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| Fall of the House of Usher, by Mario Jodra |
There have been many discussions on the Night at the Opera discord about Delta Green campaigns. I want to record some of the details of those discussions so that the recommendations and knowledge are not lost to time. Thanks to Inixis, who came up with the phrase, I will name these details “N@tO’s Need to Know”.
Without further ado, here are some thoughts on developing Delta Green campaigns.
How do you create a mood?
One way I’ve created a mood is to envision your game like connected movie stills or scenes and come up with vivid descriptions that convey a particular emotion. For example, if your mood is “decay”, I don’t think you could do better than to steal imagery from Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher. Let’s take the introductory passage from the short story:
"It was a dark and soundless day near the end of the year, and clouds were hanging low in the heavens. All day I had been riding on horseback through country with little life or beauty; and in the early evening I came within view of the House of Usher. I do not know how it was — but, with my first sight of the building, a sense of heavy sadness filled my spirit. I looked at the scene before me — at the house itself — at the ground around it — at the cold stone walls of the building — at its empty eye-like windows — and at a few dead trees — I looked at this scene, I say, with a complete sadness of soul which was no healthy, earthly feeling. There was a coldness, a sickening of the heart, in which I could discover nothing to lighten the weight I felt. What was it, I asked myself, what was it that was so fearful, so frightening in my view of the House of Usher?”
You could describe your intro scene where Delta Green agents meet in a rundown motel as having “cold flimsy walls, empty and grimy eye-like windows and surrounded by a few dead trees.” Such a description sets the tone for the adventure and story you want to tell.
Another way is to choose a mood that you want to convey and find words and synonyms that point to that mood. Sprinkle these words in your narrations, descriptions and dialogue. Let’s assume your mood is “decay” again. Synonyms are “decompose, putrefy, rot, and spoil.” You could talk about the smell of trash decomposing in dumpster outside a greasy spoon. Maybe inside the greasy spoon the cook yells at the manager, saying that the meat in the refrigerator has spoiled. Perhaps the waitress smiles and has a noticeable decaying tooth. You get the picture.
A third way to set a mood is to use the idea of synesthesia. Synesthesia, as we will be using it, is defined as when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses. For example, “tasting” a sound or “feeling” a smell. In the example mood of “decay”, instead of the air smelling like fruiting bodies, perhaps the air tastes like overwarm tobacco chew, gelatinous and unwelcome. Presenting the senses as “mixed up” can make a stronger impression on the reader or receiver.
How do you make scenarios mysterious?
Generally, in Delta Green games I think the focus of the adventure is on an event (usually a murder, or more than one) with unusual coincidences (a decaying body is found above an identical decaying body buried three months before) or with details that do not make sense (there was a murder victim found in a room locked from the inside). Further digging by the players is required to uncover the entire twisted tale you the Handler (Delta Green Game Master) are telling and have the event make sense.
But how does a Handler carry out the mystery? To answer this question, I will recommend two blog posts by The Alexandrian. The first blog post deals with the (rather well known now) Three Clue Rule, that explains how to present clues so players will not miss them. The second post is about how to run mysteries and why the failure to find a clue is so important. Both of these posts discuss actions a Handler can use to build a mystery that can be successfully unraveled in their campaign.
What is the theme/premise of your DG campaign? Have you made deliberate choices? Should you?
While one could make a campaign out of Delta Green adventures casually strung together, some Handlers want more connective tissue or a theme throughout the campaign for a richer experience for themselves and the players. If you are creating a campaign with a theme, pitch it to your players. One way to do it is to present it as a summary (we are focusing on X, Y and Z).
Another format is to do what Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition did with its campaign settings. They had defined characteristics about the campaign setting world in the introduction. Mechanically, each of the characteristics had a sentence with a paragraph explaining it. For example, in the Dark Sun Campaign Setting for 4th edition D&D, the first three characteristics of Athas (world of Dark Sun) are “The World Is a Desert”, “The World is Savage”, and “Metal is Scarce.” There are eight characteristics in total, but you can get an idea just from the first three statements where this world is going. Use this technique to craft a very clear campaign theme for your players.
What do your players want to do in the campaign?
Ask them! No seriously, asking players what they would like to accomplish during the game gives them and the Handler (you) goals and ready-made plot ideas for your campaign. You can also reflect at milestones during the campaign or after missions and ask your players if they feel like they are achieving their goals or what else needs to be done in order to do so. Player feedback provides instant scenario ideas.
Should you have a home base in a Delta Green campaign? What is your local area?
Some DG Handlers have stated that they feel the 5th edition D&D community has scooped them. 5th edition D&D Game Masters often start their campaign in a single village or town (or even just a tavern) and expand the adventuring area surrounding the village as the campaign progresses. After each adventure the player characters regroup back at the central village, meet established NPCs and engage in inventory management and/or shopping of some kind.
The D&D players have a home base, and that seems to be missing from the majority of Delta Green campaigns, but there is no rule saying you can’t steal from D&D! First, establish what your home base will be. Is it a town, a city, a Holiday Inn, or a Delta Green safehouse with really good Thai food down the street? Having a home base allows the players a sense of familiarity and relaxation once they complete a mission. Maybe they would be wrong to relax because you want paranoia to reign supreme, but that is a discussion for another post. Also, players can interact with NPCs and see how they change over time; possibly for the better if the DG agents are successful in their missions, and maybe for the worse depending on what you the Handler wants to do.
Home scenes are more than just reciting that bonds were damaged for Delta Green agents to protect their sanity or acquire new skills or whatever. Setting a home scene (say an important phone call to a loved one) at a home base may increase the poignancy and could give an excuse for important PCs and NPCs to give commentary on a player’s home scene. Is everything falling apart at a PC’s home, but the Delta Green team is hale and hearty? Does the PC spend their time meeting commitments at home but get dirty looks from the team whey they are down important gear that no one can afford (without burning bond points)? Having home scenes at a home base, or interspersed with scenes at a home base can add additional emotional weight to a scene. And that may be just what you want for your campaign.
On the flipside, maybe you want a globetrotting campaign. Hey, 007 gets along fine. Masks of Nyarlathotep (the classic Call of Cthulhu campaign) does this as well. In an international campaign you may want to focus on the local area on each “hub world” stop for the players. As a Handler, ask some questions of the area before you introduce it to give it flavor. What are the gun laws of the location? Can firearms be trafficked into a location by land, sea or air? How do the locals and the local government respond to criminal activity that the players will surely get up to? How friendly are the citizens to foreigners or shady types like the investigators? Do the PCs have access to all resources in each “hub world” they land in? Or does this require additional skill checks or expenditure of resources to get what they are looking for?
What is the quantum language skill and should you use it?
The Delta Green “quantum language skill”, comes from the concept of a “quantum ogre” which is a Game Master technique. A quantum ogre is the idea that the Game Master has designed an ogre encounter, and no matter what choice in the dungeon the players take (i.e. right or left passageway) the players will always run into the ogre.
In Delta Green, deciding your character can read Latin, Ancient Greek, or whatever; and never having that particular language show up in the campaign can be very frustrating. Thus, some Delta Green Handlers allow for the choice of a language to be a “quantum language skill”. The language skill the player has is undefined until a foreign language is encountered in the campaign. Then the player with the quantum language skill may spend that slot to know that given language at a skill level that they bought upon character creation. This is a bit metagame-y but it prevents language skills from being useless in the campaign.
Alternatively, if you the Handler know all the languages that will be used in the campaign, because you just did that much preparation, you can give a list of languages used to the players at the beginning of the campaign and have them decide what they want.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank the following people from the Night at the Opera discord for ideas and review of this post: anonymous, zomner, Splizwarf, and Inixis.
