The Downward Spiral (Sanity and Bonds)

[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. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Hey, Harrigan. [00:00:21] Speaker A: Hello, Sean. [00:00:23] Speaker B: It is another week. We are at the mics for another kick ass episode of Go Bake that [00:00:32] Speaker A: might remain to be seen, but sure. [00:00:34] Speaker B: Come on, man. Roll with it, buddy. [00:00:36] Speaker A: Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. [00:00:38] Speaker B: There we go. That's what I'm talking. Yeah. What have you been go bagging on [00:00:47] Speaker A: Go bagging. Life is, is in the way, man. [00:00:51] Speaker B: Ah, adulting. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, like work's been bananas, been traveling a lot, been year end budgets, planning for next year, new initiative, blah blah, blah, blah, blah all over all the life stuff. Right. But I do have a couple little things that have been going on. So I have not been able to restart my Bond reading. I have not gotten off the ground on my Bond. My Bond watching on Netflix. And the damn stuff leaves on April 20, even though it only arrived around Christmas time or whatever or the beginning of the year or something like that. There's no formal announcement, but the, the, the lowdown appears to be that Amazon's probably going to take it back because they've got the whole property now and all that kind of stuff. I guess they license it out as a chunk. That might be. I'm wondering if that's even why Netflix had it for such a short period of time. Is that Amazon was like, we'll take that back now. [00:01:48] Speaker B: I knew it wasn't going to be out there for very long. I just had that. [00:01:51] Speaker A: It's unusual. There are articles about how, how it's. It's kind of a rug pull to say here's the entire 2526 movie catalog, all of it, which is unusual for it to move around like a block like that. And now it's gone after three months, so. Yeah, yeah, three or four months anyway. So, you know, there's podcasts that I'm halfway through. There's all sorts of stuff that I'm sort of partway into. I'm still running both my Covert Ops and my Delta Green Duet play by post games. Both of those have actually kind of picked up a little bit, little bit of steam. I think most folks know those type. That format can move pretty slowly. Covert Ops, if we, you know, in season three, if we get back to covering the espionage and covert action genre more broadly, maybe we could spend half an episode or a quarter of an episode on has some warts is what I will say. And I referenced those, I think last season, but they remain. There's just, there's some janky mechanics around when to roll an attribute versus a skill, what the skill includes in it or not, and all that kind of stuff that just don't make it that much that fun for me to run. And maybe the bigger problem is actually it's an incomplete game in the main book. There's a great GM companion that they put out later which includes all the stuff that's missing. Like for example, there are no assist help aid mechanics. In other words, do you make a roll and they get a bonus or do they just get a bonus to their skill if you're able to help because your skill was in a certain range, Blah, blah, blah. That's all in this like add on guide. So it feels like some of the games of our youth where, remember where you know, a lot of the core rules would like to show up in like a campaign book or a, or an add on book later. So it's, it's old school in a bad way in that regard. Like the original game, it could probably use the second edition, I guess what, what I'm getting down to. But I don't think the core game is good enough to, to warrant one. I know that the designer has moved on as well. So that, and the, the Delta Green game that I'm playing is a shotgun scenario and it's kind of a slow burn, but it's. I don't know, it's. It's pretty sweet. They're rolling into, you know, the three agents are rolling into this small town in Minnesota in the winter looking for, looking for a former friendly of the program who's a mathematician who's gone missing. So there's just a fair bit of tension already. Like if they find her motel room and. Yeah, it's gonna, it's gonna be good, dude. It's gonna be good. [00:04:12] Speaker B: So you said three agents in the. It's a duet game, but he's. Is he playing three agents? [00:04:17] Speaker A: Nope, he's playing one. But I mean I, but I've got him paired up with two other two NPCs. [00:04:22] Speaker B: Got it. [00:04:22] Speaker A: Right? Yep. And you know what? [00:04:24] Speaker B: It's. [00:04:24] Speaker A: That might be something we can talk about at some point. It's. It was interesting as a duet game. There are certain things that, you know, the, it's a. Basically the, the agents are sort of a special forces kind of guy who also has some anthropology training, so he's like a adjunct professor at a school but he was in Afghanistan years ago. So he's kind of a perfect, kind of like Delta Green guy, right? That's the PC. And then there's also a paramedic who's in the program. And then there's this New York City detective who's in the program. So they've kind of got their own, they've all got their own shtick. And the player came, did come forward. This is dirigible, who I've talked about before, who I played these games with for decades, has come forward and said, my, my plan involves getting this other agent, one of my partners, to do these things. But would you, since it's a two player game, would you rather I do all that stuff? And I said, no, make, you know, do. Do exactly what you want. The part that I like about this is that like, he's. Let me give you the. For example, they're looking, they're observing this motel. It's late at night by the time they're able to get there. And it's a very quick burn mission. Like they were briefed like six hours ago. And the handler was like, get to me, get to the small town. Right now we don't know where she is, the police are closing in when, you know, she took some materials from the, from the university, etc. That kind of thing, right? And I like the fact that I'm like, no, do what your character would do. But you're not going to know what happens at the door when the detective goes and knocks on the door. So because his plan is to have a detective who's probably a pretty good door knocker, go and check out the motel while he goes around back, you know. So his question was, should I be the protagonist here and be the one who knocks on the door? And I'm like, nope, you do what you want to do. And I actually kind of like it. So he's going to be in back, not knowing what's going on. And I've got to, as the gm, may, you know, might do some rolling, might not to kind of figure out what's happening off screen and then he'll become aware of it. The whole thing keeps that sort of shroud of like mystery, secrecy, like, what the hell's going on? You don't know. It just adds to all that. So it's been interesting. [00:06:20] Speaker B: That's pretty fantastic because even in a player group, you know, you're explaining, okay, you're going to go in the back, you're going to go in the front. Okay, let's let's. All right, Jeff, let me get to you tell you. Oh, the guy up going in the front knows now because I'm sitting at the table. Instead of pulling Jeff off the table and telling him, you know, individually, okay, this is what happens. Okay. All right. Sound good? Okay. And then go back to the table. Okay, Joe, you're up at front. Okay. Okay, Joe, this is what happens. Like, what a pain in the ass. So usually you just do it right at the table, out in the open, and hope that the other players don't do the. Oh, I. I do this. But you're not there. You're not. [00:07:02] Speaker A: You're in the back. [00:07:03] Speaker B: Yeah, the. [00:07:04] Speaker A: Not only use player knowledge, but the whole. Like, I want to participate. Right. Even though I'm. Even though I'm not at the train station, I. [00:07:10] Speaker B: At the hotel, can I call the train station to distract the person at the counter that they're talking to. Get that shit out of you. [00:07:19] Speaker A: Playing with, man. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Dude, I got so many, like, oh, God, it just drives. Yeah, I like playing with Jeff. It kills me. He has some Jeff isms that really just, you know, it kills me. Like, he speaks for the party often. [00:07:36] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Right. [00:07:38] Speaker A: He's the caller, regardless of game. [00:07:41] Speaker B: Totally the caller. Yeah. He's like, okay, this is what we're gonna do. And I'm like, oh, is that. Is that right? You know, when I point to every other player at the table and they're like, he was. He just. Jeff laughs and he goes, oh, he gets all embarrassed. Cause I call him out on it, you know, so. [00:07:55] Speaker A: So some groups have that dynamic where one player is like, you know, foot forward, they're leaning in, and they're doing the calling kind of thing. [00:08:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Jeff's the leader, always has been. And so he. That's a default. And it's a. I gotta. I put him in check for that [00:08:11] Speaker A: stuff because, yeah, I mean, you have a deal. Some RPGs, like, the players are the stars of the show, right? They are like, the focus should be on them. The story's about them, the world revolves around them. For certain RPGs, right. There's other games that are more OSR, where it's like, you know, the. The environment and the world is what matters, and you're discovering it and you be. Your story emerges from how you interact and all that stuff. Then you have Delta Green, where it's like, no, this is like, it's there and it's in motion and it's moving and whatever you do or don't do, Will impact it. But if you don't do it, like shit's happening. It's essentially. We've talked about it before, it's as close to reality as you can get. [00:08:50] Speaker B: Right. [00:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah. So yeah, I have no qualms about running for a single player without it being just like. It doesn't have to be a one person operation by any means. Give them some NPCs to react with, to form bonds with. They're gonna like, you know, I'll not say too much, I'll stop there because I don't want to ruin the game for dirigible in case he listens to this. [00:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, hopefully by the time this drops, you will have been passed. [00:09:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I hope so. Yeah. We're only posting about once a week, so it's pretty slow moving game. Yeah. Anyway, what about you? What do you. What have you been up to? [00:09:24] Speaker B: Not a whole lot as a matter of fact. Setback. We were to play last week and I, we. It was just, you know, me and two buddies and that was kind of the basic. Yeah. The Delta Green game specifically. And we just. It was impossible. Landscapes. They're at a part where they run into the orderly at the, at the hospital. Yeah. And two of the guys didn't. One of the guys that typically shows wasn't there and not, not a big deal. He hasn't been there before and we can play around him but I just, we just sat around and BS'd for the three hours that we were supposed to play. So we didn't get anywhere. But I am thinking about, you know, I'm wondering about running Jeff duet style. He's retired now. He doesn't like what are you doing, man? I'd be gaming like every other day. But he is, he is definitely the gamer that. But he's like, I like to play like this, like face to face right here. So it restricts. Well, you know, none of us are like kicking it every day because we're still working to survive and so I'm so jealous. I know, me too. [00:10:35] Speaker A: Like our friend Wayne. [00:10:37] Speaker B: Yes. [00:10:37] Speaker A: And I think, I think Dwayne is getting close to that as well. I don't know if he's retired yet but man, the dude games like all the time. [00:10:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:44] Speaker A: Like whenever I run across some other. This is hilarious. I keep running across like, oh, the Denver or Colorado area has this other little gaming network I didn't know about and I've discovered and bastards in every [00:10:55] Speaker B: one of them already joins the common connection. [00:10:58] Speaker A: Yes. What the hell. Like a spider in a Web man. Yeah. [00:11:02] Speaker B: That's awesome. Yeah, so we'll see. I mean, he. But if I did duet, I, you know, like, Jeff, I can't come over to your house every week. I mean, I suppose I could, but. [00:11:10] Speaker A: I don't know. But you could hop on the. On the chat the zoom. Right quickly. [00:11:14] Speaker B: Right, right, right. So I think he would. Yeah, it would be interesting to play a duet game, but other than that, there was a couple Delta Green scenarios that were released. I haven't delved into those yet. At the time of this recording, when the names escaped me, I should have probably made note of them, but. Yeah, nothing. Nothing else [00:11:39] Speaker A: is what it is. And the fact that you. You and your players did not play, that's just three. Three adults who need to like detox a bit after work and what's going on in the world. [00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. [00:11:50] Speaker A: You know, let's just talk. [00:11:52] Speaker B: Right? Yes. That's what it was. [00:11:54] Speaker A: Let's just shoot the bull. Yeah, I get it, I get it. We've been there. Sit rep. Yeah, [00:12:04] Speaker B: give me the sit rep. Sit rep links, events, things happening, bringing to your attention, reference material, what have you. We've got four things to mention. We mentioned one of them already. [00:12:16] Speaker A: We did. Sorry. [00:12:17] Speaker B: That's all right. That's fine. Which is the James Bond catalog coming to an end on Netflix. [00:12:24] Speaker A: Yep. It's not announced yet where it's going as what I was hinting before, but when it reappears somewhere, we'll let you know. [00:12:32] Speaker B: I am going to be running a Delta Green game scenario at Gamehole Con. Gamehole Con is in October of 2026, typically October time frame here in Madison Wiscons where I live. It's my con in my backyard. Harrigan is. And some. Some folks that may listen to this come out, let's get together game like on grid typically during the day and then off grid at. At night. So I'm going to run Glass Hounds and Glass Houses I think is the official. Is the title. It's a shotgun scenario winner that I've run for BSercon and the Thursday night group that Harrigan was. Is a part of, but missed. [00:13:16] Speaker A: Missed that night. [00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So I'll be running that. I don't know if I'm gonna put another one, another game on the grid. So if you are gonna be at Gamehole Con, be sure you come up to myself. And I imagine Harrigan will be there too. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know if we're gonna run much more on grid under the go bag. Banner. I have the game under a go bag. Is it a group? So. [00:13:38] Speaker A: So I am contemplating doing the same in actually even for Delta Green. As we get into the content of this episode here. Going through that book, I'm like, why am I not running this all the time? [00:13:50] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:13:51] Speaker A: So, yep, it makes me. It makes me, you know, just question my, my rpg, what I'm doing. [00:13:58] Speaker B: Well and the other thing is, is like last year, if you looked at the catalog, there wasn't. [00:14:03] Speaker A: There were like two games. Right. [00:14:04] Speaker B: They're not a ton of. There was convergence that I had signed up and did not go to because I already knew the scenario. And then maybe one other Delta Green scenario. But even covert action and espionage is not like the highlight of that con. So some would say make the con what you want it to be. So. Right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. Yeah. [00:14:24] Speaker A: Yeah. So I may join you. I may be running something else under gobag. It might be a different Delta Green. I'm also super, super happy that you're using the shotgun scenario because, you know, for ages you might remember I'm like, Sean, run the. Run a shotgun, run a shot. Because you're always like running the longer adventures. They're hard to fit into a four hour time slot. There's a ton of like, ton of stuff going on in the, in the mission. Like you have a shotgun man. [00:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:47] Speaker A: Build it out a little bit. Do that. [00:14:51] Speaker B: So that's mine. Then we had two others, obviously. [00:14:55] Speaker A: Oh yeah, let me give one of them. And it's very quick actually. So we mentioned Duane, also known as Mr. White 20 in online circles. Dwayne is a frequent writer in to the show and contacts Sean and I on the GBS discord that we're both part of that Sean owns. Dwayne simply listed a link and I think Sean will put this in the show notes. But it's basically for Delta Green fiction. So through their history and I think it's been both Arc Dream and the prior company, Pagan Publishing. I think they've long put, long put out stories, fiction about the Delta Green universe. So what Dwayne did was, was publish or link us to like a list of all that stuff. So I figured it might be useful for some people to look at. [00:15:38] Speaker B: I do have some in ebook form, but I have not read any. I've not consumed any. So I think I probably have like three of the books and you can get them on drivethrurpg. We have like Harrigan said, we'll have a link to the reference that he had listed. But I was kind of hoping they would come out an audiobook because I'm kind of an audiobook guy. Put the headphones in, clean the house. [00:15:57] Speaker A: Agreed. Yeah, agreed. In fact, there's some. They could even do, like the radio play treatment. Friend of both John and I, Chad Gunderman, has turned me on to some Call of Cthulhu material like that, where it's voice acted by different people. So it's basically very pulpy, sort of, I don't know, twenties Cthulhu mystery action with a cast of like a half a dozen people kind of thing. Some light sound effects. Totally a radio play. And they're really fun. They're quite fun. Delta Green could benefit from the same thing. [00:16:25] Speaker B: Agreed. [00:16:25] Speaker A: That. That fiction. Yeah. And I think I have not looked into it deeply yet, but I think what. The reason why Dwayne brought this up is that I think there's some newer story maybe that's out there that is like a follow on to the events of Convergence. And I'll be. I'll be the first to admit I don't even know what happens in Convergence because the Delta Green adventures, of which there are many, is not something I'm like, knowledgeable about kind of at all. That's what, you know, I have focused on my own stuff or shotguns and whatnot. So I know less about all of the published operas than Sean does or than many people do. [00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I thought there was a kind of a sequence in that regard where it was Convergence which came out in the original. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [00:17:07] Speaker B: And then puppet shows and shadow plays, which I think I butchered the last time I tried to remember that title. I think that is. It is a natural progression into the world of Delta Green is kind of like seed planting. You start as friendlies, then get recruited by Delta Green. And I wonder, I don't know if it was. I don't know if it was puppet shows or shadow and shadow plays that he was referring to the post convergence scenario. I don't know. But it could be. [00:17:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:37] Speaker B: Anyways. And then Black Project Gaming. [00:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think we. We mentioned Vince Kaufman's materials in our last episode, which was kind of the, like the. Was it character generation. [00:17:52] Speaker B: I think it was. [00:17:53] Speaker A: Well, yeah. [00:17:54] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes. [00:17:55] Speaker A: So in addition to like the basics of character generation, we surfaced a number of sort of add on documents that either the community has written or artgreen themselves have put out that are like. They really bolster the front end of the game, basically. And Vince Kaufman is with Black Project Gaming and put out one of the like the 101 document, I think. Well, turns out there's a whole actually website instead of actual plays. And now a blog that Vince is doing and I think he's even written and we're gonna hear an encrypted. Com from him here in a second. But basically thanks for, you know, for a. I'll thank him early for writing in. But we'll link to that site so you can see that. I'll do a little bit of previewing here. There's quite a community around this game. So there's a lot of one off sites and individuals and groups who have stood up their own stuff around actual plays around their own how to play the game type materials and whatnot. We'll probably have an episode that explores that more deeply. But this is an example of one of them. Right? [00:18:54] Speaker B: Yeah. That's all. Yeah. That's it for sitrep. Let's go into encrypted comms. Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission. I will take the first one because this is one I nabbed off a YouTube comment that we had on the elements of a good tabletop RPG espionage game. So not necessarily Delta Green because we haven't released some of the season episodes as of this recording. But this is from Zortic one. You know who you are. How do you guys feel about the number of players in espionage games? Most media focuses on a single lone spy. Does having a party take away from that stealthy feeling? I know the James Bond RPG has different character creation based on the number of players. Do any other games have that? And we did have an episode dedicated. Right. And inspired from a comment from our buddy Digital Hobbit Mirko with single playing single agent scenarios versus a party. And so I just wanted to acknowledge his comment and question honestly. And maybe when he that saw that video. We may not. I'm still launching YouTube's videos from season one. So he hasn't probably gotten to that. If he hasn't tuned into the audio version which is. Which is all out at this point except for this season. [00:20:21] Speaker A: So we have a complex workflow. There's multiple ways to watch it. I think when my question was going to be which video did he comment on? And if he's. And if he's only watching the YouTube videos then yeah, he maybe he hasn't just simply hasn't gotten to the one where we talk about exactly this topic. Right. [00:20:38] Speaker B: I didn't make note of the video that he commented on elements of a Good. Ttr. PG Espionage. That's what the comment was on right when we were going through. [00:20:46] Speaker A: Oh, so an early one. [00:20:47] Speaker B: Pretty early on with YouTube. They come across it, you know, weeks later and comment on it. [00:20:53] Speaker A: I got you. [00:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we were going through like, this is what we would like to see and what makes up a good Covert Action Espionage RPG. [00:21:01] Speaker A: Let's do this then. As a proper response to Zortic1 Love that name. [00:21:05] Speaker B: Yes. [00:21:07] Speaker A: So Zortic. Either go to a podcatcher and you'll be able to see the whole catalog of the shows and you can find an episode that is dedicated to exactly this topic. Short answer is it works fine with multiple players, it works fine solo. There's probably some back and forth as to whether, like, I think probably the Mission Impossible type stuff is better suited for a team game because you can do that whole division of labor and have the person in the van helping and the one person's the pilot, blah, blah, blah, versus the Cold Warrior inserted into like a. You know, you're working in Russia behind the scenes in 1963 and you've got a British handler or a CIA handler you're working with. That's probably better suited for smaller teams still. But listen to the episode and we'll, we'll get there. And Sean, you'll. You'll post it on YouTube eventually, right? [00:21:52] Speaker B: Yeah, but his only. But one of the specific questions he had was, I didn't know James Bond had a different character creation based on the number of players, except for the metacurrency. [00:22:07] Speaker A: Like sometimes I'm not sure what he's referring to there. It may be that they simply say, remember how it has rookie, agent and double O levels? There might be reference somewhere where it says, if you're going to have a single player, think about agent or double O level type of thing. [00:22:22] Speaker B: Right. [00:22:23] Speaker A: Because the rookies. The rookies are expected to be a team. You know, I'm not sure though, but [00:22:28] Speaker B: to answer his question about do any other games have that? None that I've come across. Like, oh, if you're playing with two players, here is the different things you have to consider other than meta currency. So if you have meta currency and you have more players, the GM might get some based on the amount of players, but other than that, I don't really think we've come across one that is specific to, oh, if you're going to play this with one character, then it's this. If it's two, then it's this. And if, if it's more yeah, nothing [00:22:53] Speaker A: strikes me offhand with the exception of like you're referencing little rules. Like sometimes the GM starts with an amount of GM metacurrency that is equal to the number of players and obviously a single player will change that. But nothing. Nothing offhand. [00:23:10] Speaker B: Thanks for coming across the video and commenting, Zartik. I hope you tune into some other things beyond that episode and then. No, we alluded to it earlier. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Vince Kaufman wrote in Vince writes Good afternoon. Just wanted to tell you both how much I'm enjoying the content you're creating over at Go Bag. I also very much appreciated the shout out for Black Project and Investigations 101 in your creating your agent in Delta Green episode. If you gentlemen would ever like to join forces and do an interview or collaborative episode or something, please consider me interested. I'm also in the process of working on two additional follow up guides on Cover Ups and Tradecraft, which sound like they'd be up your alley. Thanks again for your work and please don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested in linking up. Best, Vince Kaufman. Thank you, Vince. Yeah, I think we're definitely interested in two things here. I think any further guides and whatnot that you put out Interestingly as well, Sean, he mentions tradecraft and you know, they're. We have some listeners who are a little like you're going to focus an entire season on Delta Green when it's not even a pure espionage game, what you do. And well, in going through the book more recently and you know, I kind of scoured it for things about, about Bonds, which is what I'm going to talk about today. There's a whole chapter on tradecraft or a whole append. It's a set of appendices around Tradecraft. Interested to see how Vince adds to that if he puts something out. But there's actually a few pages in the book already purely around like hiding a body, communicating secretly, all that kind of stuff. It's right, right there, front and center. [00:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And if you've done it in real life, then you have practical experience doing that. [00:24:52] Speaker A: Yes, indeed. [00:24:54] Speaker B: What is the adage, you know, a friend does this, but a good friend helps you hide the body. Right? [00:24:59] Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. I forget the front end of that adage, but the back end is the important part. [00:25:05] Speaker B: Yes, it is. [00:25:06] Speaker A: Oh man. And you know, to his comment about collaborating, I think we're open to that idea. Let's, you know, let's. Maybe we'll reach out at some point, Sean, before the show we even did a little Bit of talk about we should probably do an episode focused on the community of Delta Green and, you know, maybe we'll reach out to a couple of different people in a couple of different places and see if we can't put a little panel together or something like that. Right? [00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I'd love to do it at a convention, but I think getting everybody together in one place may be a little difficult, but nonetheless, we could do it here through the use of modern day technology. We have the power. [00:25:41] Speaker A: We do have the power with that. [00:25:44] Speaker B: Let's get in. Thanks again, Vince. Let's get into mission brief. [00:25:48] Speaker A: Have a seat. Let's get on with the mission brief. [00:25:51] Speaker B: All right. What are we covering this week? [00:25:53] Speaker A: Harrigan, Sanity and Bonds. I think you'd even given it some pithy name, hadn't you? [00:25:59] Speaker B: I mean, pithy is kind of a thing to do, I think. I don't know. Yes, I think I entitled it the Downward Spiral. That's it. [00:26:07] Speaker A: That's the one. [00:26:08] Speaker B: Sanity and Bonds. We're going to tag team this thing. Shocker. I'm going to cover sanity and then lead into. When Harrigan. Turn it over to Harrigan with Bonds. And I'm going to try to take this with me. I think it's only apropos that I start because you got to kind of understand the sanity piece and then move it over to how that plays a role with Bonds and how they manipulate or prevent or. Well, we'll get into it. [00:26:36] Speaker A: I concur. It would not make sense to do it in the other order. [00:26:39] Speaker B: Then we are on the same page. [00:26:41] Speaker A: Yep. You're at that, Casey. [00:26:43] Speaker B: Excellent. All right, so I don't want to get in belabor too much of the sanity piece, but I want to start out with this. It is interesting because I run into this and I think there is. And I think this is a mindset shift that would be healthy. Healthy. Beneficial to consider when we're talking about sanity in Delta Green. And maybe I'd say Delta Green more than Call of Cthulhu, but one of the things, it's like, it's a connection to humanity, to humanity and reality. Not because I think sanity gets a rap like, oh, I'm gonna go crazy. I'm gonna lose, you know. Yes, you're gonna lose your mental capacity, but it's the. In Delta Green, the reality component, I think is a big one. Case in point. I mentioned this to Harrigan. I'll have Jeff's character roll a sanity check. And he's like, why sanity check? I wouldn't go Crazy over this. It's just a dead body. The loss of reality and the strangeness of humanity, or not strangeness of humanity, but the humanity part and the reality piece, I think has to tie in to the sanity element because it's at its core in Delta Green. And I don't know if I'm explaining this or putting it down correctly, but do you. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? Arrogant, maybe. [00:28:01] Speaker A: Partially. [00:28:02] Speaker B: Okay. I think some people, I'll put Jeff on the spot, will think, oh, oh, you know, I see it. And they go in the corner and suck their thumb because they're. They've lost their capacity to cope with it. [00:28:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:28:19] Speaker B: And it is. That can be a reaction to something that they witness. But I think if it's framed up where sanity is the connection to reality a little bit more like, this can't be real. Right. [00:28:37] Speaker A: So let me interject and say this. I think you're. You're spot on when you put it that way, because I think that the game has these two systems. One is like your connection to reality and the other is your connection to people. Yes, right. Those are the. Like. That's what they're modeling. And they do a much better job. Maybe seventh edition Call of Cthulhu is pretty good about this. I don't. I'm not familiar enough with the game to really speak intelligently about it. But the older editions, and there's some other games with sanity mechanics where you get that situation where it's like you see something horrific and now you're afraid of spiders. It's like. But there weren't spiders in the. Delta Green doesn't do that. It's very focused on, like, tie. The disorder. If you pick up a disorder because you hit your braking point, it has to tie into what you've experienced. Whether that's. And you're going to get into it. Sean. The whole violence, helplessness, or a natural. Like. It has this framing that I think should help the player internalize things in a way that's better than what you're talking about. You know, I go in the corner, I suck my thumb. It doesn't have to be that cartoonish. I'm crazy. I can't believe what I've seen. [00:29:38] Speaker B: Right. [00:29:39] Speaker A: It can totally be a. This will affect you later. This is. This is something that's like the drawing down of a sanity points just means you're more and more susceptible. You're going further and further, closer and closer to the edge, to a breaking point, et cetera. And it doesn't have to be kind of cartoonish in terms of how they react to this stuff, Right? [00:29:54] Speaker B: Right. So introducing sanity as a whole. The score is your POW times 5. So if your POW is 10, it's usually 3 to 18 score and then times 5. So you had a number, that is your SAN number. Core mechanic is when you roll Sanity, you're rolling percentile dice. If you hit the number or below, you're succeeding on your sound effects and everything you are succeeding in your sanity check. And then depending on the scenario or the situation the handler puts together, you'll. There is two components to a well, we'll get into the loss piece. If you succeed, you take the lower number or result of what is stipulated. We'll get into that in just a second. So for example, some loss is like 1 is minimum or slash 1 D6 is typical. So if you're Karthu and you're Delta Green guy, this is all table stakes. You already know this. And then a critical. If you critical critically succeed, then the minimum possible loss is what you sustain on a failure. Then it is the higher of the two. Right. So if it's sandloss 0 slash 1d6, you're going to take, you roll the 1d6 and that's what the person would lose. And if you critically fumble or you critical failure, which is a fumble in Delta Green, then you would take the max. So if it's a 1D6 and your critical fail, you take six points of sanity loss. That's a sand check all day in Delta green. [00:31:39] Speaker A: The 1D6 thing is interesting because you're going to get to this, to the, you know, the temporary sanity loss where you take more than five in a go. So what that one D6 means is that a third of the time any failure is going to is going to put you at like a temporary. But this is another place where I love this part of the game. We talked about it a little bit last week as well. But the way that temporary insanity works is very. It's very grounded, it's very realistic and the player gets to decide how to react. Agency is not like yanked from them and suddenly the GMs controlling your PC, which is the case in some other games. So you'll get to all that. I'm sure we're on track so far. [00:32:16] Speaker B: So there are typically three threats that are related to sanity. Violence, helplessness and unnatural. And so typically when you're doing a sand check, it's tied to one of those three things depending on what they're Encountering what the agent is encountering. And helplessness specifically ties into bonds. An example, I would say is if a bond suffers harm that can be tied to the threat of sanity loss by helplessness. Number. Let's see. Moving on. Consequences. Getting into some of the details of. Okay, what happens when I lose sanity? What does that look like? So when Harrigan mentioned when you do a check and you lose five in a specific role or a single event, there are a few things that will occur. You know, it turns. Kicks in your fight or flight mode of your. Your agent. So the options. There's three options. You either flee, you'll lash out, or you will curl up in a. In a corner in. In fear or what have you. Or. Or I would. [00:33:28] Speaker A: I would say. Or just go catatonic or don react. [00:33:31] Speaker B: Yes, correct. [00:33:32] Speaker A: Like the. The. Yeah, you don't have to do that. Thumb sucking, rocking on the floor. [00:33:35] Speaker B: No, no, no, no. [00:33:36] Speaker A: It can simply be like a. Like a, you know, not going to admit I've saw that kind of thing. Right. [00:33:42] Speaker B: And then the handler will determine when the agent snaps out of it. Sometimes I have in the past had the character fled. I may have them run, like, do a constitution times five. Check. And if they, you know, succeed, they keep running. If they fail, they grow tired and exhausted and they just queue over from exhaustion, which then they, you know, they may be a mile down the road, but at least then they're not still fleeing from whatever insanity that they incurred at that time through that loss. Again, it's temporary, so it's more in a moment. There is something that gets a little bit longer term, which we'll get into. Then there is a breaking point which is also noted on the character sheet, which is your sanity minus your POW score. [00:34:32] Speaker A: How long does it last? Does it say? [00:34:34] Speaker B: No, I believe it's when the handler determines, like when you snap out of it. So if it's running, it might be a distance or, you know, I got you. Yeah. Where maybe they get a phone call from a bond that brings them down. I think it's a. My. I believe is all up to the handler's interpretation. I had this happen in the Delta Green game that I run. Joe came out of a building and his character lost his stuff and was. I think he's. I think it was lash out is what happened. And he just saw an innocent bystander on the sidewalk and it went sideways. Shot. Shot him in the leg. [00:35:19] Speaker A: Oh, my God. [00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:20] Speaker A: Which is the struggle. Yeah, yeah. So technically they're called flee, struggle and submit. Is the three titles. And I've just looked at it. You're spot on. Basically it says you lose control until the insanity quote unquote runs its course. So the handler just determines based on the context of the situation. Yeah, I got it. [00:35:38] Speaker B: So I had Joe like, like walk out, walk away from that bloodied and, and brute, like just exhausted. And then he got into an argument with one of the other agents and they duked it out, like had a fist fight. And then eventually that subsided after certain amount of damage was done to each other and he snapped out and got exhausted and both were bloodied up and bruised. [00:36:03] Speaker A: It's pretty serious because the struggle one says right here, it usually will continue. They'll fight until they are killed, unconscious or restrained. [00:36:11] Speaker B: Yes. So Jeff's agent was like in an apartment building, like going to town against each other. Yeah, it was pretty intense. [00:36:20] Speaker A: Sorry. You were about to get into breaking point. [00:36:23] Speaker B: Yeah, breaking point. So breaking point, sand minus pow. This number or below. Right. When the agent hits this number from an amount of sanity damage the agent earned, I call it earns. Haha. Earns a new long term mental disorder. [00:36:41] Speaker A: Okay. Right. So achievement unlocked. Yeah, Merit badge earned. [00:36:48] Speaker B: So this is where when you hit that break, like it's just, it's like in real life, you're just going and you're going and you're going and finally you just snap and hit your breaking point. And those things can be pretty serious, like ptsd, depression, paranoia. But it should, to Harrigan's point earlier, that should tie into exactly what, what the encounter that they, they take that damage in to hit that breaking point. So in other words, if they are now arachnophobic and there's no spiders that led them to that breaking point, that's not going to work. You got to kind of tie it into the narrative so that it makes sense. [00:37:30] Speaker A: Well, and they even list out some sample disorders, whether it's violence, helplessness, or the unnatural. Right. So they give you some sort of guidelines and some goalposts to look at. Pretty cool. [00:37:42] Speaker B: Yeah. So the symptoms of that trauma, you have to. The agent has to cross off one of their personal motivations. And that's one of the beliefs or drives that make them like life worth living for them. So typically when you start out with the agent, when we go, what talked about creating the agent, you have motivations, beliefs, and so you should be crossing those off when you hit your breaking point, which again is indicative of the agent becoming a shell of a person. [00:38:18] Speaker A: Yep. [00:38:19] Speaker B: Pretty neat. Yeah. [00:38:21] Speaker A: It's where I Have a minor beef with the character generation where they. They kind of tuck those motivations at the back of the chapter. And they're actually pretty wired into this disorder, this insanity mechanic. So you got to have them, and they should. They should matter. They shouldn't be throwaway. Right. They should matter. So in other words, when you lose a certain motivation that your character changes, not only have you got this disorder, but you've lost the fact that you know whatever was motivating you, whether it was a group or a. Yeah, I don't. I don't. [00:38:50] Speaker B: I don't care. I don't care about playing RPGs anymore, man. [00:38:56] Speaker A: That would be terrible. [00:38:57] Speaker B: Right? [00:39:00] Speaker A: But, yeah, so I guess here's the point. This is not the temporary insanity stuff is fleeting. It's in the moment. It's terrible and can really affect the characters. The stuff that Sean's talking about now is, like, permanent to the character. Like, straight up, your character is now starting to be changed by what they're [00:39:17] Speaker B: experiencing and then under consequences. Lastly, calculate a new breaking point so it just doesn't go away. You have another one that is put on the sheet, and that is your current sand at that point in time, minus your pow. So that's your new breaking point. And again, hitting that late, a little bit later, down the road starts to kick off another chain of events for the agent. [00:39:39] Speaker A: Yep, you're circling the drain. [00:39:42] Speaker B: You are circling the drain. Yes. So. But not all is lost. Not all is like, oh, it's just down, down, down, down. What am I gonna do? It's never gonna get back up. Well, it's not necessarily true. So there are a few coping mechanisms to offset that, which makes it kind of unique. And that's why Harrigan and I like Bonds so much in the game. And some of the mechanics that they incorporate, one of them is adapting to the trauma. So if you are in a particular environment and you're encountering this over and over, you become immune to it, essentially. And so losing sanity to violence and helplessness is a component of that. If you succeed in your sanity checks against helplessness or violence three times, then you become immune to that type of sanity type. [00:40:43] Speaker A: This is a mechanic, and I want you to keep going here, but this is a mechanic that I both love and I often forget, and I think it's really easy to not be tracking. Have you made these three successes against this type of, you know, threat to your sanity? [00:40:57] Speaker B: Guilty. [00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:40:59] Speaker B: Right. [00:40:59] Speaker A: Like, yeah, it's easy to lose track of. [00:41:01] Speaker B: It is. It is. And, you know, frankly, I'm doing this podcast and this season only, to bone up on the roof, to reinforce all [00:41:13] Speaker A: this because you're running the game. I mean, frankly, this is what Jeff was asking you about, John, It's a dead body. It wouldn't bother me. [00:41:20] Speaker B: Right. [00:41:20] Speaker A: You know what? Jeff might be right if. [00:41:22] Speaker B: He might be right if he made [00:41:23] Speaker A: three successful sanity checks against violence in the game already. [00:41:27] Speaker B: Right. [00:41:28] Speaker A: They might be getting to that stage where they're like, I'm kind of numb to it. But as Sean was about to describe, being numb to it sucks. There's some downsides. Yes. [00:41:36] Speaker B: And what that leads to is when you become adapted, the first thing that happens is you will always succeed on those specific threats. So if you're immune from violence, any sanity check, violence which is usually noted in a scenario, or you'll make it up as a handler, it doesn't affect that agent, but it does cost them a 1D6 in charisma, which, again, I probably don't enforce half the time. [00:42:08] Speaker A: That's a big deal because that drives down all of your bonds. [00:42:12] Speaker B: All of your bonds which Harrigan's going to go into. I won't steal his thunder. But yes, it's huge. Because if you remember in the creation, your bonds, the score of your bond is your charisma score. Yeah. Which again. Yeah. Unnatural is the only one, you know. Unnatural, helplessness, Violence. Unnatural is the only one that does this does not apply to you cannot be immune to the unnatural. [00:42:40] Speaker A: You can't get adapted to it. [00:42:41] Speaker B: No. Can't get adapted to it. There are two other coping mechanisms. There is reducing and repressing. So what Sean is typically used to when he runs his game is reducing the sand loss, which is at the exact moment that your agent is going to take that sand damage. Right. So they roll sand, they fail. What you will do is you will roll 1d4 here. If you have willpower, you're going to roll 1d4. The result of that willpower, in this case, it'll say. Or the result of that 1d4 roll will be 1d. Say it's a 3. You will reduce a score, BO score by 3. You will reduce your willpower by 3. [00:43:26] Speaker A: 3. [00:43:27] Speaker B: And you will reduce the sand loss total by 3. [00:43:32] Speaker A: You are describing projecting onto a bond. [00:43:35] Speaker B: I am describing projecting onto a bond. Yes. [00:43:38] Speaker A: Yep. [00:43:39] Speaker B: The other option, which is repressing, which Sean never does. [00:43:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm going to cover all this. [00:43:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:48] Speaker A: Unless you cover it in detail here. [00:43:49] Speaker B: No, not. Not in too much detail, but basically, it just. The other the difference between this one [00:43:54] Speaker A: and reducing your lens is how do I. What are the different ways to reduce the impact to your sanity? [00:44:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:01] Speaker A: And my lens, my lens is what are the different ways to use bonds to help your. To help in this insanity, like minigame kind of thing. So we're just going to come at it from two different angles, but keep going. [00:44:11] Speaker B: Right. So repressing is somewhat similar, but it allows the agent to reroll the sanity check. So it doesn't restore sanity but allows agents to stop from losing control. It's a mitigation step. So you do spend the 1D4 willpower and you reduce. [00:44:34] Speaker A: Here's the important part. I don't know. You called out. When you repress insanity, it is literally either the struggle, flee or Correct. What's it called? [00:44:45] Speaker B: You've already, you've already failed. [00:44:48] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's, it's either the one of those three. What are they called? What's the, what's the violence? [00:44:53] Speaker B: Unnatural. [00:44:53] Speaker A: No, no, no. The like the three different choices you make. [00:44:57] Speaker B: Oh, flee, Struggle, struggle. [00:45:00] Speaker A: And submit. [00:45:01] Speaker B: And submit. Yes. [00:45:02] Speaker A: So if you're, if you are in a temporary insanity situation and one of those three things is about to apply, you can repress that. With the mechanic that Sean is describing, you basically take a hit to your willpower, you take a hit to a bond and you try to make your sanities check again. If you succeed, you don't struggle, you don't submit, you don't flee. The same thing is true for disorders. So that's the part that I think we skipped over right here. These are tied to the very specific mechanics in the game where this is kind of out of your hands. You have to fight. I don't want to fight. There's a mechanic for that. Damage a bond. Damage your will. Is how, how they do that. [00:45:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:45:40] Speaker A: Anyway, sort of break in, but no, that's good. [00:45:41] Speaker B: I'm glad you cleared that up. Much, much better. Much succinctly. So that is the other, the other component. And I got that. And I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. [00:45:52] Speaker A: I, I, dude, when I read this, I was like, what? I didn't know you could do this. [00:45:56] Speaker B: Like, I didn't know that either. Like, oh, I can re roll, but I, no, that's not right. Do I get the wrong addition? Well, that's the wrong, you know, wrong printing. Like I'm always doing the reduction insanity. [00:46:06] Speaker A: From time to time I worry about that. Like, have they changed the text here? Right. [00:46:11] Speaker B: Oh my goodness. But anyway, so that is, that is Repressing the condition that induces the. [00:46:18] Speaker A: Yes. [00:46:19] Speaker B: Temporary insanity. So, yes. That. That should be. [00:46:22] Speaker A: Or disorder. [00:46:22] Speaker B: Or disorder. [00:46:23] Speaker A: Both. Yeah, it's both. [00:46:26] Speaker B: Then the. Then you. [00:46:27] Speaker A: Super cool, by the way. Like, super cool. Don't want that disorder because, like, we described it a minute ago, losing your motivation and getting a disorder. That's bad shit. That's bad juju. Well, put it on your bond, buddy. Put your bond. Suck it up. [00:46:43] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:46:43] Speaker A: But it might not even work. You might find out your bond, and then you fail the next sanity roll, and you still get the disorder. I love it. [00:46:51] Speaker B: Right. So your bond goes lower and your willpower gets lower, and you still may not even succeed. [00:46:57] Speaker A: In fact, in the game that you're running and the game that I'm running, we need to be like, would you like to repress that insanity? Put it out there. [00:47:06] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead. [00:47:07] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. There's a way around this. Yeah. [00:47:10] Speaker B: So then the other options, other than those two things, which seem very like. Well, I don't know if those are really great options. [00:47:18] Speaker A: They're brilliant options. You should always take them. [00:47:21] Speaker B: There is the recovery component so you can recover sanity. And it's usually done between operations. Note that I said operations and not sessions. Because usually between operations, there's the downtime aspect. And one of the major ones is seeking therapy. There's a whole mechanic in that, which [00:47:41] Speaker A: I will get into. [00:47:41] Speaker B: Okay. [00:47:42] Speaker A: And then Google home scenes. [00:47:44] Speaker B: The max you can do that from. Oh, I won't get into it because Harrigan might cover it. And then the other one is overcoming unnatural threats. [00:47:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm not covering this, so dive into this one. [00:47:54] Speaker B: I don't have all the nitty gritty, gritty details of overcoming unnatural threats. I think it is. Isn't it the ass. Isn't it the. Hey, you're on an operation and you nuke. You. You do something to overcome the unnatural. [00:48:09] Speaker A: Destroying unnatural creatures or objects or that are known to contain otherworldly power. You get to restore the equivalent that you would lose for encountering it. So if it's a. If it's a one. If it's a one one D8 loss, you can gain that back by destroying it. Right? Pretty cool. [00:48:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that is cool. Because you're like, you're. So. I envision somebody going to madness to overcome it. And then when they do, they sit up on the hill as the sun rises with a big face of satisfaction. [00:48:47] Speaker A: Yep, Yep. And you can even raise your sanity this way because as Sean stated at the start of this, it's your power times five. But your max sanity is 99. So if you are find yourself in a situation where you have, you know, found the unnatural things, major saves so you didn't lose sanity and then you destroy them, you're going to end up with more Sandy than you started with. And I bet there's one Delta green game in 10,000 where this happens. Maybe, but. But there's a chance. There's a chance where he can come out better than you went in. [00:49:22] Speaker B: So you're saying there's a chance? [00:49:24] Speaker A: Yes, there's a chance. Oh, dear. [00:49:27] Speaker B: So there's some. [00:49:28] Speaker A: So it's kind of. It's kind of cool, though. There's. There's hope, right? There's a little bit of hope. [00:49:32] Speaker B: So that sums up a bit of sanity mechanics, how it works in Delta Green 101. I will turn it over to Mr. Harrigan to kind of elaborate on how Bonds play a role in this. [00:49:48] Speaker A: This is the bookend to the sort of the sanity system, right. Sean's talking about the guts of what the characters have in terms of the numeric values around sanity, how they lose it, the mechanics for losing, gaining the different things, different levers the characters can pull to prevent that from happening, or the choices they're given in collaboration with the GM about like, I don't want to run away, I want to fight. [00:50:11] Speaker B: Cool. [00:50:12] Speaker A: That's one of the options, right? This is where I think the game has better agency for player characters than some other horror games. Be careful. Like in a horror game, you don't want to give the players too much agency or you lose that feeling of not being in control and not like, you know, you're not sure where it's going next, you're not sure what to make of things. It's a balance. But when it comes down to time to say, moment to moment, can you decide what your character is doing? Yes, you can. You can just work within this framework kind of thing. And the bookend to that is this like the connection to humanity that Sean and I were talking about. So a lot of the things that you're sacrificing to make these decisions about how you manage your sanity up and down has to do with the damage you're willing to do to your relationships to the people that matter to you. Let me read two quick things to start this, Sean. The first one actually is back to your sanity chapter, because I really like the way that they. They describe it and where depending on your group and the amount of role play they want to do and how, you know, how Deeply they get into their characters and all that sort of stuff. But I love that if you're losing sanity, the book says, if the agent loses a few points, how does that look to the people around him or her? Does the agent jump or cry out in terror? Do they stare in shock? Does the agent back away involuntarily? So it's not just a you take five damage, write that on your sheet. It needs to be like, what does it mean? What does it look like? That kind of thing. And the part that I think I mentioned that I struggle with, with Delta Green, I think I mentioned this maybe in the first episode, Sean, of season two, or maybe the second. I have now straightened all this out because I felt like on my first few reads of the book, first time, first few times I ran it, I'm like, man, when a bond gets damaged, and we'll get into this, but when a bond gets damaged, when do you play that out? Do you like, does something happen in the moment or is it during the home scene? Well, I can now tell you, having gone over these materials a lot more carefully, it is absolutely in the home scene. It does not happen in the moment at all. [00:52:01] Speaker B: Right? [00:52:02] Speaker A: At all. So let's. So let's kind of dial back, though. So what, what are these bonds? And I think we, when we went through character generation, people would have seen that these are the number that you have. The number of bonds you have is tied to your profession. Basically. If you have a profession where you have lots of time away from work, with family, with friends, it's not too much of a drain on your time. You have lots of bonds versus your special forces operator who is deployed half the time, or you work in a job where you deal with terrible things all the time and you don't have as many connections. So what it means is that you might start with between 2 and 4 bonds, I think is the typical starting point for most professions. Something like that. These are relationships with what they call vital people. So people who are really important to keeping you sane, grounded, happy on the straight and level, etc. Right. They are loved ones, family members, close friends. And as Sean said, the score, every bond has a score. It's determined by your charisma value. So if your charisma, if your charisma is 12 and you have three bonds, you can say ex wife at 12, my son at 12, and my former co worker who I worked for 20 years with is also at a 12. They all start off like full war. We're skipping over one part that's kind of cool. Which is, Sean, when you talked about the adaptation to violence and helplessness, there's a way to start the game with a damaged veteran where you have that box checked already. Some bonds get damaged in that process. So you might be starting with some of these already down a bit because your agent has already been through it. Right. They've already been, you know, faced to the grindstone of the. Of the unnatural, basically. [00:53:38] Speaker B: And to. To. To add to. So to defend Jeff's like, what? How come I'm not. I wouldn't. My character is like a military veteran who's been in a war zone. This stuff's not going to bother him. Oh, well, let's make him a damage. Literally a damage veteran status in the game. [00:53:54] Speaker A: Yep. [00:53:55] Speaker B: And then that's eliminated. [00:53:56] Speaker A: And he could have started adapted to violence, but his bonds would have suffered as a result, Correct? Yep. So for these bonds, they kept the score. Unlike your sanity, the bond score cannot go higher than your charisma. So if you have that 12, there's no way to get that bond higher than 12. Conversely, if you take any damage to your charisma, which Sean just covered, all bonds drop. So if you roll a D6 to your charisma for your charisma and you get a three, those bonds that I just described are now all at 9. Like instantly all of them. There's a slight side channel here we'll talk about around Delta Green bonds, people who are on your team, which is a little bit different, but not a lot different. This is an interesting thing, Sean, but I think you. When you were setting up your current game, you ran into this for one of the players was kind of struggling with who the bonds might be, how they were represented. And I think I mentioned already. But these can be individuals or groups. Right. Can be a support group, can be a hobbyist group you belong to. It could be your college fraternity. All those things would count as bonds. Right. But they have to be. This is text from the book. A real person or group who can be interacted with. So you can't do goofy like it's a fictitious voice in my head or it's a book I care a lot about. It's not that kind of touchstone. It's meant to be a person. Right. [00:55:15] Speaker B: What Eric, it is referring to is I had a player who thought that they would be able to buy. What is the. I think they're like a Japanese or Chinese virtual pets, Tamagotchi or whatever it's called. Some. Yes. Which I was not Wholly familiar with, but I think I might have heard of, but I didn't know the name. [00:55:37] Speaker A: Like a digital pet or a robot pet or whatever. [00:55:40] Speaker B: And I'm like, yeah, get that out of here right now. [00:55:43] Speaker A: Not, not, not super in my sphere of knowledge either. But that's what indeed what I'm referring to. So, so it's one of these, it's one of those books. It's laid out really well, really well written. Looks incredible in terms of like the, the page I'm looking at right now, page 72. Just randomly I'm looking at some, some stuff that, from the section that Sean was covering. There's this Polaroid of this living room where there's like a darkness creeped again. There's this little girl with two pin prick white. Oh my God. It's super creepy. Awesome, awesome stuff. But I will say this. As much as I like the book, there are some real gold nuggets that are like one liners that are kind of like, you got to read it pretty carefully to pick it up. Like what I just mentioned a minute ago, which is like real person or group that can be interacted with. So it can't be a dead person. It can't be, you know, and on and on. And that, you know, that's not front and center. But I think, I think, you know, pull that into your game if you're, if you haven't already. That's what the bonds are meant to be. They are permanently broken. These bonds. And this, this is stuff I learned from doing the research for this week. Sean. They're broken at zero. I think we both knew that. So if you draw down on those bonds by projecting onto them or by repressing an insanity which we've already talked about, you hit zero. That bond is broken permanently. Right? Like you cannot, you cannot rebuild it. You can build it anew, which I'll get to. So you can see. But it's just like starting a bond off with anybody who you don't know. So you can rebuild these things, but when they get to zero, there's no way to recover from that without like, like it's a reset. It's a total reset. You know, the other way to lose a bond, if they die, you know, it's not, not a leap to get there. But I mentioned this for a reason. There's another, another part of the bond system which I run, have run across that I didn't know about is when I did this research. And it relates kind of to this as well. Like things can happen off screen or in the real world that affect your bonds. One of them is that they might die. I mean, you could even get into a situation where things that you've done have caused the bond to put themselves in a dangerous situation. And maybe there's a chance. Delta Green has this wonderful luck roll mechanic that we've described. There's a chance that the bomb will just get wiped out and your bond of 12 might go to zero because they have just. That person's no longer around. So there's some very. It's not just this mechanical draw things down. You have full control over managing what your bonds are. No, there's other things that come to the fore that can affect the bonds. Examples of what the bond. What bond damage looks like is your spouse might leave you a member. If you're part of a group, a member of that group might get sick or might get killed or go missing. And then here's the part that I was just referring to. This is. I've never read this before, Sean. There are things that are, quote unquote, beyond agent control, where the bond takes D4 damage. This is not the player saying, I project and I roll that D4 and I hit my willpower and it hits the Bond and it reduces the insan. It's not that. It can be. Something happens in the game and the GMs, like, the bond takes roll d4 damage. So because of like the circumstances that you have manipulated, the fact that you didn't help the guys with the road trip, and it's just this old vet, right? So the old vet that was on the road trip by himself and the. The GM is like, all right, that's quite the decision. Rolls the die and that's how much damage the Bond takes. And all of this stuff manifests when you do these. I'll talk about these in a minute. These home scenes, basically, these, these between operas, between missions, what does it, you know, what does it all look like? [00:59:16] Speaker B: And I just want to capitalize on that component because I don't think it's done very often. I posted it on Reddit. Some of you might have seen it on Reddit, where I was just like, what is one of the things that kind of drives you bonkers about running Delta Green? And some of them are like home scenes, bonds, they don't come to as robust of fruition as they should. And to your point, like, when you repress or project onto a Bond, it's typically like, okay, you do it in the moment, your sanity is reduced, and then after the scene plays itself out. Maybe in home scenes, sometimes I will typically could do it like in a scenario or during an operation where there's a phone call made between the bonds. Hey, where are you? You know, it's your daughter's birthday this weekend. You said you would be here. Right. So it's in the moment. And I think that's also, as Harrigan gets into the home scenes, another way to handle these things. But when the individual is having those conversations or there is a date and you're not where you say you are, or you're gonna take longer because it's another, hey, you know, it's part of the job. It's part of the job. I always gotta travel. You know, it's part of the job as me as an FBI agent. I always gotta go around the country. You know, this. You bought into this. Yeah, but that doesn't always have to be face value. Rp. Oh, what? Oh, what? The agent says, that's fine. And you just write it off as a handler. Pull out the D4. Boom. It's wielded down. Doesn't matter. You're not projecting. I don't care. It's a result of this issue. [01:00:58] Speaker A: That's kind of what I'm getting at. And that it's. It's. I mean, it's always. It's always there in my head about, you know, this kind of thing that happened. But it calls it out explicitly damage to a bond that the PC, like the player doesn't control. The agent has nothing to do with it other than missing an appointment or not. Not tending to them the way they need to. Sean, you lay some great groundwork here for, like, at the beginning of the opera. You can. You should absolutely start with like the, you know, how do you get to the opera? You're leaving home, you're leaving work. And you set those. The foundations, you plant the seeds for. Hey, I thought we were going to do this this weekend. Or are you sure you're going to still be able to make the flight and do the thing? So you're setting up all these like, you know, background clockwork mechanisms that will come apart if the agent can't get somewhere on time and all that sort of stuff. I will also say, Sean, I think part of the tripwire I have felt on this and why I've always been liking when do I play out what the damage to the bond looks like is because when I play with you, we usually try to do this. Like, I better call home and see what happened. Or let Me check in. And the book's pretty explicit about not having to do that. [01:02:02] Speaker B: Interesting. [01:02:02] Speaker A: So the last thing I will say before, before I get into this whole idea of like projecting and then the home scenes and all that sort of stuff. There are these Delta green bonds that you can form as well. So the people on your team who remember, generally speaking, depending on era, you're not supposed to reveal your identity to them. You know, details of your, of your real life, etc. Well, if, if someone is on it, you're on, you're on an opera. If someone goes, temporarily insanity. So maybe, Sean, you haven't done this. If someone goes, has temporary insanity, gets his gains, a disorder, is incapacitated, dies, or the handler just feels like, whoa, that was heavy. Everyone makes a sanity roll and if you fail, you gain bonds with every agent present. Yeah, those bonds are worth half your charisma. They're not worth as much because this is an effed up group of people who are you are hanging out with. They are damaged goods already. So their bonds are worth less. But I love that you can't control not developing these bonds. I love that. Do you do that in your game? [01:03:10] Speaker B: Hell no. Yeah, I know. [01:03:14] Speaker A: Even temporary insanity can trigger it, right? Yeah. [01:03:17] Speaker B: Some people are gonna listen to this and go, who in the hell are these two yahoos? They don't even know all the rules of the game that, that they're running and have a passion for. Hey man, it's a, it's a freaking learning experience. All right? [01:03:30] Speaker A: Guilty as charged. Yeah, so here's the, here's another cool bit that I hadn't, hadn't read before. I think I knew you could gain these bonds. Right. I didn't realize how often it could happen, but I always knew you could gain these Delta green bonds. But when you gain them, you get these, this new bond or maybe multiple new bonds if you're with many people on the operation, all at hacker charisma. Great, Right. Well, each one of those bonds damages the existing bond by 1D4. So if you're with three people, you have damaged three other bonds by 1D4. Like it is a. It's a hot mess is what it is. Right. So it's again this like spiral that you, you start going down. And then lastly, if those bonds already exist, so in other words, you've already failed the sanity check when one of these momentous things happens and you've already got bonds with the two other people on the opera with you. Instead, Those bonds gain D4. So you don't get a new bond, but the bond goes up to a maximum of your. Of your charisma score still. Right. And then you take minus one to all existing bonds. So it's a little less bad if you already have bonds with the Delta Green agents. So it's one of the reasons why it's like, I'd like to go on these offers with somebody that I know and that I've lived through this stuff with kind of thing. It's a little less damaging to your other bonds. It still hurts them by one point, but it's not quite as bad. And it's a way to increase those bonds kind of thing. So in other words, being long winded here. But in other words, if there's two agents who work together all the time and they keep having temporary insanity together, they keep getting incapacitated, their bond could be pretty strong because they keep, you know, they keep kind of going up and up, but everything else in their lives is just taking it in the. In the pants. You know, it's getting nailed. Kind of funny. Kind of funny. So you know what? Since we are currently divulging that we're actually pretty shitty Delta Green handlers and don't know the rules very well, [01:05:26] Speaker B: since we're. [01:05:26] Speaker A: Since we're on that road they were traveling at 90 miles an hour, realizing that we have no brakes. [01:05:31] Speaker B: Right. [01:05:32] Speaker A: There's one more thing on insanity I wanted to mention. I've just turned my page of my notes here as I'm about to get into the. A little bit more about bonds and did you read the section on sleeplessness? [01:05:44] Speaker B: I have. [01:05:46] Speaker A: Pretty cool. [01:05:46] Speaker B: Probably read it in the willpower, loss, exhaustion components of it. And you can repress it by using stimulants and things of that nature, right? [01:05:57] Speaker A: Yep. [01:05:58] Speaker B: Right. [01:05:58] Speaker A: And become addicted and all the rest. But the perfect. I didn't realize is quite. It's how sort of how much of a cycle it is and how a death spiral is what I'm looking for. So if you experience temporary insanity of the three types we've already talked about, right, the, you know, flea, struggle, et cetera, or a disorder that night. I never do this. That night you have to make a sanity chest test or you cannot sleep and that affects your willpower. So you can get into this like night after night, you cannot rest. You never. I love that. And I've never. I've never messed with that in the game. [01:06:34] Speaker B: I have. [01:06:35] Speaker A: All right. [01:06:36] Speaker B: Right on. Yep. I have Joe's character. Same guy who shot the innocent bystander on the sidewalk. In New York City, fled, became exhausted, found a warehouse off a side street to just crash. And I'm like, well, wait a minute, I don't know if you would necessarily crash. Let me, you know, roll a check. And then it was. Yeah, then you actually. [01:06:58] Speaker A: You're up all night. [01:06:59] Speaker B: Yeah, you're up all night, you can't sleep, you're too wired. And you were wondering what to do, right? Yeah. And then of course, that goes into utter exhaustion. I mean, think of it as I've been up and I've been in the military. I've been up for. I mean, I think my longest stint was 36 hours or something. Pretty crazy. I mean, you, it's, it's. [01:07:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:07:22] Speaker B: I mean, mentally you're just crazy. Like you can't focus and things get really. And you need the cigarette and the coffee, like to just keep going and be awake and, and be competent in what you're trying to do. And it's not easy. [01:07:40] Speaker A: So the, the reason why I mentioned this sleeplessness thing, which is kind of a little bit of a one off kind of like, you know, thing that you would really engage with, maybe not really, but it's not like a central mechanic to the game. Right. But it shows how this is all so tightly wired together and works so well as a system. So as we've described already there, you know, this is basically using these bonds to protect your sanity in a couple of different ways. Either the amount of damage you take, right? So that whole like project onto a bond by lowering the, if you're successful, you lower the number that's kind of coming in kind of thing, you don't take five damage. You, in fact, you only take three damage because you've rolled a two on the D4. Right? Or the repressed insanity that we talked about with some glee around the whole, like you don't have to take the temporary insanity or the disorder. You can project that onto a bond as well. I won't call it project. You can use the bond. But here's the wiring that I'm talking about where it's so tight. The very first thing you do whenever you use a bond in this way is you roll the D4 and you reduce your willpower. So these willpower points are very important because one of the little trip wires that exists in the willpower rules about using your bonds in either of these two ways says make the roll. If you still have at least one willpower point, you can project. So this sleeplessness and these other ways to lose will and by projecting over and over, your will's going down and down and down. At some point you're going to, going to get into a situation where you cannot protect yourself. You are simply at the mercy of what you are seeing, what you're experiencing. There's no way to avoid the temporary insanity. So picture how that is cycled in with like the more and more unnatural things you're encountering. The fact that you can't sleep, the fact that your, your companions are, are going crazy and making it harder for you. Like it's just this wonderful cauldron of stuff that is all interlinked. I just really, really like it. We hinted at it before. I want to spend a little bit more time on this whole idea of like when to play out the effects of the damage to the bond. So you've rolled that D4, you've lowered it by your willpower by four points. You've lowered one bond by four points. And the incoming sanity. If we're using the projection part of this, the book again has there's these nuggets that say the next time your agent interacts with that bond is when you're going to see it. So it's the phone call, but it might often be the home scene. So if you have a bond that you haven't even talked about yet, because remember, you're going to have like two, three, four of these things, right? Maybe it's not your wife or your roommate or whatever, maybe it's some other bond that you've projected onto that you've had no interaction with yet in the game. Well, the next time, when the opera ends and the home scene rolls around, it's up to the handler to say, tell us what that looks like. Tell us why that Bond is now 4 points lower. Describe how the bond has become strained. So there's actually really explicit advice in the book about how to do this. It's just not kind of framed up tightly in like a in box text anywhere. You got to read through some paragraphs and you got to kind of, you know, unearth it a little bit. But it is, it is pretty straightforward in terms of how it, how it manifests. It's pretty cool. I mentioned this last week, Sean. I love when you break a bond either by it going to zero or by them dying. You never, you never actually erase it, you just put a line through it so you never forget you had that bond. And I would say the same, I would do the same thing with motivations. When you lose a motivation because you gain a disorder, don't erase it, put a line through it so you can see who you used to be versus who you are now. Right. That's what you want to do. And I mentioned already, you can rebuild the bonds when they get to zero. So there is a mechanism and that mechanism is the home scenes. The book says these are short scenes of everyday life and they are, quote unquote, a few minutes per scene. So you're not going to spend the entire role playing, game evenings, session by doing just home scenes, you know. So it's one of those, I think it's kind of a sweet spot where you want to do some role playing and you want to show the scene, but you don't have to torture people and say, we're going to play 20 minutes of you're going to work every day and seeing your marriage, you know, disintegrate. You can be a little more narrative, I think, with that kind of stuff and roleplay some sort of key moments. So basically what the home scenes consist of are it's a downtime system, so you're in between operas. A few months, weeks or years may have passed, depending on how active you are on the Delta Green scene. And what they really say is you need, you need to. The handler needs to set them up like, what has changed. So was the bond broken or damaged? Play that out if it was. But it also, these scenes are supposed to cover permanent injuries, disorders, if you're arrested or prosecuted, what's happening at work and if you get fired and those things like are full on, if those things happen, there's awesome mechanics for those. So after you do that, so what's changed? What has happened to your character that you need to reflect on? Like if you have a permanent injury, that sort of thing, you then get into the personal pursuit section and this is where you can build bonds, you can improve yourself, etc. Right. So the personal pursuits are basically all of them involved. Rolling against the stat, the skill or your sanity. And they generally result in improving a bond, improving your sanity, improving a skill, those sorts of things, usually at the sacrifice of something else. Right. So I'll cover them quickly here. Basically, the home scene pursuits include fulfill your responsibility, you are working on your bond. So you can pick one bond and you get to sort of, you know, add 1D6 and build it. It. I think we talked about this briefly before. You can get back to nature, go into seclusion. You're going to hurt a bond, but you're going to help your sanity establish a new bond. So if you get that bond to zero. This is where you can build it back new, right? So it's a charisma test, though. And new bonds are only at half of your charisma, so they're never worth as much as those original bonds that you kind of went into. And to do many of these things, of course, you're hurting other bonds. So if you develop a new bond, you're hurting by one D4, another bond bond, you can go to therapy. We talked about that, I think, last, last time. Improve your skills, personal motivation, personal motiv. Work on something you want to work on. You can regain one sanity and you damage a bond by. By one. There's special training, which is kind of cool. So if you need scuba training or one of those sort of special training pieces that are not a skill, but they represent as you can either do this or not. Like, train to come, train to become an astronaut, for example. There is no astronaut skill, but there's special training. You can do that. But you lose one to a bond. I do like a lot. You can stay on the case. So by taking one damage to a bond, you can roll criminology or an occult test, and you're gonna love this shot. Maybe you already know it. If you succeed, you make progress on the case, you reveal some, like, lead to chase down, right? If there's some, like, lingering thing that you didn't get to the bottom of. But here's what you do. When you stay on the case, you roll a D6 and you take three away from it. And that happens to your sanity. So in other words, D6 minus 3. If you roll a 6 minus 3, you could gain 3 points of sanity. You could also lose 2 points of sanity if you roll a 1 and take the 3 away. So by staying on the case, there's this, like, random risk to what may happen to you, which is pretty cool, I think. [01:15:03] Speaker B: Just to chime in on that, Jeff wanted to know more his age. His agent wanted to know more about Delta Green. [01:15:11] Speaker A: Oh, perfect. [01:15:12] Speaker B: Right? [01:15:12] Speaker A: Perfect. You may learn some things that are not good. [01:15:15] Speaker B: He's like, I want to learn more about the program and what this is all about. So I start digging around and I'm like, well, there we go. Stay on the case even though it's not directly related to an operation. So I'm like, yeah, we'll just use that. Give me a roll. Reduce your sanity or increase it. And oh, here's some of the things that you are that you find. Which. And I alluded to where it was like, this was his character is playing in circa. This was probably before the time jump that occurs in the current situation that we're running. [01:15:52] Speaker A: Still in the 90s. [01:15:53] Speaker B: Yeah. And so I said you can't find any documentation in any type of government document that you've gone through, database funding, budget, anything about anything called Delta Green. It's just so odd. You know, the most recent thing might have been like in the 60s, you know, something relative, but you're not even sure. Yep, there you go. Take that and put it in your cap. [01:16:19] Speaker A: I could smoke it. [01:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [01:16:22] Speaker A: I think it's the only mechanic I've seen in the game so far. Where you run. You run a chance of gaining or losing sanity at the same time. That D6 minus three roll. It's kind of. Kind of neat to finish the thought. You can also study the unnatural. You know, not. Probably not a good idea, but it raises your unnatural score, which is hard to raise otherwise, and does significant damage to a bomb. It does D4 damage to it and [01:16:46] Speaker B: probably could get you into a lot more trouble because many of your operations are due to the individuals that probably research the unknown. [01:16:55] Speaker A: All kinds of things that. Yes, I think that. [01:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, it's wonderful, Mr. Bauman. [01:17:01] Speaker A: I should say, indeed, the whole thing around. Remember I mentioned that when you start the home scenes, there's this whole like, are you going to be prosecuted for something that happened on your last opera and have you done something at work where you're going to get fired? If you get fired, it sucks. It's a sanity test and a charisma test. And there's potential bond damage, there's potential sanity loss just for just. I mean, if you lose your job, you could potentially damage Every bond by 1d4. Every bond that you have. It's very similar for getting prosecuted. This is. This is the double whammy that I adore. If you didn't lose your job, but you get prosecuted and you're found guilty, there's mechanics for this. You're found guilty, then you lose your job and you've already damaged your bonds for being prosecuted and then found guilty. And when you go to jail, you lose your job and you damage your bonds some more. It's just terrible. It's so mean. [01:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah. That's when the wife or spouse or husband decide, you know what? I'm gonna move on. [01:18:04] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely kibosh. And. Well, you know what's kind of cool as well? You can spread this out or hit all the. Hit. Like, let's say you have three different bond impacts. You have to make. You can put them all against your wife. Bam, bam, bam. And now she's left you, you're divorced. As opposed to kind of spreading them around kind of thing. [01:18:22] Speaker B: Yeah. You could confide in your buddy who is a bond that talks about your. Your and who's only worth half as much, who probably thinks you're losing your marbles anyway and that you're maybe not like the other person may not be entirely at fault, even though you think they are. [01:18:40] Speaker A: Right. [01:18:41] Speaker B: Yes, that's right. So. [01:18:42] Speaker A: So 2D4 to the wife and 1D4 to the friend. [01:18:45] Speaker B: Right. [01:18:46] Speaker A: Spread the love. Tell you what, I have one last piece to cover, which is the. Where bonds are used, and that's in the requisition process. But before I get there, have you seen the two optional home pursuits? These are pretty badass. [01:19:00] Speaker B: I don't know if I have. [01:19:01] Speaker A: So the. The home pursuits that I've just talked about. Right? Like the established new bond, go to therapy, back to nature, blah, blah, blah. The optional ones are raise illicit cash or. Or squander illicit cash. So in other words, you found something on the case, you found some money, or you have a. You have a scheme to make money in a criminal way. Right. And these can result in your getting gear and, you know, getting assets. They can result in your getting prosecuted, and they can. This is awesome. If you squander the cash on your bonds, you can. You can improve the bonds by 1d4. So you buy that wife a car with money you got by illicit. [01:19:47] Speaker B: Needs laundering money. Yeah. [01:19:49] Speaker A: Yes. And then check this out. If they. If there's ways to roll all this. If the bond detects the fact that the car was bought with illicit cash, it does 1d6 damage to the bond. Like, where the hell did you get this money? You did what? It's. It's so mean. I love it. I love it. It's so real. It's way too real. Oh, all right. [01:20:13] Speaker B: So closing this out, the last thing [01:20:15] Speaker A: I will mention is there is quite a requisition system in the game. And I will admit it's not a part of the game, and I'm super interested in diving way into it. It's. It all has to do with the type of asset you're you're requesting from, usually from your. You know, from Delta Green. Right. Like I need a helicopter, I need a rifle, or I need a. I need, you know, 55 pounds of C4. Whatever you're. You're trying to requisition. Well, you can also use your own Money to get gear in addition to the normal requisition or you can ask a bond. So if you have a bond in the right place and this is, this is quite cool. There's a risk depending on what your. The level of the thing you're asking for. There's a risk that they'll take some damage and when you get to really high levels the bomb will take damage. Even if you make, make the roll like they're gonna be like I'll get this for you but dude, I'm putting myself on the line here. So the, the bond part of this is. Is pretty wound throughout the, throughout the game. It's pretty cool. It's a, it's a great system. I think it would be probably worth it. I may do this making like a one or two pager that talks about the ways that it all comes together because what Sean and I have just described covers, I don't know, 100 pages of the book. It's kind of sprawling so it might be good to kind of boil it right down and see and even get. For the players to see. Here's how you can use these bonds to be a bit clearer about it, but I think it's what I would really recommend. If I'm going to run this live for a group. I also have an idea as we, as I know we're heading for closing up here but my idea is if you're running a one shot so this would be for you at game hole and if I end up doing it as well, I think I'm going to reduce the Bond points that are available and I think I'm going to try to end unless things, unless it's TPK or something horrific. I'm going to end on home scenes so that people can see the damage to the Bonds because that's not something that gets showcased very well. When you do a one shot in Delta Green, it's usually like it's the opera. In some, some cases people even skip the meeting with the handler. Which is one of my favorite parts of the opera is like what weird location do you go to? How are you contacted to know that there's a mission that has to be undertaken and sometimes people kind of blow past that stuff. And I think that if you're going to give people a good experience and sort of, especially if they're new to the game, include that and also include some stuff around Bonds and since the book is pretty explicit about, you know, use the home scenes to show how the impacts hit end on those Home scenes. Or you could even start on those home scenes and tell them you've just lost five points what happened last mission and put them on the spot that way. But I think there's ways to what I'm getting at, there's ways to feature them strong more strongly in one shot play. [01:22:53] Speaker B: The scenario I run involves home scenes in the beginning and the end. Cool. [01:22:59] Speaker A: Very cool. [01:23:00] Speaker B: At least a foundation pro level play. Yeah, yeah. Solid. [01:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Like it. Like it. All right. That's all I got to say about that. [01:23:12] Speaker B: Excellent. If you have experience, I want to know what do we want to know from somebody? I want to know if they have had a good, if they got a good story around Bond. I think would be awesome to hear about. [01:23:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean generally speaking, feel free to write and just let us know we're, we're either off base, we're missing something big, we haven't connected some dots, etc. But Sean, I like your, your question better, which is like what are some great stories about how it's really impacted the game? [01:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah. Tell us your favorite Bond story. And not, not James Bond, not that guy. Yeah, Ponza Delta Green. All right, well that wraps up another episode of Go Bag. On behalf of my co host Harrigan, I'm Sean. Thanks for joining us. Check us on the next one. See ya. This episode of Go Bag, produced with help from the following friendlies, Field operatives, special agents and plants. Black Ops directors Joe Swick, Roger French, Merkel Froilich, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker, Polish Ogre. 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