N@tO's Need to Know Part 2, Onboarding d20 Fantasy players to Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green

Dire d20 - Mythica DarkIron

One of the questions I see from time to time on the subreddit for Call of Cthulhu and the general roleplaying board, is how can you transition a group from playing a fantasy d20 game like Dungeons and Dragons to a horror/mystery/investigation game like Call of Cthulhu (CoC) or Delta Green (DG)?

Since this has also come up on the Night at the Opera discord, I decided to ask several regular members of the Delta Green community on how to untangle this Gordian knot. They provided the following advice.

The Mechanical Differences

Delta Green was originally an offshoot of Call of Cthulhu, which in turn was based on the Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system.  Explain to your players that this (Delta Green or Call of Cthulhu) is a 1d100 system, where your skills are each a percent value. Player Statistics reflect six core abilities: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma. For normal humans (what players will be playing as), average Statistics fall within the range of 9 to 12. In the case where a player needs to make a test for a Statistic, say for example a Strength test to break a door open, multiply the Statistic score times 5 (in the example, STR x5) to get a numerical value the player must roll under on percentile dice in order to succeed.

In addition to Statistics, there are four Derived Attributes: Hit Points, Willpower Points, Sanity Points, and the Breaking Point.  As implied, these Derived Attributes are dependent on the Statistics of the character.  Hit Points are representation of a character’s physical integrity, a concept all roleplayers already understand. Willpower Points are a mix of a character’s ability to resist mental overexertion and essentially their magic points. 

Sanity Points are different from Willpower Points. Since your players are experienced with d20 fantasy, they may be familiar with the concept of taking psychic damage.  Sanity damage is like psychic damage in D&D, except in CoC/DG a player’s Sanity value ranges from 0 to 99 and it is tracked with its own “health bar”, independent of Hit Points. 

The Unnatural skill, also called the Cthulhu Mythos skill in CoC, acts as a malus to character’s maximum Sanity. The idea is the more a character understands about the true nature of the cosmos (reflected by an increase in Unnatural/Cthulhu Mythos skill), the less maximum Sanity they can have.

A Breaking Point is related to Sanity Points, in that when a character’s Sanity Points reaches the Breaking Point, they gain a mental disorder.  The Breaking Point is then recalculated at that time, to generate a new Breaking Point of a smaller Sanity number.

Rust Cohle, HBO True Detective Season 1

In Delta Green, Bonds are relationships that the character actually cares about and that anchor them into normal human society. Mechanically, Bonds serve as ablative Sanity armor and will mitigate the Sanity damage that players take. They serve as buffers against reaching a Breaking Point.

However, anytime a player burns Bond points to mitigate Sanity damage, they are literally injuring a personal relationship with someone else (usually an NPC) later to save their own mental health now and carry on being rational in order to conclude some mission.

In Delta Green your characters are all doomed, and the slow degradation of their humanity is reflected by their worsening Sanity and Bond scores.

Here are some examples to consider when explaining what Bonds and Sanity damage are to a new group of players:

1. Your character has a shitty and difficult job. They just had a truly unspeakable and awful day. Do they really want to hang out with their family, or ignore their responsibilities and just curl up and go to sleep? 

2. Your character is confronted with some aggressively difficult parenting decisions. But what if they just did not bother? 

3. In True Detective Season 1, Rust and Marty eventually lose all family and friends and then live on their own as they progress through the story. Mechanically this is simulated by the DG bonds system. Bonds give this a simulated number to determine where you are with whom relationship wise. Story wise, characters just get worn down by this job.

4. What does burn out look like to you? 

The Tone: Mystery, Horror, and Investigation

Tone is setting.  Most d20 fantasy settings encourage superheroic characters and story arcs where characters continually improve. 

The mystery, horror and investigation tone of Delta Green is radically different. In Delta Green all the characters are doomed by the narrative. In other games your characters are going to get better over time. In DG they degrade as they get more experienced.

When coming from a heroic fantasy game, change your player’s expectations as to what they should experience in play.  In a Delta Green game player characters will not always win, and if they do not die, they may get worse physically or mentally.

Characters are likely to die based on the design of some of the core mechanics. Combat in DG is not only lethal, but fast and lethal. At any given turn there is a chance that some other character can kill you.  Let us put some numbers on that subject so that you will have an example to point out to players.  The average hit points for a human character range from 10 to 12. A medium pistol that most Law Enforcement Agents carry (and that are easy to acquire in the US for most cultists) does 1d10 damage.  If you are unlucky, one shot from that pistol can kill your character outright.  Also keep in mind that a well-aimed car in Delta Green will absolutely erase your character from existence.

“Treasure” from AD&D Player’s Handbook by David A. Trampier

Having discussed the lethality of the setting, a word about the murderhobo mentality that is sometimes observed among players of d20 fantasy games.  I will define murderhobo behavior as a player attempting to use combat, violence or intimidation on every situation or NPC they are presented with to advance the plot. This activity breaks believability in modern games and damages the tone of mystery, horror, and investigation games.

To deal with this problem, the Night at the Opera hivemind suggested the following points:

1. Remind the player that Delta Green is set in the present day. The setting is the real world and there are real world consequences to actions. As a corollary, if the player shoots an NPC in public, remind them that everyone has a phone. 

2. Most importantly, gently remind the player that the purpose of the game is for the group to have fun, and actions taken by all players (and the Game Master is a player too!) should enhance the fun of the group.  Do not take actions to have fun at expense of other people.

Another consideration about the tone is that players in a horror game should be ready to be vulnerable. Since Delta Green characters are at risk of severe physical and psychological harm, the players need to be open to experiencing and roleplaying those situations and communicate their limits with their fellow players and the Game Master.

One last piece of advice was, since Delta Green usually has elements of mystery and investigation in the tone, players should take notes to keep track of information.  A good idea is to share a Google Doc of notes with all the other players. Whomever is the least-active in the current scene should write down the clues found.

We hope these suggestions help Game Masters smoothly introduce new players to Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu, and help everyone at the table have more fun.

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the following people from the Night at the Opera discord for ideas and review of this post: Bird Bailey, Sammy J, Fee Fi Fo Fin, Frahnk, and magnificentophat.

Update: 6/14/25

Session Zero

5th Edition Dungeon Master's Screen by Hydro74, image by AugusteBlanqui

A Session Zero is a precursor session for a roleplaying group where ground rules are discussed and the GM introduces the tone and objectives of the game or campaign. Generally, this is the session that characters are made with whatever prerequisites are required for the initial adventures.  For example, you might need a healer in the party if you are running a dungeon crawl, or a detective type character if you are running a police procedural investigation.

The Session Zero is not a new concept. As I recall, I was first exposed to the term when I was reading the Dresden Files Fate game around 2010, and some internet research on rpg.net suggests the term was in use as early as 2003.  Back in the AD&D era, an informal version of Session Zero was just called a conversation with the DM. 

In either case, communication of player and GM expectations is the point of the matter. 

In a Delta Green game, a Session Zero is the perfect opportunity to discuss the tone and Game Master expectations with players. Since this is likely their first time with a new system, the GM can introduce the idea of horror and mystery in a game, and what the GM expects of the players; whether it be certain skills needed to not fail at the mechanics of the adventure, or character behavior during the investigation.  This meeting should start everyone on board with a clean slate, with the understanding that they will be playing something different than d20 Fantasy. 

Recommended Beginning Scenarios, Delta Green

Since this blogpost is focused on players and Game Masters new to Delta Green, here are some suggestions for free adventures that are focused on introducing the game to a new group.  The question of “what beginner adventures are right for my group” comes up quite often on the Night at the Opera discord, and everyone has their favorites; these are just some of mine. I will explain the utility of each adventure as I see it after they are introduced. As such some adventure spoilers will be discussed to players, please avert your eyes from this section. 

First and most venerable, I must start by introducing the official scenario Last Things Last.  Much has been written about this adventure around the internet, so I will just say that it is short, introduces investigative work at the beginning in one contained location, gives the players room to breathe and roleplay, and usually introduces combat at the end. Last Things Last is in the free starter rulebook Delta Green: Need to Know.

The Signal Smugglers by mellonbread. A perennial favorite, this scenario does the brilliant thing of having the players smash cut to roleplay police (who are not their characters) outside of an apartment. Combat is introduced and chaos ensues. However, since this combat is an introductory scene not related to the players’ actual characters, the GM can introduce the fast and lethal combat of Delta Green without consequences for the player characters. After the initial sequence, an investigation is introduced with antagonists that can actually be negotiated with.  

Enemy of the Tribes by David Tormsen.  This was the first adventure I played in, in my current DG campaign.  I have written a partial after-action report about the experience here. The adventure starts out with a crime scene and then blossoms out to a more general investigation and tracking down of other potential victims.  The monstrous antagonists can be used as combat or eerie encounters at any point during the investigation, and likely make an appearance during the finale.  Some work is required to create combat encounters appropriate for your party of players.

The Button by Will Roy. This adventure is primarily a roleplaying event with some investigation around an enigma that is like intellectual quicksand.  It is a great way to introduce the Mythos as not just unspeakable alien gods and rabid cultists.  There is an option to include a Mythos gribbly at the end if the Game Master desires. 

The Midnight Sun by Will Roy.  This adventure was my first reintroduction to Delta Green after a years long hiatus. It works really well with two players with complementary skill sets. Though in the Delta Green world, this is actually an M-EPIC scenario. M-EPIC is the Canadian mirror to the US Delta Green anti-Unnatural program. For more details about M-EPIC check the Delta Green Handler’s Guide, specifically page 271. 

To make this a Delta Green beginning scenario, simply change the location from the Yukon to somewhere in Alaska.  A Game Master may also need to change the origin of the NPC McBee from an “American” to someone who simply is not familiar with the freezing wilderness far from civilization.  The Mythos gribbly presents an interesting roleplaying experience, sort of similar to the end of Last Things Last (above).   I wrote up a semi-novelized after-action report of my experience with The Midnight Sun,here.  

Take the A-Train by Bird Baliey. A great introductory scenario that can be dropped into a campaign to interrupt a chase scene (the player characters need to take the subway) or played by itself.  Think of this game as a stage play.  It is in one location with a fixed number of characters and a common problem. Great opportunity for roleplaying under increasing tension.

The (Un)Natural Man by Bird Baliey.  A domestic disturbance that leans heavily on investigation, roleplaying and interpersonal skills to deal with adversarial NPCs.  The finale may involve conflict with a Mythos gribbly or may be very dark. If the Game Master has a streak of dark humor, this is the scenario to play to exercise that inclination.  

Five Alarm Firefight by Bird Baliey. A Delta Green adventure designed to introduce new players to the nuances, dangers, and mechanics of combat as well as rules like exhaustion. Puts the players into civilian law enforcement or rescue roles with no prior knowledge of the occult needed. They will get plenty of that if they survive. This scenario is most analogous to a dungeon crawl because the player characters will investigate an apartment building room by room with investigative skills to attempt to find clues, and interpersonal skills to deal with NPCs. Ultimately both tactics will be fruitful for unraveling the mystery.

Having said that, the structure of the adventure is not a linear railroad. There are multiple instances where there are alternate routes to take, even if they all end in a central fixed climactic scene. The danger from humans with firearms will be on display.  Pregenerated characters are included for the adventure.

My understanding is that Five Alarm Firefight will be updated soon, so check the link on occasion!

Recommended Beginning Scenarios, Call of Cthulhu

I was originally the always-GM for my Call of Cthulhu group in the late 90s. I have not kept up with the plethora of adventures for the system, but I do remember the classic adventure The Haunting. And I remember it fondly because one of my investigator players never made it up the basement stairs under his own power. Thanks to a Series of Unfortunate Events (just read The Haunting, seriously), his companion had to drag his physically knocked out ass upstairs twice to save his life.  Good times were had by all. 

The Haunting provides a series of floating encounters that can be plugged into the adventure at the GM’s discretion.  It is a classic for a reason and many others have opined far better than myself all over the internet. 

The Author by MrNightmares. I would be remiss if I did not shill my own Call of Cthulhu adventure.  Made for one or two players at maximum, the adventure features a mysterious disappearance and a timeline of events that ratchets up the tension as things get worse until there is a potentially fatal endgame if the players do not put the clues together in time. The weakness in this adventure is that it can hinge on the players finding and reciting a certain incantation to get the antagonist’s attention, so Game Masters may need to work on that.   Features one antagonist that may not be all that terrifying to confront depending on how the players proceed.  Could link this adventure into further adventures against a Cthulhu cult. 

Afterword

Want more adventure recommendations or just more advice on how to start playing Delta Green? Check out Sammy J’s Beginner’s Guide here.  It is worth your time.

Dark Sun Part 1: Introduction, Resources, Music and OSR adaptation

 

Dark Sun is a harsh desert world where traditional fantasy races have adapted to the wasteland in exotic new ways, and civilization is found in teeming city-states in the grip of nigh unrivaled tyrant Sorcerer-Kings who dominate their population with Mind as well as forbidden Magic.  It is a mix of Dune, Mad Max, Gladiator, Tolkien by way of Conan, and the ancient historical world (think Rome, Greece, etc.) all weaved together and honed into a fine point by the visionary artwork of Brom.

I first saw the AD&D Dark Sun Boxed Set cover when I was a young one and I never got over the siren song of the savage tablelands of Athas. 

When D&D 4th edition rolled around, Dark Sun was revisited as the Dark Sun Campaign Setting: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement.  On free RPG Day in 2010, the adventure book Bloodsand Arena was released, and this book had the very good idea of making the uniqueness of Dark Sun front and center by summarizing the Eight Characteristics of Athas in single sentences, which I will reiterate below.  

Eight Characteristics of Athas

1. The World Is a Desert

2. The World Is Savage

3. Metal Is Scarce

4. Arcane Magic Defiles the World

5. Sorcerer-Kings Rules the City-States

6. The Gods Are Silent

7. Fierce Monsters Roam the World

8. Familiar Races Aren’t What You Expect 

Each of these eight characteristics were further explored in about three paragraphs each, but this list serves as a quick and dirty primer for what players can expect about the Dark Sun world. 

What I am doing with Dark Sun, is adapting the setting and its mechanics to an OSR ruleset that is more lightweight than most systems. I am familiar with AD&D, as I started with those rules when I was first introduced to Dungeons and Dragons in the 90s.  I think the AD&D rules are overly fiddly in general, so I am not using that system to run Dark Sun.  

I enjoy the OSR heartbreaker Begone, FOE! written by mellonbread and magnificentophat so I am working on adapting Dark Sun to that system, because it is a streamlined short system of approximately 20 pages. The most current version of Begone, FOE! is Revision 15. 

For me this is a long-term project that I work on in the background occasionally. I am documenting this on the blog to motivate myself and archive material that hopefully someone else may find useful.

 

While wrestling with translating mechanics and rules from one system to another, I find it is easy for myself to sort of lose sight of the overall vison of Dark Sun that I want to portray to the players.  To remedy this, I have written up something I called “Bits and Pieces,” which are sensory focused descriptions that I want to put into my games.  I may turn these descriptions into characters, setpieces or experiences.  Each of these description fragments are intended to be independent of each other.  

Bits and Pieces

1. A female dancer on a stone table in a tavern. A psionic tattoo of a sandworm on her chest and stomach undulates in electric blue as she spins with a skirt made of alternating vivid red and green elbow-length feathers.

2. A contraband merchant beckons you into a shadowed alley. Suddenly a bandanna wearing man puts a blowgun to his lips and your world explodes into twinkling purple cloying dust…then the darkness of slumber.

3. A craftsman baking thin, brittle clay tablets that crawl with iridescent yellow letters, written by a psionic scribe. 

4. A leathery-skinned mercenary, body crisscrossed with scars, stands calf deep in a warm sand dune, the grit of fine glittering sand collecting at the corner of his eyes and the taste can never be fully expelled from his mouth. 

5. That relief you feel when you find a lone cactus in the desert with swollen fist sized cactus fruit. Careful peeling of the spine covered green skin with the jagged shard of a femur, unwraps a densely packed moist dark purple fruit dotted with seeds worth masticating for their gummy liquid.

6. The heady syrup of broy, fermented kank nectar, sharp with the taste of potent cinnamon and ginger clings to your lips as it coats your throat.

7. Abrasive sand against sweat soaked leather, stinking with salt. Your pulse pounding so hard it causes tremors in your wrists as you grip a brittle bleached-white femur. The overwhelming tidal wave of sound rising from the coliseum crowd as they roar for blood.  The brash clangor of bronze horns as they announce your name, gladiator.

8. A riot of crimson- and bone-colored petals rain down from above as flutists pipe delicate melodies and drummers resonate in your skull in time with the rhythm.  The blazing sun is mercifully blotted out for a moment, a moment that turns to trembling terror as something colossal with a cloying animal musk that reclines on a palanquin jingling with iron chains comes to rest in the parade. An ancient unspeakable malice sweeps over you, prickling at the back of your mind, as you prostrate yourself, lips pressed against the earth and dirt ground into your teeth.

Switching gears, I also want to present some excellent free resources I found on the Dark Sun subreddit, r/DarkSun, and elsewhere around the internet.   

Dark Sun Resources

1. Dark Sun OSE GM Guide and Player’s Handbook by Lixu

2. Dark Sun 5th edition by Marcus Stout

3. Dark Sun Tables and Alchemy Book by u/tutt_88

If you are interested in Dark Sun at all, or want a framework for filling out encounters/details/tables for your own sandbox game or game world, I highly recommend taking a look at the Dark Sun Tables document.

I am a little surprised something this extensive and quality was released for free.  For example, in the Location Exploration Finds of Athas d100 table, it has a strong variety of desert/wasteland terrain encounter locations that suggest plots and are great hooks for hex/point crawling.  There is even a reference to the Ozymandias poem by Shelly.

“Eroded Sorcerer-King Statue - A toppled statue, its face worn away, 50 cp in bronze fragments.”

If you just need Goals, Secrets, Virtues, Vices, or Moods for your NPCs even in a normal (Tolkien-esque) fantasy setting, this document has you covered. Again, with 1d100 tables for each entry.

The Entrees and Food Items Sold in Athas and the Crafting Materials of Athas tables really let the themes and flavor of Dark Sun enter your campaign on a personal level.

Also the Dark Sun Tables pdf would work very well with the Sand Marches by Jesse Heining, below.

The whole thing is really cool.

4. Dark Sun Sand Marches by Jesse Heinig

A free West Marches style campaign setting for Dark Sun that is a whopping 378 pages, The Sand Marches has been several years in development and even contains rules for high level Dark Sun play. Really worth your time to read.

5. Athas.org 

The clearing house for almost all the Dark Sun information you want. Established since 2000, Athas.org hosts a number of articles, a podcast and more free products than you can shake a stick at.

6.  Dark Sun for the Mythras system

Battle Brothers Blazing Deserts art

Here are a handful of links to music on youtube that I find inspirational for writing or thinking about Dark Sun subjects. 

Some of these are from the soundtrack of the video game Battle Brothers’s expansion Blazing Deserts, which are composed by the group Breakdown Epiphanies.

If you have any suggestions to add to this list, please let me know in the comments below.

Dark Sun Soundscape Inspiration

1. Hans Zimmer: Dune Part Two Theme [Extended by Gilles Nuytens]

2. Jo Blankenburg - Enigma

3. Breakdown Epiphanies - Battle Brothers OST - 37 - Snake Mountain

4. Breakdown Epiphanies - Battle Brothers OST - 35 - Al-Anwar's Pride

5. Breakdown Epiphanies - Battle Brothers OST - 36 - The Gilder's Eye

 

Four Mini Book Reviews of Table Top RPGs

 I've found a lot of sales on DriveThruRPG lately, including a couple Deals of the Day, and here is what I have been reading as a result of those tantalizing discounts. 

The Last Caravan

I've purchased and have been reading the Forged in the Dark rpg The Last Caravan. The game is, at base, an Oregon Trail-like game where survivors of an Alien invasion travel West from the East coast (in North America) to avoid increasing winter weather and alien activity to find a sanctuary on the West Coast.

I like it. I like it lots. Currently I have read more than 83 pages out of 212, which is the entirety of the main mechanics and descriptions of the character options and your vehicle rules.  I have specifically avoided the chapter on Aliens to avoid spoilers as I hope to play it eventually.

The "character classes" are called Travelers or Imprints, and while 6 of them share "normal" Blades in the Dark mechanics, two of them, the Innocent and the Good Boi (doggie), are variations upon the "normal" character mechanics theme and thus pretty interesting.   The Innocent is sort of an untested "pre-survivor" who can be the Hero of the group, but has a mechanic that indicates their growth/innocent's nature wearing off as they become a full-fledged survivor.  The Good Boi is a dog, but they have a series of limitations AND unique skills for making them part of the group. Yes, you can go fetch and get cuddles.

I do also like the vehicle rules and detailed pros and cons for making your vehicle unique ... but frankly I want more tables.  More tables for equipment, more detailed rules for combat with maybe Harm types and Armor types (like Fire or resist Fire weapons), and certainly more interesting possible mechanical failures for vehicle cons and more pros to make your vehicle more comfortable/badass/interesting.

The Game Master section (Part Three, The Atlas), has a lot of very specific information about the world and the Regions the players will be traveling through, but I have avoided the specifics of the Regions, because I intend to play the game.

Still, I have read the generic guide to what each Region (1-6) should do narratively on pages 150-151.  These pages suggest details like “Region one should be a tutorial that focuses on the characters and their initial personal problems” and “Introduce at least one Major Faction in Region two.”

The Last Caravan was originally intended to be a video game design document, so there is a great deal of detail for the “canon” Regions and the multiple paths through North America. However, I think that the game could also function well with random generation in each of the six Regions the Last Caravan must traverse.  For example, Region one could have a random table where all the character’s personal problems are delineated, and another random table with small encounters that describe the major themes in the book like introducing alien wildlife, trying to survive the increasing cold, dodgy scavengers, and subjects like that. One could roll on both tables and the Game Master could combine a highlighted personal problem with an encounter for Region one for one game session. 

This idea is a departure from Blades in the Dark and the book specifically, but after reading the book one gets inspired to iterate and build on the framework that The Last Caravan provides.    

So, I think The Last Caravan is good and sets up a nice survival, cozy game but you may require some modification to get more details that suit your table.  The thing is, that will be no trouble since the book generates inspiration in spades.

Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 2

I bought Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 2 a couple of days ago as it was the Deal of the Day on DriveThruRPG for $10. It is normally $25 for this 532-page tome of a West Marches style sandbox location and series of dungeons in the frozen north.  I am 36 pages into it and quite frankly very impressed by the amount of detail and guide to how to run the campaign as the whole thing is designed to be run in OSR, or more specifically the “Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy tabletop role-playing game by Necrotic Gnome.”

You can adapt it easily for any D&D-like you want, but it is easiest for OSR.

So, what do you get in Volume 2? You get an initial introduction to a hidden dwarven underworld, a full hexcrawl description of said gloomy mystic underworld, one urban investigation, and five independent dungeon crawls linked to the underworld. The adventures range from level 5 through 12.  There is a Gods of the Forbidden North: Volume 1 which contains the races and worldbuilding of the setting as well as initial adventures from levels 1 through 5.

This book is really fantastic and I will now happily pay $25 for Volume 1 because I am so impressed by it. Volume 2 is worth the money ($25) if you want a hexcrawl with several dungeons.

Specifically, one of the sections I have read deals with a warm home base tavern called “The Beating” with endearing characters and three fully fleshed out unique games of chance that can be played in the tavern, along with a rumor table and regular visitors all with plot hooks.

The Shrike

The Shrike is a brilliantly creative OSR point crawl in a distinctly unique fragment of Hell. The story is, there is a Nameless God impaled through their undying heart on a mountain of iron called The Shrike.  Divine blood, imbued with the ability to generate life from inanimate objects, flows down the spire to its deepest depths in the tempestuous ocean waters below.   Jailor-Devils, Sinners, and creatures animated by the divine blood called Partials, all occupy The Shrike up and down its length; and since food is scarce, weave plots to feed on each other. Yes, cannibalism is a major theme of this sliver of Hell, so content warning there.

The Shrike is a 46 location pointcrawl with 3 keyed dungeons and a procedurally generated depth-crawl.  In addition, there are plenty of interesting tables to use to populate a setting with infernal beings in this 169-page book. 

Creativity is on display in The Shrike. For example, all Devils are shapeshifters, except for the unique horned mask they wear, which serves as their identity.  These masks hold magic powers. Kill one and take it for yourself. Or trade it! For Hell is Capitalism, and the Infernal Economy is detailed with creativity.  You may find gold pieces, grave goods given to the dead by sorrowful mourners; and Umbra, which are the shadows of gold coins destroyed in life. Acquire black bladed knives called Athames which rise in value if they are used to slay a distinguished Devil, or even Black Ledgers of infernal debts and the Scarlet Scales of Mammon himself.

The languages used in Hell even reflect the cultures on The Shrike and have mechanical implications.  Mortals that even attempt to speak Old Infernal find the words blister their mouths as if their tongue has tasted hellfire. Abysmal, the native tongue of The Abyss of Hell, is a slurping, syrupy speech and carries underwater to communicate vast distances. Want to piss of a Devil? Speak in Celestial; the language of the Gods, and those animated by Divine blood. The very utterance of this speech sounds likes nails upon a chalkboard to Devils and drives them into frothing rage.  I have rarely seen a rpg book so cohesive in its tone with every written detail as The Shrike.

The Shrike also has an extensive inspiration and further reading list on page 166. Sure, everyone recognizes Dante’s The Divine Comedy and some of the references to it the author makes; but there are also Sinners that become Husks al la Dark Souls, a reference to China Mieville’s The City & The City in The Great Snubbing between the Gold and Silver Courts of Devils, and my personal favorite reference of Sinner’s Soulstones taken from Wayne Barlowe’s Barlowe's Inferno which is illustrated below.  It has been said, creativity stands on the shoulders of giants, and The Shrike not only wears its inspirations on its sleeve, it weaves them into a truly new and awesome vista of infernal fantasy. 

The Examination from Barlowe's Inferno by Wayne Barlowe

This is a grotesquerie tour-de-force of a very singular vision of Hell and I am glad I bought it.

The Shrike is part of the Bundle of Holding for the OSE Treasures 2 where you get SHRIKE, WYVERN SONGS, TOWER SILVERAXE, MANTICORE, and more for $17.95.  As of the time of this writing, there are only about four more days for this deal.  

The Book of Oblivion (Wraith 20^th Anniversary Edition)

Wraith: the Oblivion is a Storyteller game from the old White Wolf line in which players are one of the Restless Dead; a Wraith with unfinished business that compels them to continue to exist in the Underworld.  The Book of Oblivion is a sourcebook for Wraith, the 20th Anniversary Edition, and frankly I think they should have called this 130-page book, Wraith: the Expansion.

I am a long-term old World of Darkness player who started in the 1990s and Wraith was one of the first core books I bought. Given that, and my love for the macabre and wildly creative world painted in funeral greys and blacks of Wraith, I will do my best to explain the thematic lexicon of the Underworld to a wide audience.

The Book of Oblivion contains a hodgepodge of topics that expand on many of the core book subjects, including: four additional Dark Kingdoms (Wraith civilizations), Shadows (internal Wraith antagonists), Spectres (external Wraith antagonists), Soulforging (making useful stuff in the Deadlands), how Wraiths react to mass tragedies in the Skinlands (real world), more details about the Labyrinth (basically Wraith Hell where the Spectres and worse live) and more.  

But what if I don’t play Wraith? How is The Book of Oblivion useful?

Although The Book of Oblivion’s utility is primarily for Wraith specifically and the World of Darkness in general, the Shadows and Spectres section are great inspiration for undead antagonists or the psychological profiles of evil bad guys who are more than just cartoon characters. In Wraith, the Shadow is the self-destructive, Oblivion-focused and just plain “evil” mirror of the heroic ghost character (Wraith).  Given that, there are 10 distinct additional Shadow archetypes that describe the psychology and motivations of truly self-destructive personalities that could be useful for GMs of say a more traditional fantasy d20 game. What ideas on how competent shock troops of bad guys who serve an existential evil would function? Go to the Spectre chapter, which has nasty tricks described in detail that Spectres use as they go about their dark work.  Want new unique evil-derived magical powers? The Dark Arcanoi chapter is for you. 

The Dark Kingdoms section is more for World of Darkness players and those interested in the dark mirror of different culture’s afterlives. These chapters could also be used as inspiration for funereal otherworlds or pocket dimensions in a fantasy game too however. On display are the Wraith-coded fantasy afterlife areas for Africa, India, North America, South America and Haiti.

Soulforging is a small section describing how Wraiths make practical objects in the Underworld; the Labyrinth section introduces new ideas for how the Game Master can scare their players, even if they are playing dead people. There is a nice but small section on using body horror and unexpected settings for Wraith Hell that might be useful for other horror systems. 

The section on The Tempest (terrifying Wraith weather essentially) and how Wraiths react to mass tragedies in the mortal world are mostly of use to Wraith Game Masters who want to know how the Dead preposition themselves to interfere with the doom of a population or reap souls that will inevitably come across to the land of the dead once the mass casualty event hits.

In conclusion, The Book of Oblivion is mostly for Wraith and World of Darkness Game Masters, and occasionally useful for fantasy Dungeon Masters with a macabre streak.  Because of the vast diversity of topics, the book feels jumbled.  Compare this to The Shrike which has a very singular and cohesive view of a fragment of Hell, and thus that book feels more complete and focused.

Delta Green and the 1970s Part 2: Analysis of the Testimony of James Jesus Angleton (1975) and Delta Green Ideas

Testimony Analysis

So what have we learned? 

According to page 11 of the testimony (which I did not quote last blog post) something called the “Colorado Case”, referred to by Angleton, resulted in the “rupture” in the relationship between the CIA and the FBI, to the point where the CIA could no longer rely on a supply of domestic intelligence from the FBI.  It is my understanding that Mr. Hoover on behalf of the White House (Nixon) “in May of 1970 terminated the official liaison” (page 10).  I believe the Mr. Hoover referred to on page 10 is one J. Edgar Hoover. 

Pages 13, 20, and 21-22 paint a picture of a great deal of domestic unrest in the summer of 1970.  Also, individuals in counterintelligence, at least at the CIA, that suspected foreign involvement in domestic unrest appeared unable to verify these potential domestic-foreign connections because they were working with limited intelligence or just fully in the dark thanks to the rift with the FBI. I suspect this may be an overexaggeration of the situation by Angleton, since we are dealing with a spy and a bureaucrat talking, but I digress.

Excerpts from pages 26-27 describe the military’s actions to gather intelligence, specifically from citizens.  Mr. Johnson (Loch Johnson, special assistant to the chair of the Senate Select Committee House Subcommittee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1976) says specifically, “But isn’t it true that during this period the military was under sever criticism for earlier civilian surveillance programs?” and “To some degree the military was under public criticism for being in the domestic intelligence gathering field.”

On pages 33 and 34 the NSA is discussed, specifically who or what organizations could be on an NSA watch list in the early 1970s. Mr Angleton’s comment, “Every participant [intelligence agency] is a consumer of NSA product [intelligence]. And therefore they all have a an equal interest, they all had a departmental interest in enhancing the coverage by NSA,” suggests to me that thanks to the rift between the FBI and CIA, the CIA was relying more on the NSA and it’s sources for intelligence, possibly to cover the gaps that the loss of the FBI’s liaison caused.

The Delta Green Connection

So in the summer of 1970 and before, the alphabet agencies were scrambling to regain their domestic surveillance capabilities after the White House blinded them (for good reason)

In the Delta Green universe, this is very interesting. Most Mythos cults in the US (ghouls, Deep Ones, etc..) operate domestic criminal organizations of one shade or another.  Removing the FBI from domestic surveillance cripples counterintelligence.

Angleton (page 21) “And more important, -- and I think this is axiomatic -- that counter intelligence is about only as good as the relations between the FBI and the CIA are.”

One can assume that Delta Green assets in 1970 in the CIA and FBI are working with one hand behind their back, figuratively. Unless of course, DG agents take circumspect action to illegally liaise with their counterparts in other intelligence agencies. Or simply carry out illegal domestic surveillance themselves and hope they do not get caught. Likely their FBI/CIA case officer could not cover for those actions given the pressure Hoover was under from the White House.

The tighter the noose around Delta Green’s operational neck, the freer cults are to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves. 

Delta Green USA Operational History (1968 - 1975)

What are Delta Green and US Mythos antagonists up to in the years prior to and including 1975? I am going to highlight some of the major points in the Delta Green Handlers Guide (2023) from pages 64 through 68.

·         22 APR 1968: MAJESTIC recruits CIA officer Justin Kroft, its future director.

·         19 JAN 1969: In Operation LOOKING GLASS, Delta Green airdrops 68 men into southeast Colombia. Only the commander, Maj. Walter J. Greyman, escapes a cult of genital-sacrificing Shub-Niggurath worshippers.

·         19 JAN 1969: Dr. Abner Ringwood, cryptographic studies chief at the NSA, is recruited by MAJESTIC to break the still indecipherable alien signals intercepted by Project AQUARIUS 15 years earlier.  Project AQUARIUS is MAJESTIC’s UFO investigations carried out by the NSA which was initiated on 18 DEC 1952.

·         30 OCT 1969: Club Apocalypse opens in New York City.

·         23 NOV 1969, Operation OBSIDIAN: The death of 300 Marines in a temple complex behind the Cambodian border, potentially could expose Delta Green operations to the world.

·         24 JUL 1970: the Delta Green classification was officially deactivated.

·         25 DEC 1971, Operation BINGO: the disbanded Delta Green used US air strikes to hit every known Tcho-Tcho village and religious site. 

·         30 NOV 1972: “The Bucket”, the spacecraft recovered at Roswell, is briefly reactivated at Groom Lake by Project REDLIGHT. It explodes, killing four MAJESTIC personnel. Justin Kroft’s opposition to Project REDLIGHT earns him a MAJESTIC steering committee position not long after.

·         29 JUL 1975: Future MAJESTIC steering committee member, Gavin Ross is recruited from the CIA as a member of MAJESTIC’s enforcement arm, NRO DELTA.

Potential Adventure 1: Over the Moon or Mi-Go vs Moon-beast 

 Attempting to synthesize the previous information into a whole that I could work with as a scenario, I had the following ideas:

MAJESTIC’s Project AQUARIUS functionally became relevant in 1953 when it detected “odd signal noise originating from deep space.”  On July 14, 1954, “MAJESTIC’s Project AQUARIUS briefs President Eisenhower on the odd signals it has detected, having determined that they are indecipherable fragments of intelligent and systematic communications originating from the moon and aimed at sites on the Earth and in high orbit. Eisenhower increases MAJESTIC’s budget, allowing a complete reorganization,” (Handler’s Guide, page 56).

Let us fast forwards in time for a moment and focus on the ideas of the intelligent signals originating from the moon and these signals being aimed at sites on Earth.  We know in March 23, 1978 that “NSA’s Project AQUARIUS makes contact with the Greys through deep-space monitoring surveillance antennas, thanks to cryptographer Dr. Abner Ringwood,” (Handler’s Guide, page 68).  We also know that Mi-Go use the Greys as their puppets and the Mi-Go have bases on the moon as well as Yuggoth (Pluto).  Thus, let us assume that the Mi-Go are sending Earth these intelligent signals from the moon, possibly by using the moon as an amplifier for their signals from Pluto via moon bounce, or directly sending the signals from the moon to the Earth from a Mi-Go moon base.

The Mi-Go objective is to interface and control Earth governments (MAJESTIC) that are sufficiently intelligent to interpret their signal so that they can carry out alien activities on Earth with relative ease. This will culminate in Mi-Go sending Greys to meet and negotiate with MAJESTIC on October 31^st 1980 and the signing of the “Accord” treaty, where MAJESTIC sells out the USA and the human race for alien technology, (Handler’s Guide, page 68).

My idea is that the Mi-Go desire to colonize and operate on the moon will not be unopposed.  Time moves differently in the Dreamlands, but the moon is already occupied. Moon-beasts and the Men from Leng, their enslaved servants who once worshiped them, live on the Dark Side of the moon in the Dreamlands.  The Moon-beasts hunger for more slaves, tribute and worship. 

 Why or how would the Mi-Go and the Moon-beasts come into conflict? The first possibility is that it is a religious conflict. The Mi-Go worship Nyarlathotep and Shub-Niggurath, which we know from The Whisperer in Darkness.  Moon-beasts worship Nyarlathotep. Perhaps it is a religious war between Mi-Go Shub-Niggurath worshipers and Moon-beast Nyarlathotep worshipers.  Or, an alternative I like better, Nyarlathotep pits his worshipers against each other for His own amusement.

The second possibility that occurred to me starts with the information that the Mi-Go bodies consist of a form of matter that does not occur naturally on Earth. Maybe the Mi-Go bodies are multi-dimensional and their bases on the moon partially overlap with the Dreamlands (another dimension) and thus bother the Moon-beasts.  Alternatively, we are talking about aliens, so there is no urgent reason for the Game Master to define this interaction; they can just leave it a tantalizing mystery.

At any rate, on the Earth, I was thinking that the Moon-beasts would use Men from Leng as catspaws while the Mi-Go would use human cultists or biological constructs. For biological constructs I was considering using Men In Black from ufology fame as the Mi-Go’s shadowy agents in the 1970s.

Currently, my idea for the skeleton of the adventure plot is as follows. Initially, Delta Green Agents must secure microfilm from an NSA dead drop to prevent it from falling into MAJESTIC’s hands.   They find that the location of the dead drop is in New York City’s City Hall on the roof.  This all just happens to occur on May 8^th of 1970s right in the middle of an event called the Hard Hat Riot. 

The Hard Hat Riot was a domestic upheaval in which “when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970. The students were protesting the May 4 Kent State shootings and the Vietnam War, following the April 30 announcement by President Richard Nixon of the U.S. invasion of neutral Cambodia,” (Wikipedia). 

The key points here are that New York City becomes a madhouse with 20,000 people on the streets and City Hall surrounded. There is a conflict on the roof of City Hall, in that the NY mayor ordered all City Hall flags to be flown at half-staff to honor the Kent State University student’s deaths which occurred on May 4, 1970. The counter-protestors (construction workers and office workers) who held American flags, wanted the American flag over the roof of City Hall to be flown at full mast. This resulted in a violent conflict between anti-war students and counter-protestors. 

I thought this would be an interesting environment to set a Delta Green operation in. Get in and get out; just don’t die. Into this environment will be Men from Leng Moon-beast agents who wear hard hats to hide their horns and who target the Delta Green agents because they do not want the Mi-Go signals on the NSA microfilm to be obtained by government officials, Delta Green or MAJESTIC.  Thank you Dragoleaf for the hard hat idea! 

Now what is on the NSA microfilm? As a reminder, the Mi-Go sent “indecipherable fragments of intelligent and systematic communications originating from the moon and aimed at sites on the Earth and in high orbit.”  Since the Mi-Go wanted to open communications with an official Earth government (or likely multiple governments), I think that the Earth sites that are being targeted from the moon are areas of concentrated civilization with political rivalries.  These would be Washington DC, Moscow, London, Beijing, New Delhi, Berlin, and Tokyo.

That is about as far as I have gotten with this scenario idea, but I also possibly wanted to include foreign agents, difficulties between the FBI and the other intelligence agencies, and some kinetic conflict with MAJESTIC, but we will see.

 Potential Adventure 2: Gyre and Gimble or The Great Race vs the Lloigor

The US military has used Alice and Wonderland references to discuss nuclear subjects, and I will be no different.  In October 1962, the US came very close to a nuclear war with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  But what if there was a way for the US to be protected from nuclear weapons and fallout completely?

In the realm of science fiction, Issac Asimov needs no introduction.  He wrote a short story published in 1951 called “Breeds There a Man...?" about the possibility of development of an anti-nuclear force field generator. I will not completely spoil the story for you, but for my purposes I will say that Asimov floats the idea that aliens may not want humanity to have a counter for nuclear war.  This idea fits in perfectly to Delta Green.

In the Delta Green Mythos, The Great Race and the entities known as the Lloigor are at vicious odds.  Allow me to quote my own summary from a previous blog post. 

“In the Delta Green Handlers Guide on page 149 there is described a temporal war between The Great Race and the Lloigor.  To summarize the war, these two Mythos factions want either a radioactive future earth where a species of giant beetles dominate the planet, the Great Race’s desired outcome; or a sinister future human empire called “Tsan-Chan” to rise on Earth in approximately 5000 CE, the Lloigor’s objective.   The Lloigor’s objective is seemingly in direct conflict with the Great Race’s plans for a massive human nuclear war, as the Handler’s Guide says.”

If there was a possibility for humanity to gain a preventative measure against global nuclear war then The Great Race would be against it, and immediately deploy their cultists, The Motion, to interdict it.

What is sinister Tsan-Chan? In Lovecraft’s Beyond the Wall of Sleep, there is a conversation with an undefined cosmic star-like creature and the narrator. The cosmic entity says, “we are all roamers of vast spaces and travellers in many ages. Next year I may be dwelling in the dark Egypt which you call ancient, or in the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan which is to come three thousand years hence”. 

This simple line from HPL has stimulated a great deal of imagination.  There is a Chaosium supplement for Call of Cthulhu called The Cruel Empire of Tsan Chan (2010) where Tsan-Chan is detailed in terrible and desperate terms. On the old Delta Green website, David Tormsen created the fan faction “the Collectors of the Long Vaults” about time-traveling agents from Tsan-Chan that show up to capture human psychics from the past (our modern age), kill them, turn them into essential salts, and reanimate them in the future in Tsan-Chan where they are needed in the fight against Mythos creatures that threaten the cruel empire.

Dovetailing with this, author Fee Fi Fo Fin further detailed these Tsan-Chan time-traveling agents (calling them Men in Black and Grey Men) and expanded on the other resources the cruel empire has in the modern day.  Notably, Fee proposes the idea that there is a sliver of the future timeline where Tsan-Chan exists without The Great Race’s interference. This timeline sliver is called The Narrow Way Through. 

If there was a technology to fully protect a civilization from nuclear weapons then the servants of the Lloigor, the cruel empire of Tsan-Chan, would strongly support it by changing the timeline to preserve or bolster the anti-nuclear technology.

My scenario idea is that there is a US mathematician, code named Gyre, who has been working on equations to generate an anti-nuclear radiation force field. These valuable equations are code named Gimble.  Delta Green (for some reason I have not figured out yet) is deployed to protect Gyre and Gimble as they move from one place to an elite mathematics conference.  At this conference the Delta Green agents will be made aware of the anti-nuclear significance of Gyre and Gimble, and the importance of this work to the USA and humanity as a whole.  Then they have to protect Gyre and Gimble (or perhaps make a decision between protecting Gyre or Gimble) from the deadly cultists of The Great Race, known as The Motion, who will stop at nothing to eliminate Gyre and Gimble from the timestream.  Time-traveling agents from Tsan-Chan will assist Delta Green, at first subtly then kinetically, with battling The Motion’s assassins.  Where this ends or how I fit in the alphabet intelligence agencies or events from the 1970s I have not identified yet.    

Since Potential Adventure 1 involved MAJESTIC, I did not want Potential Adventure 2 to involve that organization.  Variety being the spice of life and all. However, if I wanted to have an easter-egg link to MAJESTIC I could reference The Courtis Papers (Handler’s Guide, page 157) being a basis for the Gimble, the anti-nuclear radiation force field equations.  Dr Courtis wrote The Courtis Papers in 1949, derived from working on the alien craft, codenamed the Bucket (Handler’s Guide, pages 52-53).

Conclusion

So those are the ideas that have been bouncing in my head regarding the scenario contest and my three chosen themes: “Set between 1970-1989”, “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle”, and “Hook does not involve a murder or a dead body”.  I am pretty happy that both potential adventures 1 and 2 do not depend on ho-hum boring murders.  So, I am in the clear there. The second potential adventure would need more thought to place it somewhen interesting in the 1970s, and I want to add more 1970s flavor, for example relevant plot points and important encounters, to both potential adventures.  “Conflict between mythos monsters, DG in the middle” I think is represented well in both possible adventures, but I want to make sure I just don’t make one side the “good” aliens and the other the “bad” aliens. That is boring. Both sides are aliens and thus do not have humanity’s best interest in mind.  Actions and themes of both alien factions should reflect that.  Next blog posts on this subject I expect I will be sharpening hooks, building up plot skeletons and possibly be detailing NPCs.