The Agent's Toolkit

[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: Hey, Harrigan, how's it going? [00:00:21] Speaker A: It's going pretty well, Sean. How are you? [00:00:23] Speaker B: I'm doing all right, can't complain. I did my complaining before the show. [00:00:29] Speaker A: I was gonna say, I bet you could complain. I've heard you. [00:00:32] Speaker B: Yes, that's not entirely true. Sorry, I can't hide it. I complained, but I'm done. But everything's fine. Yes. [00:00:39] Speaker A: This is not the. The arena, the milieu for our complaining. [00:00:45] Speaker B: That's right. [00:00:46] Speaker A: This is about COVID action and espionage and Delta Green. [00:00:50] Speaker B: It is indeed. [00:00:51] Speaker A: Games. Yes. What are we doing today? [00:00:55] Speaker B: We're going to talk about creating an agent in Delta Green. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Nice. [00:01:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:02] Speaker A: Season two, episode three. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Indeed. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Cool. [00:01:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it's good. It'll be interesting as always. But before we kick that off, what is your covert action action look like? [00:01:21] Speaker A: It was not very action filled, I'll say this. I'm listening to a lot of podcasts and analysts about what's going on currently in the world. And there's a fair bit of action, if not covert, you know, lots of shit going on. So that's kind of filling the airwaves. And I'm spending a lot of time trying to dig and understand what's happening and that kind of thing. I will say that my wife and I have identified a movie we're going to watch called the Secret Agent. Have you heard of this one? [00:01:48] Speaker B: I don't believe I have. [00:01:51] Speaker A: I think it's Disney. I don't remember what. What it's on. [00:01:55] Speaker B: I believe it's a sequel to Spy Kids. [00:01:58] Speaker A: Negative. I haven't. I am such an anti Disney guy that I had no idea there weren't. There were like non cartoons and non IP materials on Disney. I didn't know they had that kind of thing. My wife signed up for something or the other after years of resistance and lo and behold, there's a few shows on there we're watching now. Yeah, we'll figure. Yeah, I'm a hypocrite. Makes me feel great. [00:02:22] Speaker B: I mean, aren't we all? [00:02:24] Speaker A: Well, yes, we are to some degree. That movie's got some buzz. So we are going to watch it soon, is what I would say. Maybe. Maybe by the next. The time we record our next show, I'll have watched it. I can report back. Otherwise, I keep meaning to get the Bond. I keep meaning to restart my reading and I have not done that yet. Life is busy, man. [00:02:45] Speaker B: The Bond movies on Netflix are still out there, but I don't know. I don't. I'm. I can imagine they're not forever, but [00:02:54] Speaker A: if it just added them. [00:02:55] Speaker B: It doesn't. And are you. Do you not know Netflix very well? [00:02:59] Speaker A: Come on. [00:03:00] Speaker B: I mean, how long are they gonna have them? I don't know. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Could it be busy? [00:03:04] Speaker B: 3 months? 2 months? 6 months? A year? I don't know. Could. [00:03:07] Speaker A: Aren't those usually year plus contracts? I would think. [00:03:09] Speaker B: I have no idea. [00:03:10] Speaker A: I don't know. I know a lot of it's tied into other. Other things, like when new releases are coming out in a certain series and all that kind of stuff, too, right? [00:03:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:20] Speaker A: So they can pull them and make you pay for the Mission Impossible stuff if you want to watch it in advance of a new movie coming out, that kind of thing. [00:03:28] Speaker B: I want to get the book Rogue Warrior. I think I might have mentioned this briefly in a previous episode, Rogue Warrior. I thought it came out when I was in high school for some reason, but it was 1990 or 91, so I would have had to been out of high school. So do the math, folks. [00:03:46] Speaker A: I'm old. [00:03:46] Speaker B: All right, lay off. Back off. But it was by Richard Marchenko, and it was so interesting of a book. He was one of the founders of Seal Team 6. And the way that he wrote it, he went on to write fictional novels like Rogue Warrior, Red Team, and they were more fictional, based on maybe some real stories and some real, real SEAL Team members. [00:04:11] Speaker A: I don't know these. [00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah, but Richard Marchenko's autobiography, I don't think, first of all, he passed away in 2010 or wasn't, you know, 40 years ago, but he had passed away. He had served prison time because the government went after him for a variety of reasons. He has his take, of course. And then of course, the government's not going to comment on their take. But he served some prison time. But he wrote this autobiography and talking about, like, he was part of the Navy before there was seals, Right. He was the founding member. And the way he wrote that book was such an interesting, in your face, like, guy on a bar stool type of approach, no holds barred. And, you know, he was talking about his time in Vietnam and how he would eat, like, you know, cobra eggs and all kinds of other stuff, and cobra eggs ate it. You know, this kind of, you know, this, this animal or this plant or whatever craziness. Ate it. Yeah, it's a good one. And I'd like to see it. I could probably get it used in paperback somewhere, but it's like you can't. It's not. You can't find it in a reprint. [00:05:20] Speaker A: So sort of a more modern day Mac Bolan men's adventure fiction. [00:05:27] Speaker B: It's kind of pretty. Pretty interesting, dude. Yeah, but he was. I think he was present or connected to when the Iran hostage rescue failed and he was like, yeah, I wouldn't have done it that way or whatever it was, but. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:46] Speaker B: Yeah, but interesting dude. I don't know why it kind of piques my interest because I've read it and was really enthralled with the book at the time and it did not make me want to join the SEALs for whatever reason, you know, or become that hardcore. [00:06:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:02] Speaker B: But otherwise it's been pretty quiet on my end as well. [00:06:06] Speaker A: There you go. [00:06:07] Speaker B: Should we get into sit rep? [00:06:09] Speaker A: Yep, let's do it. [00:06:13] Speaker B: Give me the sit rep. Sit rep. Lynx, we want to bring to your attention events. We had one from Mr. White 20. [00:06:25] Speaker A: Oh. Oh, that's right. Did you wanna. [00:06:29] Speaker B: Did you want to elaborate? [00:06:30] Speaker A: Have you looked. I have a different. I have a different thing to elaborate on. I did, I did look at it, but why don't you take this one? And I have a different thing that I did not add into our notion files that I should have. [00:06:40] Speaker B: Okay. [00:06:40] Speaker A: But I can, I can shoot from the hip on that one. [00:06:42] Speaker B: All right, fantastic. So the one Mr. White 20 supporter. [00:06:47] Speaker A: I didn't know about this. [00:06:48] Speaker B: I didn't know about it either. It's the 9th, the 9th annual for so nine years oblivious night at the Opera scenario contest. That is as of this recording, open. When this drops, it could be long gone because we're doing this in a vacuum at the moment. Except for those that are patrons of the show that get to see it live. But essentially due by Wednesday, April 29th at 11:59pm Pacific Standard Time. It's another scenario writing community writing contest. Essentially. It's like the shotgun scenarios. It's a little different though. There's no length requirement. Where the shotgun scenarios do have a length requirement. So there isn't one. With this one. They have other roles. You have to be a NATO. It's NATO member. It's NATO with the. [00:07:44] Speaker A: It's the AT symbol. [00:07:46] Speaker B: So you have to be a member of NATO. No aai. And then there are themes and you must incorporate three themes into your scenario. And those themes are World War II, early Cold War scenarios, 40s-60s United States Postal Service, single player scenario. Yeah, I know. Usps. I'll write my mom. Yeah. Actually having to cultivate friendlies and intelligence assets uses a submission from Lalone's Goo Rehab jam, which is another thing I'm not familiar with, so I have to look into that. And then Internet or the Internet horror jam. I guess those are two jams that you can use to spread on your NATO scenario. Peanut butter sandwich scenario with a time limit. An American place affected by American imperialism, which include Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Samoa, the reservation system. Some of those are just examples. Cult lifestyles of the rich and famous. This one. What are you, a communist? There's also another one. And then 1955. Yeah. [00:09:00] Speaker A: Right. [00:09:00] Speaker B: McCarthy is in full swing. [00:09:02] Speaker A: Yep. Go find the reds working in this factory. That's right. [00:09:06] Speaker B: A niche skill has time to shine. So Harrigan has his thoughts about artillery, but there's anthropology. Artillery, heavy machinery, pilot ride. Incorporating a niche skill that shines in the scenario. [00:09:21] Speaker A: It's niche. All right. [00:09:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you can incorporate three of the ones I just said, that would also check the box. [00:09:29] Speaker A: I got an idea. Let's split up. You go down and check town hall for records. You go to the police station and make contact. And you man the field gun and see if we can lob some shells [00:09:38] Speaker B: onto something with the USPS member. [00:09:41] Speaker A: Yes. What the hell? That's. So that's a lot of different angles you can take. I thought you said there would be like. Like tie into one of these three themes and then you proceeded to name a dozen or more. [00:09:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the deal. And so then it's hardly themed. It's like. [00:09:57] Speaker A: It's like pick something about Delta Green and write about it. [00:10:01] Speaker B: With NATO, there's going to be two winners. Submitter. Submitters will be asked to judge five other submissions. So just because you submit does not mean you're off the hook to be involved in reading five other submissions, rating them using the rubric below and pro providing full feedback. So the rubric is this. If you're going to write and you want to win, here's the deal. Popular vote. So people's choice is going to be one of those winners. And then judging criteria, legibility, freshness. And then there's some elements be below that. Yeah. Freshness is. How did the entry. I'm sorry, Freshness. Does the scenario bring something new to the medium? That's the freshness. And then feature and theme. And then runability. Runability and taste. Taste is. How personally appealing do you find the scenario aesthetics go here as well. [00:11:03] Speaker A: Neat. I have some issues with the rubric sensor, crowdsourcing, how they score it. And the taste is going to be all over the place, but it's still super cool. Sean, this just underscores what we mentioned before, which is like there's a community here creating content like, you know, Arc Dream could frankly fold up and never publish anything else. This is one of those games that's going to have like a rabid fan base that pushes on, it carries on. I do have a question for you because Dwayne shared this. Thank you, Dwayne. Awesome find. I have a feeling there's more of these out there we don't know about. But here's my question for the Campaign 1 and the Shotgun Scenario 1. Those are hosted on the Fairfield project, right? Where can you find these NATO ones? Is there a website? All I saw was the Google Doc. Maybe the Google Doc leads to an archive. [00:11:57] Speaker B: I think it's a subreddit, right? [00:12:00] Speaker A: Oh, that's what it was. [00:12:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's a subreddit. [00:12:04] Speaker A: Okay, so, yeah, so less, less of an archive and more of a go data mine Reddit to find this stuff. [00:12:13] Speaker B: Hey, man. Hey. Still gaming. Okay. Still gaming. Really? [00:12:16] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:17] Speaker B: I mean, and I say that as in my gamer. How buttoned up is it? I don't know. It's in a Google Doc and it's somewhere out there. [00:12:31] Speaker A: I was just hoping to find like Fairfield, where there's a neat, you know, year by year, here are the annual winners and all that kind of stuff [00:12:37] Speaker B: that's, I mean, you know, domain name and you know, a website listing all the scenarios and links to them could go a long ways, but that, you know, who knows. I have thoughts. [00:12:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I hear that. Okay, keep me posted. [00:12:55] Speaker B: Are you going to partake? You have not said you are going to partake. [00:13:00] Speaker A: I haven't looked into it as deeply as you have. I got the link scanned. It was like cool. Got distracted. Knew we would talk about it on the show, but I did not like, for example, I didn't see all of the thematic elements. I love a couple of the ones you mentioned, the whole recruit friendlies and whatnot. Like that's. It fits in with my general concept of Delta Green. Missions don't have to be operas, don't have to be impossible landscapes. They don't have to be epics that span decades and et cetera, et cetera. They can be as simple as go find the thing, put it in the box and drive it over here. And during just that simple thing like terrible things can happen. And the same thing is true for These simple things you just mentioned about like, like recruiting new folks and that kind of thing. [00:13:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:13:45] Speaker A: You can start small. I think the game does really well when you have those sort of zero in. Make it, make it a very claustrophobic affair to begin with in terms of what you're, who's involved and all that kind of stuff. Right. And I think it fits well with that. So I, I, I'll tell you what, I will look at it because I do have the two ideas for shotguns I didn't get off the ground. They did not have to do with NATO. What about you? You think you might, you might put in for it? [00:14:11] Speaker B: I could try. I think mine's gonna probably suck bad because I'm not, I don't do this very often at all. So it's exercising some of my brain that I usually. [00:14:22] Speaker A: That's all the more reason to try. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would love to. I would love to especially Cold War friendlies, you know, recruit somebody out of East Berlin and then have it go sideways for some reason. And what are you, a communist? Yeah. I mean. Oh yeah, there's all kinds of good stuff there. [00:14:38] Speaker A: Yeah, there is. There's all kinds of good stuff. [00:14:42] Speaker B: So. [00:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:43] Speaker B: Thanks Wayne, for sending that over. I much appreciate it. And then the next one, I'm sorry. Over to you, sir. [00:14:48] Speaker A: Well, the espionage community, the fiction, literature, et cetera. Lost like a, like a giant recently. The, I think his name is Len Dayton and he was a novelist who wrote the Ipkris Files and then a bunch of follow on books that became Michael Caine movies all through the 60s and 70s, I think. So someone, I think who is. And I don't know his work very well. I've not read any of his work. I'm going to change that when we get into our. We're going to do a season on Cold War Spoiler. When we do that, I'm going to read Dayton's stuff because he kind of took the angle of it ain't like James Bond. It's actually much more grounded, much more frankly boring and bureaucratic etc. So I think his books are really known for that sort of slow burn kind of, you know, much more elaborate story and machinations behind the scenes and much less of I'm gonna bolt a pair of wings and a propeller onto a car and it flies. There's less of that in his stuff. Have you ever read any of this stuff or seen those Michael Kane movies? [00:15:50] Speaker B: I have not. But the IP Chris file comes up on a lot of modern or espionage, covert Action book lists. Like, it's one of the ones you have to Giant. Yeah. [00:16:03] Speaker A: Yep. For sure. So thank you for. For Dan to bring this to my attention. I also had sent some feeds from elsewhere that I was. I was sort of digging into at the time. But I am absolutely gonna either visit the first book, or I may just go straight for some of the Michael Caine movies as well. Because I. I love that era of Michael Caine. Love that stuff. Don't know if they're any good or not. I haven't looked into it enough to know. I do know there's some weird stuff where they. I think it's this. I don't remember from the books. It's the same character that spans a few books or not. But they. They monkey with that a bit in versions where they either they either break the fact that it's the same character or they make multiple characters into one. For Kane, there's something like that going on as well. But when I. When I watch them, I'll do some research and I'll report back. [00:16:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna. I. It has piqued my interest as well, you know, to kind of put it in the same bucket as Jean Lar and some of those. [00:16:58] Speaker A: He's a contemporary of Le Carre's. Right. [00:17:00] Speaker B: So. Yep. [00:17:01] Speaker A: Yeah, There you go. [00:17:02] Speaker B: Well, cool. Didn't know he passed away. So unfortunate. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Older guy, though, full life, so, you know, all good. But he'll be missed. [00:17:12] Speaker B: Yeah. We get into encrypted comms or should we just. I don't think we. You know, we don't have anything. [00:17:19] Speaker A: Okay. I was gonna say we did. We didn't talk about this before the show, so I. I'm not aware if there are any. [00:17:23] Speaker B: We could skip it. [00:17:25] Speaker A: Are there any unencrypted comms? [00:17:28] Speaker B: There are not any unencrypted comms either. That's a good question. Always got to check. [00:17:35] Speaker A: Okay, good. Yeah. We can proceed to the mission. Right. Have a seat. Let's get on with the mission brief. [00:17:44] Speaker B: Creating a character in delta green that is your mission agent. If you do so, opt to choose and take it on. This week in this episode of Go Bag. Before we get into that Harrigan, one of the things I was thinking about with. With even like, okay. Character creation in a role playing game. Here are the steps. You gotta come up with a concept. That's fine. But I came. I was thinking of, like, three things that would weigh into how you would want to create your character that kind of tie into the concept. And if you'll allow me. [00:18:30] Speaker A: Let me check. Yep, I'll allow it. [00:18:33] Speaker B: Excellent. Because of Delta Green's eras and the premise of being part of a clandestine organization that is maybe on the books, maybe off the books. Few things I had thought about is when you as a player character, and every time you create a player character, you're usually getting feedback from a GM to determine, like, what's the game? And somebody would say, well, it's Delta Green. Sure. But, like, what are we going to be playing? Well, you're going to be playing agents. Yes, I understand that, but where in the timeline of an agent's profession is my character going to start? So I will write. One of the things is you could start Delta Green as a member of. Not Delta Green. [00:19:31] Speaker A: Right. Ignorant of the conspiracy, the program, the unnatural. [00:19:35] Speaker B: Correct. [00:19:36] Speaker A: There are a number of operas that factor that in. Yes, right. [00:19:39] Speaker B: There are puppet shows and Shoot. Can't remember the name of it. There's one convergence, Poker Night, PX Poker Night, which I listed, and PX Poker Night's an interesting one because you play Air Force members of the Air Force in a remote base. So when you do that approach, especially like with PX Poker Night, you're members of the Air Force. So it's almost like this is. This is a foundation of your character or you're working on the base. [00:20:13] Speaker A: I think there's one in Afghanistan too. [00:20:16] Speaker B: Kali. Is it Kali? I don't know if it's that one. [00:20:20] Speaker A: I don't think I'll tell you this. I love where you're going with this. This is an example of some stuff that maybe isn't in the book and should be, or you can get to it from some of the supporting materials. One of the things that I want to do today, Sean, you're going to lead us through character generation. There are a crap ton of really good supporting materials that either the community's put out, Arc Dream has put out, and when you combine them with the Agent Agent's Handbook, it gives you a much better fleshed out picture of what Sean's talking about right now, which is, well, I'll let you dive in here, but I like the attack that you're on. I like it a lot. [00:20:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So the jam can very much define that box very early. So there's that way some players may be like, I, I don't want. I don't want to be Air Force guy. The other one was recruited. [00:21:14] Speaker A: Let me interrupt just for a second. [00:21:15] Speaker B: By all means. [00:21:16] Speaker A: Because in your. In your current game, I think it's Joe Is Joe the helicopter pilot. [00:21:20] Speaker B: Joe is the helicopter pilot in the [00:21:22] Speaker A: first scenario where people are ignorant. The, the soon to be agents are ignorant of the conspiracy. You can have people like Joe be like, I don't know man. I'm just a helicopter pilot. You tell me how I get involved. And the first adventure is that story, right? [00:21:41] Speaker B: Yeah, right. [00:21:42] Speaker A: Like it. [00:21:42] Speaker B: So there is that angle and then the other one is being recruited. Like it starts at the inciting incident or right after or obviously years later. And it's in the face of the player characters initially because I say it's in the face because there is also the last situation where you've already been recruited as an agent. There's actually four scenarios. Or you've always already been recruited as an agent of Delta Green because you had an inciting incident. So that has already been touched on or thought of by between the player and the g. The handler. Or you could play that out as well. The actual inciting incident or it was just afterwards and how that recruitment effort happens or occurs. So it's. It's happened, right? The PX Poker Night events have happened. Where does Delta Green come in and actually recruit the agent? [00:22:42] Speaker A: Right. And some of the published materials are pretty explicit about, you know, there's a group of people who are collected together. Let's take PX Poker Night. They're on an air base. It's a quiet weekend. Some happens, some really weird happens. And at the end of it I think is when you get into that whole like dudes in black suits show up and are like, you saw an awful lot, you know, this weekend, let us tell you a little more kind of thing. Right. And that's your onboarding potentially and all that kind of stuff. And I think a number of scenarios that I've seen both published and third party or fan created can kind of get into that stuff where they give you that like nice on ramp. But you absolutely don't have to play that way. And I would say 90% materials out there assume you are already part of the program, right? [00:23:31] Speaker B: Correct. Because one of the things that I think people need to understand is that the player characters don't sign up for. They don't sign up. There isn't a list on a bulletin board taking volunteers for Delta Green. And the recruitment process is outlined in the Agent's Handbook on what that looks like and why they would want to recruit this person and how and what that looks like. And then the other one is kind of the last scenario. So then it would be, well, the most common one. Which Harrigan alludes to is that's already happened though. You've already been recruited. So this is the understanding and this is where we're going to start. But one could say has a mission taken place yet? Have they been a part of a mission? If they have, they could also become a damaged veteran. So you could start like you've already had two or three missions under your belt. And so then the damage veteran piece comes in which is actually mechanically impacts the player character. [00:24:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Which all that does is. Takes what we talked about last week around like the. The game is about this unraveling of the agents of their lives coming apart. You're starting, you know, put it this way, this agent has some experience points. They've been through a lot and it's damaged their sanity, it's damaged their bonds, it's maybe made them, you know, what's, what's it called, Sean? When they are immune to the. They're desensitized to violence or whatever. Right. All that stuff. You can start your character that way. Which is kind of cool. I'll say this. It can be a combination of these things. You can have some agents who are fresh faced, you still want to. And this part I'm going to get into this a little bit later in the show I think. But this whole inciting incident thing is actually pretty important to know why you were drawn in. So whether you put it in your background and you're going to flush it out as you play, that's cool. But you've got to have something in there that's like why did you join up? Unless you are playing that scenario where you are about to experience it. So beyond the PX poker night, like you're, you're completely oblivious from there though. You can have a real mix of people. Right. Where it can be like two, two agents who are brand new and who have never met and the one who's like I've been doing this for 20 years and that person is the damaged vet. And you can get into some cool especially if the players are knowledgeable about, about like the setting and how the game plays out. There's just some really cool dynamics between the player characters I think where one of them is maybe a little more jaded than the other ones might be if you've been part of the game for a while. [00:26:05] Speaker B: Yes. But one of the things that's mentioned and the reason it's so important is because you have to get the character and the player to understand that the world that they have lived in, the Comfort of the world that they have lived in, the assumptions that they have where human supremacy is. The deal is not the deal. And that's why they need to buy into that. Because then it's. Then you run into. I don't even know what I'm doing here. [00:26:32] Speaker A: Yeah. And that's, you know, there's tripwires all over the place for Delta Green. If you don't have all the players on the same page. It's where. Sean, we talked about it before, but please, players, if you're going to play this game, read the first, like 10 pages. You know what, I'm going to go there right now because I brought this up. The first, like, how many pages is it? Not very many. In the agent's Handbook. The world of Delta Green. What is Delta Green? The fundamentals, how the game's played, how to play an agent. It is like 10 pages. And these are not, you know, not tiny, tiny print. But it really gets into like everything that Sean and I have talked about in terms of the players understanding the vibe and the mood and whatnot. It lays it all out in the first 10 pages of the book. So I, I will personally get frustrated sometimes when I'm playing a Delta Green game. That's pretty obvious to me that the players, some of the players have not read that part and they're playing like either to Gonzo or why would it. Why would I be. Why am I concerned about what happens over in Utah? Right. Well, it's, you know, did you not read that you're part of this program and that you've, you've witnessed something that has shaken your reality and you've connected to an organization that's fighting it secretly. Did you not get that part? Anyway, back to you, buddy. [00:27:52] Speaker B: In short, the inciting incident is the crucible that burns away a regular professional and forges a Delta Green agent. They're recruited because they already have paid the price of admission, proven they can face the unnatural, and shown that they will do whatever it takes to stop it. That is. Those are very. It's an important mantra through this. And when they recruit, they recruit the agent because they know you have had this experience and you haven't gone to the press. It's how you've also handled. [00:28:28] Speaker A: You haven't cracked exactly right under an [00:28:30] Speaker B: interrogation or whatever the case is. And that's where they're like, so that's key. So when we talk about character concepts and you're like, ah, you know, I kind of like Indiana Jones, kind of like Luke Skywalker. Han Solo, you know, which is all fine and dandy, but the individual you're creating has to keep these things in mind or it is gonna just be a fiasco in the game. In my opinion, the default is sort [00:28:58] Speaker A: of you've had the exciting, the inciting incident. [00:29:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:29:02] Speaker A: That's kind of the assumption that the game makes if you read the Agent's Handbook and many of the operas that come afterwards. But there is a supplement that comes later, Sean, that is like gets into great detail around that stuff and makes it much more clear that actually not only, not only have you had this brush with the unnatural, but you should understand it a little bit. And it's one of the things that you're not supposed to talk about with your fellow agents that you will absolutely talk about, right. That like the whole like you got a four hour drive to get somewhere. The two agents are like, so when did you come on board? What happened? Right? And just they're, they're there, they, you know, let's unfurl the red carpet for the role playing. Basically. Like let's, let's go, let's get it into what damaged you and brought you in and all that stuff. Aces, man. [00:29:48] Speaker B: So having said that, once that is established, and usually it's not even established up front, usually people are like determining what organization they're going to be a part of and what type of individual they're going to be a part be right as an agent. And that could be am I going to be a scientist or am I going to be type of a government official type or a scientist in service of the government. Some type of tie in that, in that regard. And so once that usually is in place, they will go into coming up with the six stats and it's done. You know, the stats in question, strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, Pow. Or power and charisma. And those all range from 3 to 18. And you typically decide on a array, one of three arrays depending on how specialized you want to be. In each one you will choose There [00:30:44] Speaker A: is a 4D 6 drop lowest method and there is a take 72 points and assign them however the hell you want. Right. [00:30:53] Speaker B: Once that's done, you fill in the blanks. The funny thing is with those arrays there isn't modifiers to like oh, your strength 17, you got plus two to hit. No, doesn't work like that in delta green. They are, they do have, they are the basis of what their intelligence will eventually be, which is like they call it the ability times five. So if you have a strength 10 give me a strength times five check. You're running percentile and your number is 50 because of the strength times five component. And you're rolling that or lower. To succeed, sometimes you'll call upon those. We mentioned that in the last episode as the mechanics piece. [00:31:34] Speaker A: So one of the things I really think, I really like Delta Green Agent creation is that there's this flexibility and you know, it could be that the players decide altogether how they're going to do it or the handler may say here's how we're going to generate characters or you may leave it wide open, let some people roll and some people pick arrays and some people assign points. But point here is that I have a frustration that there's a mechanism in the OSR that seems to have infected a lot of other games and that is the 3D6 down the line. Don't move anything around and then understand who you're playing. Delta Green isn't that kind of game and thank God they didn't do that. But there's lots of games I'm often on board for let the numbers on the sheet that I'm rolling, let me, let me tell me who I'm playing and then I will like investigate that in play and they'll take shape, et cetera. This isn't that game. This is a game where you have an inciting incident, you're building bonds with people, you have a profession like you are. This is like build a robust character and to make it random, to add in some randomness. I mean if you want that you can, you can, you can juice it that way. But I love the fact that you don't have to do that. I will also tell you the number of OSR related games that I see, NSR, whatever that use 3D6 instead of something like 4D6 and then they tell you you're starting off as like a high powered agent. I'm like with 3D6, really I've got a. I've got a couple of fives and a 15 and a. So the fact that it's all over the map doesn't lend as well towards these like these are pretty competent people I think that we're talking about. They've either survive an incident or they're going to survive the inciting incident. So I don't know, I just like the way. And we're going to see the exact same thing when you get to the skills and the profession packaging. Same thing is true where there's a couple of ways to do it. One of Them is tightly packaged and quick. The other way is like, hey, you who likes to optimize everything, have at it. You can build it skill by skill if you want to. [00:33:37] Speaker B: So once you have the stats in place, then you move on to some of the derived components of the character. And those include hit points. Yes, there are hit points in Delta Green. It's the average of strength and con, the root scores. And then willpower points equals pow. So it's a one for one. And then your starting sanity is pow times five, whatever that is. So essentially your willpower times five as well. So hit points, you know, 10 or 12 might be a lot for this game. And they don't change, which we mentioned in the last episode. They really don't. Unless you try to pump up your. Your strength and your off time by. [00:34:26] Speaker A: I mean, there are ways to do it, but you are not. You're never rolling another hit die kind of thing. [00:34:31] Speaker B: Correct. Adding to it. [00:34:32] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:33] Speaker B: Breaking point is also a component. The breaking point is the critical attribute calculated by POW from San. So represents the exact threshold where an agent will develop a new material disorder. So when you have your sanity and it gets down to your breaking point, you could expect a disorder to occur which is just a threshold number that you hit through play. That is bad news or good news. Could be great. Right? Rope. I'm a glass half full kind of guy. Great role playing opportunity. [00:35:11] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, if you're playing this to understand how your agent, you know, comes apart and loses their mind, then yeah, I mean, step one, step one, hit, hit the breaking point. [00:35:21] Speaker B: Lose a lot of sanity. Step two, hit your breaking point. Yes. [00:35:25] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. It's a pretty trad game, right? It's like get your statistics, derive some other attributes from them. You're about to describe skills and professions, build your bonds, add the details, you're done. It's that kind of thing. [00:35:41] Speaker B: And then you will pick a profession at some point, which is the archetype. So it's your day job agent. When you aren't doing Delta Green stuff. The game offers a few different options. Anthropologist is a popular one. Federal agent of some kind, which will go into a little bit more minutiae under each one. Physician, scientist, special operator. Depending on what those look like, they do have a set of professional skills that are aligned with those. So consider those their specialty. And then it also limits how many bonds that that archetype can maintain. So if you are a special operator or a military person, or if you are in a profession that requires a lot of stress, maybe It's a lot of travel. Because what you could do is also create your own type of profession and how it relates to your bonds is, you know, if I'm in the military, I don't have a lot of bonds because I'm always on the go. I don't set down roots very well. And so it is conveyed through that archetype pick. [00:36:49] Speaker A: The professions are really important. They're described in the game as kits, which is this package of stuff that Sean is talking about. And not only does it say, what are your professional skills? But it actually gives you a rating as well. So if you're a computer scientist, for example, you get computer science at 60, craft electrician at 30, craft mechanic at 30, craft microelectronics at 40. I don't love all the craft skills in this game. It's one of the things where I think we could probably simplify it. But point being, there's this pretty sweet, like, what's the profession then? A lot of things kind of spins off of that. And then you'll probably describe in a minute, Chambers, ways to, like, customize that with some secondary skills and that kind of thing. One thing that I kind of adore about this game is that it gives you, like, a pretty short list of professions. We can run through them quickly. Anthropologist or historian, Computer scientist or engineer, federal agent, physician, scientist, special operator. Those are the ones that are, like, immediately on offer. And then right away it's like, there are also some additional professions you might want to look at. Criminal firefighter, foreign service officer, intelligence analyst, intelligence case officer, lawyer or business executive, media specialist. It goes on and on and on for a couple more pages. And then at the back of the book, there's a like, so you don't want to work for a federal agency. And then it goes into, like, crazy detail around that, which is. I just kind of. I dig it. Like, again, there's like the. You know, I'm the science guy, I'm the agent. I'm the law enforcement. Okay, we're good. We're done. Someone might be like, what if I'm a nurse? What if I'm like a construction manager on a site, but I experienced something that we dug up or whatever. There's just. There's layers to it. So if you want to go deeper, you can. I dig it. [00:38:28] Speaker B: Yeah, you can customize a build. So those that are. Well, that's fine. I just don't like the box approach. You can take a base professional skills. And then every. Every agent gets to pick 8 bonus skills. To add plus 20% to after taking the base. Professional skills. Every agent gets to pick eight bonus skills to add 20% to. So I misspoke in what I was getting to, which. [00:39:00] Speaker A: Which don't have anything to do with your profession. And I would also say. Sorry to rewind for a second, Sean. One of the other things that the professions do with the professional skills is they give you a block. Right. They give you this set like I described. But they also then have. At the bottom, they have like. And choose one of these three more. One of the. Or one. You know, so you can have two law enforcement officers that will look quite different because you're. You're a. You're going to have some different professional skills because they provide you some options. And then, as Sean is describing right now, there are secondary skills, which really are the ones you're like, what are your hobbies? What did you do before you were a cop? Or what are you interested in right now? In our training. So if you want to have that situation where you're like, I'm playing a position, but I'm actually really good with a handgun because I go to the range every week. Well, you have these 20% blocks that Sean's talking about. There are eight of them, and you can stack them. So you can go 20, 40, 60 on one skill if you want to. You're probably going to get to this, Sean. But the other thing that I like is that you, as a starting character, you cannot go above 80%. [00:40:01] Speaker B: That's right. [00:40:02] Speaker A: Any of these skills. [00:40:03] Speaker B: That's right. [00:40:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:03] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up, because I don't think I had that noted. So starting out. Starting out, you can't go above 80, [00:40:09] Speaker A: but you can as a starting agent. Yeah, yeah. [00:40:11] Speaker B: Yep. [00:40:12] Speaker A: Yep. [00:40:13] Speaker B: Then we did mention in the last episode what those skill numbers mean. So if you want to know, go check out that episode, which is like, you know, 60 or higher, PhD, lifelong study, or things of that nature. [00:40:24] Speaker A: So, so basically, roll under with the handler. Supposed to have an eye on the ball, like for all the situations where you shouldn't even have to roll, especially if you have a 40, 50, 60, 70. Like, you're not rolling up half the time. Yep. [00:40:36] Speaker B: Now to comment on building a custom profession. So adapting a core archetype. So if none of the core archetypes that Harrigan just touched on very briefly. [00:40:47] Speaker A: There are many. [00:40:48] Speaker B: Yes. There are a few that. That, you know, I don't know. I want to play taxi driver. Taxi driver in New York City. Talks to a Lot of people. And, you know, he's part of this and knows New York City really well and talks to a lot of people. Great. So the. The get the concept, work with the taxi drivers. [00:41:10] Speaker A: Actually, I'm just breaking in here. Taxi Driver is kind of cool, dude. [00:41:12] Speaker B: It is kind of cool. [00:41:13] Speaker A: Kind of like. I kind of like the idea of a Delta green tax driver, dude. [00:41:17] Speaker B: Jamie Foxx in what, the Tom Cruise movie, right? [00:41:22] Speaker A: Collateral. Collateral is the movie. Yes. Great movie. [00:41:26] Speaker B: Taxi Driver to be really kind of cool. And then your. Your handler cringes and goes, okay. But then you say, it's just like this movie. How do you build one? [00:41:36] Speaker A: You know what I haven't done in a while, Sean? I haven't hit you with a whole bunch of, like, gun walk style. So I will only say that Michael Mann movies in general, and Collateral specifically has some great gun sounds. Like, gun sounds are pretty important to me in a movie. I think I described Black Bag recently. At the end of Black Bag, there's this, like, kind of gun fired. Like what? It's not what it sounds like when you fire a 9 millimeter in a room. In a closed room. It's effing loud when you do that. Yeah, it's loud. And yeah, Collateral has some great gun sounds. Anyway. Oh, back over to you. [00:42:09] Speaker B: I thought you were going to elaborate on a particular gun model. [00:42:12] Speaker A: Okay, I can, but no, I won't. No one wants that. You'll just mute me in the editing room. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Somebody does out there. Yeah. [00:42:21] Speaker A: One. Yeah. Jason. [00:42:22] Speaker B: Yes. [00:42:23] Speaker A: Jason's not podcasting anymore. [00:42:24] Speaker B: That's right. [00:42:25] Speaker A: Probably because of that last episode we filmed or we not filmed, we recorded about guns in our DJs. Right, right. Yeah. Where's the nail in the coffin? [00:42:37] Speaker B: So the Agent's Handbook method comes up and involves selecting logical set of skills that define the job's daily duties and establishing an appropriate bond limit based on the profession's interest and stress level. That's how you kind of come up with the amount of bonds, because usually it's tied to the archetype. Well, what happens if you don't have an archetype and you're making your own? Well, it depends. What's the stress level of that, that archetype that you're coming up with, that new concept? What is their roots look like? Is it kind of like, yeah, they're home every day and they're not called off on strange missions all the time because they're in the military. Maybe they have a greater amount of bonds. Maybe it's up to four where an operator in the military has one. So maybe if it's something that's similar in nature to some of their routes, maybe they only get one. So that's something that can come down. So if you're a taxi driver example, you probably have driving as a better driver. Navigating some of those nuanced skills that aren't skills on the sheet, but maybe they're something that need to be listed as a craft or something specific in that regard. Kind of a streetwise. Anything tying into streetwise or persuasion might come into play. People related skills might be human. Human, right. Big one for a taxi driver type. [00:43:58] Speaker A: Yep. Totally agree. And just. And I'm not sure if you're going to cover this or not just as a side. There's like 40 plus skills in the game that comprise these professions that Sean's talking about. So you've got pretty good, you know, there's pretty good ways to differentiate yourself and several of those skills like craft and science and languages and pilot and military science, those are all situations where you're supposed to specialize further and say which science and which art or witchcraft, that kind of thing. [00:44:28] Speaker B: Right, right. The personal toll bonds and motivations. Things to offset your loss of sanity throughout the game and then your motivations on why you're actually doing this thing. So the bonds, each archetype typically comes with a number of bonds. Kind of touched on it already. The bond score that is assigned to a particular bond, which can be again, could be an individual, could be an organization, a club, something that you're involved with from an agent perspective or a character perspective. The score assigned to those are your charisma score of the agent. So if you got a great charisma, the higher the bond score, as you continue to repress trauma, if you will, you systematically reduce that bond. So when you take sanity damage, I'm going to project it onto the bond that whittles down. I do believe one of the things that we had listed or mentioned in the previous episode was you can start forming bonds with players, other players, agents, Team Delta Green team members. And they do start out at half the amount of charisma. [00:45:45] Speaker A: Yeah, it's all tied into that downtime system we talked about right between missions and the home scenes and all that sort of stuff. [00:45:51] Speaker B: And it's. I didn't really realize this, but when I was looking through like can you increase the amount. Amount of bonds? I think it says you can, but it is supposed to be systematically. Or the GM or the handler can work with the Individual. [00:46:09] Speaker A: I had a similar question after last week's show and I think when we do our. We're going to do a show on bonds and home scenes and sanity and all that stuff. I think we dig into it then, Sean, because I don't know if there's a rule buried somewhere that I haven't found yet which tells you you're only allowed to ever have four. [00:46:23] Speaker B: Right? [00:46:24] Speaker A: Or if you, or maybe you have a collection of like four times your charisma in point Bond points, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know if that's in there somewhere. So let's, let's not spend too much time today, but let's dig in in an episode in the future and really understand that part of it deeply is what I would say. Can I go back briefly to the secondary skills? So Sean mentioned there's these eight skills that anybody can add 20% to. We talked about it might represent a hobby or whatever. Well, and a little while ago I talked about the fact that Delta Green offers a couple of different ways to do this and one of them is always very bundled. So if you want to build an agent quickly, you really can pick a profession, use those skills. And when it comes to the secondary skills, you can pick packages there too, which is really cool. You can pick. I was an interrogator, I was a firefighter, I was a blue collar worker. And basically, let's say blue collar worker, it says add 20 to alertness, athletics, craft, electrician, craft, locksmithing, criminology, disguise, search and stealth and you're done. Like you're done with the skills. At that point you have chosen the profession. You've added the fact that you're a blue collar worker and you are moving on to bonds. Like you can do the skills part of this really quickly, which is unlike a lot of BRP games, is why I'm pointing it out. Delta Green has a really nice way of packaging things up. If you want to move quickly, you don't have to. You can, you can, you know, you can tinker. There's a great set of things you can kind of build like Legos, almost like click, click, click. Here's my agent. Anyway, sorry to interrupt you, but I just ran across that part in the book and I didn't know if we were going to talk about it. [00:47:57] Speaker B: So yeah, it's a good call out. I would have over overlooked it for sure. Okay, motivations. So every agent starts with five personal motivations. Each time you hit their hit your breaking point as an agent One of these motivations is permanently removed as a symptom of trauma, symbolizing a loss of, of drive or belief. And of course you'd think that Sean would have those motivations in front of him, but you would guess wrong. [00:48:36] Speaker A: We're gonna. So I'm gonna let you run through the whole, your whole, like Sean's handling our description of how to build an agent. Right. And this piece right here, motivations is one of the beefs I have with the book where it does a weak sauce, limp, limp wristed version of really getting into what the motivations could and should look like. So keep going. But when you're finished, I have a. I'm going to direct us to a different document. This is the one I was trying to remember the name of last week. Yes, I've got that document. And it does a way better job of providing concrete examples of what professions can look like, what inciting incidents can look like, and what these motivations can look like. They're important because you lose them. Like you have a motivation and when certain things happen, you lose the motivation. You pick up a disorder, it replaces your motivation. Which character wise is so cool. [00:49:30] Speaker B: It's so cool. [00:49:32] Speaker A: They just don't do it justice in this part of the book. [00:49:35] Speaker B: So then I think lastly, what I have down is what brought you to Delta Green, which is what I started with. So it comes all full circle. [00:49:43] Speaker A: Ladies and gentlemen, look at you. [00:49:46] Speaker B: Hey, damaged veterans. So if your agent is a veteran of the unnatural, you must choose a traumatic background. He or she's already gone through something bad. He or she's already gone on a mission or two. Seen stuff, seen stuff that would just make you a different person. And mechanically there are components and levers that come with that background. The cost of experience. So there are four options through the cost of experience. There is extreme violence, captivity or imprisonment. Hard experience or things man was not meant to know. My favorite these grant bonus skills or unnatural knowledge, but at a terrible price. They permanently cost the agent's sanity points. They reduce stats like charisma or pow. And then they damage bonds before the first session even begins. It's like, hey, hey, Harrigan, what level are we starting at? You're gonna start at damaged veteran level. [00:50:55] Speaker A: I love the system, but it's kind of hidden back. Sean mentioned page 38. Like that's at the very tail end, very tail end of the character creation chapter. And there's not a lot of lead up to it. You almost stumble across it at the end of the. Like, there's no Point. Let me say this. One of the things I've been wanting to point out Sean back on page, I don't know, 15, 16, something like that. One thing I adore when a game does is when it lays out the character sheet on a two page spread and has a bunch of big red arrows that are like here's what this means, here's what that means, here's the step you go through. 1, 2, 3, 4. Delta Green has that and it has it at spades. It's beautiful. So there's a two page spread. Everything Sean has just been through is laid out on two pages in the book and it gives you a fantastic concept of what you have to do. But there's no real call out to you might be a damaged veteran or not. Or maybe even more importantly at the top of what of the, of the show. Sean talked about the three different. Like maybe you don't. Maybe you know nothing about the program, maybe you just had the incident you're in or maybe you're a damaged veteran. It never really brings that to the fore and says this is a decision you should make. There's just this go through and make it. The middle one is the assumption. Right Sean? [00:52:11] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say many people that play the game pick that middle. Like you've already been recruited into Delta Green and we're assuming something has already occurred to your character. What is that listed? [00:52:21] Speaker A: But you're not damaged yet, Correct? Right. So it's this middle ground. But the. Yeah. So as much as I love the, I love that two page spread that gets into. Oh man, it covers 90% of what you need, what you need to cover. But in terms of like motivations and damage veterans and there's a few other little things that should get more spotlight and they should be wired in to the character creation process I think more tightly. They're not unfortunately, but they are in a later document they are. Yeah. [00:52:53] Speaker B: And then of course which some of the things we didn't mention is like your name, you know, nationality, where, where you're from. Delta Green I find is very you typically US based unless you get one of the supplements. Doesn't mean you can't have them from another country of origin or nationality to be a part of Delta Green necessarily. But there is games like that highlight the British counterpart if you will like Pisces and some of those details. But at some point you would, you know, give them a name. One of the other things is the era now with the era and when it takes place, your age as well. Some of those things the handler may have thoughts about only because they may have an idea of, I don't know, jumping the timeline 20 years. So if you make a 60 year old agent and they jump the timeline 20 years, some player may be a little perturbed that are playing an 80 year old agent. I would accept it as a challenge personally, but I'm not everybody that's playing the game, so something to be aware of. [00:54:04] Speaker A: And don't get me wrong, it is a wonderful chapter and a wonderful book. Again, there's all these, what it looked like either polaroids or of scenes or there's a lot of faux documents that are kind of scattered throughout. It's just a great read. It's really fun. It's just they get, they get so close to making it like almost a perfect character generation sort of thing. But there's a few of those things at the end. The biggest thing that jumps out at me, Sean, in addition to the motivations and the, the lack of wiring in the damaged veterans as well as they need to, is there's this. Everything you just, you just described a minute ago in the, what they call the finishing up section. That's right, right. The finishing up section has the agent's name, it has their, you know, agent appearance, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, it also has like a bunch of bullets that people usually ignore. Like, do you have college or advanced degrees? Where'd you go to school? What'd you study? What's, what's your personality like? Are you obsessed with anything beyond your motivations? And these fit into something called quote unquote, other motivations on page 38 or something you admire about the agent, something you dislike about the agent. Why does Delta Green trust your agent? These need to be, in my opinion, front and center. Not on page 37. At the very end again of that chapter in a little boated list that's pretty easy to read because. And the reason is by the time you get to this point, your character's done like, you've got your sheet, you put all the points down, you're doing the things. And the character sheets do not call out anything around these things. I just mentioned around why they trust you, what you like about your agent, what you dislike about your agent. So again, there's just like this, oh man, look at these hooks that these guys have built into the characters. These are awesome. And then they kind of breeze past them is the, is the issue, but they're there. Don't breeze past them, guys. They're really cool. Yeah, go to that, go to the very end of the character generation chapter. Because it's got some good at the end for sure. [00:56:01] Speaker B: It's almost like you have to read the whole thing, then create your character. [00:56:06] Speaker A: That's not a bad idea. And it gets a little rambly in places, I would say the first half of that chapter, which is all based on that two page spread and it goes very much in order, like do this, do this, do this, do this. Very procedural. It's great. Then at the end they get into a whole bunch more like here's a whole bunch of good ideas that are a little less organized and they hit you with them. But they're good ideas, man. Truly good. If you're going to either build a character or you're going to be a handler and you want to have pregens or you want to, or you're the one who's presiding over the character generation process, there are some materials that I think are very helpful. Do you have Sean, and I know you do. Do you have the Agent Dossier Portfolio? [00:56:51] Speaker B: I do. And I knew that was what you were referring. I just didn't know the name. It's like the red, it's got the red top secret border. [00:56:59] Speaker A: No, no, no. I'm doing a different thing now. [00:57:01] Speaker B: Oh, different. I'm mistaken. [00:57:03] Speaker A: The age. The Agent Dossier portfolio comes with. [00:57:07] Speaker B: Oh, the hundred. [00:57:07] Speaker A: I want to PDF. I want to say it's a hundred different character. Like when I said. When we say like pregens, they give you all the room in the world where you can put the name in the nationality. I'm looking at them right now. They don't define the bonds, but what they do do. Let's take the first one. The first one is you're an anthropologist or historian. It gives you your scores all filled out, your skills all filled out. And it gives you a little bit of personality. You study humanity. You're concerned with the patterns that emerge over time across land masses, cultures, et cetera, et cetera. It gives you a thumbnail of a character and there are 100 of these in this PDF. So it's things like. Let me just give a couple of examples. There's an anthropologist, there's a federal agent who's working in the tactical Canine Program, first brigade in the army. So you're a soldier, atf. You were doing explosives detection, Crime program, dea, epa, Intelligence analyst. You're a marine. Like you work for the NASA in the astronaut Corps. There's just a ton of these that are really easy to hand out. And I'd have people kind of customize and get. Get off the ground quickly. So it's just more in that. In that vein of giving people more materials to kind of build characters quickly from. So cool stuff. The. The one. Any comments on that before I move on to the. To the document that you. I would like to print all of [00:58:29] Speaker B: them off and then put them down on a. On a table at a con and go, here, pick a. Here, pick a pregen. [00:58:36] Speaker A: I've done that with these. [00:58:37] Speaker B: All of them. [00:58:38] Speaker A: Yep. [00:58:39] Speaker B: Have you really? [00:58:40] Speaker A: I printed. It wasn't a con. You might remember the two or three summers ago now, I went to Maine for a reunion around an old friend died and a bunch of us got together and one of the things we did was play some games because this guy loved games. I ran Last Things Last and I brought the entire printed stack of these things and the guys used them. But I mean, it's one of those things. Like we had an Airbnb. So, you know, the boys. The boys all pick one and over breakfast or something, they're filling them out. We're like. We're like half playing, half shooting the bowl, having breakfast. It was. It was a fantastic time that. That. That moment in. In Maine there a couple summers ago. But long story short, it works well that, you know, because people are like, I'll play this kind of agent. Sure. Especially if. If it's from the hip. People haven't been thinking about it very much. It's pretty cool. So in addition to this, Last Things Last is a part of need to Know, Right. Need to Know is the free PDF, almost a quick start that Sean and I talked about last week. And it includes, like, again, how to be a player. The core rules, what an agent is. I'm just flipping through it here. An agent sheet. It's a condensed version of the 30 pages that Sean just went through in the book, basically. And then at the end, it adds this. There's some pregens, and it adds in this pretty amazing adventure which we will talk about, called Last Things Last. At the end, it's like a. It's a fantastic intro to Delta Green. Presuming you are in the program already, but you're kind of new. So it's kind of like your handler giving you, like, the training wheels or they put the bumpers up on the bowling alley. Like, look, there's this mission. Let's go to this guy's apartment, make sure he didn't have anything weird there if he did collect it. Right. Because the program can't let the Stuff get out at the people come in and do the cleaning. They can't find anything, blah, blah, blah. It goes from there. So. But it's again one of those like very compact sorts of things. But if you want to, if you want to like put your toe in the water with Delta Green, it's a great PDF to pick up. Maybe don't read last things last. If that is if you're going to be a player as opposed to run it. I would, I would. You know, this is one of those scenarios where you will ruin some surprises if you read ahead. And there's some really fun stuff in that, in that adventure. But Lassie's Last is a pretty good pickup. But the one that I think makes the most difference on top of the core book is called the Briefing Documents. It's the one that has the red top secret cover that you're thinking of. Yeah, he's pointing at the screen. [01:01:08] Speaker B: Yes, that's the one. Yes. [01:01:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it does a better job. And this is something that another frustration I had when I first started, when I first realized Delta Green wasn't the gung ho, you know, shoot them up. Yeah, Special Forces, let's go. Yeah, gonna kill the deep ones. When I realized it wasn't that and it was this. Everything that we've described so far in this season, like this just expanse of rich role playing opportunity. And I started reading about it, I remember getting not confused, but I remember thinking like, who else in the program and do they have different roles? And yeah, as you read the books, you realize that some folks are considered agents and some are considered specialists. Well, that is not called out very explicitly in the Agent's Handbook, Sean. It gets more into it in some other materials. And that starts with this one, this Briefing Documents where you have a first page is the agents, the second page is the specialists. And it gives you a bunch of examples. So these are ways to get going. Again with. This is all meant for. You're building a character. Here's some ideas for who you're going to play. Right. There are special agents and police. Federal agent, police officer, FBI, dea, ice. Don't want to, don't want to do that one right now. U.S. navy, NCIS. Just like all these cool great ways. And there are references back to the book because the Agent's Handbook is loaded with ideas around this stuff, but they're kind of buried. Remember we said the federal stuff's in the back, all that stuff. This is like a quick reference guide to get into that stuff. SWOT and Special Operators Other military. If you're part of, like the. You know, if you want to be like a mountain division, you know, 10th. 10th Mountain Division kind of guy with special skills, kind of. That kind of thing. Intelligence case officers. And then they have other. Which is like criminal and that. Those sorts of things. Specialists to get into, like humanities and media, science and technology. Medical pilots and sailors. It's just this quick reference guide that kind of boils it all down. If you're looking for some ideas for who should I play? And then it gives you some D10 tables that says, what keeps your agent going? Why don't you give me a couple of D10 rolls, Sean? Give me. Actually, it's D12 roll and then a D10 roll. [01:03:23] Speaker B: All right, D12. [01:03:24] Speaker A: We'll tell you what keeps your agent going. [01:03:25] Speaker B: Five. [01:03:27] Speaker A: Five. Is there's a principle that you have that keeps you going. And I roll a D10, a 9. I'll tell you what your principle is. Personal integrity. So it's very. It's very osr. Like if you. If there are certain things that you're just not sure of, if you don't have a solid character in mind, it gives you these tables to either browse and pick, come up with your own or role. But basically, the motivations include things around achieving something, protecting something, opposing something, finding solace, building relationships, gaining an understanding or standing on principle. The main book doesn't have that stuff at all. So all those motivations that does not exist in the agent's handbook. And then the same thing is true for the incursion where you get into. What happened to you? Why did you come into the program? You need to roll me. Oh, I love when games do this. The black hacks. The first time I saw this, you need to roll me a D4, a D6, a D8, a D10, and a D12. All of those, and then tell me what you get in order. [01:04:31] Speaker B: In order? [01:04:32] Speaker A: Yep. So you gotta roll them all, stack the results. [01:04:37] Speaker B: Make sure I only have one D10 in this whole spiel here. [01:04:41] Speaker A: This is what brought your agent to Delta Green. It's the incursion. [01:04:45] Speaker B: Let's create it. Right? [01:04:47] Speaker A: Create it right now. [01:04:48] Speaker B: D4. Result is a 2. [01:04:51] Speaker A: Okay, before we start again, this is like a set of random tables, but you can easily just read these. And it just gives you ideas for, like. Like, if you're struggling with what. What was the incursion? You got a two. Okay. The environment, Sean, was either suburban or ex urban. I don't know what ex urban is, [01:05:07] Speaker B: but ex urban is at like a rundown town, rundown city. I don't know. [01:05:12] Speaker A: Oh, that's a great idea. Okay, so. So the environment for the incident was either suburban or Exurban. What's your D6 role 2. What was the threat vector? A family cult. Okay, so we have a family cult in a suburban or I like ex urban sort of scenario. What's your D8 result? [01:05:31] Speaker B: 3. [01:05:33] Speaker A: The COVID investigation was for Delta Green was theft or fraud. Okay, now what's the complication? What's your D10 result? [01:05:43] Speaker B: 010 10. [01:05:46] Speaker A: Your agent does not remember some of what happened. [01:05:48] Speaker B: Oh, oh, [01:05:51] Speaker A: love that one. And then what? And then what's your D12 result 6. 6 is the incursion was taking physical form through human infestation. So bring all that together, man. The cult, the exurban environment, not remembering the fact that you were. So now it's even telling you like you were part of some investigation around theft or. Or whatever. Right? And that's what I think the core book lacks. It doesn't give you these building blocks to say what do we mean? Like the incursion can be really cool. And imagine like four or five pages of this stuff, which is what they really should do. This is a single page in the book. Not to go on too long about this document. It's worth getting. I forget if it's. Is it free? [01:06:37] Speaker B: Sean, Briefing deck is pay what you want on drive thru. We'll have a link in the notes. [01:06:45] Speaker A: It's an official PDF. They then get this they get into. For those who think that Delta Green shouldn't be on the show because there's not enough about espionage, there's a whole page on tradecraft about your cover story, your cover identity, how you communicate, how you deal with witnesses, firearms, the handover. There's all kinds of stuff that it goes into. And then finally it goes into a full page of examples around your home scenes. And that kind of thing, like going to therapy, improving your skills. It's meant to be like a packaged version of some things we talked about last week as well, where you're in those home scenes. It's almost like a single page reference to that stuff which is a little more spread out in the book. It is 100% worth it. And when I was first playing Delta Green, first exploring like what is this game really? I joined a play by post game and the GM shared this document. And from that early, you know what it's like. You're like. You're like me, Sean. You're old memory's going you know those situations where you're like, you come back to something later, or you're like. I don't know, you're. You're in the middle of it. You're like, man, why can't I find that section in the book that's about this. It's about this thing. [01:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:07:57] Speaker A: You know that. That sensation. [01:07:59] Speaker B: Yes, all the time. [01:07:59] Speaker A: I know. [01:08:00] Speaker B: More and more every day. [01:08:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that, dude. But you know what I mean? Like. Like that. I know. I've read it, and I can't find it. This document flummoxed me for years because I encountered it very early on, and I assumed it was in the ages handbook. So I looked page turn after page turn. Where the hell are the. Are the things on the motivations and the inciting incidents? Then much later, I'm like, oh, it's a separate document. They're all here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a. All right, so there's a bunch of other stuff that's worth investigating. Dwayne has shared some things with us before, before we ever ran the show. Written by a couple of people around, like, the. What's it called? The axioms from Asel, written by Adam Scott Glancy. Right. [01:08:52] Speaker B: Yes. [01:08:53] Speaker A: So that's 44 bullets of, like, how to play an agent. [01:08:58] Speaker B: Yes. [01:08:59] Speaker A: They include things like, always keep your cover identity. Your cover should be always someone with a reason for asking the questions that you need answered. Prepare a cover after every night at the opera. Like, there's just all these. Like, there's 44 of them, I think. Yeah. 44 things. Axioms that if you want to go, like, first of all, Future players and GMs, please read that. Like, first 10 pages of the Agent's Handbook. Because it describes the game, it describes how things happen. Like, what you're dipping your foot into. But this gets into, like. Okay, you want to get serious about playing an agent. Well. And being smart about it. And then there's one, Sean, that is by. Forgive me for flipping through here. There's 10 Commandments by Dennis Detweller. [01:09:43] Speaker B: Yes. [01:09:43] Speaker A: As well. [01:09:44] Speaker B: Yes. [01:09:44] Speaker A: Another. Another PDF. And we can. If you don't. Can't find these. We can share them in the. Maybe these belong in the other section of the show. But, hey, so these include things like, thou shalt embrace the atmosphere. Thou shalt foster tension and paranoia. Thou shalt make it personal. Thou shalt respect player, agency, and dice. Thou shalt not shy from consequences. So this is. These are for the handler, clearly. Right. Thou shalt not overuse the unnatural, which I think is a huge one. This is not. This is where I thought the. I had the misconception that I thought it was about, like, taking your M4 and gunning down a bunch of. Bunch of squid men who were loose in the streets. Right. It's not that way. It's this slow burn until you have the moment where everything's wrong now. Like, oh, God. And if you have too much of the unnatural in there, people get desensitized to it as players. Thou shalt listen. Listen to this. Thou shalt mix universal despair with personal hope. Thou shalt pit the group against one another, and thou shalt keep them guessing. There's some really good stuff in here, man. Then the last one is actually by a guy. Where is he from? Vincent Kaufman, part of the Black Project. Gaming's A Night at the Opera and possible landscape campaigns for Mayday Roleplay. He's a member of Mayday Roleplay, which you and I both have both listened to. [01:11:08] Speaker B: Podcast. Black Project was a podcast on Delta Green, so if you want to check those out. [01:11:13] Speaker A: Yep. So his document is a foundational guide to uncovering the truth in Delta Green. And it just gets into record checks, interviews, investigative techniques, like all of the, like, oh, I got a little quick story to tell you that's going to make you, make you laugh. I think all of the tradecrafty things around. Doing an investigation that people like you and I are not that familiar with. Like your friend Jeff. Jeff did some investigations. Right. So Jeff has this, like, angle. I have played a few games here now in Colorado, I'll use his first name only because I want to. I don't want to out him. But Fred. Fred is, I've come to discover, is a detective. Like a police. [01:11:54] Speaker B: Oh, wow. Okay. [01:11:56] Speaker A: Super cool. Really good guy. Love playing with him. Will. Will not play Delta Green because the handlers don't understand investigations like he does. He's like, I go collect the blood sp. But he's like, there isn't any. He's like, that's not. That's not. I can't be the case because you described this, this, and this, and there would be blood splat. You know, Fred will, like, break it down so he'll run Delta Green. I am. I am desperate to play him running [01:12:22] Speaker B: one of these games. [01:12:23] Speaker A: I know, I know. I can't wait. [01:12:25] Speaker B: Fred describing a crime scene. Oh, please. Yes, I. I know. Yeah. So good. [01:12:32] Speaker A: So good. Now Fred's near retirement, and I can tell he's ready to, like, he's ready to not be a detective anymore, I'll tell you that. But he's done it for like 30 years, dude. Like, he's been there and seen it. [01:12:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:12:43] Speaker A: So this document has a little bit of that in it. This one by. By Vincent Kaufman. So that's what I got in terms of like other material. But I think these things, as you get deeper into the game, if you're, if you're wanting to get kind of the full experience or you have concerns like I did around, like, you know, why don't they give me more on X, Y or Z? There's some other materials that are out there that just help kind of reinforce. Reinforce things. And I'm sure there are a bunch of other fan creative materials that are similar that are just around like reinforcing vibes and getting people on board quickly and all those sorts of things. Do you have all those documents? [01:13:17] Speaker B: I do have all those documents and I'm. Yes. And I didn't even think of half of them. I'm actually wondering, did I print them off for my group when we started? And I don't think I did. I had a dossier or a folder with. I think I had the. I did have the briefing docs, man, [01:13:38] Speaker A: you could create a cool package for players and if. And if you included the first 10 pages of the agent's handbook as well, that is the whole like, what is this game? Kind of thing, that would be pretty sweet, man. Yeah, pretty sweet. [01:13:52] Speaker B: I agree. [01:13:54] Speaker A: My enthusiasm is unvarnished for this game. I think this is a fantastic game, man. It's got its warts. I don't. I generally don't love BRP roll under kind of systems with 40 plus skills, but it's by far worth it to put up, you know, put up with that for what you get out of the game. Yeah. [01:14:16] Speaker B: This is it for this episode of Go Bag. On behalf of my esteemed co hosts, thanks for tuning in. We'll catch you on the next one. 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 hus Carl Farty McMutterpants, Laramie Wall, Eileen Barnes, Hepta Lima, Aaron Raila, Wayne Peacock, Jeff Walken, Yorcus Rex Eric Salzwedo, Phil McLory, Jason Hobbs, Michael Holland, Remy Billodeau, Crystal Eggstad, Eric Av Fornak, Brian Kurtz, Chad Glamon, Jim Ingram, Orchis Dorcas, Chris Shorb, Ryan Rumble Victor Wyatt, Kevin Keneally, Andy Hall, Jason Weitzel, Saltheart, Tad Lechman, Nicholas Abruzzo, Matthew Catron, Curtis Takahashi, Angela Murray, Mr. White, 20. Jason Connerly, Shannon Olson, Ryan West, Kristen McLean, Larry Hollis, Glenn Seal, Jake at Fated Quail. Jake at Fated Quail Gaming. Tess Trekkie, Tim Jensen Noobis, Christopher Lang Krallog, Peter Staines, Wendy Forkon, James Fraser, Ronald Durigible and Chaplain Grimaldis. Thank you, operatives.