16 Wednesday Dec 2015
Posted in Podcast
Brad, Beard, and Jet come to terms with their situation, and begin to look for a way out.
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12 Saturday Dec 2015
Posted in Podcast
Brad, Beard, Kyle, and Jet venture through the wardrobe for a second time, and immediately end up in a no-holds-barred shootout with the Gendarmes.
(Keeper’s note- if you’re not a fan of extended , utterly ludicrous combat scenes, go ahead and skip this episode).
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29 Sunday Nov 2015
Posted in Podcast
The Crazy Train begins to pull out of the station in earnest as Brad, Kyle, and Beard head back through the wardrobe and into a strange situation involving a model train, vampires, and the Void. If you missed the first episode and have no desire to slog through muddy audio, start here. The recap is pretty good, so you won’t miss out on much.
Keeper’s Notes:
1) The very odd story of Crazy Train has accidentally evolved beyond the scope of the core Delta Green rules. While DG provides the strong backbone on which the system we are using is built, we have also chosen to include elements from other games that we find appealing, in order to really play through Horror on the Orient Express in a completely new and unique way that is capable of handling much stranger PC requests than DG. To that end, we have created the “RIFTS: BACK TO THE FUTURE PART IV: THE CALL OF DELTA GREEN’S DRAGON FILES, NARNIA EDITION” character sheet, the latest iteration of which can be found here. The sheet may change a bit during the first few weeks as we try out the various new systems we’ve implemented, but feel free to follow along with us and give it a try in your own games!
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15 Sunday Nov 2015
Posted in Podcast
On this, the first episode of Crazy Train, Group A and some special guests from the cast of Paranoid Delusions learn what they’re in for, work on their characters, and begin their descent into madness. If you’re not particularly interested in the new character creation process/characters/house rules we’re operating with, you can probably skip to around the 1:13:00 mark to get into the story right away.
Once again, I do apologize for the audio quality. We think we’ve got it figured out moving forward, but in the meantime, you can mitigate the awfulness by listening in with headphones.
A couple retcons (there will be more of these than usual due to the way we’re setting this game up):
1) The organization that the players are working for is Delta Green.
2) The time portal doesn’t only open on the train, it opens in different places and times within the 1920s, with no real rhyme or reason.
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26 Monday Oct 2015
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for Delta Green.”
The imaginary bell that signals the delivery of another Vivisection Verdict, that is. We recorded two playtests of the scenario “Last Things Last,” (I and II), using the quickstart rules. As the scenario was by design a limited introduction to the full scope of the game, this review may not be comprehensive in all respects. Please also note that any references to the rules of Call of Cthulhu are references to the way we usually run it at OTRS (75% 7th Ed., 20% 6th Ed., 4% rules we think are rules but haven’t ever checked, and 1% top secret chemicals recovered from meteorites)- if I’m doing something incredibly wrong, please let me know.
Delta Green is a game in which players play as agents working for a top secret organization within the US government dedicated to investigating the paranormal. Operating under the broad label of “Counterterrorism,” Delta Green’s operatives traverse the globe, trying to stay one step ahead of the enemies of freedom (not to mention maniacal cultists trying to resurrect sleeping gods). If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if Mulder and Scully came up against a Lovecraftian horror from beyond time and thought, this is the game for you.
Originally designed as a setting for Call of Cthulhu, this iteration of Delta Green is a much different beast than its ancestor. What really stood out to me as a Keeper were the common-sense quality of life changes that improved upon the d% system in a way that left the underlying simplicity and utility of the system intact. There are many of these throughout the game, but three of them in particular really impressed me.
Alertness
In Delta Green, the old CoC workhorses “Spot Hidden” and “Listen” have been wrapped up into one convenient all-purpose skill: Alertness (that doesn’t mean I didn’t ask for at least twelve Spot Hidden rolls during playtesting, though). It was uncomfortable at first, but as I got used to it, I really began to enjoy not having to spoil the attack vector of the threat by asking for one roll or the other. I also think that this skill could be used to handle edge cases, like detecting strange scents, in a much more elegant way than a POW roll. A small change, but one that feels very streamlined.
Scaling Crits
In Delta Green, a critical success occurs on a roll of 01 or success with matching dice (11, 22, 33, etc.), and a critical fail occurs on a roll of 100 or failure with matching dice (77, 88, 99, etc.). Coming from a campaign background where crits at the right (or wrong) time have had a huge effect on whole campaigns despite only occurring on 01s and 100s, I didn’t understand the decision to do this at first.
After some thought, though, I came to the realization that this is a masterfully implemented pressure/power mechanic. Since die rolls in Delta Green are reserved for situations that are up to chance, characters won’t be at risk for trying a weak skill in low risk situations. On the other hand, a character with a weak skill is far more likely to critically fail under pressure than someone who is a professional, just like they would in real life. At the same time, someone with a highly trained skill has more chances to really pull off something spectacular when things get hot. Instead of being gifts of fate, crits have become an important part of gameplay.
For instance, in CoC, there’s never much real harm in throwing out an untrained First Aid roll (30%) most of the time. The chance of a critical failure is a flat 1%. However, in Delta Green, for a character with an untrained First Aid skill (10%), the chance of a critical failure is 10%. The decision to have your librarian deal with the taxidermist’s gunshot wound is no longer consequence-free; instead of a measly 1% chance of failure, you’re just as likely to kill them as you are to save them. That’s not a fact that any responsible PC can ignore. In short, simply by scaling crit frequency with skill level, the authors of Delta Green were able to introduce meaningful tension into scenes which have become somewhat stale and routine within the CoC system, while simultaneously allowing characters who are highly skilled to have more chances to take the spotlight for the things their character is best at. Best of all, they didn’t do this with a table, or a chart, or some kind of card system, but in a way that’s trivially easy to remember.
Target DCs
Instead of rolling against skills during downtime, most tasks can be completed by a simple pass/fail check against a target number or number spread. While this might not seem like a major change, it makes life much easier for the Keeper. Consider the following situation:
“The investigators are following up on a mysterious letter they received, and have decided to go to the library.”
In CoC, this can be very dangerous territory for the Keeper.
> What if all of the characters fail their Library Use roll?
> How close to a success is enough to count?
> Since none of them found the right book, how do I pass on the information that was in it?
> Do I even try?
> If I’m playing by the rules of realism they didn’t find anything, so it’s not wrong that they’re going to face Nyarly without realizing he’s not a suave businessman…right?
> Why does everyone look so grumpy?
In Delta Green, there is nothing to worry about. If there’s a clue to be found, it’s assigned a target number, like “HUMINT 50%.” Any character whose HUMINT skill is >= 50% receives the information. Some clues even have different tiers, where a higher skill level reveals information hidden to those with a lower skill level. This makes for some interesting replayability, as all parties might not be able to learn the same things along the way. I truly didn’t realize just how much time I spent worrying about delivering clues until I didn’t have to.
This mechanic also has the side-effect of allowing the Keeper to introduce more clues. Since finding clues is much less of a challenge for the PCs than in CoC, the focus shifts from getting the clues to the PCs to providing a deep and broad selection of clues for the PCs to draw rich conclusions from. As an example, in our second playtest, the players really ran with a collection of red herrings found near the climax of the story, crafting some very thrilling theories about how everything was connected (even though it wasn’t). It was the kind of roleplaying everyone thinks about when they think about Lovecraftian adventure games, where the length of a session isn’t determined by the number of pages or rolls between the start and finish of the PDF, but rather by the depth of the story it tells, and that story’s place in the wider canon of the Delta Green setting.
A Note Regarding Willpower, Bonds, Sanity Threats, Motivations, Projection, and Probably At Least Fifty Other Things That Aren’t Mentioned In the Quickstart Rules
Delta Green contains an intricate resource management mechanic that is designed to reproduce the long-term effects of the kind of work players will be undertaking on their character’s relationships, demeanor, fears, and beliefs. Since we did not play a full campaign with interludes for the investigators to utilize this mechanic, I am unable to comment on how well it functions in practice. The system appears very well designed, and seems finely tuned to accent the “accelerating horror” theme of the setting and overall “Investigative Horror” genre. Early on, characters have answers- people to turn to and points to spend to mitigate the damage to their minds. As they take advantage of these resources, their availability shrinks, causing more turmoil and external pressure. If utilized properly, these mechanics have the potential to give rise to truly legendary tales of broken men driven mad by fixing their gaze upon the void. I cannot wait to see what other improvements exist within the full text.
Closing Remarks
At the beginning of the second playtest, I made a bad judgement call and decided to use a 3d12 roll against a target number to find a clue hidden among some papers, in an attempt to simulate a frantic search through random boxes. After describing the fifth or sixth box of papers with themes inspired by stuff on my desk, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. One should not trifle with that which one does not understand.
That’s the thing. Delta Green is hard to understand right off the bat from a “play feel” perspective. It feels surprisingly light to run, but unlike many lightweight games, it has an extensive, tuned ruleset to fall back on if you need to. I never felt restricted by the rules, but I also didn’t ever feel like I was in a place where there wasn’t an official rule that probably would make more sense than what I could come up with on the fly. My experiment with the search showed me that Delta Green isn’t just another dice game- it’s a game that uses dice (and every other mechanic I encountered) as tools to build a great story. When the dice get in the way, you’re probably doing it wrong.
The overall impression I got from the system was that every change was made by people who understood how the game worked at a deep level. If the authors put as much effort into the lore of Delta Green as they did into the system they built to help us explore it (something of which I have no doubt), then we are all in for quite a treat as we explore the myriad sourcebooks and scenarios that have been funded by the Kickstarter so far.
Everything else said and done, here’s the bottom line:
There are plenty of games out there that run like clockwork, but Delta Green is the first one I’ve come across that runs with the quality, precision, and engineering of a Rolex.
Final Verdict:
13/13: So good we bought six copies for our store, which doesn’t even exist yet. You should probably do that too.
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22 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in Podcast
Brad and Kyle take a crack at surviving Delta Green’s quickstart scenario “Last Things Last.”
(Keeper’s Note: we needed to split up the rolls for the papers in Clyde’s office because the players wanted, so I decided to make it a 3d6 roll against a target number of 26. It was a terrible idea, and took us forever to resolve. Feel free to skip that bit.)
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17 Saturday Oct 2015
Posted in Podcast
In this session, Aaron and special guest Adam tackle the Delta Green quickstart scenario “Last Things Last.”
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08 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in Podcast
Dave, Slade, Geoff, and Aaron speak with Shane Ivey about Arc Dream’s upcoming relaunch of the Delta Green Roleplaying Game.
We was also so kind as to send us the Quickstart rules and scenario for Delta Green, so stay tuned for a very special Delta Green episode of Variable Vivisection, followed by a review!
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On the Remembered Slopes 