And so, Pagan Publishing was faced with a book for the new millenium that didn't even really mirror the new millenium for more than about the first 9 months. Oops.
Still, Delta Green: Countdown did some good things, and frankly, though still rooted in the 1990's, has enough going for it to be worth picking up. Like the original Delta Green book, it was originally released in hardcover, with a subsequent rerelease in softcover. Unlike Delta Green, Countdown hasn't been updated much since 1999, and until earlier this week, was by far the hardest (and most expensive) Delta Green sourcebook to track down.
Nothing illustrates this point better than my own laying down $105 to pick up a copy of Countdown about 18 months ago off of Ebay, and feeling fortunate in doing so (I'd lost in bidding on an earlier copy that ran up to almost $150 about a month earlier.
Delta Green: Countdown
Copyright: 1999 Pagan Publishing
Page Count 426 (about 90 more pages than Delta Green)
Authors: Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy, and John Tynes
This book is a monster. Even the paperback, in terms of sheer size, exceeds every other RPG in page count in my collection, with the exception of Pathfinder's core book. But what's inside? Why should I part with $40 or $50 to order a Print On Demand copy (or $20 for a PDF) from RPGNow?
Prologue (Of Sorts?)
Just as the main Delta Green book starts off with the last email transmission of Reginald Fairfield, head of Delta Green both in its last days as a legitimate government agency, and after as an illegal conspiracy, just moments before his heroic death at the hands of a Majestic 12 death squad, Countdown starts off with a small article in the form of something that might be printed in a London tabloid, before continuing with copies of pages of report of a joint operation between Delta Green and PISCES (Britain's legitimate equivalent to the still illegal Delta Green) that goes horribly wrong, ending in the killing of several FBI agents in front of the US Embassy in London by PISCES. It sets the grim tone for what is to follow appropriately, and is a brilliant lead in (after a brief introduction) to the first chapter, about PISCES.
Chapter I: PISCES
PISCES is a very different agency than Delta Green. Like Delta Green, PISCES got its start in the post-World War I expansion of UK intelligence services. While Delta Green origins were rooted in the 1928 raid on Innsmouth, PISCES grew out of its own encounters with Mythos entities around the same time. Unlike Delta Green, PISCES has not been disbanded, or forced to go underground. It is still a legitimate (albeit not well known) arm of the British intelligence apparatus.
But PISCES has problems of its own. It got a little too close to the creatures it was studying, particularly a new beast called the Shan, and ultimately, has been infiltrated, a fact that the broader British government is not aware of. The chapter describes the history of PISCES from its early successes to its present role as a Trojan Horse within the British government for certain Mythos entities that have literally taken control, in the fashion of parasites, to its all still too human appearing agents.
It's chilling, it feels real, like everything else about Delta Green there's enough detail and adventure hooks to run a lifetime of campaigns out of, and it would feel like a very different game than being agents of Delta Green.
It also would provide an excellent opportunity for a group of FBI agents liaising with the British government, and not knowing who they can trust.
Chapter II: GRU-SV8
It should come as no surprise that the second European nation to get the Delta Green treatment in Countdown is that of Russia. GRU-SV8, an arm of the GRU (the Red Army's intelligence organization) is that agency. It arose out of the Russian Civil War, grew during the Soviet Union, and like so many of the Russian government's organizations has declined since the USSR dissolved.
GRU-SV8, like PISCES is still a legitimate organization of the Russian government, but unlike PISCES, suffers from budget and manpower shortfalls.
It's a shorter chapter, but still does a good job of detailing the history of the organization, its current struggles, and ways it might be used in a Delta Green game, primarily as a possible ally to Delta Green.
Chapter III: The Skoptsi
Just as Delta Green gave the GM new organizations to menace Delta Green with (Majestic 12, The Karotechia, and FATE), the same goes for Countdown. The first of these, the Skoptsi, which originated as a cult of Shub Niggurath in the Caucasus Mountains (making that joint Delta Green & GRU-SVG mission) more plausible, they have since gone global, arriving in the US in the early 1920's, where the cult has infiltrated the US government, including most notably, the CIA.
While still rooted within the borders of the old Russian Empire, posing a foil to GRU-SV8 in particular. As usual, the chapter is well detailed, with plenty of hooks, and would be an interesting foil for Delta Green.
Chapter IV: The OUTLOOK Group
So what happens when a world leading biotech firm becomes a major supplier to Majestic 12 (and all the evil that entails?) and by extension its sponsors, the Mi-Go (in the guise of the Grays?). You get the OUTLOOK Group. The OUTLOOK Group becomes the Majestic 12 way to "better living through chemistry" creating new poisons, toxins, and other biological and chemical weapons. The organization tests its weapons on live human subjects, altering and ultimately killing them in horrific ways, all in providing Majestic 12's "wet works" squads with more effective, less detectable ways to kill.
It's a chilling organization that really feeds into the government paranoia angle of Delta Green as a setting, and provides the players with just one more reason to hate Majestic 12.
Chapter V: Phenomen-X
Take a little bit of E!, Inside Edition, the Weekly World News, Ghost Hunters, and of course, a liberal helping of Lovecraft, throw them in the blender, and what do you get? Phenomen-X.
Phenomen-X is a syndicated, weekly television show, that pursues all sorts of matters, including much of the same territory covered by Ghost Hunters (and with equal authenticity), but also covers government conspiracies, including problems that would normally attract Delta Green's intention. Their main role in such operations would be to get in the way of a Delta Green invetigation, and their main threat would be to expose the Delta Green conspiracy.
Ironically, Majestic 12 and Delta Green have a history of manipulating Phenomen-X, albeit with very different end goals in mind. For Majestic 12, they represent a way to hinder and possibly expose Delta Green operations. For Delta Green, stretched tight on resources, they often give Phenomen-X anonymous tips to check out an area Delta Green is considering investigating to see if it is indeed worthy of Delta Green's attention.
Chapter VI: Tiger Transit
So what happens when you take a Vietnam-era, covertly CIA-operated airline (like its real-life counterpart, Air America), replace the garden variety drug smuggler operators with cults based on the Great Old Ones, and make it fully owned and operated by the Tcho-Tcho? You get Tiger Transit, the official civilian airlines of horrors beyond time and space.
Very much the fodder of 1980's & 90's American films (and numerous conspiracy theories about the CIA), Tiger Transit has its fingers in organized crime, and everything else in the Mythos. One can imagine a million uses for Tiger Transit in a game, ranging as a red herring, or the vital cog in a worldwide conspiracy.
Chapter VII: The D Stacks
Buried deep in the stacks of the American Museum of Natural History, besides the plot of a couple of Ben Stiller movies, lies one of the largest collections of Mythos knowledge and artifacts outside of Miskatonic University (and probably more, since Miskatonic has been raided of many of its best treasures). This museum within a museum is operated by Dr. Jensen Wu, and is covertly known, by the few that know it exists at all, as the D Stacks. This chapter details the artifacts and knowledge within the D Stacks, and how it could be useful in a Delta Green game.
Chapter VIII: The Keepers of the Faith
From the 17th Century, when New York City was a simple Dutch trading post called New Amsterdam, to the present day, a cult of ghouls has existed in warrens deep beneath the streets of America's largest city, founded by a heretical religious order. Eschewing visibility in the name of safety, they occasionally surface to kill as well as rob graves. If you ever wanted a different take on ghouls in Call of Cthulhu, this is the chapter for you.
Chapter IX: The Hastur Mythos
If there's any single chapter that should convince you to buy a sourcebook, this chapter should convince you to buy Delta Green: Countdown. The King in Yellow, Carcosa, and Hastur all predate Lovecraft, but he liked them so much he incorporated into some of his stories. And then August Derlath, a contemporary of Lovecraft, took Lovecraft's (and Robert Chambers's) toys out to play with and broke some of them in his own stories.
In The Hastur Mythos, Dennis Detwiller does a superb job of turning the various stories of the Hastur Mythos, turns them into a more coherent whole (mostly by leaving some of the Derlath stuff in the historical dustbin), and makes it an ideal playground for both Delta Green, and I might add, regular Call of Cthulhu gaming. It's that good.
Appendices:
As with Delta Green, nearly half of Countdown is actually contained in Appendices. Therefore, it seems only reasonable to detail them.
Appendix A: Psychic Powers.
Yeah, Countdown goes there. Psionics, wrecker of many a D&D campaign dating back to when Forgotten Realms was a place where Ed Greenwood ran his own home game, finally enter Call of Cthulhu, sort of.
The author, John Crowe III, takes pains to point out that they fit most closely with the PISCES chapter earlier in the book, and should, for game balance reasons, be the province of NPCs. Still, there here, if you want them. And in my games, that's right where they'll stay. Psionics (psychic powers in Delta Green) seem incredibly out of place in a Call of Cthulhu game, and the thought of putting them in the hands of PCs seems a tad self-defeating. Still, as I said, there here if you want them, so enjoy watching the players turn your two session investigation game into a ten seconds worth of Precognition as you collapse in a quivering mass.
Appendix B: From the Files of Professor Emerson
A series of research reports written by a Professor Grant Emerson, these are intended to read like the end lab reports from a number of locations. Avoid reading these if you're a player, as they will wreck the secrets behind not only scenarios in Delta Green, but also Countdown. Still, they're well written, and could find their way into players hands in a long campaign, preferably only after the players have finished the appropriate scenario.
Appendix C: New Skills:
This brief chapter (one page) introduces three new skills to Call of Cthulhu, Signals, Survival, and Tradecraft.
Appendix D: Adventures
Here's the heart of the thing. Delta Green is first and foremost a setting for adventures (in fact, the first time the words Delta Green were used in print was in the form of the classic scenario Convergence). I'll attempt to keep these descriptions spoiler-free, but if you expect to play in any of these, may I suggest skipping down to Appendix E below. Countdown follows the Delta Green model of two adventures and a short campaign.
I. A Victim of the Art
The first adventure, I've not had a chance to run this, but it looks as good as anything that made its way into Delta Green. Delta Green is called into investigate a series of bizarre murders on Long Island. As the scenario describes it, the killer isn't human, but the perpetrator is.
II. Night Floors
Again set in New York, this scenario takes place in the floors of a high-rise apartment in Manhattan. This time, the scenario is tied around what appears to be a missing persons case with possible occult connections. Needless to say, Delta Green gets the call.
III. Dead Letter
This one looks like a pulpy one (though it can be just as dangerous as any Call of Cthulhu scenario). Start with aging Nazi Sorcerors in South America, mix in a lot of other bizarre players (including a radical environmentalist, and you have the makings of a great campaign.
Appendix E: International Federal Agencies
Effectively, this does for countries across the globe what Delta Green did for Federal Agencies in the United States. Need to pull an SAS commando into an investigation of Byakhee activity on the Isle of Man? Appendix E will let you do that. This makes for a terrific resource for both Delta Green, and indeed Modern Call of Cthulhu games outside of Delta Green.
Summary and Rating:
While some of the information is dated, the heart of this book is still a winner. Making the needed changes to update it to 2012 is not difficult, and some of the stuff here, like the Hastur Mythos chapter, is essentially timeless.
I can't recommend this one more strongly.
4.5 out of 5 stars, marked down only for it still being rooted in a pre-9/11 world.
Saturday, August 4, 2012
What Have You Been Doing Lately?
Last Non-RPG Book Read...
The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry
As I've said before, I've been on a Steve Berry kick recently, as I've been slowly picking the books up on Kindle for the iPad. Templar Legacy is the first of a series of novels featuring Cotton Malone. Berry's first three novels and latest novel all had different protagonists, but the middle seven contained Cotton Malone.
The Templar Legacy scratches a couple of itches. First, I'm a big fan of political conspiracies, and oddly, religious conspiracies, and the Templars and other odd medieval knightly orders have been fodder for some of my games for years. As a novel, it came out a few years ago at the height of the Dan Brown craze, although Berry is a better writer than Brown. It's a good read, if not quite as gripping as some of Berry's later stuff, and a good introduction to the Malone character.
Last Music Listened To...
Bedsitter Images-Al Stewart. Some old Al Stewart, oddly enough, way back in his electric folk period from the late 1960s, well before anybody in America had even heard of him.
Last Move Watched...
I got nothing. Haven't watched a lot of movies recently, which leads to...
Last TV Watched...
I've been studiously avoiding the Olympics, for the most part. We did the Buffy Season 5, Fringe Season 1, Heroes Season 2, Supernatural Season 5 cycle last Sunday night after the Star Wars game, so I'm going to go with that.
Last RPG Books Purchased/Read...
I recently purchased Cthulhu by Gaslight (3rd Edition), Cthulhu Dark Ages, and Chronicles of Future Earth.
Cthulhu by Gaslight: This is the new version, which came out earlier this year. I'd acquired the previous, 1988 Second Edition from Chaosium about a year ago in PDF, much to my regret, and so I was curious to see what the new edition would be like. I have to say, after an initial skim that I'm very impressed with it. They've tweaked character generation in a couple of good ways that may make it into all of my Call of Cthulhu games from now on, the book is written with a lot more in the way of adventure hooks, and it's a much more beautiful book than the old edition. As soon as I get done reading it, I'll post a review.
Cthulhu Dark Ages: This one came out a few years ago and was Chaosium's first official setting for Call of Cthulhu in the pre-gunpowder era. I haven't really gone through it yet, but it seems rather impressive upon first glance. I love the concept of blending Cthulhu into a much grimmer time, when the separation of Church and State was what happened when the Pope excommunicated Kings and Queens, and feudalism was the political order of the day and could see some interesting blending of the Mythos with the dogma of Medieval era Roman Catholicm and Eastern Orthodoxy. I can also see it being a useful item for running straight-up Medieval settings with BRP.
Chronicles of Future Earth: This one is for Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying. It's first official setting published after the release of 2008's Basic Roleplaying 4th Edition Core Rulebook, it describes itself as "Science-Fantasy Roleplaying in Earth's Far Future". It looks like an odd mix of a post-apocalyptic setting (set thousands of years after the event occurred), and contains a liberal mix of fantasy elements. I'm not sure I'd ever run it as a setting whole cloth (I rarely run published settings as is these days), but I can definitely see some elements, particularly things like spells, magic items, weird tech, character ideas, etc. that I might steal for other BRP games. Since these are precisely the things I think BRP's core rulebook could have used more of, I consider it a worthy purchase.
Setting Stuff I'm Currently Working On...
Most of my prep time in the last two weeks has gone to work on the two games I'm running for the family, Star Wars Saga Edition: Anakin Takes a Bullet and BRP: Emberverse.
I'm also working on a Call of Cthulhu one shot. Without giving away too many details, here's a snapshot:
The End: With the upcoming end of the Mayan Calendar coming upon us, I felt a horror game would be in order, and what better way to end the world than to hand it over as a plaything to the Elder Gods.
Loosely based on an old Actual Play recording from Role Playing Public Radio entitled "Is It The End Of The World As We Know It?", I'll be setting it in Phoenix, December 2012, and adding a few fictionalized versions of controversial local politicians into the mix. The players will be playing characters like the Mayor, Governor, Chief of Police, Commander of the Arizona National Guard, Maricopa County Sheriff, etc. trying to maintain control in a metropolitan area gone mad and stave off the end of the world. They'll be dealing with riots, rebellions, breakdowns of city services, crazy cultists, and most dangerous of all, half-insane teams of normal Call of Cthulhu investigators firmly convinced that only they can save the city, etc.
It should be a lot of fun.
The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry
As I've said before, I've been on a Steve Berry kick recently, as I've been slowly picking the books up on Kindle for the iPad. Templar Legacy is the first of a series of novels featuring Cotton Malone. Berry's first three novels and latest novel all had different protagonists, but the middle seven contained Cotton Malone.
The Templar Legacy scratches a couple of itches. First, I'm a big fan of political conspiracies, and oddly, religious conspiracies, and the Templars and other odd medieval knightly orders have been fodder for some of my games for years. As a novel, it came out a few years ago at the height of the Dan Brown craze, although Berry is a better writer than Brown. It's a good read, if not quite as gripping as some of Berry's later stuff, and a good introduction to the Malone character.
Last Music Listened To...
Bedsitter Images-Al Stewart. Some old Al Stewart, oddly enough, way back in his electric folk period from the late 1960s, well before anybody in America had even heard of him.
Last Move Watched...
I got nothing. Haven't watched a lot of movies recently, which leads to...
Last TV Watched...
I've been studiously avoiding the Olympics, for the most part. We did the Buffy Season 5, Fringe Season 1, Heroes Season 2, Supernatural Season 5 cycle last Sunday night after the Star Wars game, so I'm going to go with that.
Last RPG Books Purchased/Read...
I recently purchased Cthulhu by Gaslight (3rd Edition), Cthulhu Dark Ages, and Chronicles of Future Earth.
Cthulhu by Gaslight: This is the new version, which came out earlier this year. I'd acquired the previous, 1988 Second Edition from Chaosium about a year ago in PDF, much to my regret, and so I was curious to see what the new edition would be like. I have to say, after an initial skim that I'm very impressed with it. They've tweaked character generation in a couple of good ways that may make it into all of my Call of Cthulhu games from now on, the book is written with a lot more in the way of adventure hooks, and it's a much more beautiful book than the old edition. As soon as I get done reading it, I'll post a review.
Cthulhu Dark Ages: This one came out a few years ago and was Chaosium's first official setting for Call of Cthulhu in the pre-gunpowder era. I haven't really gone through it yet, but it seems rather impressive upon first glance. I love the concept of blending Cthulhu into a much grimmer time, when the separation of Church and State was what happened when the Pope excommunicated Kings and Queens, and feudalism was the political order of the day and could see some interesting blending of the Mythos with the dogma of Medieval era Roman Catholicm and Eastern Orthodoxy. I can also see it being a useful item for running straight-up Medieval settings with BRP.
Chronicles of Future Earth: This one is for Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying. It's first official setting published after the release of 2008's Basic Roleplaying 4th Edition Core Rulebook, it describes itself as "Science-Fantasy Roleplaying in Earth's Far Future". It looks like an odd mix of a post-apocalyptic setting (set thousands of years after the event occurred), and contains a liberal mix of fantasy elements. I'm not sure I'd ever run it as a setting whole cloth (I rarely run published settings as is these days), but I can definitely see some elements, particularly things like spells, magic items, weird tech, character ideas, etc. that I might steal for other BRP games. Since these are precisely the things I think BRP's core rulebook could have used more of, I consider it a worthy purchase.
Setting Stuff I'm Currently Working On...
Most of my prep time in the last two weeks has gone to work on the two games I'm running for the family, Star Wars Saga Edition: Anakin Takes a Bullet and BRP: Emberverse.
I'm also working on a Call of Cthulhu one shot. Without giving away too many details, here's a snapshot:
The End: With the upcoming end of the Mayan Calendar coming upon us, I felt a horror game would be in order, and what better way to end the world than to hand it over as a plaything to the Elder Gods.
Loosely based on an old Actual Play recording from Role Playing Public Radio entitled "Is It The End Of The World As We Know It?", I'll be setting it in Phoenix, December 2012, and adding a few fictionalized versions of controversial local politicians into the mix. The players will be playing characters like the Mayor, Governor, Chief of Police, Commander of the Arizona National Guard, Maricopa County Sheriff, etc. trying to maintain control in a metropolitan area gone mad and stave off the end of the world. They'll be dealing with riots, rebellions, breakdowns of city services, crazy cultists, and most dangerous of all, half-insane teams of normal Call of Cthulhu investigators firmly convinced that only they can save the city, etc.
It should be a lot of fun.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Emberverse: The Story So Far
OK. I'll admit it. I'm a sucker from Post-Apocalyptic stories and adventures. From my original reading of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend to seeing a young pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson traipsing around a weird post-apocalyptic future in A Boy and His Dog to more conventional fare like the Mad Max series, The Day After, Jericho, etc. I've enjoyed a number of great post-apocalyptic stories and played or run a few post-apocalyptic games, including Gamma World, and most recently, my current favorite, Darwin's World for d20 Modern.
Still, in a day and age when there is no obvious threat of nuclear war (conservative paranoia about Iran aside), and there are far more pressing concerns on the environmental front, nuclear post-apocalyptic survival stories look about as dated today as Cold War spy thrillers. In a day and age where the Department of Agriculture reports that 88% of the US corn crop is basically being trashed by a drought...where whole Pacific islands in Micronesia are being abandoned because rising sea levels are causing ridiculous amounts of flooding, or in some cases have risen to the point that there simply is no fresh water available on the island, it seems more than likely that if mankind is going to engineer its own destruction, it will be through global warming by burning too many fossil fuels, not some cataclysmic nuclear exchange (although such a scenario as an endgame where the world's powers compete for ever shrinking pools of resources isn't completely out of the realm of possibility). Unfortunately, mass death by global warming isn't quite as sexy as a game with implausible man-sized insects, and mutated humans and other critters in a post-nuclear setting, so this particular scenario generally gets ignored by RPGs, except perhaps as a peripheral issue in some cyberpunk settings.
And then there's something like S M Stirling's Dies the Fire, which along with its companion Nantucket trilogy, takes the modern world and shakes it up like an 8 year old kid who got a hold of his older brother's ant farm.
The base premise of the Nantucket trilogy, and its spinoff Emberverse series (the first novel of which is Dies the Fire), is that on March 17, 1998 (St. Patrick's Day, as it were) the modern day Nantucket Island is transported back nearly 3000 years to the Bronze Age, and effectively swapped with the Bronze Age Nantucket Island, which is transported to 1998.
The Nantucket Trilogy sees a post-industrial island dropped back into the Bronze Age, and is a tale of the small island's survival in a world where it boasts advanced technology, but not much of an industrial base to sustain it...literally an island of the 20th Century regressing, but still 3000 years ahead in technical knowledge compared to the world around it.
Dies the Fire takes a look at our world, after the swap of Nantucket Island, and the resulting change of physical laws that alters the world. Specifically, a handful of physical laws simply stop working. Electrical systems no longer work, including electronics, power generation, batteries, and any devices dependent upon electricity. Gunpowder, and other explosives don't work, effectively knocking weapon technology back to high medieval, pre-gunpowder days. And finally, high gaseous pressure systems (compressed air, compressed fuel, etc.) cease to function. Goodbye internal combustion, all but the earliest and least efficient of steam engines, etc. The novel then follows two groups of survivors trying to survive a treacherous first year, through the initial dieoffs, the emergence of warlords all in Central Oregon.
It's been my goal since reading the Emberverse series in particular to run it as a setting. I struggled to find a setting to run it with until I got hooked on Chaosium's venerable Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system, which contained a combination of ease of use (unlike GURPS), and a grittiness that is missing from other generic systems like Savage Worlds or the various flavors of d20. So over the past few months, I've been tweaking BRP to run Emberverse.
We finished our fourth session today. I'll be posting a report of the first few sessions in the next few days, along with a writeup of today's session. Until then, consider this a teaser. Also, in future posts, I'll provide documents on what I changed or added to the system, and finally, some character designs and other goodies.
Still, in a day and age when there is no obvious threat of nuclear war (conservative paranoia about Iran aside), and there are far more pressing concerns on the environmental front, nuclear post-apocalyptic survival stories look about as dated today as Cold War spy thrillers. In a day and age where the Department of Agriculture reports that 88% of the US corn crop is basically being trashed by a drought...where whole Pacific islands in Micronesia are being abandoned because rising sea levels are causing ridiculous amounts of flooding, or in some cases have risen to the point that there simply is no fresh water available on the island, it seems more than likely that if mankind is going to engineer its own destruction, it will be through global warming by burning too many fossil fuels, not some cataclysmic nuclear exchange (although such a scenario as an endgame where the world's powers compete for ever shrinking pools of resources isn't completely out of the realm of possibility). Unfortunately, mass death by global warming isn't quite as sexy as a game with implausible man-sized insects, and mutated humans and other critters in a post-nuclear setting, so this particular scenario generally gets ignored by RPGs, except perhaps as a peripheral issue in some cyberpunk settings.
And then there's something like S M Stirling's Dies the Fire, which along with its companion Nantucket trilogy, takes the modern world and shakes it up like an 8 year old kid who got a hold of his older brother's ant farm.
The base premise of the Nantucket trilogy, and its spinoff Emberverse series (the first novel of which is Dies the Fire), is that on March 17, 1998 (St. Patrick's Day, as it were) the modern day Nantucket Island is transported back nearly 3000 years to the Bronze Age, and effectively swapped with the Bronze Age Nantucket Island, which is transported to 1998.
The Nantucket Trilogy sees a post-industrial island dropped back into the Bronze Age, and is a tale of the small island's survival in a world where it boasts advanced technology, but not much of an industrial base to sustain it...literally an island of the 20th Century regressing, but still 3000 years ahead in technical knowledge compared to the world around it.
Dies the Fire takes a look at our world, after the swap of Nantucket Island, and the resulting change of physical laws that alters the world. Specifically, a handful of physical laws simply stop working. Electrical systems no longer work, including electronics, power generation, batteries, and any devices dependent upon electricity. Gunpowder, and other explosives don't work, effectively knocking weapon technology back to high medieval, pre-gunpowder days. And finally, high gaseous pressure systems (compressed air, compressed fuel, etc.) cease to function. Goodbye internal combustion, all but the earliest and least efficient of steam engines, etc. The novel then follows two groups of survivors trying to survive a treacherous first year, through the initial dieoffs, the emergence of warlords all in Central Oregon.
It's been my goal since reading the Emberverse series in particular to run it as a setting. I struggled to find a setting to run it with until I got hooked on Chaosium's venerable Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system, which contained a combination of ease of use (unlike GURPS), and a grittiness that is missing from other generic systems like Savage Worlds or the various flavors of d20. So over the past few months, I've been tweaking BRP to run Emberverse.
We finished our fourth session today. I'll be posting a report of the first few sessions in the next few days, along with a writeup of today's session. Until then, consider this a teaser. Also, in future posts, I'll provide documents on what I changed or added to the system, and finally, some character designs and other goodies.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition: My Thoughts.
The Unspeakable Oath has a post up about the upcoming Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. It looks like, unlike 6th Edition, which basically took 5th Edition and relaid it out in a nearly unreadable font, that this will be a major rewrite.
I like a few of the proposed changes. Removing Fast-Talk and adding Charm and Intimidate seems like a good idea. CofC has cried out for the need for an Intimidate skill for a while.
I'm lukewarm on the characteristic changes, though I think the old Characteristic x Multiplier was hardly a difficult thing to get used to.
I really, really don't like the changes to Luck. I personally loathe excess resource management in games. Too wargamey for me most times. If I want players to spend points out of a pool, I might as well go pick up Trail of Cthulhu. This change is a tough sell, and likely would be the first thing I house ruled out.
The changes to the Idea roll sounds like a great idea.
Frankly, there's not enough information about Sanity for me to talk about, but I do like the sound of constantly tagging back to the same indefinite insanity you developed earlier.
Anyway, I'll probably pick up 7th Ed when it comes out...how much I run it depends on what it looks like when Chaosium gets done with it.
I like a few of the proposed changes. Removing Fast-Talk and adding Charm and Intimidate seems like a good idea. CofC has cried out for the need for an Intimidate skill for a while.
I'm lukewarm on the characteristic changes, though I think the old Characteristic x Multiplier was hardly a difficult thing to get used to.
I really, really don't like the changes to Luck. I personally loathe excess resource management in games. Too wargamey for me most times. If I want players to spend points out of a pool, I might as well go pick up Trail of Cthulhu. This change is a tough sell, and likely would be the first thing I house ruled out.
The changes to the Idea roll sounds like a great idea.
Frankly, there's not enough information about Sanity for me to talk about, but I do like the sound of constantly tagging back to the same indefinite insanity you developed earlier.
Anyway, I'll probably pick up 7th Ed when it comes out...how much I run it depends on what it looks like when Chaosium gets done with it.
Monday, July 16, 2012
The What Have You Been Doing Lately Post
It's been a while since I did one of these, and I kind of like the moment in time feel of them.
Last (non-RPG) Book I've Read...
The Third Secret by Steve Berry.
Treading much the same ground as Dan Brown's terrible novel turned into a mediocre movie, Angels & Demons. This one treads much the same ground. In this case, the camerlengo is the hero, the Pope is murdered (and anticipates it), and the newly elected Pope pretty seems like he modeled his life after the Borgia Family. It's a better read just because the characters involved in a lot of instances have conflicting agendas and loyalties. Worth a read if you enjoyed either of Dan Brown's novels that tread the same territory, as I consider Berry to be a better writer.
This would make a great d20 Modern Blood & Relics game, if I ever found the time or the group.
Last Music Listened To...
Black Rain, Original Soundtrack, Hans Zimmer
I've been on a soundtracks kick again recently, and I've been collecting a lot of Hans Zimmer's early work. While his later stuff is a lot more orchestral, and enters the same bombastic territory occupied by John Williams, a lot of his earlier stuff is more synth/light orchestra/chorale heavy, and trades the same ground as some of Vangelis's early stuff. Most recently, I picked up a copy of the Black Rain soundtrack. The movie was eh...but the soundtrack just screams cyberpunk to me...without being quite as familiar as the Blade Runner soundtrack, but treading some of the same ground. It may wind up at the gaming table some day for a cyberpunk or neo-noir game.
Last Movie Watched...
Inception
Rewatched Inception a couple of days ago. I tend to watch more TV series than movies these days. I don't go to many movies and I tend to occasionally go on DVD/Blu Ray buying binges. I'm about due for another one. Anybody got any suggestions? I'll certainly be picking up John Carter (I'm a Burroughs fan) and a few others.
Last Television Watched...
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes, Supernatural, Fringe, every Sunday night.
I don't have cable, and I don't have Netflix (though the later should be rectified soon), as I read a lot more than I watch, but the family and I got in a habit of watching television series on DVD a few years back on Sunday nights, starting with Firefly and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Since that time, we've worked our way through X-Files, seasons 1-9, and are currently working our way through Heroes, Buffy, Supernatural, and Fringe.
Supernatural is brilliant. If you haven't been watching it, you're making a big mistake. We're about halfway through Season 5, and loving it.
Buffy I saw bits of this series on the WB back in the day, but frankly I worked a lot of nights during its run, and I missed a lot more of it than I remembered. It's been fun, though frankly, I thought the series may have jumped the shark in Season 4 a bit, and I'm hoping Season 5 (which we started just a few weeks ago) tries to restart some of the momentum.
Heroes we just finished Season 1, which was brilliant. I understand the remaining three seasons represent a huge drop in quality. But the complete series was $8 a season on a Black Friday special at Target last Christmas, and I'm figuring I'll get $24 of enjoyment out of the last three seasons at some point.
Fringe we just started with Season 1. Looks like early X-Files with fewer supernatural terrors and more alien weirdness. I understand it got better with later seasons, but so far, I could take it or leave it.
I'm also collecting True Blood and Game of Thrones as they come out. Both television series are amazing.
Last RPG Book Purchased...
Physical Books:
Hollow Earth Expedition, Exile Game Studios
Wild Talents Essentials Edition, Arc Dream Publishing
PDFs:
d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth & d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth Horrors of the Weird West
Thrilling Hero Adventures (Hero System)
I'll talk about these in order. Both were purchased from Darren from Imperial Outpost Games at Conflagration.
Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) scratches my pulp itch. For those who know me, pulp, horror, and noir are basically the main themes that run through my games. Even when I run other systems, they wind up with noir or pulp elements, depending on the mood appropriate for the game. Although I'm still learning this one, the Ubiquity System looks like it would fairly easy to run, and most of the obvious pulp archetypes can be created readily.
One of the things I like about HEX in particular is that unlike a lot of pulp RPG games and settings, its very tightly focused. Most pulp games try to cover the gamut from boxing stories, to westerns, to car racing to space, to 1930's adventure yarns, and so on. HEX's emphasis and inspiration, is based on things like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar novels, and other novels using a Hollow Earth or Lost Island style adventures. The setting is pretty tightly focused on that style of fiction, and doesn't try to be all things to all people. If somebody's looking to dip their toes in the water with classic 1920-1940 style pulp gaming, you could do worse than HEX.
Wild Talents scratches my One Roll Engine itch. I've come to admire A Dirty World and Nemesis, and the simplicity of One Roll Engine, so I picked this up for a song. It's strictly the rules, but I'd probably roll my own as far as setting if and when I ran it anyway. I mainly just picked it up ($9.99 sticker price, but I got a bit of a deal) to check out the mechanics. One of these days I'll get around to picking up Reign as well...not enough money, too many games.
The d20 Deadlands stuff is a bit peculiar for me. I love the Deadlands settings (including Lost Colony and Hell on Earth), not so fond of Deadlands system (or its successor, Savage Worlds, for that matter, which I know puts me in something of a minority). Thought this might be fun in case I ever try to do a d20 version. Besides, RPGNow was selling them for $5 apiece as part of their promotion for the recent release of the Savage Worlds compatible Hell on Earth Reloaded. If nothing else, I've got some more creatures to throw in a Darwin's World game, so it's all good.
Thrilling Hero Adventures is more pulp. Although I'm great at math, I don't run Hero System, as I prefer not to be that rules heavy these days, but this was a $10 volume, has a number of great pulp adventures, a lot more great pulp ideas, and heck, I'll convert some of it to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales or maybe even Hollow Earth Expedition one of these days. I usually buy pregen adventures to steal ideas from, rather than run them whole cloth anyway.
What I'm working on currently...
I'm a bit of a gaming floozy. Even when I've got campaigns running, I like to tinker around with campaign ideas for other genres.
As far as games I'm running, I'm running a Pathfinder game based on RPPR's New World Campaign. It was originally written for 4E, but I'd rather rip my toenails out than play 4E, so I retrofitted it to Pathfinder.
For Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium's house system), I'm running my take on S M Stirling's Emberverse novel series. The grittiness of BRP seemed to fit Dies the Fire rather nicely, and its an easy system to adapt to new settings and genres, and an even easier one to teach.
Stuff being worked on, but not run at the moment...
I'm working on another one shot for A Dirty World...going to be setting this during the Cold War, but still toying around with ideas. No big rush, as con season is about over for Phoenix this year.
We're about to return to our Star Wars Saga Edition campaign, but I'll leave that for another post. Needless to say I've been working on that.
I'm tinkering with adapting the first scenario from Thrilling Hero Adventures to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales for use as a one shot the next time the mood strikes me.
I'm also working on the beginnings of a cyberpunk setting. Probably d20 Modern/Future, but I may try it with BRP...I'm not sure which direction I'll go. It won't be run for a while yet.
I've also been asked to run a Supers game. I'm actually thinking I may combine this with the Cyberpunk feel, and create sort of a Neo Postmodern/Iron Age in the near future sort of game. Not sure yet. At this point I'm just bouncing around ideas in my head, and haven't put pen to paper yet.
Last (non-RPG) Book I've Read...
The Third Secret by Steve Berry.
Treading much the same ground as Dan Brown's terrible novel turned into a mediocre movie, Angels & Demons. This one treads much the same ground. In this case, the camerlengo is the hero, the Pope is murdered (and anticipates it), and the newly elected Pope pretty seems like he modeled his life after the Borgia Family. It's a better read just because the characters involved in a lot of instances have conflicting agendas and loyalties. Worth a read if you enjoyed either of Dan Brown's novels that tread the same territory, as I consider Berry to be a better writer.
This would make a great d20 Modern Blood & Relics game, if I ever found the time or the group.
Last Music Listened To...
Black Rain, Original Soundtrack, Hans Zimmer
I've been on a soundtracks kick again recently, and I've been collecting a lot of Hans Zimmer's early work. While his later stuff is a lot more orchestral, and enters the same bombastic territory occupied by John Williams, a lot of his earlier stuff is more synth/light orchestra/chorale heavy, and trades the same ground as some of Vangelis's early stuff. Most recently, I picked up a copy of the Black Rain soundtrack. The movie was eh...but the soundtrack just screams cyberpunk to me...without being quite as familiar as the Blade Runner soundtrack, but treading some of the same ground. It may wind up at the gaming table some day for a cyberpunk or neo-noir game.
Last Movie Watched...
Inception
Rewatched Inception a couple of days ago. I tend to watch more TV series than movies these days. I don't go to many movies and I tend to occasionally go on DVD/Blu Ray buying binges. I'm about due for another one. Anybody got any suggestions? I'll certainly be picking up John Carter (I'm a Burroughs fan) and a few others.
Last Television Watched...
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Heroes, Supernatural, Fringe, every Sunday night.
I don't have cable, and I don't have Netflix (though the later should be rectified soon), as I read a lot more than I watch, but the family and I got in a habit of watching television series on DVD a few years back on Sunday nights, starting with Firefly and the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. Since that time, we've worked our way through X-Files, seasons 1-9, and are currently working our way through Heroes, Buffy, Supernatural, and Fringe.
Supernatural is brilliant. If you haven't been watching it, you're making a big mistake. We're about halfway through Season 5, and loving it.
Buffy I saw bits of this series on the WB back in the day, but frankly I worked a lot of nights during its run, and I missed a lot more of it than I remembered. It's been fun, though frankly, I thought the series may have jumped the shark in Season 4 a bit, and I'm hoping Season 5 (which we started just a few weeks ago) tries to restart some of the momentum.
Heroes we just finished Season 1, which was brilliant. I understand the remaining three seasons represent a huge drop in quality. But the complete series was $8 a season on a Black Friday special at Target last Christmas, and I'm figuring I'll get $24 of enjoyment out of the last three seasons at some point.
Fringe we just started with Season 1. Looks like early X-Files with fewer supernatural terrors and more alien weirdness. I understand it got better with later seasons, but so far, I could take it or leave it.
I'm also collecting True Blood and Game of Thrones as they come out. Both television series are amazing.
Last RPG Book Purchased...
Physical Books:
Hollow Earth Expedition, Exile Game Studios
Wild Talents Essentials Edition, Arc Dream Publishing
PDFs:
d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth & d20 Deadlands Hell on Earth Horrors of the Weird West
Thrilling Hero Adventures (Hero System)
I'll talk about these in order. Both were purchased from Darren from Imperial Outpost Games at Conflagration.
Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) scratches my pulp itch. For those who know me, pulp, horror, and noir are basically the main themes that run through my games. Even when I run other systems, they wind up with noir or pulp elements, depending on the mood appropriate for the game. Although I'm still learning this one, the Ubiquity System looks like it would fairly easy to run, and most of the obvious pulp archetypes can be created readily.
One of the things I like about HEX in particular is that unlike a lot of pulp RPG games and settings, its very tightly focused. Most pulp games try to cover the gamut from boxing stories, to westerns, to car racing to space, to 1930's adventure yarns, and so on. HEX's emphasis and inspiration, is based on things like Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar novels, and other novels using a Hollow Earth or Lost Island style adventures. The setting is pretty tightly focused on that style of fiction, and doesn't try to be all things to all people. If somebody's looking to dip their toes in the water with classic 1920-1940 style pulp gaming, you could do worse than HEX.
Wild Talents scratches my One Roll Engine itch. I've come to admire A Dirty World and Nemesis, and the simplicity of One Roll Engine, so I picked this up for a song. It's strictly the rules, but I'd probably roll my own as far as setting if and when I ran it anyway. I mainly just picked it up ($9.99 sticker price, but I got a bit of a deal) to check out the mechanics. One of these days I'll get around to picking up Reign as well...not enough money, too many games.
The d20 Deadlands stuff is a bit peculiar for me. I love the Deadlands settings (including Lost Colony and Hell on Earth), not so fond of Deadlands system (or its successor, Savage Worlds, for that matter, which I know puts me in something of a minority). Thought this might be fun in case I ever try to do a d20 version. Besides, RPGNow was selling them for $5 apiece as part of their promotion for the recent release of the Savage Worlds compatible Hell on Earth Reloaded. If nothing else, I've got some more creatures to throw in a Darwin's World game, so it's all good.
Thrilling Hero Adventures is more pulp. Although I'm great at math, I don't run Hero System, as I prefer not to be that rules heavy these days, but this was a $10 volume, has a number of great pulp adventures, a lot more great pulp ideas, and heck, I'll convert some of it to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales or maybe even Hollow Earth Expedition one of these days. I usually buy pregen adventures to steal ideas from, rather than run them whole cloth anyway.
What I'm working on currently...
I'm a bit of a gaming floozy. Even when I've got campaigns running, I like to tinker around with campaign ideas for other genres.
As far as games I'm running, I'm running a Pathfinder game based on RPPR's New World Campaign. It was originally written for 4E, but I'd rather rip my toenails out than play 4E, so I retrofitted it to Pathfinder.
For Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium's house system), I'm running my take on S M Stirling's Emberverse novel series. The grittiness of BRP seemed to fit Dies the Fire rather nicely, and its an easy system to adapt to new settings and genres, and an even easier one to teach.
Stuff being worked on, but not run at the moment...
I'm working on another one shot for A Dirty World...going to be setting this during the Cold War, but still toying around with ideas. No big rush, as con season is about over for Phoenix this year.
We're about to return to our Star Wars Saga Edition campaign, but I'll leave that for another post. Needless to say I've been working on that.
I'm tinkering with adapting the first scenario from Thrilling Hero Adventures to d20 Modern Thrilling Tales for use as a one shot the next time the mood strikes me.
I'm also working on the beginnings of a cyberpunk setting. Probably d20 Modern/Future, but I may try it with BRP...I'm not sure which direction I'll go. It won't be run for a while yet.
I've also been asked to run a Supers game. I'm actually thinking I may combine this with the Cyberpunk feel, and create sort of a Neo Postmodern/Iron Age in the near future sort of game. Not sure yet. At this point I'm just bouncing around ideas in my head, and haven't put pen to paper yet.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Delta Green: A Review
One of the conceits of a lot of fiction, whether it be movies, television, novels, or even roleplaying games is that the reasons a character is risking life or limb is answered only sketchily, or not at all. Why is the hero, now up to his neck in dinosaur riding Nazis, on the deck of a spaceship in a decaying orbit above an inhospitalble planet in deep space, or fighting a dragon that just roasted his best friend into ash, still fighting when most of us, when confronted with such danger to life and limb, would more likely stay indoors, order Chinese takeout, and maybe have a glass of wine and watch that episode of Law and Order they missed last night?
This conceit is most keenly felt with horror. Horror takes this leap of logic to absurd heights, and there is no worse offender than Call of Cthulhu, though other horror games are undoubtedly just as bad about it. There's no doubt, from Lovecraft's fiction, and from a meatgrinder like Masks of Nyarlathotep, the quintessential Chaosium 1920's CofC campaign, that players who confront the various baddies from the Cthulhu Mythos are pretty much doomed to either go irretrievably mad, or be devoured by some horror from beyond time and space (or likely, some entertaining combination of the two). In fact, probably the best thing that could happen to your typical Call of Cthulhu character is being stabbed to death by cultists. Graveyards are filled with the bodies of characters who have died solving Masks of Nyarlathotep. Whole forests from London to Constantinople and back have been stripped of every last tree to build coffins for the characters who have died in "Horror on the Orient Express." Never mind that two dozen characters have been killed in a trail of bodies from New York to Kenya, that kindly old history professor you met in Kenya is just eager as punch to have his head cut off in a ritualistic murder in Shanghai.
Almost invariably, investigators in Call of Cthulhu wind up investigating a location, or a strange happening in a sleepy (usually New England) town. Why are they doing this? Usually, it boils down to one of the following:
1. Because one of the investigators inherited the house/mansion/old hotel/office building. This is quite literally the hook for the classic Call of Cthulhu adventure "The Haunting" which has been published in one form or another in every edition of the core rulebook since 1981. Never mind that the house is old enough and dilapidated enough that it should have been condemned back during the McKinley Administration, but damn it, Aunt Emily bequeathed it to us, and we're going to stay here overnight, even if that horror from beyond time and space in the attic menaces us with an axe.
2. Because a family member suffered a (usually violent and bizarre) crime in the location, and damn it, even if the case has completely baffled the police, the sheriff, Scotland Yard, the FBI, (insert law enforcement organization name here), somehow, I, a rank amateur who learned everything I know about crimefighting from reading Murder in the Rue Morgue, am going to do them all one better.
3. A member of the group found this weird old book, or artifact, examined it, and even though it gave the owner nightmares for a week when he read it, and cultists keep trying to kill them to take it from them, the group is bound and determined that they're going to investigate it further, even though it will likely kill them (and usually does).
Delta Green solves this dilemma by giving a reason and a rationale for why a character might actually confront horrors from beyond time and space (because it's his/her job), and a framework for replacing characters who are devoured, killed, or given the proverbial 9mm retirement plan.
The origin story behind Delta Green is it was born out of the Navy/Marine raid on Innsmouth very sparsely described at the end of Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." In the wake of the raid, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) was left with various artifacts, a number of captured and killed Deep One/human hybrids, and a mountain of data to sort through. The working group assigned to sort through all this data (and indeed conduct a few operations against the Mythos in the pre-WW2 era) became known as P Division.
This was more or less the status quo until shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In February 1942, P Division's commanding officer in a meeting with the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) Director William Donovan, provides information from P Division's researches, particularly emphasizing a division of Himmler's SS, the Karotechia, that is interested in harnessing the Mythos for the war effort. As a result of the meeting, P Division is transferred to the OSS, given a special security clearance "Delta Green" which eventually became the name of the agency. Delta Green successfully fights the Mythos and the Karotechia throughout the rest of the war, and continues as an agency until the OSS is disbanded, at which time Delta Green is also disbanded in 1945.
This might have been the end of the story if it wasn't for a certain crash in Roswell, NM in 1947. As a result of the Roswell investigation, two organizations are created, both out of men who formerly served in Delta Green. Delta Green itself was reinstated. And the slightly more infamous Majestic 12 was launched as well. Both organizations fought turf wars, with Delta Green coming to realize more and more that while aliens were real, the UFO conspiracy wasn't what MJ-12 thought it was. Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, both organizations warred for Federal dollars, for recognition, and sometimes for turf. This continued until finally, in 1969, Delta Green had a leader go rogue, get a lot of men killed in Vietnam, and the resulting closed-door Congressional investigation led to the end of Delta Green as a legitimate agency.
But the Mythos is still there, and someone still needed to fight it. Enter the Delta Green Conspiracy. At first, a loose organization of former members of Delta Green from its days as a legitimate Federal Agency, a Majestic 12 Wetworks squad put an end to that in 1994 when they killed Delta Green's legendary leader, Reginald Fairfield. Delta Green, whose membership had dwindled in the intervening 25 years due to deaths and retirements, was reinvented as a tightly controlled conspiracy within Federal law enforcement, organized using a cellular structure more reminiscent of a terrorist organization, to fight the battles humanity is already destined to lose. That, in essence, is Delta Green.
Now that you know what Delta Green is about, here's a synopsis of the contents:
Delta Green is a 336 page volume. Initially published in 1993, it was updated with d20 stat conversions after Wizards of the Coast's brief publication of d20 Call of Cthulhu in 2001 at the height of the d20 craze. The latter edition can still be found for sale for the reasonable price of $39.95+shipping at Arkham Bazaar which is where I picked it up a year or two ago. Three other sourcebooks (as well as three smaller chapter books) have been published for Delta Green since that time as supplements for the main book. Finding two of those three books will cost you a fairly pretty penny.
Chapter 1: The Big Picture
If no other piece of Delta Green had been published in any form other than this chapter, it would have been a remarkable work. Effectively, this chapter takes Lovecraft's fiction, much of the better Cthulhu Mythos fiction written by people other than Lovecraft, turns them into a cohesive whole, and frankly does a whole lot better job than Chaosium's Cthulhu Now of making modern Call of Cthulhu gaming a reality. It outlines the main villains (the Mi-Go, in this case), the never-ending turf war with Majestic 12, the Federal alphabet soup concept that is the heart of the rationale for Delta Green (Big Brother Then and Now).
Chapter 2: Delta Green
This chapter basically outlines Delta Green. What it's about, how it was formed, its history, important individuals in the organization, and a Timeline of events.
Chapter 3: Majestic 12
This chapter outlines Delta Green's nemesis among government conspiracies in Washington Majestic 12, outlining Majestic 12's history, its leadership, and most importantly, where UFO mythology fits into the picture. Let's just say, it's not pretty.
Chapter 4: Karotechia
Just like there are probably still nonagenarian Nazis living in South America, Delta Green's old World War II nemesis still exists, albeit as a gray shadow of its former self. The Karotechia would be almost laughable, if its connections to certain Elder Gods weren't real enough.
Chapter 5: SaucerWatch
Every UFO Conspiracy story needs a bunch of kooks getting in the way, asking dopey questions, getting into things over their head, and basically being an annoyance to real investigators doing the real work of learning the unknowable. SaucerWatch fits that bill just fine. This chapter details them.
Chapter 6: The FATE
Just like Prohibition, flapper girls, and Tommy Guns, gone are the days of crazy cultists wielding primitive weapons, and blending in with urban life about as well as cactii on a glacier. Now the cultists are smart, suave, sophisticated, every bit as insane, and several orders of magnitude more dangerous. The FATE is one such group, lovingly detailed.
Those 6 chapters, ironically, are less than half the page count of the book. Afterward comes the world's longest appendix, or should I say, appendices, since there are no fewer than 10 of them.
Appendix A is a great bibliography
Appendix B gives a glossary of terminology, effectively the lingo of Delta Green.
Appendix C gives a list of Security Classifications.
Appendix D gives a list of Delta Green related Mythos and non-Mythos tomes with very real looking copies of documents.
Appendix E contains two adventures and a short campaign.
The first of two adventures, Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, is an introductory adventure that would be a great starting point for a Delta Green campaign. A group of Delta Green friendlies (not full agents, friendlies are possibly aware of the Mythos, and certainly unaware of the nature of Delta Green) chase a string of bizarre killings across the Desert Southwest. Each killing is perpretated by a different person, but the MO is the same in each case. It's a good 1-2 session adventure that's wonderful for getting players nice and confident of their chances of battling the Mythos, a notion the next adventure, Convergence, will quickly disabuse them of.
Convergence, is an update of the original Unspeakable Oath #7 adventure that Delta Green sprung from. A group of Delta Green agents is investigating a horrific killing by a teenager endowed with inhuman strength in a sleepy town in Tennessee that has suffered a rash of UFO sightings. It's a deadly adventure, with lots of ways for characters (and NPCs) to die, and endings that range from horrific to merely awful. It's also a great con game that I recently ran at Conflagration.
The short campaign is The New Age, a great campaign that takes a strange New Age religious organization with a bit more going on behind the scenes than even most of its membership understands.
Appendix F gives Occupations and information on Creating Delta Green investigators for both BRP and d20 Call of Cthulhu.
Appendix G gives a pre-9/11 list of alphabet soup Federal Agencies that your Delta Green agent might be drawn from, with occupations, typical agents, and a brief description of the agency and typical roles in the agency that might become agents. This list is really the heart of character generation, occupying almost 20% of the book by itself.
Appendix H gives new skills for both BRP and d20 Call of Cthulhu.
Appendix I is a list of new spells for both BRP/d20 Call of Cthulhu.
Appendix J is a fairly exhaustive list of firearms, both of US and foreign manufacture, with relevant stats for both d20 and BRP.
Finally the book is rounded out with an extensive index, something that's always a plus.
Pros:
* This is really the best, most logical, and cohesive way to play modern Call of Cthulhu. Chapter 1 of the book alone should be required reading for any new Keeper thinking of running a modern Call of Cthulhu game.
* Each chapter is well-written, with numerous adventure hooks, and the character generation information is topnotch. The adventures themselves do a great job of providing numerous examples of what a Delta Green game should be like.
* For the amount of material, the $39.95 sticker price looks very reasonable.
Cons:
* One big one in particular. Copyright 1997. Delta Green is a product of the 1990s, and a Keeper had best understand it hasn't really been updated since. Even the 2001 reprint to add d20 stats didn't change much, and the fact that a lot of law enforcement agencies have been consolidated under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security (insert eyeroll here) leads one to question the veracity of some of the data in this day and age.
In a country, where in the last decade, we have literally thrown away trillions of dollars on national security, only to learn that we're not that much safer (and certainly have a whole lot less privacy). Where we've funded Federal, state, and local law enforcement to the point that rural sheriff's departments are now requisitioning armored cars at the same time their school districts are laying teachers off by the score, its hard to believe that Delta Green is still an underfunded, illegal government conspiracy having to barely scrape by.
Fortunately, Arc Dream Publishing and Pagan Publishing are working on the Delta Green RPG, which should solve this, but until then, you'll have to tweak a few assumptions of running a post-9/11 game where such things are needed.
Content: 4 out of 5 (I marked this one down mostly due to the pre-9/11 setting material. What's here is nothing short of top notch.
Art & Layout: 5 of 5. Though black and white, Delta Green is a gorgeous book, nicely laid out, with an exhaustive Table of Contents, Bibliography and Index. A lot of more modern game books would do well to emulate Delta Green for its ease in terms of finding what you need quickly as a GM.
Overall Value: 5 of 5. Delta Green, like its later expanding sourcebooks, Countdown, Eyes Only, and Targets of Opportunity, (more on those in future reviews) all have one thing in common. Exquisitely written material, tons of adventure hooks, some really well-written adventures, and tons of stuff you can use in your games. If you play or run Call of Cthulhu, and haven't picked this one up yet, you're really missing out.
This conceit is most keenly felt with horror. Horror takes this leap of logic to absurd heights, and there is no worse offender than Call of Cthulhu, though other horror games are undoubtedly just as bad about it. There's no doubt, from Lovecraft's fiction, and from a meatgrinder like Masks of Nyarlathotep, the quintessential Chaosium 1920's CofC campaign, that players who confront the various baddies from the Cthulhu Mythos are pretty much doomed to either go irretrievably mad, or be devoured by some horror from beyond time and space (or likely, some entertaining combination of the two). In fact, probably the best thing that could happen to your typical Call of Cthulhu character is being stabbed to death by cultists. Graveyards are filled with the bodies of characters who have died solving Masks of Nyarlathotep. Whole forests from London to Constantinople and back have been stripped of every last tree to build coffins for the characters who have died in "Horror on the Orient Express." Never mind that two dozen characters have been killed in a trail of bodies from New York to Kenya, that kindly old history professor you met in Kenya is just eager as punch to have his head cut off in a ritualistic murder in Shanghai.
Almost invariably, investigators in Call of Cthulhu wind up investigating a location, or a strange happening in a sleepy (usually New England) town. Why are they doing this? Usually, it boils down to one of the following:
1. Because one of the investigators inherited the house/mansion/old hotel/office building. This is quite literally the hook for the classic Call of Cthulhu adventure "The Haunting" which has been published in one form or another in every edition of the core rulebook since 1981. Never mind that the house is old enough and dilapidated enough that it should have been condemned back during the McKinley Administration, but damn it, Aunt Emily bequeathed it to us, and we're going to stay here overnight, even if that horror from beyond time and space in the attic menaces us with an axe.
2. Because a family member suffered a (usually violent and bizarre) crime in the location, and damn it, even if the case has completely baffled the police, the sheriff, Scotland Yard, the FBI, (insert law enforcement organization name here), somehow, I, a rank amateur who learned everything I know about crimefighting from reading Murder in the Rue Morgue, am going to do them all one better.
3. A member of the group found this weird old book, or artifact, examined it, and even though it gave the owner nightmares for a week when he read it, and cultists keep trying to kill them to take it from them, the group is bound and determined that they're going to investigate it further, even though it will likely kill them (and usually does).
Delta Green solves this dilemma by giving a reason and a rationale for why a character might actually confront horrors from beyond time and space (because it's his/her job), and a framework for replacing characters who are devoured, killed, or given the proverbial 9mm retirement plan.
The origin story behind Delta Green is it was born out of the Navy/Marine raid on Innsmouth very sparsely described at the end of Lovecraft's short story "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." In the wake of the raid, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) was left with various artifacts, a number of captured and killed Deep One/human hybrids, and a mountain of data to sort through. The working group assigned to sort through all this data (and indeed conduct a few operations against the Mythos in the pre-WW2 era) became known as P Division.
This was more or less the status quo until shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. In February 1942, P Division's commanding officer in a meeting with the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) Director William Donovan, provides information from P Division's researches, particularly emphasizing a division of Himmler's SS, the Karotechia, that is interested in harnessing the Mythos for the war effort. As a result of the meeting, P Division is transferred to the OSS, given a special security clearance "Delta Green" which eventually became the name of the agency. Delta Green successfully fights the Mythos and the Karotechia throughout the rest of the war, and continues as an agency until the OSS is disbanded, at which time Delta Green is also disbanded in 1945.
This might have been the end of the story if it wasn't for a certain crash in Roswell, NM in 1947. As a result of the Roswell investigation, two organizations are created, both out of men who formerly served in Delta Green. Delta Green itself was reinstated. And the slightly more infamous Majestic 12 was launched as well. Both organizations fought turf wars, with Delta Green coming to realize more and more that while aliens were real, the UFO conspiracy wasn't what MJ-12 thought it was. Throughout the 1950's and 1960's, both organizations warred for Federal dollars, for recognition, and sometimes for turf. This continued until finally, in 1969, Delta Green had a leader go rogue, get a lot of men killed in Vietnam, and the resulting closed-door Congressional investigation led to the end of Delta Green as a legitimate agency.
But the Mythos is still there, and someone still needed to fight it. Enter the Delta Green Conspiracy. At first, a loose organization of former members of Delta Green from its days as a legitimate Federal Agency, a Majestic 12 Wetworks squad put an end to that in 1994 when they killed Delta Green's legendary leader, Reginald Fairfield. Delta Green, whose membership had dwindled in the intervening 25 years due to deaths and retirements, was reinvented as a tightly controlled conspiracy within Federal law enforcement, organized using a cellular structure more reminiscent of a terrorist organization, to fight the battles humanity is already destined to lose. That, in essence, is Delta Green.
Now that you know what Delta Green is about, here's a synopsis of the contents:
Delta Green is a 336 page volume. Initially published in 1993, it was updated with d20 stat conversions after Wizards of the Coast's brief publication of d20 Call of Cthulhu in 2001 at the height of the d20 craze. The latter edition can still be found for sale for the reasonable price of $39.95+shipping at Arkham Bazaar which is where I picked it up a year or two ago. Three other sourcebooks (as well as three smaller chapter books) have been published for Delta Green since that time as supplements for the main book. Finding two of those three books will cost you a fairly pretty penny.
Chapter 1: The Big Picture
If no other piece of Delta Green had been published in any form other than this chapter, it would have been a remarkable work. Effectively, this chapter takes Lovecraft's fiction, much of the better Cthulhu Mythos fiction written by people other than Lovecraft, turns them into a cohesive whole, and frankly does a whole lot better job than Chaosium's Cthulhu Now of making modern Call of Cthulhu gaming a reality. It outlines the main villains (the Mi-Go, in this case), the never-ending turf war with Majestic 12, the Federal alphabet soup concept that is the heart of the rationale for Delta Green (Big Brother Then and Now).
Chapter 2: Delta Green
This chapter basically outlines Delta Green. What it's about, how it was formed, its history, important individuals in the organization, and a Timeline of events.
Chapter 3: Majestic 12
This chapter outlines Delta Green's nemesis among government conspiracies in Washington Majestic 12, outlining Majestic 12's history, its leadership, and most importantly, where UFO mythology fits into the picture. Let's just say, it's not pretty.
Chapter 4: Karotechia
Just like there are probably still nonagenarian Nazis living in South America, Delta Green's old World War II nemesis still exists, albeit as a gray shadow of its former self. The Karotechia would be almost laughable, if its connections to certain Elder Gods weren't real enough.
Chapter 5: SaucerWatch
Every UFO Conspiracy story needs a bunch of kooks getting in the way, asking dopey questions, getting into things over their head, and basically being an annoyance to real investigators doing the real work of learning the unknowable. SaucerWatch fits that bill just fine. This chapter details them.
Chapter 6: The FATE
Just like Prohibition, flapper girls, and Tommy Guns, gone are the days of crazy cultists wielding primitive weapons, and blending in with urban life about as well as cactii on a glacier. Now the cultists are smart, suave, sophisticated, every bit as insane, and several orders of magnitude more dangerous. The FATE is one such group, lovingly detailed.
Those 6 chapters, ironically, are less than half the page count of the book. Afterward comes the world's longest appendix, or should I say, appendices, since there are no fewer than 10 of them.
Appendix A is a great bibliography
Appendix B gives a glossary of terminology, effectively the lingo of Delta Green.
Appendix C gives a list of Security Classifications.
Appendix D gives a list of Delta Green related Mythos and non-Mythos tomes with very real looking copies of documents.
Appendix E contains two adventures and a short campaign.
The first of two adventures, Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, is an introductory adventure that would be a great starting point for a Delta Green campaign. A group of Delta Green friendlies (not full agents, friendlies are possibly aware of the Mythos, and certainly unaware of the nature of Delta Green) chase a string of bizarre killings across the Desert Southwest. Each killing is perpretated by a different person, but the MO is the same in each case. It's a good 1-2 session adventure that's wonderful for getting players nice and confident of their chances of battling the Mythos, a notion the next adventure, Convergence, will quickly disabuse them of.
Convergence, is an update of the original Unspeakable Oath #7 adventure that Delta Green sprung from. A group of Delta Green agents is investigating a horrific killing by a teenager endowed with inhuman strength in a sleepy town in Tennessee that has suffered a rash of UFO sightings. It's a deadly adventure, with lots of ways for characters (and NPCs) to die, and endings that range from horrific to merely awful. It's also a great con game that I recently ran at Conflagration.
The short campaign is The New Age, a great campaign that takes a strange New Age religious organization with a bit more going on behind the scenes than even most of its membership understands.
Appendix F gives Occupations and information on Creating Delta Green investigators for both BRP and d20 Call of Cthulhu.
Appendix G gives a pre-9/11 list of alphabet soup Federal Agencies that your Delta Green agent might be drawn from, with occupations, typical agents, and a brief description of the agency and typical roles in the agency that might become agents. This list is really the heart of character generation, occupying almost 20% of the book by itself.
Appendix H gives new skills for both BRP and d20 Call of Cthulhu.
Appendix I is a list of new spells for both BRP/d20 Call of Cthulhu.
Appendix J is a fairly exhaustive list of firearms, both of US and foreign manufacture, with relevant stats for both d20 and BRP.
Finally the book is rounded out with an extensive index, something that's always a plus.
Pros:
* This is really the best, most logical, and cohesive way to play modern Call of Cthulhu. Chapter 1 of the book alone should be required reading for any new Keeper thinking of running a modern Call of Cthulhu game.
* Each chapter is well-written, with numerous adventure hooks, and the character generation information is topnotch. The adventures themselves do a great job of providing numerous examples of what a Delta Green game should be like.
* For the amount of material, the $39.95 sticker price looks very reasonable.
Cons:
* One big one in particular. Copyright 1997. Delta Green is a product of the 1990s, and a Keeper had best understand it hasn't really been updated since. Even the 2001 reprint to add d20 stats didn't change much, and the fact that a lot of law enforcement agencies have been consolidated under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security (insert eyeroll here) leads one to question the veracity of some of the data in this day and age.
In a country, where in the last decade, we have literally thrown away trillions of dollars on national security, only to learn that we're not that much safer (and certainly have a whole lot less privacy). Where we've funded Federal, state, and local law enforcement to the point that rural sheriff's departments are now requisitioning armored cars at the same time their school districts are laying teachers off by the score, its hard to believe that Delta Green is still an underfunded, illegal government conspiracy having to barely scrape by.
Fortunately, Arc Dream Publishing and Pagan Publishing are working on the Delta Green RPG, which should solve this, but until then, you'll have to tweak a few assumptions of running a post-9/11 game where such things are needed.
Content: 4 out of 5 (I marked this one down mostly due to the pre-9/11 setting material. What's here is nothing short of top notch.
Art & Layout: 5 of 5. Though black and white, Delta Green is a gorgeous book, nicely laid out, with an exhaustive Table of Contents, Bibliography and Index. A lot of more modern game books would do well to emulate Delta Green for its ease in terms of finding what you need quickly as a GM.
Overall Value: 5 of 5. Delta Green, like its later expanding sourcebooks, Countdown, Eyes Only, and Targets of Opportunity, (more on those in future reviews) all have one thing in common. Exquisitely written material, tons of adventure hooks, some really well-written adventures, and tons of stuff you can use in your games. If you play or run Call of Cthulhu, and haven't picked this one up yet, you're really missing out.
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