Handlers Guide: Running the Game

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Strap in, operatives. This is go back your all access pass to modern day RPGs loaded with bullets, backstories, and a whole lot of bad decisions. And here are your mission leaders, Sean and Harrigan. [00:00:18] Speaker B: What's up, Harrigan? [00:00:21] Speaker A: Hey, buddy. Right after you asked me, we're ready to go live. I got a sneeze attack coming on, so if I have to mute. Mute the mic. Exactly. You're like, ready to roll? I'm like, yeah. Good morning. How are you? Ready to roll. [00:00:38] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Finally. Good to get back in an episode of Go Bake. [00:00:44] Speaker A: So. [00:00:44] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:00:47] Speaker A: This episode six of season two. [00:00:49] Speaker B: It is episode six of season two where we're going to be discussing some of the Handler's Guide and some of the things that a handler, AKA the game master, has to kind of keep in mind for Delta Green. And maybe we've got some examples that we'll chime in with. We'll see. [00:01:09] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, let's, we'll roll through the, our usual show format here, but I think when we get to the mission brief, we'll. We'll cover what's in the Handler's Guide because there is a dedicated GM book for this game. But beyond that, I think, Sean, you've got some ideas and I can certainly chime in as well around some sort of best practices and some things you want to avoid, some things you. I mean, put it this way, it's a mystery RPG at its heart. It's investigative, maybe is a better, better way of saying it. You're trying to find out some things and put two and two together to advance things. So that's a certain type of rpg and there's, you know, there's tricks and tips and pitfalls from that type of game that maybe we'll get a little bit into. But back over to you, buddy. What have you been doing? What have you been doing in the world of espionage and covert action? [00:01:54] Speaker B: I watched Operation Mincemeat last night. Oh, have you seen it? [00:02:01] Speaker A: So no is the answer. It's on my, it's on my Netflix watch list. And recently, recently my wife was having like a, like a down day. She was, I forget she was sick or what it was, but it was a Friday evening or a Thursday evening or something. And she's just like, I'm just going to sit on the sofa and read or, you know, play this witch or whatever she was doing. And she's like, you watch whatever you want. I'm like, ooh. So I put on, I Was in a weird mood too. I ended up putting on a variety of things and never settled in any one show. And Operation Mincemeat was one of them. And I was kind of in that mode where I was kind of puttering around like I was making dinner and. And I could tell like, oh no, I need to sit and watch this. So Colin Firth, is that right? [00:02:42] Speaker B: That's right, yeah. [00:02:43] Speaker A: So tell us about a little bit about Operation Mincemeat. Because I didn't get into it enough, let me put it this way. I put it on my watch list like a year ago and it's been there. And I even forget other than World War II, what it's about. So what's. What's the story based on? [00:02:57] Speaker B: A true story. It's. It features 1, 2, 3, 4 ish main characters. Colin Firth runs point and I failed to remember the other actors names, but it is based on the true story of Operation Mincemeat which was initiated by MI5 in World War II to deceive the Germans on a particular landing in Sicily. Or I think it was like, hey, we want to land in Sicily and we want to distract them to think we're landing in Greece. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Yep. [00:03:35] Speaker B: And so they. It's the plan to. To devise that. Apparently it is the biggest deception ever pulled off. [00:03:43] Speaker A: Is this the one where they planted fake documents on a body? [00:03:47] Speaker B: Yes. [00:03:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. Yeah. I remember reading about this for real and when the. Like the. Not the non dramatized version and when. And now I'm remembering when I saw Operation Mincemeat advertised and I watched the trailer, I was like, ooh, I need to watch this. [00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's pretty good. And also has other kind of. They feature Ian Fleming in there. [00:04:09] Speaker A: I remember hearing that too. That's right. [00:04:10] Speaker B: Which I don't think he was. I would be shocked if he was actually involved. I think they just dropped it in there as a talking point or if anybody. An Easter egg kind of thing. [00:04:20] Speaker A: He's got some connections to MI5 though. I mean, he's. [00:04:22] Speaker B: Well, that's true. [00:04:23] Speaker A: He might have been around in that space. Yeah, maybe. [00:04:26] Speaker B: Well, there was. It was kind of funny in the show not to give. I won't give a lot away. Even though it's based on a historic event. [00:04:35] Speaker A: By the way, is it MI5 at the time or is that before? [00:04:38] Speaker B: That's a good question. It's funny. They actually say, they ask. So first character. I think it was first character and Fleming in the show are walking down the Thames. I think you Know, and they were talking about why Fleming refers to this guy as Mr. [00:05:00] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:00] Speaker B: And he's like, well, because the way he explained it in the show, as well, it's because M is for like, my mother was the one that, you know, she, she was the person, she was the one in life to be, you know, that would direct everything. And so, you know, it's, it's M is short for mother. [00:05:20] Speaker A: So is it, is it MI5 or MI6 then? [00:05:23] Speaker B: It's. I thought in the description it's MI5. [00:05:27] Speaker A: I'm remembering now, by the way, remember the podcast that we both like. The rest is classified. I remember they have an episode on the formation of these British Secret Service agencies and it's quite a bit before the Sacamura war. It's, you know. [00:05:39] Speaker B: Right. [00:05:39] Speaker A: I think, I think it's the teens and twenties that it all kind of really takes shape. [00:05:43] Speaker B: Anyway, so I think the description is MI5, but they never, I don't think, reference. I can't remember if they specifically say MI5 in the show and if they did, it was like literally once, you know, and they just referred to the director that they were reporting to for this operation specifically on occasion. But yeah, it's an interesting one. It's amazing to the degree of what they want to build up as a Persona for this person that is dead. Right. [00:06:20] Speaker A: Like, that's, that's. Yeah. Dude. The Second World War is full of cool espionage stuff. [00:06:25] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Including like the Enigma machine and codes getting broken when the other one side doesn't know, you know, that, that their codes are broken. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. We need to, we need to play some of these games, man. [00:06:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a good one. I don't know how to incorporate it into an RPG, honestly, because I'm like, it's so 100 foot view. Right. I mean, they're sitting around, they're sitting around trying to come up with details on how to make this person a real person. [00:06:52] Speaker A: So when, when the show started the, you know, a week or two ago when I was like, oh, I'll put this on, and I was kind of half paying attention, I could tell. I'm like, oh boy, it's talky talk. It's, it's a lot of dark smoking rooms with, you know, with the well dressed gentlemen discussing how they can beat the Nazis. [00:07:09] Speaker B: Yes. [00:07:09] Speaker A: You know, yes. That kind of thing. So I'm like, oh, I gotta sit and be like, this isn't going to be like, ooh, mosquitoes, Ooh, A tank batt. This is. Yeah, yeah. This is not that. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Now there are elements after the mission kicks off where I could see like a one shot would be perfect. Right. [00:07:29] Speaker A: So that's what I was going to say is there's some element of, I'm sure, Operation Minsky where you could pull it out and say we need commandos to go and get these documents or kill this person or blow this bridge or sabotage a radio or whatever. And that's the, that's the mission. Right. You are the Operation White box or war stories. Right, right. One of those. [00:07:52] Speaker B: It's an interesting dynamic because of course they have this overall mission and there's all these moving parts and in order to pull this off, they've got to have these things happen. And when something doesn't happen, it's like, what are we going to do? Right. These things aren't getting into the hands of the people we want. And they're talking on the phones. Right. They say they're encrypted. They know they're being listened to. It's a lot of good. Like some of that stuff is just to see it from that view in perspective, to go, oh, okay, yeah, that's, ah, this is pretty cool. [00:08:27] Speaker A: I will, I will prioritize watching it. Have you. We, maybe we talked about this before on the show last season. Are you, Are you a big war movie guy? Are you a big, like, especially modern war movie guy? [00:08:37] Speaker B: I mean, the one movie that really impacted me when I was quite younger was Inglourious Basterds. And it was not the Quentin Tarantino version because there was one, the original. [00:08:49] Speaker A: Really. I'd never seen it. [00:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I really liked it. I don't know why. I don't know when I saw it. And I think it's in a different. I might be in a different language and it might have been dubbed, but I didn't realize it at the time. But I don't know why it was so intriguing to me. I don't know if it was just because they kept throwing grenades over around everything and blowing stuff up. But, you know, I've seen Force 10 from Navarone and. And some of those other ones. You know, it's not the one I go to as the thing I want to watch all the time because sometimes it's kind of a little dried for me. Like, oh, God, now I got like, Harrison Ford's in one of them. Yeah, what's his name? [00:09:29] Speaker A: I always forget if it's Guns in Navarone or Force 10 from Navarro. He's in one of those. [00:09:32] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. And so it's kind of. I probably need to go back and look at them from that perspective now that we've been doing Go Bag and Eagle has landed. [00:09:42] Speaker A: Yes, yes, etc. [00:09:44] Speaker B: Kelly. You know, and a few of those. [00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess so. All right, so we're of a similar age. You've seen a lot of that stuff, especially in the 70s. Right. Those movies were being cranked out. I maintain that, like, Midway and A Bridge Too far from the 70s. Those are, like, the best horror movies of that whole time. I love those movies. But, I mean, Private Ryan changed it, all right. Like, that's the kind of movie for me, I'm like, I remember where I saw that movie. Like, Aliens. Like, I remember where I saw Aliens because it affected me. And I remember where I saw Private Ryan being like, oh, my God. [00:10:16] Speaker B: The first opening scene was like, yeah, [00:10:19] Speaker A: there's no war movie. And, you know, revisiting it now, there's a. It could be tightened up as a bunch of kind of schlocky scenes and that kind of thing. But, man, the combat in that. In that movie, whether it's the. Whether it's the landings or whether it's the end when there's an assault on the town, it's like, oh. Oh, dear. This is like, you know, this is what I wanted to see as a kid, where I was so enthralled by the technology and the armor and the planes and all that sort of stuff. Right. Just so cool. My whole point. [00:10:48] Speaker B: Yeah, Fury was. [00:10:49] Speaker A: Yeah, Fury. Fury's got some good. Fury falls into some traps around. Around the, like, serious character caricatures of American types. Like, I'm the God in the south who's really hard to deal with, and I'm gonna go rape the women. You know, look, I. Oh, dude. Like, it falls. It falls down. But it also has some amazing moments, like when the. The fal. The German paratroopers are singing on the road. Holy crow. And there's the scenes at night where they. Everything's ricocheting off the tank because they're shooting tracers at it. Like, just wonderful scene. [00:11:24] Speaker B: A Sherman. A Sherman round bouncing off a tiger. Like, I mean, that is. Oh, my goodness. [00:11:31] Speaker A: Well. And that tiger coming. Coming, blasting through that brush. That's a real tiger. That's not cgi. That is the tiger that's in the British Tank Museum in the uk. The last running tiger in the world. Wow. Which I've taken my son to see. Yeah, I love. As anyone could tell. Who listens? I Love this. This is, this is just the flip side of my obsession with guns. This is just the same thing. But military, right? World War II, military hardware. My, my whole point was going to be that Netflix and Amazon prime and a few other shows have, have really been focusing on war movies in the last five years or so. Not focus, but a lot of them have been made and a lot of them are made actually in Holland, in Germany, in Eastern Europe. There's a ton of them and some of them are actually really good. And Mincemeat kind of falls into that kind of category where it's like, it's not a big budget thing, it didn't go to the theaters, but it's well made. It's about a really cool little known part of World War II. Have you seen Anthropoid? [00:12:27] Speaker B: I have not. [00:12:28] Speaker A: Anthropoid is basically kind of a, I think, is it Prague? I'm trying to remember where it is. I think it's the Czech Republic maybe then Czechoslovakia. That's after the war. Long story short, it's about a little known Nazi resistance and, and what the Nazis do to that resistance. Oh my heavens, it's fantastic. Killian Murphy's in is in it. There's a shootout and a battle in a church at the end. That is just awesome. It's, it's a great movie. It's a dark movie. Like not, not a lot of happy ending stuff in that movie necessarily, but it's, it's good. Anyway, glad that you watched Mincemeat. I do not. I, I, I've been focused on Delta Green, so I haven't watched a lot of other shows. I've been running my Delta Green played by Post Game. I've been reading the Handler's Guide, but I don't have anything beyond that in the last week that I really, where I really focused. I guess there's a, you know how your phone now shouts at you all the awful headlines that are happening every day. One of the ones that came up for me today was that there's a new James Bond video game which I think we've talked about before, but I think like Lana Del Rey does the song and super high production values on the opening credits for the video game which had some people thinking it's actually the movie where, you know, which hasn't been cast yet, shooting hasn't started yet, etc, so the new game might be, might be all right. I think it's called First Light, which I think we've mentioned before we did [00:13:53] Speaker B: early on, but it's interesting to know that it's launched. [00:13:56] Speaker A: Well, at least there's trailers. I don't know if it's out yet. At least there's trailers anyway. Yeah, not. Not much other than that for me. [00:14:03] Speaker B: I was going to. In addition, like, I messaged my buddy Jeff, asked him if he was up for a duet game. He said yes. Yeah, I got a plot, kind of laid out some of the details of what it. Where it would start. And I just, you know, said, hey, just be. Be a government agent. Like, just. I don't care, but just be a government agent. Like, starting out now, if you decided to be, like, I don't know, something. Something other than that, that's fine. I can make adjustments. But it's. It's an interesting one I like. And you're not part of Delta Grade, so, like, I'm starting. Yeah, Start from scratch. So I messaged him and said, hey, created a character yet? [00:14:42] Speaker A: And he's like, dude, I've been too busy. [00:14:44] Speaker B: Like, I've been too busy dealing with insurance companies. And we had some crappy weather. She's like, my car fixed and my roof fixed. [00:14:53] Speaker A: Some crappy weather. [00:14:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:55] Speaker A: Tornado freaking alley, dude. The whole Midwest this week. [00:14:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Not great. [00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'm waiting for him to get everything in order lifewise, and then maybe we'll kick it off. We'll see. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Sweet. [00:15:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:07] Speaker A: Sweet. Well, you know what? This. This kind of jumps ahead a little bit to the discussion we're going to have, but I don't think. I don't think I talk about it in my notes in any detail, so I'll mention it. Now, the. The game has this presumption that you are. And I didn't realize this, Sean, until I really read more deeply into the Handler's Guide. It presumes you are agents, right? And you might be an agent or a specialist, depending on where your focus is, but it then gets into a whole. Like, there's a range of, like, how much do you know about the program? And I didn't realize this. There are some agents who don't know about the unnatural who are in the program. They've been. They've been through such trying and awful things in their lives. Someone has said, it's a good candidate, go recruit them. And they. There's a presumption that they'll be able to keep their shit together when they see the unnatural. I didn't know that. I hadn't seen that in the game. My presumption is always, you've had an inciting incident and as part of the tail end of being incited into it, the wrap up, you get drawn in. There's a whole little piece in the book that's about people who they've identified. Like good candidate hasn't seen anything too crazy but keep your eye on them kind of thing. [00:16:16] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:16:16] Speaker A: And then, and then get this to, to the point you're trying to do with Jeff. There's the concept of outsiders in the game. It's just people who just don't know and aren't going to be involved. Right. And what the game does not do, unfortunately, like Jeff's going to run straight into this. There's no character generation for a non agent in the game. Like how many skill points do they get? I guess maybe you could just do the profession thing and build them normally and just say they don't know anyone and be specific with no, you know what? Maybe you don't even need it. Maybe you don't even need it because there's nothing that is really tied to like having a high and natural score or anything like that because you've, you've already witnessed some things. Interesting. Yeah. So I was, I was surprised to [00:16:57] Speaker B: see that I have a pretty good plot laid out. Like it'll be, it's. The premise is. And I, I don't think I, I'm spoiling anything. It would be kind of. The deal is he's going to be either part of the FBI, US Marshals, CIA, some investigative component. It could be even Homeland Security. I don't care. It'll be modern day. And he gets assigned a case that an agent was looking into it. They just want it closed. It's not a big deal. But she's ended up missing. I think if I remember correctly and just go handle it. And then I think I have a premise under which it's assigned to him. And then it just goes from there. [00:17:39] Speaker A: You're gonna play out the inciting incident is what you're gonna do. [00:17:42] Speaker B: Maybe. [00:17:43] Speaker A: Which is part of why I love this, this game is that you can take it from the very mundane, like you know, missing person. Missing person, Yep. That kind of thing. In fact, in fact, that's what the solo game, the duet that I'm running right now with the dirigible. That is exactly what that is. Like I think I told you this before, like there's a friendly and they've kind of lost tabs in the friendly and now she's missing. So where's the friendly and what's going on kind of thing. Right. It's kind of cool. [00:18:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:12] Speaker A: It's easy. [00:18:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:13] Speaker A: Right. Just part of it is just how, like, Jeff will grab onto that and be like, oh, yeah, I gotta go find her. And here are the ways. I'm gonna look for her. Check her credit card numbers. And, like, he's gonna do all that. [00:18:23] Speaker B: He's gonna be given a box. Here's everything we got. [00:18:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:28] Speaker B: He'll be filtering through all that crap that she was dealing with. And then, you know, why. Why all of a sudden are they gone or. I don't remember. If I had her gone or dead, I'd have to remember. [00:18:43] Speaker A: He'll find out. [00:18:44] Speaker B: Yeah. And then it just kind of trickles from there. So. Yeah, it'll be fun. Hopefully get kicked off. I don't know. Let's have to see. I'm just going to start feeding him teasers and then he won't have a choice because I don't think he's. Yeah, I don't think he's like, rah, rah, go, go, Just yet for this game. But he will be. He will be. [00:19:06] Speaker A: Nice. [00:19:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Should we get into sit rep? [00:19:09] Speaker A: Yep, let's do it. [00:19:12] Speaker B: Give me the sit rep. Sit rep. The only thing that I have to contribute is going to be the link to mincemeat, Operation Mincemeat, IMDb. So you can check that out and see what it's all about. And then I think Harrigan's got one more that he wanted to bring up. [00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah, minor stuff. And we. I think we made oblique reference to one of these before. But as I was paging through the. The Handbook or the. The Handler's Guide, you know, this weekend system, some things started to occur to me where I'm like, you know, I want to. I want. I need to consume more media that is like, either inspired by or related to, et cetera. And two things occurred that I know that we haven't shared directly. The first is there's a show called Archive 81 on Netflix, which is very delta green. It's not by the. You know, it's one of those things where it starts off fantastic. It's got some great parts. Maybe a little bit of a letdown towards the end, but it is basically. It's very impossible landscape. See, actually it's about a film expert who gets recruited by, like, a weird, weird person. Weird organization to come and go through the archive of a bunch of tapes that were damaged in a fire. And the tapes are so damaged that you can't leave the facility where the fire was. And it's Way out in the woods. So you have to go out by your. It's. The crevice is awesome. It's awesome. And, and you know, the tapes have some obviously crazy on them. [00:20:32] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure. Right. [00:20:33] Speaker A: It's so, it's, it's good. Archive 81 is worth watching for sure. That's Netflix. And the one that I have never seen. So I've seen archive 81. The one I've never seen is the Outsider. Have you seen that with. [00:20:45] Speaker B: I have not. [00:20:45] Speaker A: Jason Bateman, no. Oh, that's it. [00:20:48] Speaker B: Interesting. Bateman. I like Bateman. [00:20:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I, well, and when I, when I was coming across the Outsider, I'm like, ooh. More I read about it. Read about it, the more I kind of. And it's, it's a little less of like a takeoff or a directly related to and more of along the lines of like, there's a horrible thing that's happened. It's almost maybe like the first season of True Detective where it's like, is this. Are there some supernatural things or not? Maybe. And I don't, I, I haven't seen it, so I can't tell you if that's true or not. But I will say that the more I read about it, I'm like. And people were, were like, recommending it for this style of media. I was like, oh, I'm gonna see that. And then I. Only then did I discover, oh, this has Jason Bateman in it. Like, it's got some big name actors in it. So I'm going to revisit that. I think that's like a single season as well. Like kind of a one and done sort of thing on HBO. So archive 81 on the outside are two, two pieces of media that I think are, are pretty, pretty steeped in this stuff. [00:21:39] Speaker B: Very good. [00:21:40] Speaker A: Oh, I got. That's all I got. [00:21:42] Speaker B: All right, well, encrypted comms, nothing. Nothing to, to, to talk about this week. Mad Shack. [00:21:52] Speaker A: We should turn on the radio. [00:21:54] Speaker B: We should. So we should probably launch an episode or two. [00:21:58] Speaker A: As soon as you launch an episode, I think we will start maybe getting some encryption. [00:22:02] Speaker B: We'll end up having to probably consolidate it all. I don't know how many, how many people will write in about how many episodes. But yeah, that's okay. We're here for it. Yeah. Let's get into the mission brief. [00:22:17] Speaker A: Have a seat. Let's get on with the mission brief. [00:22:20] Speaker B: The mission brief. So episode six, Delta Green, Season two. It's entitled Working title. As we're recording, this is The Handler's Guide running the game. But, you know, that could entail quite a bit. And the synopsis initially was shifting focus from the game master, AKA the Handler. This episode would cover the philosophy of running Delta Green, focusing on building tension, managing information drip, and establishing bleak, paranoid atmosphere. So we'll talk a little bit about that. For those of you familiar with the Handler's Guide, most of the information I'm going to highlight is touching on those components and like running an opera. But, you know, if we come across good examples of how to do that in our games or what we've run into through play, I'm sure we'll chime in and play. And then Harrigan had a different angle and there's, you know, I didn't go through the Handler's Guide because it's a lot of. I mean, except for what I just mentioned, but there's a lot other info that is in there that's outside of all the historic timeline pieces. And I think some of it, frankly, Harrigan should be in the Player Agents Guide, but I think it covers some of that. [00:23:37] Speaker A: We're going to talk about that. [00:23:38] Speaker B: Yeah. So I will. Where do we want to start? Do you want to start with me or you? [00:23:43] Speaker A: I'll give me the. Let me do the breakdown. Generally speaking of the Handler's Guide and what's in it, what value it has, because one of the things you'll often hear people say about Delta Green is that get the Agent's Handbook, and that's kind of all you need. You can kind of launch from there and they will reference the Handler's Guide as being. It's just lore. And then, you know, if you really want to get. Go deep on that part of the game. And I'm here to tell you there's more to that book than just the lore. The lore is a big chunk of it. But there's some great stuff in the book. Some of it does belong, I think, in the Handler's Guide, or, excuse me, in the Agent's Handbook, just because of the way that there's. There's some gaps in that book that we actually talked about last week. So let me go first. I'll try to be relatively brief, and then you can get into a little more of the specifics on some best practices and some, you know, some of your own lessons that you've learned about trying to keep the mood and not break the tension and like all that kind of stuff. Generally speaking, though, I think the. The idea of reading the Agent's Handbook first Is the right. That's the right idea. Like, the core of the game is in that book for sure. But there's some cool stuff in the opening chapter, the introduction of the Handler's Guide, which really underscores the whole. For people who are new to this and are trying to get the vibe, they're kind of really trying to grok, like, what makes it different than Call of Cthulhu? What makes it different than Cult? What makes it different than other horror games kind of thing. They call out horror, wonder and conspiracy as sort of like, you know, three legs of a stool sort of thing. It's about truths that kill and about the need to. You're fighting to stave off the end of the world. So, in fact, the opening chapter of the Handler's Guide is a little at odds with the way I see Delta Green because I talk about it as the unraveling of the characters, the agents, the people, the disintegration of their bonds and all that sort of stuff. Handler's Guide is like, this is about the end of the world. Simple as that. Like, humans are. Are dust on the back of a. Of a flea on a dog on a. You know, like you're nothing. And this will all be gone soon, so enjoy. And you can try to fight it off if you want to, but good luck is the. Is kind of the vibe, you know, it's very. It's very nihilistic, it's very dark, but it. It has some good. Some good advice. Like it says, handlers need preparation, vision, imagination. And I love this last one, indifference. So it's almost like the OSR neutral GM thing. Like, I don't. I'm just here to represent the world, man. Right? Like the. [00:26:11] Speaker B: A. [00:26:12] Speaker A: A Handler in Delta Green shouldn't be, like, out to get people and shouldn't be tr. You know, using all the resources that they can bring to bear to just put the players down and kill them and annihilate them and make them crazy. That all. That all happens through the mechanics anyway, right? So just be indifferent about it. Like, oh, I'm so sorry that, you know that your child died right in the. In the book or in the. In the game. And I will also say it's one of the reasons why you should use some safety tools for this game, right? Because if you're going to be indifferent about this type of horror, really, really tough stuff can happen in the game that some people may not want to see on the table. So make sure you use those. Those safety tools as well. I love this concept as well. The universe is antithetical to human understanding and survival. Like, it's like there's the dark things that are out there. It's just the two just don't go together. Eventually we will be. Will be gone. It's just what it will stop. [00:27:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I have some of these things listed as well. [00:27:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, good, good, good. So there's a great overview that talks. So the what's in the book is the book has this, this introduction which talks about sort of what is Delta Green as a game. And then it talks about the history. And this is the hundred pages plus that I'm actually not going to go into. It's one of the least interesting parts of Delta Green to me is the 1962 this operation happened. And there's 100 pages of that. And it's what people remember when they look at the Handler's Guide. They all. Because it's like it's literally a timeline. There's a lot of call outs for specific ops. It's cool. And if you love lore, it's juicy lore. It's great. Right beyond the history, it gets into the schism between the two different. Like the forking of Delta Green first in 1970 when the program is shut, is shut down and the outlaws really sort of take take shape. And then in the late 90s and in 2002 when the new program comes along, there's the schism. And what it means is in modern times there's two different groups. Some of them know about each other, some of them don't, depending on how, how much seniority you have in the organization. It talks about other governmental programs. The British Pisces program, the Canada's M Epic, the Russian Grusb 8 program. After you get through the past and this whole timeline of things, it then goes directly into the unnatural, which is the books, the spells, the rituals, all the creatures that, you know, a lot of it's Lovecraftian, a lot of it's cosmic horror and basis. It just gets into the schism part of this, which is the two different versions of Delta Green, the two different groups that, that you know, splinter off in 1970 after Delta Green shut down. And then later in 2002 when the new program starts up, kind of incorporating some pieces of Majestic and I'm name dropping some things here if you want to know more like go to the book and read the lore. Right. But beyond that, then it gets into the, you know, the opera itself gets into a set of appendices. The opera is what Sean's going to talk about, I think, when we're. When I get through the overview here, which is about how to run the game. Right. I tell you one cool thing that I discovered, Sean. You know what opera means? The word opera Operation. Right. I mean, the actual word opera, not in the Delta Green context. Like, like the, the Italian word, opera, [00:29:20] Speaker B: the singing of musical. I, I mean, I know what it is, but I guess I don't. [00:29:27] Speaker A: So it's. So it's Italian, it's rooted in Latin, and it actually means work or effort. Oh. Is what it means. Which I, I like a lot. In the context of Delta Green. Right. Like, what's the work we have to do, what's the effort we have to put in kind of thing. So, so we'll, we'll circle back to the whole opera part of this. But it gets into the whole, like, how do you, you know, what does the mission consist of? How do you run the damn thing? Right. And then there are some appendices in the book as well, including an adventure called Operation Fulminate. And then there's a section on generic NPCs and animals and, and a few pages of recommended media. Just to call a call back to the films that are the series that we were just recommending. There's a whole list of them in the Handler's Guide. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's more or less it. The Unnatural chapter is interesting because it's very focused on kind of the Lovecraftian side of things. Like there's great old ones in there. There's ghouls, elder. Elder things, Deep ones that the Migo, all that kind of stuff. Right. And it. I mention this because, for me, Delta Green is a type of horror game where I want it to be like, super specific about cosmic horror. I don't want to see vampires and werewolves and ghosts and like the traditional stuff. I mentioned that because some of the modules actually focus on that stuff. There's more. It's more traditional horror. It almost always has a cosmic horror sort of lens or backing kind of thing. But. But I don't know. This is a super specific kind of horror. And campy aliens and ghosts just kind of. They ruin the vibe for me. I even connect that it's one of the places where I, I divorce myself a little bit from the lore. I don't love the whole Migo controlling Grays and flying saucers and Area 51. That's not, that's not what grabs me about Delta Green. Delta Green is the Stuff where you've seen it and you can't describe it and it troubles you. And the next time you meet your son, you see the same thing on his face. And now you've got, like, what's going on? Like, that whole, like, unraveling of insanity or. Insanity is what I'm after. Not the. It's. You know, there's a flying saucer, and what Delta Green says is the flying saucer crash. And the grays are just, you know, remotely controlled by an even more alien thing. I don't know if I love it. What is your take on, like, the types of adversaries and the horrors that you put in the game? What do you. What do you like and don't like? [00:31:45] Speaker B: I agree with you. I'm not looking for traditional vampires, werewolves, types of things. And, you know, part. One of the things that I mention in my part of this is the. Let me see if I have it written down and articulated correctly. Antithesis of fear as it is in the book. Antithesis of fear is understanding is. Is a component. And I think you touched on it just briefly, which is once it's understood and how many, specifically it says, like, how many HP it has or what the name of the monster is, it ceases to be frightening. So to me, I don't read these monsters. If they come up in a scenario that I need to read and kind of understand how they think or move or what motivates them and what maybe powers or stat block they have, that is fine. But other than that, I don't want to know anything about these things. I just want. Now. [00:32:47] Speaker A: Yes. [00:32:47] Speaker B: Yeah. So I. I think it's part of that. And that is one of the. That's why I, like, I don't want to run this for Lovecraft gurus necessarily, because I don't want them to go up deep one, right. [00:33:03] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Yawn. [00:33:05] Speaker B: Doug Sokoff. I got it right. Like, dude, Jeff is perfect because I think he has just an inkling of what some of these things are, but he's not a Call of Cthulhu fan. None of the players I play with are like that. And that's where it's like, wtf? So that's me. That's my take on them. Yeah. [00:33:25] Speaker A: I would even recommend, if you are playing with a whole bunch of people who know either Lovecraft, mythos, Call of Cthulhu, or Delta Green really well, mix some things up. [00:33:33] Speaker B: Yes. [00:33:34] Speaker A: To pull the carpet out from under them when they're thinking of this. Oh, I know what's going on. Here. I know what Migos weaknesses or whatever. Right. That's not what you want in this game. You, You. You want this game to be. I play as a player. I don't understand what's going on. Right. And I'm not going to. I'm not going to get to the answer. Impossible Landscapes is brilliant at this, frankly. You know that we, at some point when you were running that I just had to, like, shift mental gears. Like, okay, this clown thing we're seeing in public, and I can't tell if other people can see it or not. And like, I just have to let. Like, this is just. This is just what's happening. I can't explain it. I can't, you know, even. Even in a supernatural sense, I couldn't put two, two and two together. And we've talked about it before. I, you know, when I went to get the coffee that time where I was trying to, like, find out, is this real or not? Is this reality? [00:34:24] Speaker B: Is my name on the cup? What's the name they put on the cup? [00:34:27] Speaker A: I asked for. I asked for my. My regular coffee at the coffee shop. Do I. Do I get the right coffee? [00:34:33] Speaker B: Right. Right. [00:34:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. And so it's really about that. It's not. It is. It's so far from dnd and knowing that a troll is vulnerable to fire for. For to not regenerate, it's so far from that, it's not funny. And I think in some ways I'm with you. Like, I, I like the. Love the Lovecraft mythos, just because I, you know, read that as a. As a kid, as a young man, and just, you know, you know, probably too early. So maybe for some of my. Some of who I am, but as much as I love it, I don't want the familiarity of any of that in the game. Right. So you're right. It even goes beyond Frankenstein's monster and vampires and goblins and fairies and all the rest. Right. It should be so strange. They can't fathom it. They can't understand it. They don't know what the motivations for these things are. That's where you need to go with this stuff. [00:35:27] Speaker B: And with that, I agree with you. When you talk about the Grays and the Mego piece, I do understand. Like, I don't want. [00:35:33] Speaker A: I get it. Yeah. [00:35:35] Speaker B: Well, some people equate this game to X Files, and then some Die Hards are like, it drives me nuts when people refer to it as X Files because it's not the X Files, it's. You're not the good guys. And that's the rub that they have. But it's also, to your point, like the grays, Roswell, Area 51, you know, alien crashes can get to be the werewolf vampire that you are referring to and that's what you're wanting to steer away from. For me, I think I ran convergence, you know, and there's a touch on that. You know, PX Poker Night is all, you know, involved in that. But it's also, it's interesting because as you look at some of these published scenarios, there are different takes. Like, there's different paths that you go down. Right. There's different factions. So it's kind of unique where it's like, do you want the Alien X Files ish game? [00:36:30] Speaker A: You're right. [00:36:31] Speaker B: You can present that as the backdrop. You know, you could be the molder if you wanted to in this game as a handler and then discovering those things. I do agree with you, Harrigan. My preference is I want more of the WTF versus the Scully Mulder skeptic believer. You could have that in a group. Great. I think that leads to some cool role playing opportunities. But I also don't want to mimic it one for one. Like I do want the wtf. I don't understand any of this. And you know what? You're not supposed to, right? [00:37:07] Speaker A: So, yep, yep, now we're, I think we're on the same page. And you know what's funny? I. I set PX Poker Night up to run. And for, you know, those in the audience or the listeners who don't know that scenario, it's an official scenario that is in one of the, one of the early collections after 2016 where they, you know, they put a lot of, a lot of operas out there, then they collect them together into hardcovers. I forget which one that's in. Maybe even Night of the Opera, the first one. But long story short, it is, you know, these players are not Delta Green agents. It is the inciting incident. They are literally on an air base in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska or somewhere. I forget where it is. Oklahoma maybe. Middle of nowhere. And this weird stuff happens that kind of changes them forever, right? And it's very tied into this, you know, Grays crashing spaceship, weird, weird radio signals kind of stuff. And I set it all up to run it. And when I read the adventure like more deeply and started to prepare, I'm like, I don't want to run this. And I, and I, I pulled the plug. Jason. Carly was going to be in that game. He Yeah, I had a number of people lined up. They had made characters an. [00:38:13] Speaker B: From. Okay, the, the gnomes. Yeah, she's the, the gnome cast. [00:38:20] Speaker A: Gnome cast. [00:38:21] Speaker B: And also with Jared Rasher, with Falco, [00:38:26] Speaker A: with Advantage or whatever. [00:38:27] Speaker B: That's right. Yes. [00:38:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So also in that game. So I felt really badly because I was like, there's a lot of people who had not played Delta Green before. I'm like, this is perfect. It's a, it's a scenario where you are not agents yet, so you don't have to have the knowledge about how things work. You're just, you're just a, you know, low ranking airman, you know, on a, on a hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of July. But when I read about all the alien stuff that I'm less. I'm like, I don't want to run it. And I didn't, I didn't run it. So I felt. I'm sorry for those of you who were almost involved in that game. But it's just sort of, I guess a good indicator of what interests me and the. On the horror side, the cosmic weirdness side and what doesn't kind of thing. All right, so let me finish out the book here. So the section on the past, which is this timeline thing is, is great. You know, I think we mentioned before the whole thing starts on an assault on Innsmouth with the Marines and the coast guard in 1928. Delta Green itself is founded in, I think, the middle of a Second World War. In terms of when it gets its name, 1942 and then in the Second World War, there's lots of different things they're doing. They're commandos, they're doing psychological warfare, they're investigators, they're fighting the Germans who are doing all kinds of crazy stuff with, with the mythos, basically. And then, you know, there's Cold War stuff that goes on in 1970 in Cambodia. There's the rather famous gumshoe powered follow Delta Green mission that happens, which is basically a big public event that ends up in the whole program getting defunded, exposed, etc. That starts almost 30 years of underground. When, when Sean and I say outlaws, when the game says outlaws, this is this unsanctioned group who are like, well, we don't have any money anymore. We don't have like congressional authority. But this stuff's still out there, so what are we going to do about. And they've developed their own networks and their own. So it's a really cool time period. Kind of like Call of Cthulhu where you can like pick your. Pick your slider. You want to play like, like Victorian Cthulhu, you can do that. You want to play modern day, you can do that. You want to play in the 20s, cool. Delta Green from 28 forward. Like pick your time period and you can drop down. In fact, I ran a Delta Greenish scenario. What was it? No, it was actually Cthulhu. I misspeak. But you could do it as well. I ran something in the 1960s Bayou using Eldrick Hack. I think I use what I used to use to run it, but just that if you want the period. What I'm getting at is if you want the period piece, you can totally do that. Oh, you know what, here's one. The first time I ever ran Last Things Last, which is the rather famous, you know, table setting adventure that Sean and I have talked about. I ran it in like 1970, just. Just because the guys wanted to have like no cell phones. They wanted big ass cars, gas guzzler cars, you know, wide leg pants, you know, all that kind of crazy. [00:41:16] Speaker B: Mustaches. [00:41:17] Speaker A: Yes. It was like 74 or something like that. Yeah, it was, it was awesome. It was awesome. But. And then, you know, from. I'm not going to go into this deeply from then it goes into the whole like the program gets reformed, refounded. There's some, I think there's some assassinations that happen for some high level leaders in various places, all behind the scenes. And the new program forms up in 2002 officially, and that's what's in place today. So when, when Ivy and others are writing about stuff now, it's generally with this modern program in mind, right where it's, it's official, it's still off the books. You're not going to find a line item for it in the budget or anything like that. So it's still a conspiracy and very secretive, but. But it's better funded. And I think, Sean, it's one of the places where I have tripped. Maybe you have tripped. You know, they do have. There are. There is like one part of the Air Force that's kind of in the know about Delta Green and they will send like support if you requisition it the right way, et cetera. So you can actually have like a commando strike force or helicopters come rescue people or whatever if you arrange it correctly. So it's a little bit at odds with the. Got to keep everything on the down low and all that kind of stuff. But there are parts of the modern program that are a little more muscly in terms of the resources that they have. Right. That you're understanding as well. [00:42:34] Speaker B: It is, but I still have a problem with it. [00:42:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:42:39] Speaker A: I prefer to be the. Here's the mission. You got to figure it out. Yeah. Off you go. [00:42:44] Speaker B: I just wonder. Yeah. I just wonder when you get looped in and as you partake, how much do you know? Like, that's what it comes down to. And if a handler's like, let us know and we'll call the calvary. Well, that's okay. Good to know. But then is that typical or not? And if you're under the premise of the outlaws, that's not. That's not what you do. Keep it down. Don't tell anybody. [00:43:11] Speaker A: Outlaws. Outlaws for sure. [00:43:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:13] Speaker A: But the newer program, I think there's some gray area. And now that I, you know, now that you say that and I think it through because I even. I even question, like, because I forget what it is, but it's some. And forgive me, because as much as I'm a. I'm a World War II, like, military hardware wonk, I know little about the structure of these militaries. So I forget if it's an air brigade or what it is, but there's some unit in the Air Force and it's a specific thing that is like, is you can. You can call on it. But if you think about it, Sean, it kind of gets back to what I said before, where there's. There's some resources that don't know about the unnatural but are friendly to the program or are wired in. In the right way. So think of. Picture this. Maybe you're in Afghanistan or you're wherever, and you're like, we've discovered the thing that needs to be destroyed. You can call in the resource without the resource knowing what they're doing. Which I think maybe is the angle I would take. [00:44:02] Speaker B: Right. [00:44:03] Speaker A: Like last. Last resort is, you know, have the. Have the B1 fly over top, you know, the B2 fly over top and drop a bomb on this bunker under the ground. Because of what's in the bunker, they don't even know what's in the bunker. And when they get the call from the right people through the. Through the chain, they're not going to know is this going to be a, you know, executing such and such a code, which means this coordinate drop, a bunker buster. It might be that simple. So you can kind of keep it a little cleaner than. Do all those people in the Air Force really know about Delta Green, that kind of thing. [00:44:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:44:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's. I think that's it for the overview, I guess in terms of the major piece that I think belongs in the Handler's Guide, there's actually decent coverage on the inciting incident in. Or, excuse me, belongs in the Agent's Handbook, is what I meant to say. In the Handler's Guide, there is decent coverage of the inciting incident, which belongs in that other book. I think if you listen to the show that we did last week around making a character, it's not as much meat on the bones as there should be around what happened to make you aware of and brought into Delta Green, what was the inciting incident. And there's some decent coverage in this book that I think the way the angle that they play it up as is, the handler should be aware of this stuff and they should work with the players when they're making characters to sort of set the scene, that sort of thing. So, anyway, anything else overview wise, you want to talk about or should we dive into the chapter that is all about the opera? [00:45:32] Speaker B: That's all good. I think we can move on to the chapter piece. [00:45:36] Speaker A: And. Yeah, you know, Sean, actually, before we. We dive straight into that, there is one, one last little thing that I think is pretty cool. For those who don't know about, who either don't have the book or are thinking about getting it. The chapter on the schism, which is the two different versions of Delta Green, has really good depth on the differences between the goals, facilities, the organizational structures, the agents, the specialists, how they recruit, the how they run operations. It's pretty cool. There's separate sections for the program and the outlaws. So if you want to do that kind of contrast and compare and maybe critically, if you're in the middle of an adventure that spans this, like impossible landscapes that starts in one era and lands in the other. I've never seen anybody do it, but it might be kind of cool to get into what the differences are 20 years later from the 90s to the teens, or the 90s to 2010 or whatever. Whatever the jump is. And the Handler's Guide actually has some sweet detail around that stuff. It's good. Over to you, buddy. [00:46:37] Speaker B: All right. I think it goes without saying that there's going to be a particular tone that the game is going to enable. So the court philosophy which is outlined in the Handler's Guide really is. It's a game of fear. That's the tone. So when you're doing CATS concept aim tone subject matter, that can come in pretty handy. It's one of the things I think I had somewhere down has to do with the horror component, but not making it frequently because if it's a lot of horror, then it becomes more of a farce. So it's really grounded into reality and you have to kind of, everything's normal, everything's fine, until it's not. [00:47:26] Speaker A: Not. [00:47:27] Speaker B: And that's usually when things go like, you want to have those WTF moments, but essentially to some of these things are going to be a little repetitive to what Harrigan had touched on, like the end of humanity and the nihilistic component of it. You know, it's just a clock winding down until the end of the world and we are just a blip on the radar of time, you know. [00:47:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:51] Speaker B: In passing. Yeah. [00:47:53] Speaker A: One thing I would say that relates to what you're talking about. Like, people will. In the osr, people will debate what. What gonzo means and sort of wild and willy play where anything can happen. And how when you start to have more and more of that in your game, it starts to feel unmoored and not grounded. And like, if anything can happen, then why do I care about anything that. So this is a similar thing in Delta Green where it's. It's trying to say, basically be judicious about these weird things that they encounter. And they should almost be like. Almost like Death of a Thousand Cuts until you get to the really momentous stuff towards the end of the adventure when it's like, all bets are off. Right. But early on and Impossible Landscapes does it. Well, it's so. It's like, what. What did I just glimpse? And then. And then the scenes change. You're like, all right, moving on. I got to get to New York. So. And you kind of just file it away. Like, that was weird. But I think if you just hit people over and over again with the, with the, you know, you're. There's ghouls in the streets and you know, your every mission is. Is involving like machine gunning a bunch of monsters and you just get numb to it. You're desensitized. And it just doesn't have the same impact. As opposed to, you're at home, there's a birthday party, and you see a face in the window kind of thing. And then when you go to the window, the face is not there. Like, that is what we're going after, I think. But back to you, man. [00:49:13] Speaker B: It is indeed indifference to survival as the Handler. So I should have even started off like, it's called the Handler. You're the handler, you're the game master. You're not the dungeon master, you're not the referee. It's handler. So it's even embodying the tradecraft elements of a clandestine agency that is working off the grid and depending on the era that we had mentioned, it's going to be more so than other others. But that is a purposefully designed like moniker for sure. It's about the urge of survival. Understand in a universe wholly antithetical to human survival and understanding. And you know, you got to resist urgencies to fudge the dice. You know, that's the component that Harrigan touched on and saying, you know, you're just there to present the info to them. Don't try to get into. It's about victory necessarily. Like even character death in the book is pretty much like yeah, it's the thing. It's a thing which can be sometimes jarring for those that if you play with they may not be big fans of character death. So how do you address that with your group right on the up front? Fail forward is a component. I don't want to die for no reason. It's got to be purposeful. And it's almost sometimes when you get into that purposeful piece, it may go directly head to head with, you know, the trying to. You're going to survive. It's inevitable. [00:50:54] Speaker A: You know. You know what, Forgive me for breaking in here. I mentioned that there's a. There's a quote in the book that talks about how the GM or the handler has to be indifferent. And I love that. And the angle that I was thinking about last night when I read this was the whole like, hey, adversarial GMs. You know, cool it. You're not playing against the players here. You're not trying to. But what you're saying right now is the opposite is also true if you're coming from either, you know more the more traditional trad games trying to keep the players alive. Everybody has fun and like the game's about the player stories and all that sort of stuff. That is not this game is not. You are literally. And like you said, the fact that you're the handler, like you are providing the briefing and you are getting briefed back to you the players. Like there should be a scene where the players are like having to explain what went wrong, what went right. All that is this like two way with the handler. And the other thing that underlies it all is like even the cosmic horror is indifferent. These are not demons, they're not evil. In the same way that you think about it in a law versus Chaos or a Help Hellraiser or even a Stephen King thing. Like, it's not that these are entities and things that are so alien they don't care about us and they happen to be consuming us or otherwise, like doing horrendous things to people. But it's not in that same like malevolent way necessarily. Right. [00:52:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. And it's not something we understand, we're not meant to understand. So it's bad evil horror only because we don't understand it and it's bad outcomes. [00:52:30] Speaker A: Yeah, well. And the end of all things and all that. Yeah. [00:52:34] Speaker B: Minor details, you know. [00:52:35] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:52:38] Speaker B: So managing info drip control is the opposite of fear. So when your characters or as the handler provides an element of control to the player characters, you know, it'll say in the book, like, then you're doing it. It literally says you're doing it wrong. You know, they investigate, they learn things, they kind of figure things out which may lead them to be more in control. Let them think that. So I guess it goes back to not fudging dice, not leading them to anything. Not. It says, don't drop a clue. Right? Don't drop. Don't drop what you. A vital clue. Which is also kind of might be against another philosophy of hiding a clue behind a locked door. So there's a trade off, Right. So if you have a clue, you want the players to understand it and get it and move on. [00:53:45] Speaker A: I think I know what you're getting at. I have a slightly different take on it and quite frankly, quite frankly, I, I think I probably go against some of the advice that's in the book here. So, you know, everybody take this, get your salt shaker ready because we're going to need some grains of salt here to, you know, take this on the book. Very trad in terms of the investigative part of it, right? So it says you have to, you know, the template is you have to have a hook, you need some NPCs, you got to have some leads. And the leads are. The part is the part where it's so trad that I don't know if I really love running that way. But it basically says you have to know the clues where they are and how to find them and maneuver the characters to them. I don't know if I love that. And I also, earlier in the other book in the ages handbook, you get into the whole like, hey, if you have a competency of 50%, you just do the thing so why wouldn't that apply to this and say you just learn the thing. So I'm jumping ahead a little here. I had some, like, I had some, some save rounds up to the. For the end of the. Sean that I'd say, well, here's my take. I'll provide some of them now. Like, my perspective on this is like gumshoe this. Like if they come into a. Doing an autopsy or they come into a room, give. Especially if they have the right skill levels, give them the core stuff that lets them move the thing on and then either have them ask the right questions or make them roll the dice to give them more. Right. That whole thing around. Like, for heaven's sakes, don't make them come in with a 60%. You know, forensics blow the roll and they can't progress the mission. And some of this stuff reads that way. And I've been in games where the handler is doing this and it, you know what, we don't swear a lot, but it sucks. It sucks when you're in a game. And like I've been in last equation, I think and there is a role. If you don't make the role, you're just not. You can't figure it out and you can bleep me all you want. Sean, I, I do think there's a more modern way, there's a more rational way to do this. And it's not quite as distasteful as some people would think it is. Gabe. Dibbing we've been arguing with. About failing forward and that sort of thing over on the Discord. This is not necessarily failing forward. This is presenting. We're in a shared fiction universe in our heads. Right. And you have experts who are present in the scene. They would know that you are not. The handler's not describing it even gets to a little bit to what you might have talked about where certain people have jobs in real life that apply to these games. The detective that I know, Jeff being a former investigator for the. I think for the county or the state. I forget what you said he did for the state. You know, the hanger doesn't know how to present the clues in the right way for them to ask the right questions. Instead, we abstract it into skill roles and you can extract that further into the. Oh man, you got an expert on the scene. I'm just going to give you the three things that you would already know. Right. I don't know why you would do it any different, but the book does talk about what you're saying. Which is like there's three. Three clues to understand here. And don't, don't give them away. Right. Don't do that. I see you nodding, but I can't tell what you're thinking. [00:57:00] Speaker B: I'm with you. [00:57:01] Speaker A: I'm with you because you've run more Delta green than I have got to. [00:57:05] Speaker B: You got to give them the things. You got to just give them the things. Because you know what? It doesn't really matter. [00:57:11] Speaker A: Especially you know what? Especially if it's things that let you progress things, which is the whole failing forward thing. It's not even going forward. It's like keep things moving, keep things progressing. You don't have to give them. And understanding. [00:57:23] Speaker B: No. [00:57:24] Speaker A: Right. That's. In fact, you don't want to do that. [00:57:26] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. Let them, let them put like, let them have the pieces. How they put it together. That's on them. [00:57:37] Speaker A: There's. There should be. I'm doing this in my game right now, so hopefully I'll be through this scene by the time we. This, this airs. There should be tension in almost everything you do once you arrive at the place and are trying to understand what the hell happened. Whether it's examining a body or interviewing people. Like they're trying to catch up with someone right now. And at least I'm feeling it. The tension we have over. Like there's the motel room she's supposed to be in, lights on. Her car's not here. Is she in there? Like how do we get it? How do we check? Do we check with the hotel manager for all of that? There's like tension that like, like bubbles behind it. Because there's this expectation that. Oh boy, you know, we gotta. Now we're into it kind of thing. [00:58:19] Speaker B: Dude, watch the movie Seven man. Just. [00:58:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:25] Speaker B: Attention is going to happen when they open this freaking door. [00:58:29] Speaker A: Yep. Or box or. Yes. Yeah. [00:58:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:35] Speaker A: That's what you're after. Right? And then. And you have to. It's like a slow build up to that. You gotta, you gotta set the scene. And it's also. Why shouldn't be too jokey. Shouldn't be. Shouldn't be goofy stuff that breaks the tone because you're not going to get up the. These are stairs you have to climb to get more and more tense in the scene and in the game. And Yeah. I don't know. It's everybody. That's why everybody has to be at the table to play the same game. It's the things we've talked about where you want everybody on the Same page. Anyway, I've interrupted you to talk about this, the clue part of this. Right. But I'm sure you've got other. Other notes you want to get. [00:59:10] Speaker B: I actually, I think I might have. I skipped over a part of my own section. But bleak, paranoid atmosphere is. And the bleak, I think has been like bounded down everybody's throat for sure. But even just the paranoid component. So it. Mundane is the, you know, we mentioned. Mundane is the backdrop. Yes. You're kind of a family person or whatever. The normal day job. It's just a normal, you know, office. And it's an operation. You get a brief, they want you to go check something out. Okay. It sounds rather routine, but we know that it isn't going to be because of the premise of the game. But rooting things in mundane, set up things for the unnatural presents itself to be more striking when it does occur. That's the weirdness that comes into place. Less is more, you know, a little unnatural goes a long way. And that goes back to what I was mentioning earlier on is if it's, you know, a horror piece, every turn of the corner, then it becomes much of a farce for sure. [01:00:11] Speaker A: It's, you know what. And there's a. There's a juxtaposition as well. Like if you can overlay the really weird moment in something that's so mundane and the mundane being. Again, hate to keep hitting it. But the impossible landscape scene, like when we. Is it a mime or a clown that you see? [01:00:28] Speaker B: Clown. [01:00:30] Speaker A: So when you see the clown, you're not alone. There's like. It's like a city street scene, like a festival or something. Like Times Square, Washington Square Park. There you go, Washington Square. It's like, it's like you're, you know. That's the part that's so jarring. Yeah. Sean's making clown. [01:00:46] Speaker B: Clown around. Yes, yes. [01:00:48] Speaker A: But that's the part that's so jarring. You're not in a dark room expecting, or I should say a dark building. And you go on room to room and, you know, the tension levels up. This is more of like we're. We're just getting set up. We just met with the handler. And what's that, you know, over there? I also love that the game is so filled with the faction play. Whether it's majestic or the outlaws or the things you're going against. You can be tailed by a car or see someone following you and have no idea who it is and never find out. Right. It like that level. That's another way you just like, give the players those WTF moments. Like, why did that happen? What's. Where's this coming from? Who's this letter from? Who. Who was, you know, who contacted my boss and let them know I was doing this instead of that. There's all of that stuff you can get into. [01:01:39] Speaker B: You know, there is a type of horror in Impossible Landscapes that they reference, and I'm trying to remember the exact term, and that's what I'm trying to find. Surreal horror is what they're referencing. Which means, you know, it's. You go to go and get a coffee at a cafe and you sit down in a booth and then your long dead sibling walks in to sit down across from you, right? [01:02:10] Speaker A: Yep. That's like, do you remember Jacob's Ladder? [01:02:15] Speaker B: Yeah, dude. [01:02:16] Speaker A: Jacob's Ladder has surreal horror. [01:02:18] Speaker B: I know, that is. Wow. I haven't seen it in years and the first time I did was like, what did I just watch? [01:02:25] Speaker A: It was in the theater. I don't think I've seen it, but I remember it. [01:02:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember parts of it just. I just remember, like, it's off the hook, that's all. [01:02:34] Speaker A: It's a wonderful story. It's an adaptation of an occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. Right? [01:02:39] Speaker B: Was it? [01:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah. It's like a famous story. Yeah, it's pretty cool. [01:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So moving on. Less is more. Kind of touched on that. Nothing is certain. So if the agents are confident, which I started getting into, then you're doing it wrong. Page 328 of the handler's Guide. So they should live in constant fear of being double crossed. Even so, we're not even talking about horror. It's just like looking over your shoulder to Harrigan's point. What is that? Why does that car keep popping up? [01:03:09] Speaker A: Right. [01:03:10] Speaker B: And you know, you know the players will do anything in their power to get to that car. [01:03:19] Speaker A: I've done it. Remember, I think my character Chase went all through New York City while the [01:03:23] Speaker B: rest of the players. I follow the Handler in the car to the airport. Like, I'm gonna follow where they go. And it's like, we're going to LaGuardia, they're going to the airport. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So there is a component of that. Humans are the main threat, though, in Delta Green, which is kind of kooky when you're talking about these cosmic horrors that people are willing to do terrible things. There's Reddit threads. Like some of the misnomers that drive some of the players crazy is that the agents are the good. The good guys. They're really not. They do terrible things to protect humanity because they have to cover it up. So when you're in the middle of the woods and you know, the neighbor comes by and they see that you are yet two graves dug and you're going to throw a couple dead bodies that are laying there in the yard in those. What are you, what are you going to do? What is that guy going to do? What is that guy going to do now that he's caught, he or she's caught you like, you don't want them to go back to the authorities. [01:04:26] Speaker A: Dude, it's. It's so rich. The. So then the, the agents don't necessarily start there. They kind of. They can slide into that, becoming numb and doing awful things. Right. In the duet that I'm running, there's one little element that I really love, which is there's, you know, the handler briefs these three agents, one of whom is the PC. Two NPC agents. Right. One of the, one of the NPCs is quite new to this, so she's still pretty fresh faced and like not, she's not, you know, hasn't slid off the abyss yet. And then there's this New York City detective who's like, yeah, I seen it all. You know, allow me to just simply say one has lower sanity than the other. [01:05:04] Speaker B: Yes, of course. [01:05:05] Speaker A: What I will say, one may be immune. Yep. Yeah, yeah. It might be desensitized. Right? [01:05:10] Speaker B: Yes. [01:05:10] Speaker A: But, but so you know the overall setup, again, there's this, there's this mathematician who's a friendly and she's missing. Go find her. Right. Well, in the go bag in the back of the car that was provided to them is a silenced pistol, unmarked. What do you think that's for? Like, if you find the woman and she's like offer rocker or like take care of it. And this is where, this is where you get into the. Not the good guys. Like, hopefully dirigible won't listen. Maybe we'll get to the. Better not say anything. Damn it. D. Close your ears for a minute if you're listening to this. The. The woman's brother is also looking for her and there's going to be a moment like. Yeah, let's just. I'll just, I'll just leave it at that. Family member is going to be on site. Right? It's going to be. Yeah, it's going to be good. It's going to be good. [01:05:56] Speaker B: We already know what's going to happen just by that right there. [01:06:02] Speaker A: But you're right. Not Not. Not good guys. And humans are the problem. [01:06:05] Speaker B: That's right. [01:06:05] Speaker A: 90% of the time they are. [01:06:07] Speaker B: And people willing to do terrible things for the power the unnatural brings. I have a character in the Jeff group that's like, oh, I could. I could hold this stuff. I can keep this. We can use it as a magic item to defeat everything else. No. Nope, nope, nope, nope. Because Delta Green, per the words in the Handler's Guide, is there to slam the door shut. [01:06:33] Speaker A: Dude. He can do it. And if they find out about it. [01:06:36] Speaker B: That's true. That's true. [01:06:37] Speaker A: That's the angle. Yep. [01:06:39] Speaker B: There is a story plot. [01:06:41] Speaker A: You can try to hide it. [01:06:43] Speaker B: Yes, yes. [01:06:44] Speaker A: I've got a. One of the shotguns that I'm gonna write. Remember I always said I had two ideas. I've always had the idea for a shot. You know how a How about Lovecraftian ghoul works? What they can do. [01:06:55] Speaker B: Don't. No. [01:06:57] Speaker A: So if I Lovecraftian ghoul eats you, it gains your memories. [01:07:01] Speaker B: Oh, yes. Okay. I think I didn't know the reference, but I didn't know it was cool. [01:07:06] Speaker A: I have this idea, like, you know, someone in the program we got. You've got cadavers or you've got people who. You want to know what they know and they won't tell you. Well, guess what? We're going to have a pet ghoul and they're going to eat you, and they will tell me what you know. I have not formed it fully in my head yet, but I love that. Again, it's because it's a bad. You know, the ghoul is just the mechanism. The evil here is the person. It's the. The person whose idea it is. You know, me [01:07:39] Speaker B: managing the drip antithesis of fear is understanding and going back to control. Understanding, you know, the players, the minute they think they understand, you know, turning it up on its head is the way to go. [01:07:54] Speaker A: I think one thing you'll often hear about in horror movies and in horror games and in gaming in general, there's this thing about player agency. And a big part of what makes horror games what they are is that the players don't have as much agency, they don't have as much control over the scene themselves, the flow, etc. This is taking it one step further and saying, no, no, no, it's not just agency they don't have. They don't understand what's going on and they're not going to. And that, you know, we've talked about it a couple of times already. But I think that's the difference between this and some other horror where you can kind of wrap your head around it. Oh, now I know how to solve it or whatever. You're not going to get there with most of this stuff, right? You might in the short term solve some problems, but in the long term, no, not happening. Right. [01:08:38] Speaker B: Yeah, we talked about monsters and knowing the stats and if they know the stats, they're not going to be afraid of it. I don't, you know, it's even in fantasy games. Stop referring to the monsters as their names. Just take it away from them and you know, they stick it in the monster and their sword like goes into a puddle of goo. You know, that's scary enough. Don't you know, you can maybe describe it. But anyways, that's a whole nother GM topic. The lack of comprehension. The ultimate answers are beyond human comprehension. So never tell them anything. Which is also a little tricky because you, you know, they say never give the players enough info to let them think they truly understand an unnatural threat. So it's not. That is not the clue thing that we're talking about. This happens to be the, you know. Oh, I know. It's this thing that propels the thing. I also think that there are, in some scenarios there are kind of like, oh, this is how it moves around or this is why it does what it does or the people it seeks out, or so the players are led to believe. And sometimes they're right on because they end up trying to put that to bed. So I think there is a trade off in giving them that understanding through pattern recognition, if you will. So I think it's like, well, so sometimes I come to a crossroads with that mentality where it's like, yeah, they don't understand and they may never. Or oh, I get it. Let me, let me make sure of this. Is this, this is what I'm seeing. Yes. Nice seeing it again. Okay, I'm going to put two and two together. But in the end there is still maybe the mighty question mark. [01:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I see two, two angles here that interest me. One is if they do gain an understanding of some things that are unnatural, guess what? It's damaging their sanity. [01:10:40] Speaker B: That's true. Right. [01:10:41] Speaker A: Your natural score is going up, your sanity is going down. So the game is built in to do that. So we don't mean to say it's not meant to be the door shut. You're not allowed to know this stuff. It's not that. It is more in the capital. Capital U. This is Unknowable. You will. Your brain cannot. Your human brain cannot wrap around the scale of these things and what they really mean. But if you start to get close and you start to, you know, understand some rituals or whatever it is, then you're. You're doing some. Some irreparable harm. But the other side of it is, I do think we're not also not trying to say you have to treat the characters or the players like mushrooms, put them in a dark closet and feed them kind of thing. Right? It's, you know, then they'll, you know, they. And they're. And there's just. So they had that feeling like nothing I do matters, like, how do I even make progress on this? It's also not what we're saying. And I think you can. You just have to kind of layer it in a way. Think, picture this, a couple of different Delta Green scenarios. There's often a corporation involved who's made some discovery involving the unnatural, and they're producing like a product or a drug or something. You can figure all that out, like their supply chain and who they're sending it to and even what it does to a degree. But what you're not going to get to is like, what's. Where'd that ingredient come from? It came from. You know what I mean? That's like. As you pull the thread. So there's parts of this that are veiled and that are like, you know, you're not gonna. You're not gonna. You just. You're not equipped to understand that. But it doesn't mean that you have to be inept at what you're doing or you can't make progress. You can be a badass set of agents who go in and disrupt that whole process and shut the place down and win the scenario or whatever. Right. But you've taken all this harm as a result of doing it. So it's not. It's not as black and white, maybe, as it. As it seems. Is that what I would say? [01:12:26] Speaker B: Agreed. Agreed. Tension, Risk. Control. Death. Control is the opposite of fear. Mentioned that briefly. Fear, not frustration. So give them a silver, a sliver. Give them a sliver of hope for success. Because without hope, their eventual horrific failure comes as a boring shrug, you know, rather than a terrifying shock, which is from the Handler's Guide. And that's what Harrigan is touching on specifically. There is like, you know, I. There was a situation with Jeff's character, and we brought it up, and I told him there are fates worse than death in Delta Green. So even with character death, where they talk about, you know, it's, it's a lethal game, you know, characters will die. That's the way it's supposed to be. At the same time, you know, some characters and players, or some players won't want the senseless death. Like, ah, man, give me a break. Ah, it's dumb. You fail to roll, you're dead. Save or die. I'm dead. Give me a break. So I think there's a trade off and one of those trades, trade offs is, you know, the, the downward spiral of the human, the human condition and you know, becoming immune to violence. Like some people think, oh, I'm immune to violence. [01:13:45] Speaker A: Like, woo. [01:13:46] Speaker B: I don't get any sanity damage. Yay, I'm winning. [01:13:49] Speaker A: Winning, right? [01:13:50] Speaker B: Like really are you winning? Because there's a whole lot of other bad juju coming your way. [01:13:55] Speaker A: Does that mean you beat your kids? Right, right. [01:13:57] Speaker B: Like there's all sorts of, hey, congratulations, you're winning. Yeah. [01:14:01] Speaker A: From that. Yeah. Do you get a bar fights every weekend now and end up in the slammer half the time? [01:14:07] Speaker B: Right. You're somewhat sane, but you're just an asshole and you're getting thrown in jail all the time. [01:14:16] Speaker A: Exactly. [01:14:17] Speaker B: So it's about that having one's humanity subsumed also by an alien intelligence. But those are some of the highlights that I think I wanted to hit when we talk about as a handler. Some of the things you want to keep in mind from a Delta Green perspective on what that looks like, you know, Agent Axiom's whatever the list of things you do, there are some things in there that's 40, 40 some points. Bullets that say, here's what you do, here's what you don't do. And sometimes it's like, yeah. The only problem with that, we referenced it on the last episode and it's in the show notes back there. And it's a great reference from Unspeakable Oath and it does help paint the picture. But at the same time that's just like a. Hey, FYI because it's like always lie to everybody outside of Delta Green. Never lie to anybody inside Delta Green. [01:15:12] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:15:13] Speaker B: And some of those components are, you know, you get a player that's like, no, no, that's not what you're supposed to do. This is the document that says right here. You don't do that. Dude. Just relax a little bit. You know, it's still a game. Let the players have the agency to be able to tell, you know, their other agent, like, well, this is what I do, or, you know, on my day job, blah, blah, blah, or wait a minute, aren't you a radio personality? I've heard your voice before and then have that come through in play. And what does that mean when the players start to get to know each other a little bit more? Because if you just treat it like, if you game it, I think it's, it's going to lose some of those details. But anyways, I wanted to touch on some of these aspects to get into the frame of mind of what a Delta Green game is and how you run it as a handler. [01:16:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's good stuff, man. And you're. I, I, I read the axiom axioms again recently. I had the same opinion you did. I'm like, these are like guidelines and some, some of them are a little too rigid. I don't know. I would also say, just to touch on something you just mentioned the whole, like, you get to know that your fellow agents. One of the cool parts we talked before in this, you know, earlier in the show about, there's these, there's a schism which means that there's these two different Delta green groups. They actually form teams quite differently. Like in the, whatever everybody thinks of, like B cell, J cell, P cell, that is outlaws talk when, so those cells with the letter designations and code names and all that sort of stuff, everybody is the same, everybody's agent name is the same letter as their cell. So if it's J, you've got to be John or Jack or Joe or whatever, right? That kind of thing. Those cells stay together. So they get to, they go through it. They go through a meat grinder together, one operation after another. The modern program is more of the, like, put the chess pieces on the board that you need. At least that's my understanding where it's like, you know, we need a specialist that does this. We have these two FBI agents we can use. And you're assembling the teams a little more dynamically, depending on who's available in what part of the country. It's a little less of the, like, you know, my, my boys, my cell is, you know, who I'm with kind of thing. [01:17:23] Speaker B: Yeah, the ladder is much more task, Joint task force. [01:17:26] Speaker A: Yes, exactly, exactly. Assembled as, as needed. I will also say that do not be, if you're the handler, do not be afraid. If you want, you know, if you want to get, have those, those high, high octane energetic moments where the players maybe don't yet know how to play the game and they get into that. Like I pull my gun on the clerk to get the information and, and they're in like a department store. Play that out like, like teach them that they are in the real, essentially the real world in terms of security, impact on their home life. Because you will have players who are used to the murder hobo thing where they just, they try to run roughshot over, you know, everything that everyone they meet. And if you do like again, like we said before on the show, open your door, walk outside. You're in that world with the, with the. All the, you know, unnatural, layered beneath. But, you know, go to the cafe and pull your gun on the clerk and see what happens. Right? So I would not be afraid of any of that up to and including, you know, having the, the police arrest or take down the offending operative. And the, the group will rapidly. I mean, obviously you talk about this in advance. You don't spring this on them. So make sure your session zero has covered it, et cetera. But if you're running into that player who's just not getting it, I, you know, I, I will not flex the world to make the world less realistic or less believable. Like, you know, you know, you fired your gun that, that night. You're gonna have to file a report with the, with the police chief and you're gonna have to go through all the things now. Right. That kind of thing. So anyway, do you have anything else on the. Running an opera? Sure. I have a couple little things I want to bring to the table. We are, we already talked about the competency rules like the whole, like you have the equivalency of a, of a bachelor's degree or, or 10 years of experience, use those rules heavily to give people information or even contacts and whatnot. If you're trying to make contact with somebody and you have persuade at 50, you're pretty persuasive person. It's probably your part of your job and you know how to do it. And, and you can. I mean, this is where you can also always get into the want to have to make the role because Delta Green has the got to fail to get better. So you don't want to remove roles from the table all the time, but use the role to either give them more or prevent them from having to pay a cost. So in other words, it happens faster. If you succeed on the role, you get more information, better quality information. No one knows you've done it. Like, those are the things that I look at for when you want to bring the dice out kind of thing. I would use the Alexandrian's 33 clue rule as well. If you're familiar with that, which if the adventure tells you the document is in the safe at the bottom or it's the safe in the trunk of the car, it's at the bottom of the lake, right. And you're like, no, I gotta guide the players right to the lake and the car and the trunk and the document have the same information be available in different ways in up to three, up to three or more different like avenues. Right. Pretty classic investigative game mechanic, but I definitely think it can be used well in Delta Green. I would also recommend that handlers play Delta Green so you can see what, how other handlers run the game and you can experience what it feels like to be someone who's in the shoes of the, of the agents who you don't, when you don't have all the information and you're trying to put two, two and two together. It's a well known phenomena in investigative play when the GM has all the information about what happened and how things work and they reveal a few things to the players. It is so much harder for the players to connect the dots than it is for the GM because they haven't read all the backstory. The GM may not be describing it correctly. They may just be thinking on a different plane right now. So just if you're, if you put yourself in the player's shoes, you'll start to see that and understand why you have to maybe be a little more giving with the information than you think you might be. Because players just aren't going to get it otherwise, is what I would say. That's, that's largely it. So the same sort of, you know, be smart about how you run an investigative game so it just doesn't become slow or frustrating. I do think, you know, Delta Green is a funny game because the pacing can be slow, especially in the start of the, of the operation where you're gathering data, you're interviewing people, you're not going to be having gunfights and whatnot. But I think if you start to include little, you know, leave those little jelly beans of terror here and there for the players to find and they don't know what to make of it. And it's not so bad that it like derails anything or makes them think, holy crap, I'm getting out of here. It's just a little bit of the weird to kind of keep things flavored as they go and things get, you know, start to Ramp up and get stranger and stranger as they go. [01:22:09] Speaker B: We'll have a link to the Alexandrian three clue rule. We'll try to find a blog article so you can reference that. [01:22:16] Speaker A: It and the gumshoe approach where you, like, give them the clue and then let them in Gumshoe. It's like they can spend resources, forces to get more. There's no reason why you can't turn that into a role. To get more. [01:22:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know. There's the, the investigation piece. I think they're the. I don't know. Sometimes I wonder why wouldn't a game master give the party the clue? And I think the biggest reason is they want the party to feel as they succeeded in achieving the Clue and so they withhold it. They got to earn it. Yeah, and, and that's okay. But it also often stifles the progress of the mission. And in every game and in every rpg, it's. In this case, it's not the earning of the crew of the Clue, it's giving them the ticket to the next step, which is probably even more fun, honestly. [01:23:08] Speaker A: Like. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're not. I will say this. It's not one size fits all where you should be always giving out clues. No matter what's happening. There's tons of situations where it doesn't matter if they get a clue. Make them roll for it. Like, you know, it'd be a little bit, a little extra piece of information that will help them triangulate what the hell's happening. Make the rule for that. But if it's this thing where they can't go to the next scene or they can't get to the location or they. As long as it's not like that's not the penultimate, like the final, you know, the very end goal or next to it, then consider being a little more lenient with that stuff. But it's always going to be contextualized where, you know, you don't want to be saying, oh, okay, you just succeeded and now the adventure's over because you arrived at the place. Don't do that either. But I don't know. I don't know. It's. It's all, all of this is like understanding the adventure you're running, getting reps on the system so you know when to call for roles, when not to call for roles and all that stuff. [01:24:02] Speaker B: It's. [01:24:02] Speaker A: Being a handler can be super fun. Super fun. But there's a fair bit to it. [01:24:07] Speaker B: There is, for sure. Well, I think that wraps things up up for this episode of Go Bag. Thanks for tuning in on behalf of my co host Harrigan. We'll check you on the next one. See ya. This episode of Go Bag, produced with help from the following friendlies, field operatives, special agents and black ops directors. Joe Swick, Roger French, Merkel Froehlich, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker Polish Ogre, Hoos card, Carl Farty McMutterpants, Laramie Wall, Eileen Barnes, Heptol Lima, Aaron Raelia, Wayne Peacock, Jeff Walken, Jorcus Rex, Eric Salzwedle, Phil McClory, Jason Hobbs, Michael Holland, Remy Billido, Crystal Eggstad, Eric Avia Fornak, Brian Kurtz, Chad Blaman, Jim Ingram, Orchis Dorcas, Chris Shorb, Brian Rumble, Victor Wyatt, Kevin Keneally, Andy Hall, Jason Weitzel, Salt Hart, Tad Lechman, Nicholas Abruzzo, Matthew Catron, Curtis Takahashi, Angela Murray, Mr. White 20 Jason Connerly, Shannon Olson, Ryan West, Kristen McLean, Larry Hollis, Len Seal, Jake at Faded Quill Jake at Faded Quill Gaming Tess Trekkie, Tim Jensen, Nubis, Christopher Lang Qualog, Peter Skaines, Wendy Forcon, James Fraser, Ronald Dirigible, Chaplin, Grimaldis and Mark Mequez. Thank you, Operatives.