[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.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Harrigan. It's like the first time we've ever recorded in four weeks.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: It's got to be close to a month, something like that.
[00:00:31] Speaker B: It's been a while.
Yeah.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Good day, Mr. Sean.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Good day to you, sir.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: It's all right. You had a few in the bank, so we're. We're covered. I don't think there's going to be a break in the action for listeners or maybe there will be, but if there is, apologies. Life has been busy.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yes, it has.
What's been keeping you in the go bag?
[00:00:55] Speaker A: I'm glad you didn't say what's been keeping you busy because that's far less interesting in, in the go bag.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: The, the.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: All the play by post stuff that I'm doing kind of continues a pace. So that's the Operation Fulminate game that I'm playing in. We're moving along. The storm is hitting. If you. For those who know that adventure storm's starting to ramp up. It's starting to move into the night time of that, you know, that first day that you're on site, the kids starting to tell us some Weir stuff about what he's experienced. So it's, it's, it's been good. Like the first, the first sanity checks have been made.
It's, it's, it's starting to kind of escalate a little bit, which is, which is fun.
The duet that I'm running with the dirigible is going well. We're kind of back on pace there. And I would also say that the COVID ops game that I'm running is probably dead in the water at this stage. It's just, it's just moving so slowly. We've all just kind of lost interest, I think a little bit. So I'll probably do a final push to finish the scene that we're in and then probably put a bow on that one, is what I would think. I don't love the system as I've referenced before.
And you know what part of it is, in case we don't talk about this game in the future, part of it has to do with character generation and when you come up with your spies, your different, you know, your different specializations, that's one of those kind of games where like, it's kind of, it's open but it's kind of got some class stuff in it. Like I'm more of a driver, I'm more of a tactical, I'm more of a sneaky, sneaky kind of thing.
But they don't do much beyond that like introducing like who were you before the, before you got involved in the, in the agency, whatever. Whatever agency it is. And they don't do much with just your personality. And I don't know, there's a few things that they make attempts at but they're kind of slippery, they're hard for the players to hold on to. So I can tell the players are not into their characters all that much. This one of the issues that we're having beyond that.
You know, I just signed up for a raft of games at Tacticon which is a, a gaming convention in Colorado in Aurora, Colorado in the late August time frame every year. And I'm pretty excited by this slate of games and a couple of them are, are in our. Maybe one of them's in our, our.
Our ballpark. I'm gonna play the Black Hat, gonna play a Gaslands game with friend of the show Dan. Dan's gonna run a Gaslands game which is kind of cool. I've played that with my son before but I've never, I've never done it for realsies where we got like cars that are painted up and all that sort of stuff. Right. We've, we just use the regular Hot Wheels and I'm playing two different Call of Cthulhu games. One is Pulp Cthulhu, one is more of a historical thing that I'm really looking forward to that I think that's Leon that's running that one who I think I may have talked about on the show before. And then finally there is a Twilight 2000 game that I'm in that I'm looking forward to where this is a guy who runs the same. It's apparently it's. It's an aircraft carrier based T2K game. So imagine you're at sea when all this goes down in Twilight 2000. So you're like in like the Caribbean I think and it's kind of the, you know what happens on that carrier over the course of multi months, years. I think it's kind of a quasi living campaign that the guy runs every Genghis Khan and tacticon he offers like one or two sessions that people play in. It's been recommended to me by friend of the show Dwayne and others. So I'm going to give it a shot this time and see, see how it Goes.
And then the PS De resistance. Remember, I've talked about Fred before. Who is the detective.
He's a police detective who has, you know, been at the job 30 some years and said he couldn't play in the Delta Green game. Fred is running Delta Green at this. At this con, and I'm playing in it. The 13th key is what it's called. So I don't know the. I don't know that particular scenario or opera, but I am pretty stoked to be in a game of Delta Green run by a police detective veteran. I'm gonna have to bone up on my tradecraft and my police procedures. For sure.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Sounds fantastic, man.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I got going on. What about yourself?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: I.
Well, I mean, the Delta Green Impossible Landscapes campaign continues.
I have had somebody show up from the program at the agent's hotel. Knock, knock, knock. That was the last session.
And they are looking for some tomes that the agents had come about two ops prior and 20, 20 years earlier.
It just took them that long to pin these guys down.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: Yep. Someone went through a manila envelope, was like, whatever happened to.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so now it's like, well, who are.
What are you talking about?
We'll talk about this briefly because there was something that came up during that session where I was still like, dude, somebody still doesn't get the game.
So, yeah, we play tonight because of a holiday that's coming up as we record this here in the US Next week is our Independence Day. So we. The. The gang won't be able to meet. So we're doing it another week, shifting weeks, shifted weeks. So we're doing, you know, one after the other versus every other.
So we'll see how that goes.
You know, Je. Jeff's agent, his player character's like, we gotta pack up. We gotta get out of here. Like, we're. These guys will come in and as
[00:06:28] Speaker A: the guy's knocking at the door, no,
[00:06:30] Speaker B: he's already talked to him, told them what they're looking for. They're not sure he's left him his calling card kind of, so to speak.
[00:06:38] Speaker A: They played dumb. I don't know what books do you mean, that kind of thing.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: I. Yeah. And yes, for the most part. And I said, well, okay. And so they think of. Well, Jeff's character definitely thinks, like, they're gonna come in and wax us or. Because they.
Yeah. How he's coming to that conclusion, I have no idea necessarily.
[00:06:59] Speaker A: Seems a little premature, but a little bit.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: But, you know, I don't. I don't know if Jeff has immersed himself into the back meta plot of Delta Green necessarily. I think he might have an idea, but he kind of keeps that arm's length so he doesn't.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Which is fine.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which is great.
But he's like, we gotta get out of here. And. And yeah, Joe's character.
Well, if you guys are gonna take over, we'll just take over then. We don't. We're done.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: I was like, oh, yeah, he's thinking the program. Other program guys are on site.
[00:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah, they're. They're, they're handling things now. Okay, well then they don't need us.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: You need to make it personal. I need to make it personal and make a point that, like, something must needs to happen that proves that's not the case to him.
[00:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I know.
We'll talk about that.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Speaker A: Okay. In the context of the wider or wider campaign discussion today. Okay.
[00:07:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:07:55] Speaker A: Good. Yeah, good, good.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: I'd like to touch on it because it was like.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Okay.
So still though, like, when you first started this game, you weren't sure it was going to get off the ground with these guys. And you're now into like your third opera and it's a big opera. It's Impossible landscapes. Right. So, I mean, mission's been pretty successful so far.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: It has been. It has been. There's.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: And this is not like a group of people who are like, all had their hands in the air for Delta Green. Jeff did. But the rest of them are like, we'll play whatever the gang's playing, right?
[00:08:24] Speaker B: Pretty much.
[00:08:25] Speaker A: And I think, I think you should be proud of what you've been able to do with you. Quite a few sessions under your belt with these guys, for sure.
[00:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's.
Things are like, oh, okay. Like, we have good sessions and it's good. And everything's going fine.
[00:08:37] Speaker A: Yeah, they're fine. You're having fun.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Yes. And having fun.
Yes. And then if it's. Every once in a while there's a curveball, right? Yeah, yeah.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: Or a curveball. I'm picturing more like, you know, every once in a while you see that wild pitch that lands like 40ft outside the pattern.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Outside, as the youth would say.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: As the Bob Euchre would say, just.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Just a bit outside. Yeah, exactly.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: You know, once in a while.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: Comes to the mound. Ye.
Ball.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Ball. What was that?
Duck. If you're in the front row.
[00:09:10] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. A little. Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: All right. What else is going on espionage wise? You're watching Reading, consuming Anything. Anything good?
[00:09:19] Speaker B: No, no, nothing. I did get the IP Chris Files book on audio and have not delved in. It started and then I kind of zoned out, so I haven't consciously kept in tune with that, if you will.
So nothing. Nothing crazy other than, like no media influences, no talk, reading or anything.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:09:44] Speaker A: I've got this, you know, lack of time. But I also have this wandering eye problem, right. Where we both have so many games, genres, things that we like. So I've been hardcore into, like, reading Cyberpunk lately, different RPGs, and that has transitioned into noir. And I'm back on kind of a noir and I'm even doing like. Like I'm Brooke, my wife and I are watching Sugar on Apple tv, if you know that.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: I know of it. Isn't that with.
What's his name? Colin.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: Colin Farrell.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
We're only two episodes in, but, man, I'm. I'm digging it so far.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Does he talk to himself?
[00:10:20] Speaker A: At times, but it's not overdone. It's not like a. It's not pastiche. It's not like, I don't know, cheesy.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Dead man wear plaid.
Right. Remember that movie?
[00:10:31] Speaker A: I don't know if I've seen that. It's a Steve Martin movie, right?
[00:10:34] Speaker B: Martin, Yeah.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: I don't know if I've seen that.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: That is it. I think it makes. I don't know if its intention was to make fun of the genre, but it's.
[00:10:42] Speaker A: Oh, I think so. I think so. This is a Philip Marlo, like, in fact, this. The show Sugar is interspersed. He's obsessed with old films and whatnot. Oh, so it's interspersed first with a bunch of scenes from, I'm sure, famous movies that I don't get because I didn't. I'm not a big noir, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, you know, movies aficionado.
But it's. Well, it's really well done so far. I'll. I'll let you know more of what's going on. But, you know, there's elements of, like, there's a little bit of tradecraft in it where people are. It's because it's modern day, so there's a fair bit of, like, how do you break into a car in 2020, whenever it was made? 2023, I think he's got like a device on his phone, little thing that lets him like, scan the RFID that the car is looking for from the key and get in. Like, there's all kinds of little stuff like that, that's that's pretty cool. Kind of like it. He sets. He knows these guys are onto him, so he sets these little tiny spy cameras up in. In the hotel he stays in. So he catches them planting a surveillance device on him in his room. Kind of. There's just lots of stuff like that that is. It's quite related to what we are talking about on the show. But I don't know. I'm just in a noir kind of mood. I'm also part of. It has to do with the fact that there's this one designer. I think his name is Nathan Russell, if I have that right.
For anybody who knows Free Form Universal, it's a generic rpg. He's also written cyberpunk and noir versions of that game. They're kind of different takes on it, but not quite the same as. As fu.
But for whatever reason, that little bridge following the one author led me from cyberpunk into the war. I'm like, oh, I forgot how much I like noir stories. Noir RPGs. To have the. The RPG called Noir. It's a pretty good game too. That's from like late 90s, I think. Something like that.
Anyway, I think that's all we both got. Should we move on to sit Rep?
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Yes. But before we do, I'm gonna shut this stupid cat fountain off because I can hear it bubbling. And I know I've had other people say, do you have like a fountain in your room? And I'm like, no, that is a cat bubbler.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: A cat bubbler.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: It's a fountain with water that, like, bubbles up.
[00:12:51] Speaker A: Understood.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Pretty much. Let me shut that thing off.
[00:12:56] Speaker A: Okay. Please do.
He's back.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: When it gets lower and. Or lower or more in water, it, like, really, like, you hear it like. Yeah, yeah.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: You hear it more.
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So I don't think it's as bad right now, but I don't want to, like, try to edit.
[00:13:28] Speaker A: I don't hear it, but.
[00:13:29] Speaker B: But hey, yeah, you never know.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Probably smarts. Turn it off.
[00:13:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I could edit this.
All right, let's get into Sit rep.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Give me the sit rep.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Sit rep.
Things that are going on that we want to bring to your attention this week. We have a couple, I think, that we want to highlight.
[00:13:50] Speaker A: Yeah, I basically, you know, Sean and I are lucky in that a couple of.
They're basically friends of ours at this stage or have always been friends. Listeners, friends often are flinging Flinging interesting things our way via the discord or other, you know, other means in addition to sort of Sean and I just sort of keeping our ear to the ground about what's happening spy game wise out there. And recently I mentioned him already. He's running Gaslands. Dan, friend of the show, shared with me a podcast called Spybrary.
So if you
[email protected] that's s p y dash b r a r y dot com. Sean will put the link in the show notes, but it's basically a 300 episode podcast that's been going for a long time. It's all about the best spy books, movies, TV and more. So I haven't actually given any of them a listen yet, but I think Dan was tripped when we mentioned. I think we were talking about Operation Mincemeat and then we had a brief, you know, divergence into World War II, commando espionage, all that kind of stuff. And I think they've got some shows on that. So he shared one specific one with me. And then when I, you know, look a little more broadly at the, at the podcast, it's kind of like our, you know, we're both fans of the. The rest is uncle Classified or the rest is classified, I should say. I think it's just another. Well, you could get right into. If you really want to go deep into the. Into the spy genre, this is a place to look. Right?
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna check it out.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Yeah, me too.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Thanks, Dan.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Appreciate it.
Do you have anything or. Or just. Do we just have the other one which is all about Anthony and Jason?
[00:15:31] Speaker B: The other one. That's it.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: Okay. Since I've listened to it, you have not want me to cover that one as well?
Okay, so Anthony, who has called the show before and I think has written a couple times as well, also known as Runestlinger, has his podcast, YouTube channel, I think blog, all known as kind of Casting Shadows. It's kind of like a triumvirate of RPG wisdom that he shares. Well, after a brief discussion and when I mean brief, I think there was one line from me where I think Jason Connolly, so people will recall, ran top secret for us and for those you know. Actually, Sean, let me back up just slightly, especially for any listeners of the show who are not part of Sean's former sphere gaming and bs, the current BS Landia Discord server, lots of, you know, there's a few hundred people on that server and there's probably a few dozen who are very active and, you know, really know each other pretty well at this stage. If you're not amongst those people or you're not amongst. What are known as the anchor rights. So these are podcasters that started relatively early days on the osr.
Kind of like guerrilla podcasting, podcasting in their cars, podcasting every week, podcasting on the go. All about topics they would share with each other and they would respond frequently to each other's podcasts. The topics, the things they got into. And Jason Connerly for those who are not part of either of those communities. So people don't know who Jason is. Jason was kind of an. I like a, like a monolith, like a, a real foundation stone in that anchorite community. Then there's a fair bit of crossover with some people who are in that community and then the stuff that Sean and Brett set up originally in the for gaming bs. So just to set a little bit of context, I think Anthony's rune Casting Shadows also comes from the more anchor right side of things. I don't know if it came directly from that, but I know he's pretty wired into some of that stuff as well. So just to give the people who are cold to this a bit of bit of context, there's a number of YPG or ypg, there's a number of RPG networks that are kind of overlapping. Here is what I would say.
So Anthony and Jason in our in the Discord for Go Bag said, hey, there's some inspirations for Delta Green that older games that you guys, we guys think you should spend some time looking at. To which I glibly said that sounds like another podcast should do that.
I won't say famously because I'm not famous, but I think I'm known in that community at least for being, you know, like I don't want to go look at a bunch of old games that I feel like are full cruft and aren't for me. Like I was there at the time and I didn't like that. I actually didn't like many of these games at the time, let alone now.
Jason and Anthony to a lesser degree perhaps have a great appreciation for these older games. Kind of the history of the, of the hobby and just I don't know, like the edges of things. Right. These are not super well known games in all cases. So long story short, when I said some other podcast should do that runeslinger Anthony picks up the ball, gets Jason on his show and you know, we'll link to the episode. They do a great little episode on, on what they call unsuspected inspirations for Delta Green. So since Sean and I aren't going to talk about, you know, I would Say, their potential inspirations. They might be tangentially related. They might be orthogonally related.
They're not. There's not a direct line in. In any case, but there are certainly some systems you can recognize or some themes you can recognize. Jason is dead set that Stalking the Night, Fantastic, which is a game where you play a government agent. You're fighting the supernatural. There's an incident that, you know, he goes into it on the show. I won't. I won't recount it all here. If you want that story, go listen to Anthony's podcast. It's an entertaining listen, for sure.
I guess all, you know, kudos to the guys for picking the ball up and doing it. They cover things like. Like Chill, an older horror game. They cover.
Where are my notes here? They cover Dark Conspiracy, which is a game designer. Game Designs Workshop, like GDW game. Which should explain to Jason why I didn't read that game, because I don't do GDW games from the 80s.
Never will. Nope. You know, that's the old Twilight 2000 system, I think they get. They. They bleed some of that stuff into the Traveler games at some point. It's super complex. It's just. I don't know. It's just not for me, that stuff. But it's. It's cool to hear them kind of call out bits and pieces of these games that potentially influenced Delta Green as it took shape in the 1990s. This is all about trying to figure out, like, where did the team that developed Delta Green early on, what inspirations did they draw from? Here are some games that may have been in that pile. I don't think we would know In. In all cases, I don't think we would know if any of these were actually inspirations or not. Unless you talk to the powers that be behind Delta Green.
Anything you want to. You want to add to that, Sean?
[00:20:25] Speaker B: No.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: You haven't actually listened to the episode yet.
[00:20:27] Speaker B: No, but it's on my to listen to list.
And I know that Anthony, I think, commented to somebody on the Discord about World War II. World War II. Cthulhu or World War Cthulhu.
[00:20:41] Speaker A: World War Cthulhu.
[00:20:42] Speaker B: Yeah. I was looking that up just to kind of get an idea of what the context of that game was, because I'm not.
I'm not a person that gets all the Cthulhu games. Like, I don't get Cthulhu Dark and Cthulhu light and, you know, insert Cthulhu and all this other stuff.
I'm sure they're all Fantastic games with different takes on mechanics and things of that nature.
World War Cthulhu is interesting because of the premise of World War II and operations that are centered around some of those details. Right. Even the going back in the Delta Green days, I could see it getting closer in the Venn diagram, but that thing is not cheap.
[00:21:23] Speaker A: When did it come out?
[00:21:25] Speaker B: I don't remember. It's not old old. It was done by Cubicle seven and I don't. You know, Cubicle seven, I gotta say, it's not.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: It's not Chaosium, right?
[00:21:33] Speaker B: No, but I think.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: But I think it is brp.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: Well, in Chaosium, I think there was a licensing issue or something that I think Anthony alluded to in his comment, which may have been the resulted in the line discontinuing, in which case on the used market, it's like, you know, $185. So yeah, it's crazy, but cubicle seven has not been around since the 80s as far as I know. And so therefore it's.
[00:22:01] Speaker A: No, I think, yeah, I think he references in that little add on post you're talking about. So. So World War Cthulhu is not talked about on the podcast.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:22:10] Speaker A: It comes. It comes later. Crawlock, another friend of mine and also fan of the show or listener of a show at least. Maybe not a fan support actually. Maybe sits there and grinds his teeth. Maybe. Maybe Kerlock wrote to say, hey guys, are there any other games that we should be looking at that are in the same vein? You know, that kind of thing. And Anthony came back with that, which is. Which is pretty cool. Yeah, pretty cool.
Just to close out on this though, I guess. You know, thank you. Thank you two for taking the time to, you know, connect up with what we're. Our topics are and looking at Delta Green influences, inspirations. I think you both know by now, maybe Anthony. I know Anthony less well than I know Jason. You know, I've been on Jason's show multiple times.
I hope to think we're buds, but he knows that I could be a grouch about crufty old game systems and you know, look, look up tables and you know, just all those like, you know what, I'll use this term because it'll make sense in a minute. But all those games that have such high handling times to determine what happens in the results where you have to roll the dice and cross reference this and look that up and then. And then roll a second, second time, like all those 80s games are heavy with that stuff and that just tends to put me off. The term handling time for that stuff comes from Greg Stolzi.
He's the person I've heard use it the most and use it first. He's one of the podcasters on, I think, Ludonarrative Dissonance. No, Ludonarrative Dissidents, not dissonance dissidents.
So Greg is a game designer and helped design and I think was largely behind Unknown Armies, which is one of the games that's in the mix that Anthony and Jason do talk about. And they. They. There's a through line here. There's a. There's a thread because Stolzy is involved with John Tynes.
John Scott Tynes, I guess it is. And then some of the other Delta Green guys as you kind of move through time. I wish I could remember where I heard this, Sean, or where I read it, but I'm about 90% sure that Greg Stolzi wrote the bond system for the new version of Delta Green. I think he covers that on an episode of Ludonarrative Dissidents. I think that's where I heard that. But just to carry the kind of the. Because they talk a lot about, like, sanity and other things that are in. That are in unknown armies and kind of the unraveling of humanity kind of thing and how that starts to trickle into the games, like Delta Green and all that sort of stuff. There's some personalities here. There's some game designers that are swirling in multiple orbits, and there's no question that there's some DNA that gets shared across them. Right. And they may have even gone to Stolzi and said, we like what you did in the Unknown Armies. Can you bring something similar? Here's the rough idea. Can you build us a bond system? I'd like to dig a little bit further into that. I don't know. It's not as much about it as I'd like to, but I know there's something. There's something there to mind, that's for sure.
[00:24:55] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:55] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Interesting stuff.
[00:24:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. One last parting shock because I have to meme. One last. One last time. Stalking the night. Found. Stalking the night. Fantastic. Jason.
Sounds awful to me. It is. It's Sean. You'll. You'll love it, too. It's one of these, like, super farcical, like, you know, the funniest part of the game is the paperwork you have to fill out because of the. The Supernatural incident. And it's just the supernatural is much more in your face. There's just. I don't know, it's just there are elements that do sound a lot like Delta Green the way that Jason describes them, but the tone is like one of them is the sun and one of them is Pluto. Like, they're pretty far apart.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: They're.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: They just sound like they would play differently, they would feel differently. So even though there's pieces that. That sound like there's an awful lot of overlap and you could accomplish some of the same things, they sound like they're not even in the same, like on the same planet to me, so.
All right. That's all I got to say.
[00:25:51] Speaker B: It's like Men in Black, the movie.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: It's a lot more like that. Yeah, yeah. Which can be fun and great and like, for a one shot, I'll play it. I'll play that with Jason at a con or a one shot. I will not play that game as a campaign. No way.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: Same here. It's just that my cup of tea.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:26:11] Speaker B: All right, let's get into encrypted comms.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: Sir, we have an incoming encrypted transmission.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Encrypted comms.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: Correct me if I'm wrong. Forgive me for taking a drink of water here. Correct me if I'm wrong. This is a comm that was so well encrypted, it went months unfounded apparently.
[00:26:36] Speaker B: Apparently.
[00:26:37] Speaker A: So the person who transmitted this. I'm gonna let you read this one because I've been talking forever on the show already.
The person who sent this reached out to me and said, hey, you guys have said on the show recently you haven't had any encrypted comms. You do realize there was one I left six months ago to which I had to say no.
So Sean went digging and I think actually the transmitter resent the transmission is what happened.
[00:27:00] Speaker B: Yes, that for sure.
All right, so this is M in the uk.
Your discussion of COVID ops in the Italian campaign during World War II has me wondering whether they are covert action games, whether there are covert action games set in World War I or World War II.
My grandfather fought against Mussolini's Fascists in World War II, albeit not on the COVID front. And I've long had a desire to run a game in the largely pre electronic era.
I am aware of at least one a cool and lonely courage, but would be interested to know whether there are more, particularly from the story games tradition.
Harrigan may recall that a decade ago we played a short play by Post Campaign together set in World War I. Whereas ordinary Commonwealth soldiers we undertook a discussion.
I'm sorry, undertook a disastrous mission into no man's land to retrieve something.
This was played in fate with some small tweaks to mechanically represent the rank of characters. I remember this campaign very fondly as we played it during the centenary years of World War I.
I'm enjoying your podcast. As a complete newcomer to the genre of COVID action, Go Bag has been very eye opening, confirming both my interest and in some cases my worst fears.
Best wishes, agents.
M.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: Cool.
[00:28:32] Speaker B: Do you recall M.
Oh yeah, I
[00:28:35] Speaker A: know who this is.
So in fact he used to run his own podcast for a long time.
I'll potentially out him here. The yes Indeed podcast, which I think is still going, but may have been, I think the reins were handed over at some point from M here to a new, a new lead who he sort of, I think, you know, mentored and brought along and then handed handed the show over to. Unfortunately I, I too fondly remember the game he's talking about this World War I game where we played basically grunts in the trenches. So it wasn't espionage as much as it was. There were some other things going on though. Like, like I think there were some, like you said, there were some things that we were supposed to do in addition to, you know, fight back the, the advancing German force.
There were places we were supposed to go, things you're supposed to find kind of thing. We, you know, we got a, we played it for months thinking back and it was quite fun but we didn't get to the end game and discover what was going on. All that sort of stuff.
I have to sadly admit I don't know of any games that specifically target World War I, World War II, covert action beyond. Like if you pick up, you know, and this is not the story game stuff that, that Emma's looking for.
If you, if you expand past like savage worlds and gurps, having books about the wars and covering wide varieties of types of action and types of adventure, that sort of thing. You can stretch those into these spaces. But in terms of it being like explicitly about, you know, all because I think we mentioned on the show before there's a lot of political stuff going on right before the first World War, like tons of stuff. Very espionage heavy time and it is all pre electronic so the notes are differently. Telephones are just becoming, you know, really standardized and, and you know there's, there's, there's much, it's a much more old school way of like having to do espionage and that sort of thing. I will look, I'm going to have a, have a peek to see if there's More games that are out there. My go to for this stuff M would be to use either. Operation White Box is a bit more of, a bit more of a commandos behind enemy lines kind of game. So typically it's meant to be a resistance force that links up with a number of like British paratroopers or allies that are otherwise getting in country by, you know, undercover of darkness at night or they parachute in or you name it, and they're trying to link up with like a, you know, and free some prisoners or blow a bridge or whatever. There's lots of games that do that kind of thing. Operation White Box is one of them. And then War Story, Sean, is the other game that you and I have talked about, which is the YZE third party game.
But it, it is not explicitly espionage either. A lot of these are like more like small unit action. Like if you have a force of 10, 20 people kind of thing and you're behind enemy lines and you're, you know, you got a mission that you have to accomplish. You have to go and sabotage the heavy water plant in Norway. You know, that's, it's that kind of thing. Right?
[00:31:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: But what about you? Do you have any, any thoughts on whether or not these games are out there?
[00:31:32] Speaker B: I don't know.
No, I don't. Not, not specifically to WWI, WWII. The big one.
[00:31:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And World War I is probably, you know, there's less gaming material about that generally. It's just a little, little further out of the cultural zeitgeist than our cultural memory.
I'm kind of amazing when you think about it, when he said it's the, the 100 year anniversary of the, of the First World War back in 20, you know, 16, 17, whenever that was. We were playing 15, I guess it's amazing how long ago it was, right?
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Crazy. Yeah, there is. And I know he knows about this game because he may have even had him, the author on his show. I'm forgetting the guy's name. The designers out of Toronto, Canada, he did a game called Ross Rifles, which is pretty cool. It is a powered by the apocalypse, World War I Canadian troops in the trenches game. But I'm almost positive he knows this game and it's not about espionage. It's about your Canadian grunt in the mud. And the problem with Ross Rifles. Oh, Sean. We haven't talked about firearms for a while on this show.
So I pull up a chair and get comfy and pack some tobacco into your pipe and light it up and pour yourself a glass of scotch because we're gonna go deep.
I kid this won't take long at all. The Ross rifle is a Canadian bolt action straight pull rifle. So you can picture with a bolt action rifle you usually have to lift the bolt to get it so that it will pull back.
When you pull back, that ejects the dispense shell. When you push it forward, that loads the new shell. And when you put the bolt down, you know, firing pin set, you're in, you're now in position to fire the rifle. Right. The Ross rifle allow you to put your hand on the bolt, pull straight back and push straight forward.
So technically you can fire it considerably faster. If you've ever seen someone try to fire a bolt action rifle quickly, there's a motion that you have to, you know, up, back, forward, down, up, back, forward, down to do it quickly. Right. And if you watch various, like there's a number of films about the first World War, you'll see this kind of thing happening. And in fact one of the big advantages that USGIS had in World War II is that the infantry rifle was the grand which was semi automatic. So they didn't have to, they didn't have to do the bolt pole at all. So they're shooting against or firefighting against Germans and Japanese who are usually shooting, you know, five shot Mausers and that sort of thing. So there's. The volume of fire that U S forces could generate was vastly higher than their, than their opposition basically. So the Ross rifle was vaunted as a. Look how much faster the volume of fire can be in the thing jammed like hell in the mud and killed a lot of people.
So Ross rifles the game kind of takes that like, you know, I don't know, I haven't ever played it. I do, I do own it, but I've never played it. But beyond that I don't know of any games that are that specific because when he says tell me about some story games that's where they would usually dial into like a specific thing that happened during the war. That's often what story games are good at. Like they're about some event that had some espionage around it as I think what he's, that's what he's plumbing for here anyway. And that's our only calm, right? So we're moving on to the mission, is that right?
[00:34:52] Speaker B: It is our only calm. Yeah. Let's get into the mission.
[00:34:54] Speaker A: You're the mission lead, so take us there, have a seat, let's get on with the mission.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Brief the mission, brief this.
Something long Delt Sustaining long. I cannot read.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: You're right over there.
Sean's having a moment.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: I've had a moment.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Things going on.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah, you have a few things going on at the exact same time. Like, yes, sustaining long Delta Green campaigns without frying your players is kind of the byline to the episode. Although I wouldn't even use that one necessarily.
This one's a little bit. And I'm running point because this is my jam. I've run Impossible landscapes and I've run published scenarios that tend to go more than one session in a. In a nutshell.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: So the long game.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: It is the long game.
And I am learning to this day, if I were to run a long game, some of the things that I would probably change about the long game, what that looks like specifically in Delta Green, we're going to talk about a lot of those details.
So if you are a one shot person like Harrigan, then great. But this just one shots.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Come on now.
[00:36:18] Speaker B: Well, true.
Not just one shot.
[00:36:21] Speaker A: Short campaign.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: Short campaign.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: I haven't run anything longer than what was our forbidden lands. I don't want to been 14 or 15 sessions or 13 sessions or something in a long time.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that one was pretty long.
And so thinking of this one, I'm like, where do I start? Where, where do we start on this? And I think Harrigan will be able to contribute. Obviously I'm not. This is just not going to be the Sean show.
One of the things that I've realized, and I think it all begins with the planning phase and then depends on what you want, what you want to run. And really what it comes down to is two things to start with.
One, are you going to make this up and be at Homebrew? Or two, are you going to run a published adventure?
And they could be treated relatively the same way. There are some, I would say, pitfalls to avoid. Things to consider either way.
With the published adventures, they're going to have more of the things baked in. Right. It's gonna have the plot, the mission briefs, the overall arc of what's involved.
So with God's Teeth and Impossible Landscapes being two of the biggest campaigns written for Delta Green, I have not run God's Teeth. I do own it, but I haven't read a ton of it. And then Impossible Landscapes, I'm on my second campaign. But having said that, I've run music from a darkened room which can also say, oh, it's one scenario takes, you know, four or five sessions to get through, maybe depending on the session length and things of that nature.
So mileage may vary depending on how you cut this up.
Are we on the same page? Are we talking about the same thing? Harrigan?
[00:38:15] Speaker A: We are. I think there's a variety of shades in between though that are like full homebrew. Like you don't even crack the COVID on one of the operas that Arc Dream or you know, Fairfield puts up or shotguns or whatever. Right. You don't even look at that stuff. You can easily do that.
You still have to do the same planning like, you know, envisioning that Sean is talking about. And we're going to get into that, I think in a minute here. All the way through. You pick up God's Teeth. You pick up Impossible Landscapes. You got, you've got weeks and weeks and weeks of play in those books. Especially when Art Dream is coming out and saying things like, you know, we actually left a lot of Impossible landscapes on the cutting room floor. It's going to be more materials that are coming God's Teeth. I think the same thing must have happened because they've got that big hardcover out and they have a second hardcover with a bunch of quasi related operas around it. Right. And I would even say, Sean, that the first, I think the first three compilations of books, like for example, A Night at the Opera, they state in there. These things can be chained together. So they give you like four operas and they even give you a. A potential running order of them. Right. Still up to the handler to do the connecting muscle between them and all that sort of stuff.
But I think it's, you know, there's, there's a fair bit.
Sorry, let me, let me rewind back to my initial comment about. There are. There's a. Lots of shades of in between. This is where it could be like you run two out of the box and then you run your own stuff for a while. You tie it together and then you bring in Impossible landscapes and they. You dump out of Impossible Landscapes halfway through because half them are in the insane asylum. And then you pick up the game 10 years later. Like there's all sorts of things like that. But I do think I, I am fully on board with like have some idea of what your source material is, what you're trying to accomplish.
The way I look at this, Sean, actually is when I took my own notes on this.
I've got. And I'll break these into sections and I'll cover them as you get through them with your own framework here.
But my first one is starting a long form campaign. Like what do you, what do you, what do you have to think about? Right, the time frame. Right. Is this because you can do it in the 60s or the 40s or the 80s or whatever, right. The number of players you have, how often you're going to play, how frequently and how long you're going to play. Right. This is meant to be a year long campaign or is everybody signing up for like, we're playing this game for the next few years, which you could do with Delta Green, or is it meant to be a couple of operas and we'll switch to something else? Right. I think, I think now is also the time to talk a little bit of lines and veils action. Not everybody's a fan of, of safety tools. I am. And as you talked about previously on the show, there's some really problematic content in this, in this game.
And you know, even for those of us who are a little bit numb to it, shall we say, life's whipped us and taught us some lessons. And, you know, I. It takes a lot to upset me in terms of content in a game. I also don't have a, you know, a recent car accident that killed a family member or a divorce that's gone so badly that you just don't want to have anything like that in your game. You know what I mean? So this is, I think now is the time to surface some of that sort of stuff just so there's some pitfalls you can avoid because some of these games are hardcore on like violence against children, against slavery, against body horror or some. There's some pretty hardcore stuff in there. So I think now is the right time to do that.
But I might. Are we. Yeah, Keep, keep going. Sean, take, take the reins back here.
I do think there's a lot to do at the front end of this though, before you ever run the first session. Right.
[00:41:46] Speaker B: Yeah.
Most of the things that you had outlined would be in Cats, right? Yep. Concept, aim, tone, subject matter.
So that's the session zero thing that, that we've touched on on occasion, but even more so in other areas of our discussions, even outside of the podcast, we were big, two big fans of cats, the acronym, in addition. So once you start establishing the concept, aim, tone and subject matter specifically around the aim and tone and what you're wanting to tackle within this, the greater grand scheme of things and how often you want to play and things of that nature, going to Harrigan's point, you could absolutely string published material together, inject your own homebrew. So there's hybrids of components of that, like you could Literally run last things last. And then the next opera that you want to run is completely your own, or it's a shotgun scenario or you run one of the compilations.
One of the things that you'll want to consider when you do that is, you know, with all the compilations, if you have multiple compilations, sometimes there is an underlying theme amongst them. So maybe there's an underlying faction that tends to rear its head in three of three or four of those scenarios.
If you don't want to play like Harrigan, Aliens and X Files ish and investigating the UFO conspiracy pieces, you probably don't want to run certain ones. Like, I don't know, PX Poker Night, the one that Harrigan had mentioned in a previous episode.
It was like, nah, not for me.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Right.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: So having said that, once you figure out, oh, do I want to do homebrew? Do I want to do a published scenario at the beginning Also determine, I would say obviously the era is going to be a big one. So if you run a published scenario, those are set typically in a particular time frame or era, whether it be the 90s, maybe it doesn't have one. And then you have to set it because it doesn't specify when it's taking place.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: We, yeah, we talked about this before. I think at least two or three of those collections actually are around an era 90s, early aughts, teens kind of thing. Now that I think about it, yeah,
[00:44:20] Speaker B: most of them are, but there are published scenarios that don't specify.
So in that case, or they'll say in the modern day, does that mean 2015, 2010, 2025, like 1990? It could be any of those.
And the reason that is important is if you want to inject some of the meta plots of Delta Green and what that looks like on the previous one of the previous episodes, one or two ago we had mentioned, you know, the Cowboys, Outlaws, the program and those transition components which also plays a role within.
When do things transition from one faction to the other? And does that is that important for you when you run your game or your campaign?
It may not start out that way, but eventually it could get into those pieces and spaces.
Yeah, comments on that.
[00:45:21] Speaker A: You know, you don't have to do any of this.
[00:45:23] Speaker B: No, you don't.
[00:45:25] Speaker A: You can start with last things last and like see where the game goes. Right, right.
It totally can do that.
[00:45:31] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: But I do, I do think, if you. Many people, I think are starting with impossible landscapes. Right. From what I'm hearing, people who are gravitating to the game, you See, I read it on a number of times on Reddit where people are like start with this or I did start with this, maybe I shouldn't have. And where you, there's a little bit of a tripwire. There is this whole thing of like when they make the first time jump in that game. You move from Cowboys era to modern program era. And that is meaningful. At least it's meaningful to people like Sean and I who care about sort of the, the backdrop here and how it should impact the game and how the characters can impact that. Right. That part of it. So I, I do think as well though, you can shoot from the hip and just start playing. I do think sitting down and figuring out what's the most interesting part of this to me and to the, and knowing my players, what would be the most interesting stuff to, to kind of play through should they think they're playing part of a government backed organization only to find out there's no government backing and it's 1998 and you know what I mean, like that kind of thing. So I, I, I'm fully on board.
The time frame matters a lot. You mentioned briefly the faction play. To me that is huge.
You know, identify. We, we had a whole show where we talked about kind of the schism between the two parts of Delta Green and then I had a bunch of like little faction stuff kind of at the tail end of that episode. Right.
I would pick out your favorites and just, you know, this is not, you don't have to develop anything completely. Don't write a book about what's going to happen. Don't put a railroad down. But man, have some index cards or some pages in your notebook talking to the handler here about wouldn't it be cool if. Right. And this is where you get these weird intersections with like whatever. There are remnants of Majestic 12 hanging around and they want to do some things. Maybe, maybe there's some karatechia stuff that's kind of cool because they're, they're in Europe and they're finding that there's some cells that are still, you know, active.
Insert cool faction here, doing cool thing there.
I, you know, I do this for all the role playing games that I, that I want to have a longer run of though. And I will say, well, I don't do a lot of long form play live. I do tons of long form play play by post where games take years to unfold and it can be, you know, there's a lot that goes on. I just think there's an element of planning Here, that can be pretty cool because it links up to something you're probably going to talk about later, Sean, which is this whole idea of, like, breadcrumbing things and glimpsing things before you really reveal them fully. If you know what they are in advance, you will know how to signal them. You will know how to foreshadow. If you haven't foreshadowed this thing that's going to happen, it's less effective when it's in the moment and there's a knock on the door like Sean has done recently. Sean's team already knows.
Who is that. There's one. I can think of three people I don't want that to be.
One of them's the program. Right. So you're. You're not going to get there in session one by having the knock on the door. There's going to be like, open the door and be like, hello. Right. But once you've got the paranoia rolling and once you've got the, like, are they really on our side? And that friendly who was with us, we saw him with some other, you know. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not sure he. Who he was talking to with the suits. Once you introduce some of that stuff. And the best way to introduce that is to be aware of it early. So you can drop the little.
Drop a little gem here, little gemstone there, that kind of thing.
Agree.
[00:48:50] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:48:51] Speaker A: I mean, you're the one who's running this stuff long form, so, yeah, validate.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
Even beef. And so once you. I would say, and this could be done in lots of different orders. If you're thinking about it and having it in your brain, how you position it, it's just something to consider. The other thing is, how do you want to handle character death, which is always a thing in RPGs regardless. But even in Delta Green, you know, are the player characters good with that? And then if they are, great. If they're not, how do you handle that? But also, Harrigan and I, you know, we were talking Chris Neezak, friend of the show for Misdirected Mark and some other channels, he's running Delta Green. He's also a supporter of the show. Thanks, Chris.
He's running more of an open sandboxy type of approach with Delta Green, and he has his player characters or players rolling up multiple characters.
And at first, I know my kind of initial reaction was, oh, no, I would not go that route. But thinking through it, I thought, wait a minute.
If you're Delta Green and you're recruiting people and you're recruiting them for specialty areas.
It might make sense that the actual, I don't know, the postal inspector is recruited to do an inspection on something that has to do with the mail service.
But it, that is a, that is a U call on the handler piece and what that looks like, because how do you manage those agents coming and going?
And that's just something to keep in mind, I think.
[00:50:34] Speaker A: I don't want to interrupt you here, but I think the, the part where we both were like, scratch our heads for a minute and we're like, does that, will that impact how the game plays and how it feels? I think in the end we both, you know, reacted one way to begin with and the other and then later went, no, it won't. I don't think it will.
You know, on one hand it's either the handler who's saying, bring these skills to the table and make a PC that has, that works for fema or that is an FBI agent or whatever. I think, I think what we're looking at here is that this group is just a relatively modern minded set of gamers who are okay with the group making decisions that the GM would normally make. So it's maybe a little bit less trad.
So instead of the GM saying here's the team you're allowed to bring, I think they are sitting down and saying, I've got a pool. It's almost like a, you know, RS Magica where you've got the, the troop, troop play. You know, I've got three or four PCs and we'll hear about what, what the mission is. This is the part, this is the part that I think caused a little bit of dissonance with us. A little bit of a break. Like you don't know what the mission is yet. How would you know to, how would you know to bring whom? Right, well, loosen up a little bit guys, and approach this, you know, Mew and I, I mean, approach this in a bit more of a meta standpoint and say the GM can say, here's the opera, here's the, here's the opening part of it. Who do you think is appropriate to bring, right, so that they can do that. Like I can do lots of financial shenanigans because we know we have to go and look at financial records and potentially change them. And in the end this is what we, we landed on. Sean, it doesn't matter.
Whoever you want.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: It does whatever you want.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I had the same reaction what Chris was talking about.
In the end, I'm like, that sounds like a pretty cool play to wait. Way to play, I should say. Yeah.
[00:52:23] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's a. I mean that way I would position it is even probably skipping the home scene. But you are in the debrief or in the briefing and this is the mission. Now tell me who's there.
[00:52:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: And then how did you get there? As a flashback is how I would handle that. If you're running a pool of characters. So with specific. A specific set of skills.
[00:52:51] Speaker A: Yeah. But you're. You're right in that as well. You have to have that conversation up front because maybe even more so than losing characters. Like to have them. Having them die like you're gonna. You might lose them to insanity or to being imprisoned or like there's other ways to get out of the game in this game. Right. Yeah.
[00:53:09] Speaker B: Jumps in time is a. Can be a component. Is that something you're going to do? I would say my experience is that Delta Green is not the.
It is not the. It is the adventure and the journey, but that adventure and that journey is going to span over time. And it's not something where.
Whether you're part of the cell format and being the cowboys or if you're the program, those things aren't. You may not be involved in an operation one after the other. You don't end one, start one. Now you could. There's nobody saying you can't.
But, you know, it's not unusual for Delta Green operatives to have a mission that they're called to or an opera one a year. One every couple years, if that.
[00:54:03] Speaker A: Let's make. Let's make something clear, Sean. Play this game however you want to.
[00:54:06] Speaker B: Sure.
[00:54:07] Speaker A: Have big pools of players.
Have everybody equipped with machine guns all the time. Be able to call in, you know, helicopter attacks at the moment's notice. We're just giving our perspectives on how we think will people. Us and people like us will have the most fun with this game.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Fair. Yes.
[00:54:23] Speaker A: That's all we're after, Right?
[00:54:25] Speaker B: Yep. So you want to do them every other time program. I could see it being more consistent. Even if you wanted to adhere closer to the intention of the game. I would say so. There are.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: There are recommendations in the Handler's Guide about this. And what they say is typically not more than two to three operas per game year.
Like that's. They're. These are. These missions are not happening like week after week. You're not. You're going back to your. Your day job. You're going back and doing Your thing.
[00:54:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:54:55] Speaker A: Which I think what that is one of the things that I think sneeze acts group has to navigate is like when you have multiple PCs, you're not going as deep on the bonds, perhaps you're not seeing, you're not seeing the people who are their bonds in as many scenes. Right. So you're not getting to know them as well and that sort of thing. So that is one thing to consider with the pool. The pool approach, yeah.
[00:55:17] Speaker B: So if you do play and decide that there is two operatives a year, it'll continue.
Some campaigns or some published adventures scenarios will have an actual built in time jump. Now just because there's a time jump doesn't mean from this year, this year in 1995, this opera, and then it continues in 2015, that nothing happens between that time jump.
As a matter of fact, this would be something where you could get those scenarios that you enjoy. Maybe a scenario does take place in the 90s and then another scenario takes place in the 2000s.
What happens between there? Is there something that occurs? And then you can inject your own stuff if you will.
You have a lot of flexibility in that regard.
[00:56:13] Speaker A: Yeah, for me, for me personally, we've talked about it briefly before.
I love the idea of playing an outlaw who decides to join the program when everything gets turned on. Right. Because you're going to have a bunch of former contacts that are, that did not join up and that trend like so set in the campaign during a time when you're going to, you know, you're going to have this transition and you will afford those opportunities to people to do that is kind of cool, I think. And you're not going to get that unless you think about it in advance. Right. Or play an adventure that like impossible landscapes that has it built in.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: One of the things that HUS had come up with is separating the players from the characters. And we brought it up to touched on it.
How does a player character become a bad person?
And I think Cats plays a role with that. That's why some of this episode is a very kind of stream of conscious. Because it's also something where if it is one character or even a pool of characters, but one of those you play over a certain amount of operas or time, what does that diminishment of their human spirit look like and how does it take take form and take shape? And that is specifically to the long game, short, succinct 1 Opera 1 shots, con games that ends up missing quite a bit as a matter of fact, longer or down My notes, quite a. Quite a bit is the being adapted to violence or helplessness sometimes doesn't take place in shorter scenarios. It just isn't enough time to develop the character and get enough taste and a diminishment of their sanity or the amount of sanity checks where they become numb to that.
And that is. I mean, and this is how it. I thought of this too. Harrigan. If you have a home scene and you're adapted to violence or you're adapted to helplessness, how does that come to fruition in a home?
[00:58:23] Speaker A: How does it manifest?
[00:58:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, say your child gets into a car accident, gets hit by a car.
If you're adapted to violence or helplessness, you may just act as a player character, as a robot in that scene or what that looks like.
[00:58:42] Speaker A: There's so many things you can do, dude. You can also go and find the person that hurt your kids and knock on their front door and pull them out of their house and do a number on them in the yard.
[00:58:53] Speaker B: Right.
[00:58:53] Speaker A: Like, because you're just numb to this stuff and aren't thinking about it.
[00:58:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:59:00] Speaker A: Ptsd, basically.
[00:59:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And how does that manifest with. Between, say, your significant other.
[00:59:07] Speaker A: Yep. So this is where you can see how dark it can get.
[00:59:10] Speaker B: Yes. How dark it can get.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: You're bringing the. Those that psychological damage, these adaptations, and you're. You're dropping them into, like, the classroom, the office.
[00:59:18] Speaker B: Right.
[00:59:19] Speaker A: Dinner at night as opposed to, you're on. You're on the mission in New York City and you're at a diner with your buddies, trying to figure out how to break into an apartment building kind of thing.
[00:59:27] Speaker B: Imagine being at a social activity, like a dinner with the neighbors that you've known and then something they find amusing, you don't find amusing at all. And you would have a couple years ago.
[00:59:44] Speaker A: Yeah, dude, it's. It's horrific when you really.
When you really put your mind to it.
[00:59:49] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:59:51] Speaker A: And, you know, one of the things I've been thinking about recently as well is in these home scenes, there's no reason why you can't enter the handler, can't inject little bits of the setting, the scenes, the. The vibe of the game. Like. Like, what did you see in the window while, you know, you're having dinner with the family and, you know, there's a shadow that passes by the window outside.
And the PCs, you know, if we all know our players is going to be like, what the hell was that? You know, and maybe there's nothing to find, but there was a shadow. Right. You're at the. Yeah.
[01:00:21] Speaker B: In their own mind.
[01:00:22] Speaker A: In their own mind. Yep. Yep. There's stuff like that you can do. But, yeah, I mean, I love the idea of, like, you're not. It's not a car chase. You're at the school gymnasium with your kid and they're showing you their science project and running through your head, is this, you know, the person you just murdered? You're seeing their face because you had to kill them for the program. You know what I mean? Like, there's that kind of. And that's the stuff that I. I will admit I can't square.
When Huss wrote to talk about briefly about, like, how do you get the PCs to not be an avatar of themselves?
Like, my whole. The whole. Whole time I've been playing these damn games, I'm trying to put myself in the mindset of the person I'm playing. Right, Right. That's just what I do. And I think that's true for a lot of people. I think it's. Anything special about it. I just have a hard time relating to. If I play. Like, if I play one PC and they die and I bring another PC in, I do not play them the same way.
Absolutely not. Not in a game like Delta Green.
I don't know.
Anyway.
Just. Yeah. The long game. I'll say this.
I think the game is architected for the long game. Like, the sanity losses and whatnot are not that great generally. Right. You're usually talking zero. If you. If you've passed, you're gonna need to lose zero sanity. And if you miss, you get a D4 sanity loss. Right. Might go up to one slash, one D6. You're not going to be. Unless you're encountering stuff all the time and you have the ability to gain it back in the home scenes. It's not going to be. Let's put it this way. This is one reason why people sometimes take Call of Cthulhu Delta Green mothership. And when they play a con game, they fiddle a little bit with the sanity systems because they're generally built for a little longer frame destruction of the player character. Right. So when you're doing the long game, you don't have to do that.
It's okay if someone doesn't lose much sanity during a mission. Like during this shotgun that I'm running right now, the duet that I'm running.
There's been like one moment so far, far that we. There's been some sanity loss. I think there's only a handful of more moments that we're going to. We're going to do. Because I'm not trying to like, destroy the character, the player character in one mission. We're trying to build on this and do multiple missions and show what happens over time is what this is all about.
[01:02:41] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:02:43] Speaker A: Great.
[01:02:45] Speaker B: One of the things I want to touch on and one thing that came to mind is the opera.
You know, some of the things that we're overly verbose about, in the end, there's a mission brief. They are brought in to tackle something that they don't know what the deal is. They go find the clues, talk to friendlies, talk to locals, uncover what that all means, what is going on, and eventually take care of it at all costs and then cover it up so that they don't.
It doesn't lead back to them.
That's in a nutshell. That's the short game.
That's the opera. The opera is the now.
The era is the forever.
And those things about the forever are everything that's going on through time with the different factions as the cowboys, the outlaws, and the program comes into fruition. And so those things can be peppered into your overall campaign to enrich in it for the most part and get them immersed.
The factions, the era, the meta plot are the deep time, the op is floating on.
It's the geology under the dirt.
Love that. That dude.
Geology under the dirt.
I have this other thing that I thought was cool. It moves at a scale no single op can affect.
[01:04:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
The. The background of it all. The. The factions moving, the. Yeah. I mean, it h. It hints at the whole cosmic horror thing being. Can't understand it, can't affect it, can't change it.
Yep.
[01:04:34] Speaker B: So one of the things that had recently came to my attention as I was in introducing the program.
KNOCK AT THE DOOR who's that? Get in here. Who are you? What do you want?
Part of the program. We're part of the program. Yeah. That's what you think. That's what you think. That's what you've always thought.
It's not. It's not real. Like the program. You guys got recruited. You don't know what you're doing. You're part of the cell group. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who are you? What do you want? Blah, blah, you know, whatever. What are you doing here?
One of the things that came up was, well, if you guys got it taken care of, then we can quit. You don't need me anymore.
[01:05:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:21] Speaker B: And I just thought to myself, no. That I have in bold capital letters, don't allow the PCs to quit.
They don't get to quit. And I think one of the things with the long game and trying to instill that is the, obviously the inciting incident. But even after they've gone through the inciting incident, there are still going to be players like they've been recruited to handle this. So when they think that it's being handled, they're not needed anymore. They're not a. Hey, my job, my job here is done.
And what I would say, because if you've run into this is at some point make it quite personal to that player character. Where they don't.
If they do, then it's just going to be another person that they care about that's going to be affected or whatever is would be my.
One of the things I would start contemplating.
Harrigan, how would you handle that? Like, hey, I'm gonna. Oh, it's. Oh, okay, so I'm not part of the program or I'm not part of the I'm not part of doubt degree and I'm part of this thing that's. Oh, then what am I doing here?
[01:06:34] Speaker A: Tell me more about the specifics of the. Of that. Is someone. Is it an actual, like, modern program handler telling them they're working for the Cowboys? Is that what you're getting?
[01:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah,
[01:06:46] Speaker A: but. Yeah. Yeah, you've been. Yeah. So let me think about that.
[01:06:50] Speaker B: So the premise is. Wait a minute, I thought I was working for Delta Green.
[01:06:55] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:06:56] Speaker B: And they say, well, not, not, not this.
You guys are out on the fringe. You're all nutty.
You're all.
I mean, you're not. You don't have money for a reason.
[01:07:10] Speaker A: Reason. Well, this is, this is where we talked about it on a recent show where we talked about how the.
The book is. Maybe it puts those two a little bit less at odds, the program and the outlaws, the modern outlaws, than I would. Where it says things like they have an agreement to not shoot each other if they're both on the scene and all that stuff.
I would be much more into like, hey, I'm with the actual program.
And now you are too.
Yeah, well, but in a, in a you have no choice kind of way.
Like, you know about these things. You're. You've been working for, you know, agents who have some of the similar, some similar goals, but some goals that quite frankly are not okay. And you can get into or not get into that you can leave it a bit of a mystery, but I think I would if I'm you. I'm turning it to Say, since you're close to this and you're on the case, you need to keep going. But you're reporting to me now.
Yeah, that's what I would do.
[01:08:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:08:09] Speaker A: I'm taking over this op. Right. Or you can even get into the, like, you know, tell me who your handler is, and I'll work with them. And they're going to either eliminate the handler or bring them in. Right.
I would totally go those. Like, I think the program is maybe a little more. It should be a little more aggressive against the cowboys than parts of the book portray it as if. If I'm. If I'm that person. And the other thing to something that you said a minute, you know, at the top of the show about making it personal, and then you repeated it here just a minute ago.
Like, there's totally the whole. If someone's like, I'm backing out, there's no reason why those guys wouldn't be like, you need to finish the job, dude. Finish the job. And then, you know, time goes by. If they don't work on it, they're like, we know what school your son goes to. We know. You know what I mean? They start to lay out, like, here are the things that might happen if you don't finish the job, because that's what you're here for.
And then when the mission's over as well, like, you might get robbed out. You might get either talked to or, you know, you lose your job and are sent to, you know, a Turkish prison somewhere or whatever. There's all kinds of, you know, depending on this, on the context of how things have evolved in your game. Right. How you can do that. But I do think.
Because let's put it this way, the program, either version of the program, cowboys or otherwise, are not apt to have someone just walk away.
They know too much.
Right?
They know way too much at this stage. I don't know. What do you. What are you thinking? What are you planning on doing?
[01:09:35] Speaker B: I couldn't help. When you say Turkish prison, I know the reference.
You ever spend time in a Turkish prison? No. You ever seen a grown man naked?
[01:09:49] Speaker A: Yep. Yep. Airplane.
Ever seen a grown man naked? Yeah. It's good stuff.
Pretty good stuff. But you see what I'm getting at, like these. They wouldn't just leave it as someone's like, yeah, I'm good. I'm out.
[01:10:02] Speaker B: Right? Right.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: Number one. Number one, what? Sorry to keep going here, but number one, when the. When the. The new program handler who knocked on the door gives them a lowdown and Then says, welcome in your particular case. I think they're looking for some books that they found in a prior opera and they're like, here's my card. Call me.
Like, if the players decide right then and there the real Delta Greens on this, we're good. You don't think the Cowboys are going to get back a hold of them saying, what, you know, what the. What the f. Are you doing? Get back in the field. There's still a job to do.
And that's. And that's where, you know, over time, I wouldn't do. I would not escalate right away. Like, I've also played with people who are like, if you don't do the job, Delta Green will kill you.
[01:10:43] Speaker B: Right.
[01:10:43] Speaker A: I don't think it's anywhere near that simple. I don't think it's anywhere near that.
[01:10:47] Speaker B: No, I don't think it's. I don't think.
[01:10:48] Speaker A: I think you can get to that stage.
Right. And I definitely think at the end of an opera, if you've gone off a deep end, they want the opera done. But when the opera's finished now, you might be in some trouble. Right.
So, you know, whether it's just being discredited or you lose your job and are prosecuted or you get. Or they put a hit out on you or whatever. Whatever it might be, but I do think there's no way that their current handler is going to. Let's let things sit.
[01:11:14] Speaker B: They haven't been able to get a hold of their old handler.
[01:11:18] Speaker A: Oh, well, you have. You have the additional complexity of this being impossible landscape.
[01:11:22] Speaker B: I do, yeah.
[01:11:22] Speaker A: That's a. That's a bit.
[01:11:24] Speaker B: A whole nother ball wax.
[01:11:26] Speaker A: But in which case. In which case I would play more the card of the. The program's gonna. The real program's gonna swoop in and take over.
Yeah, right.
[01:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah. They need to know what's going on and why they're even involved and what they're involved in.
[01:11:37] Speaker A: Right, Exactly.
[01:11:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:11:38] Speaker A: That's going to turn into a bunch of, like, people. They're sitting in rooms with blank walls and a table between them and some interview. Interviewers. Right. That's what that's going to turn into.
[01:11:49] Speaker B: In some basement, continuing on.
It even gets down to where do you have the agents based out of. So even before you start, if you have an opera in mind or a scenario, and if. Even if it's your own, are you going to have the agents be distributed across the US and in different locations and then flown into the different areas where they need to Investigate. And that's very, very, very common. But Glass Cannon Network, Delta Green, Impossible Landscapes. They featured all of their player character agents in New York City.
So as they're investigating impossible landscapes and some of the things that are going on, their bonds are in New York City. So they have a direct impact on those that are. Yeah. And it's a different dynamic now. Could you have them? That was the thing I found when I ran it for you guys. Harrigan, you guys were all from all over the place. And at times I was like, how do I.
I really want some of those bonds to be kind of involved. And then if they were, but the agents were from a different area, then it was always like a phone call or some type of message.
[01:13:02] Speaker A: It's because we weren't doing enough home scenes between the.
[01:13:05] Speaker B: Right.
[01:13:05] Speaker A: The action, the times of action kind of thing.
[01:13:07] Speaker B: Right.
[01:13:08] Speaker A: Which.
[01:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. But you know, in Delta Green, I also find myself like, I'm on session 10. It's hour five of the day.
Right. So there is that really weird component where if you want to real. If you want to run Delta Green in real time almost.
Or not. Okay. The day is over.
Three days go by. Wait a minute, hold on. Three days go by. Wait a minute, Sean.
We wake up the next day and then we go to the. Yeah.
[01:13:40] Speaker A: We do these things.
[01:13:40] Speaker B: We do these things.
[01:13:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[01:13:42] Speaker B: And then we get through that.
[01:13:44] Speaker A: Wait a minute.
[01:13:44] Speaker B: It shouldn't take us that. That long.
[01:13:49] Speaker A: Yeah. It's interesting how some people are open to those jumps and some people are not.
[01:13:53] Speaker B: Right.
[01:13:55] Speaker A: I have run a game for someone who is neurodivergent before and she would not allow me to time jump anytime, any, ever. She wanted to do everything like, you know, Back to back, 9 o', clock, 10 o', clock, 11 o', clock, 12 o'. Clock. What are we doing? Anyway, set that aside. It was, you know, I can talk more about that at some point because it was a fascinating thing to discover about this person.
[01:14:18] Speaker B: Sure.
[01:14:19] Speaker A: But I will say we. We frequently call you to the carpet on this. Some other bs' ers and I. About how much rope you give people in Delta Green. Right.
[01:14:27] Speaker B: No.
[01:14:28] Speaker A: Want to hang yourself? Sean's got all the rope. He'll give you as much as you want. Right. If you want to go on some wild goose chase and do some other thing and talk to some npc, it doesn't matter. Sean's there to play that npc. Sean is there to not, you know, so I, you know, I have, I think I have counseled you before, like add Some pressure to these situations. Right.
So there's a. You know, things. It matters if it takes a long time, etc. But the, the upshot here actually is that I think Delta Green is like a slow burn kind of game.
[01:14:57] Speaker B: For sure.
[01:14:58] Speaker A: I think it's okay for the. In fact, it feels more realistic in some ways to be like, man, we chased these three leads and we're at a dead end. I don't know what. I don't know what to do next. And I've been in those games with you. We're like.
And either. Either something has to happen in the game, otherwise like the. The factions make a move or whatever, or someone has a brain, a great idea or a terrible idea, but it still moves things forward sort of thing. It is not meant to be that. It's not a pulp game where it's like you're going action scene to action scene to action scene. Stuff's always moving. It's not that game. And that's partly. Partly what they're getting at. I think when they say two to three operas a year, like otherwise it seems like it's just not. It's not how it would happen if it were to happen in reality. It wouldn't. It wouldn't unfold that way. Things were slower.
[01:15:43] Speaker B: Yes.
Also with the era which we didn't touch on was like, why would you set it in one era versus another? Even outside of. Of what's going on in the kind of overall backdrop of Delta Green? But just like tech level can be different.
[01:15:58] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, travel, phones, etc.
[01:16:01] Speaker B: Right. Smoking on airplanes.
[01:16:05] Speaker A: Yes. You know, carrying guns on airplanes.
[01:16:07] Speaker B: Carrying guns on airplanes. Yes. Being able to get in touch with somebody before the Internet and before cell
[01:16:13] Speaker A: phones, looking up things on the Internet, getting records when you need them immediately. As opposed to I gotta go to D.C. to go to the archives.
[01:16:20] Speaker B: Right. And which you can do and you can facilitate. Like that's where I think having a non modern Delta Green game is always interesting because you want to get. You got to get that paperwork. Yeah. It's in the fricking home office in St. Louis, Missouri.
[01:16:38] Speaker A: In the file cabinet.
[01:16:39] Speaker B: In a file cabinet where you have to go and pick it up or
[01:16:43] Speaker A: break in to the FBI and get it right. Which the whole. Yeah, you're right. Like, it. It enables a whole different set of tradecraft and of scenes and things you have to do as opposed to making. You know, we are. We have the easy button now.
[01:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:16:58] Speaker A: Even easier lately with. With AI but you know.
Yeah, I agree with you.
[01:17:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Three days later you find yourself back and you went to St. Louis, picked up the documents and it's three days later and what has happened in those three days and then the time starts to really matter.
[01:17:18] Speaker A: One thing that I think we've skirted around, but maybe we should hit directly around the open, starting off one of these longer running campaigns.
There are many operas that are meant as a starting point, so you could use one of those. Like many of them are like, I guess one of the first things to decide is are they in the program yet or not. Right?
[01:17:34] Speaker B: True.
[01:17:35] Speaker A: Yep. So pick, pick that opera. You can mix it up. You could do, especially if you had one character that came in, like if they missed the first couple sessions, you could have a few that are. That get the exciting incident like PX poker night. There's a few more as well, like that. There's. You can very easily bring one that's already in the program. They just are on the team kind of thing. Right.
And then the other classic way to start this would be start with the home scenes, I think. So they're all in their home place or at work when they get the call and you bring them in that way. Right. And they're all part of the program. You could do a mix. There's a. I think there's a decision to make. Are they all brand new or is there a. Is there a crusty old veteran on the team who can, who knows a little bit more Maybe, maybe is aware of the cowboys for example, or is aware of, you know, they've seen some bad things and they're already adapted to violence or whatever it might be. I do think there's some early work you can do there that will help firm up who the team is like their identity at the beginning of the game as well.
[01:18:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I would love the opportunity to run a longer term campaign and get like a lot of these details kind of ideas on the table. That's why I wanted to talk about it in this episode.
And then you taught you each player you meet one on one and go over some of the details of what they know, what they don't know, or maybe even just an opera like they. We talk about it. Have they been on one, what was it about?
And maybe not even necessarily running it, but then going, okay, I got an idea who you are and where you've been and where you might want to be going just as a personal motivation. So then the character's baked and I go to the next one. Then what happens is I bring them all together and if they have those ties between themselves because they've been on an opera prior. Great. If not great, it's kind of a weird dynamic only because, yes, it would work great in a group dynamic to talk about those details, but there's also something to be said about another person at the table knowing something different than another character or player at the table.
[01:19:46] Speaker A: Yep.
[01:19:47] Speaker B: So see, I think how far do you map it out?
You know, may vary and, and, and how much is baked and concrete. Be flexible, I would say, is some of the advice I would give.
You'll find moments where your campaign can pivot impossible landscapes. Where I am implementing the program is not in the scenario like when a person knocks on the hotel door. That's not in there. And I think you'll be able to find as a handler those certain points in time where you'll want to be able to or feel like it's a good spot to inject that. Those things.
Yeah.
[01:20:31] Speaker A: I mean, it's why the. When you pick up these materials and read them, these adventures or operas, they can look very trad and very railroad rail. Very railroady in some ways. Some of them are.
But generally speaking, like just man, when the players take different approaches, it changes things. Things are out of order, things are. They do things you don't expect. It's nowhere near as, you know, problematic as it. As maybe it first appears and you look at it, you're like, oh, I don't want them just go point A to point B to point C and how do I get them from A to B to C? There could be some of that, but that can also still be fun. Not every RPG has to be full. You know, the players are driving everything.
What we talked about previously was along the lines of how not only is it not driven by the. By the players all the time, it's the handler and it's this lore of the setting. It's. You are encountering things and it's easier for the handler, at least if I'm the handler, to portray that as a concrete thing that is everybody's kind of has the same touch points on. If it's written down and if it's like you've got a, you've got a model to follow. Even if you're not going to go A, B, C, D, you're going to go A, D, C, E, you invent E. The fact that A, B, C and D are written down and are like a thing in the game can make it easier. It's not a very good way of stating it. Maybe But I guess what I'm getting at is that don't be afraid of it looking linear because the fact you can mess with that and the fact that these events happen, there's a timeline and all that sort of stuff, you've got flexibility to move that stuff around and then players will make it their own. I guarantee. Right.
[01:22:08] Speaker B: To tap on that. The prep side of things, we haven't even touched on that. And I would say this as a piece of advice.
If the, if. If you treat it at the end of a session and the players come to an impasse and they're wrapping it up and it's a good spot to do so, ask them what their intentions are for the next session and you could pick up their knowing where they're going, or at least a ballpark of two different avenues that they will go and then more than likely, hopefully not change. And you'll be prepped and everything will be fine. What I found in Impossible Landscapes was I would prep and then realize these guys are going in all kinds of different directions. And that is fine. But it's something that you really have to adapt to pretty quickly in the moment.
So don't over prep and read everything because then you might prep too much for something that's not going to come to fruition in that particular session.
[01:23:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It even gets back to. You know, I frequently mention the OSR in this because I've got kind of an OSR mindset for a lot of the stuff, like prep situations, prep locations.
[01:23:14] Speaker B: Right.
[01:23:14] Speaker A: Not the plot that's happening that you are, is immutable, that you can't change. But do think about the fact that they might go to the dmv, they might go to the morgue, they might go to the library, they might go to the whatever. So either look up those sections in the books or make your own notes about who works there. What are the hours of operation.
You know, that. That little bit of prep that Sean's talking about and having that like leader on where might you go can help. I mean, you can always make it up in the moment. We all do it as GMs, but it can.
The grounding thing I was talking about a minute ago, that's where like not changing the NPC name, not changing who.
You know what I mean? Getting the details right. If you start to get the details wrong from session to session on some of this stuff, that's where the. To me, at least, the ground starts getting a little bit shaky around. You know, I can see the game world as opposed to the actual story we're in. Right.
[01:24:08] Speaker B: Places like the Dorchester House and Impossible Landscapes is not an easy run because there's so many different people and they. Lots of different things going on, which can be tricky and contrary to what Harrigan just outlined.
[01:24:21] Speaker A: Well, that's the far end of the scale.
[01:24:23] Speaker B: Right, but that's the far end of the scale for sure.
[01:24:25] Speaker A: They hit you with a lot to run all those NPCs, all those rooms.
[01:24:28] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:24:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:24:29] Speaker B: And all that at once can be a trick.
The other component is the.
The prep, the campaign. Oh, my God, now I'm having a moment. Oh, I gotta write this down. That's what notes for are for.
The other thing is clues. Like, if you're running the long game, dude, especially if there are jumps and time kind of speed up speed ramps and you're finding yourself like, oh, we did a. We did an operation in the 90s and now it's 2015.
Do any of the clues that you had provided to them matter in the modern day? So, case in point, I'm talking to Jeff and the gang.
I'm throwing out handouts. I'm hoping. I've kind of teased Jeff. I said, jeff, I'm waiting to show up and have you had the corkboard, man? Where's the corkboard with the strings and stuff? Because what happens is they'll throw those things all into a file and they'll think it's great, but they will not keep track of anything. The mass o', nyolethotep, which I'm probably butchering every time I say that, but that is. I mean, I've got the HP Lovecraft prop set for that game. It's.
[01:25:43] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, like 100 bucks plus.
[01:25:45] Speaker B: Right. 150 bucks. It is fantastic. Like, nothing is. Nothing is labeled Exhibit A.
It's literally the thing. And you give it a matchbook. It's there. A fricking scroll. It's there. And you put it out on the table.
And if they're going into Jackson Elias's apartment and there's a few things that they find, it's in that prop kit. But it's a. It's a long, overarching campaign that spans.
[01:26:13] Speaker A: Might matter 20 years later. Right.
[01:26:15] Speaker B: Four, three or like four or five different countries.
[01:26:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:26:19] Speaker B: So what happens when, like, I've.
People have said, I've bought a journal for each player and I've given it to them and said, here, this is your kind of personal notes thing.
Scratch whatever you want into it. But it is not only on.
And that may be Something that you have to bring up in Cats. If you're going to play the long game of Delta Green, say, look, I
[01:26:41] Speaker A: need somebody that's going to like there's an expectation around.
[01:26:43] Speaker B: You got to know this, you know, and, and it's always left up to the, the GM or the handler to handle some of those things. And like, oh, you remember, remember that thing we Harrigan and I have played one shots at a con game and it'll be on our character sheet and nobody will see it or reference it.
[01:27:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:27:01] Speaker B: And it's like a four hour game. It's like the GM will point at you and go, hey, I think you
[01:27:06] Speaker A: got something on your character sheet.
Yeah.
[01:27:09] Speaker B: Why don't you flip your sheet over and just look at the bottom and just, you know, and so take that and go over like eight weeks, 10 weeks, different sessions, different things you're encountering and grabbing and what is the relevance.
But you have to really either make them very, very memorable or in the moment where it kind of hits them in the face where it's like, oh, I remember. Right, the napkins.
[01:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah. And you know, this is where you get into that, that type of play as well where the GM like won't tell you if you can't remember, the GM won't help you.
[01:27:41] Speaker B: Right.
[01:27:41] Speaker A: I don't think that's helpful in a game like this.
Right. Where you're guys, you, you encountered this six months ago in real time.
[01:27:48] Speaker B: Right.
[01:27:49] Speaker A: You know, so you know, remember when you found the thing. I think it's a perfectly okay thing for the GM to say. I will say though, in general, Sean, I know we're making a bit of a bit of a mess of this. So frankly, all over the place.
[01:28:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:28:01] Speaker A: But in terms of the long game, it's even more important. I think what Sean's saying is it's even more important to have this note taking aspect and it would be ideal if you confirm some of that to the player. So they're doing their own thing.
Hat my hats off here to Jim, who I frequently play with. Jim takes incredible notes. Kevin in our group takes incredible notes. Jim, recently Sean is doing it in character and, and other, other games. Yeah. Really, really cool.
But back to the handler. This is where I've talked before about having like a little notepad or index cards or a little black book around what happens with their bonds throughout the game. So you have like a little diary of, of what's going on in the home scenes and that sort of thing. The same thing is true in the long Game for the whole damn thing. Have a timeline instead of a corkboard that Sean is asking Jeff to bring into the room and set it up, get the yarn out.
[01:28:52] Speaker B: Jeff's retired. He's got a little time.
[01:28:54] Speaker A: Use Miro, use lucid. You use the white digital whiteboards that are out there to bring the stuff together. So you can easily group it, put it off to the side, draw lines between it.
Mind mapping applications like this is where if you're, you know, there's one thing, it's one thing, you run a long game for a D D campaign or whatever where they're like pulling treasure out, you're leveling up. This is a different animal that we're talking about here. Whether it's massive Nylah Tap or, you know, Orient Express or like those other big Cthulhu ones or the modern, the more modern Delta Green ones. There's a lot to remember to cover the props help. But I do think that having some short form, easy to process, note taking capabilities, so you're not just writing paragraphs of prose in a. In a three leaf binder kind of thing. Make it easy to find reference, update, check, make it digital, can make this kind of play a lot easier. And don't be afraid to remind the players of things that they found and all that kind of stuff.
[01:29:55] Speaker B: Right.
[01:29:55] Speaker A: I think that's a, That's a big part of it. Yeah.
Yeah.
[01:29:59] Speaker B: I don't have anything else on.
[01:30:02] Speaker A: On what? I don't even know what subject we're on. But long game, you had nothing else in the long game at all.
[01:30:09] Speaker B: I mean, I think we've covered some of the things that I wanted to cover specifically.
[01:30:16] Speaker A: Okay, let me scan my notes because I got a couple more things that we could probably get into. Just a little.
Just did the black book.
I do think, vary the scenarios of. Vary the types of missions you're sending people on. Information retrieval, hunt someone down, infiltrate an organization. Like there's all these different, like, things you can do in Delta Green. I think mixing that up is pretty fun. I do think at some point, Sean, you've almost just done it over the. Over a long game. I'd love to see some sort of like, picture Delta Green having, you know, there's an inquest of some kind. I think that the Star Chamber opera gets into this where you have to go and find another team and interrogate them on what they did because Delta Green's unhappy with the outcome. I love that angle. There's a, like, you know, there's just kind of an inside baseball Kind of in Inside Internal affairs kind of thing.
Beyond even the schism that we've talked about, just the program within itself can be like this team, this team's gone to ground because it went badly. Go find them, bring them in for questioning and you can find out things about, you know what I mean? Like you can pack that in around other, other operas that you're doing.
I think there's a little bit of instructions or a little bit of work in the books around interconnecting the operas. So it might be the same factions that are behind one or one or the other kind of thing.
Definitely. I would focus on interesting NPCs, interesting locations. So we're talking the classic stuff, asylums, labs, morgues, you know, just very thematic sorts of things. And when it comes to the NPCs, and I'm not just talking about like the people that you have to, you know, eliminate or deal with. This is the home scenes too, like subject matter, experts, friendlies. Give those people some personality, like develop them a little bit so that they're more interesting to play, that the players will have some favorites that they want to kind of go back to over time.
I think the long game is a perfect place to introduce a whole bunch of trade craft around dead drops and brush passes and encrypted comms and, you know, because you're not going to do that day to day and you'll see it, you know, in each, in each opera. But maybe, I don't know, maybe you can intersperse some things where you're having to just report on, like, you know, have the lab reports come back and you. To get that back to the handler. And I don't know, there's just ways to inject more of that in the long game I think, than there is the, the short game.
I do think that the long game also gives you more ability to mess with the players, player characters around, like surrealistic horror, that sort of thing. The whole idea of, you finished Impossible landscapes, John, I've had this, this thought like, you know, you know your sister, right? Well, you've since discovered your sister never existed.
You never had a sister. And when you go back to the birth records, like she, you know, that's the case, but you have all these memories. So I think the surreal horror thing, as their sanities get lower and lower and you're trying to portray the dementia that they're experiencing, there's things you can take that would otherwise be the moorings. They have to keep them grounded. A bond no longer exists. Whatever it might be, I think the long game can lean well into that as you get into the later stages of the game sort of thing. So the last thing I would go into here is I do have like, how do you finish one of these campaigns, right?
And I think there's some advice in the Handler's Guide around this. It can be cataclysmic, it can be, you know, it's a carcosa kind of thing. It can be the end of the world, frankly. There's some Call of Cthulhu adventures I've read that are basically, if you fail, it's the end of the world.
That's it, it's all over.
But I think the other things that when you're closing the game out, especially if you're doing something like Impossible Landscapes, which is one big campaign, don't forget the cleanup, don't forget all the loose ends you've created over the course of the whole adventure. So you're revisiting places and people that you're now worried about, know too much, etc, right?
Then you get into the whole thing around where Delta Green can look into your just recently closed out opera to make sure that you've done that properly. And there may be a, you, you know, this, this, this woman over here, this TV reporter that you met, she's not keeping quiet like you thought she was. So now you have to go back out and you can kind of keep that, keep that rolling kind of thing, right?
I think that's it.
Oh, oh. I just have one, one parting thought to finish a campaign. I wouldn't be afraid to visit the agents like, like years later.
So in other words, you've almost retired, but you can finish out the game by having something catch up with them, with having the program reel them back in or the program finally moved to eliminate them. Like there's all kinds of stuff you can do. You know, games people often do like an epilogue to a role playing game when they finish a set of sessions. There's lots you can do with Delta Green because you can get into the. They're out of the asylum now or they're still in the asylum. Like my character from your Possible Landscapes game. The last time we saw Agent Maya, she was locked up in Dorchester house, right? So how long she been there? We could, you know, it kind of even gets into if you want to do another follow on campaign.
If there's, you know, maybe people have recovered, they got maybe, maybe 20 points of sanity back and they're back in the field.
There's stuff you can do. There's stuff you can do.
Yeah. What else? I feel like we're forgetting stuff, but.
[01:35:38] Speaker B: But, hey, well. And if we are, throw us a grenade.
[01:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Let us know.
[01:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah. If you've run a long campaign, be interested to know what your experience has been and what. How you've planned it out. And if there's a little subtle nuance that you've taken yourself to. To pull it off, we'd be interested in knowing. So throw us a grenade at
[email protected] or phone one in at 929. Big. Nice parting words, Harrigan.
[01:36:11] Speaker A: No kind of a rambling discussion today, but I, you know, always fun.
Like you said.
Drop us a line if you got something that you. That we missed or something obvious that we're. We're missing about the long game or anything else.
We have a few more. I think we have a few more episodes in the can. Not in the can. A few more episodes on the planning deck for Delta Green. But I think we're starting to approach sort of the. The landing pad for this and for the end of season two, correct?
[01:36:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
Okay, cool.
[01:36:41] Speaker A: I have. Don't have anything else.
[01:36:43] Speaker B: All right. On behalf of Harrigan and myself, this has been an episode of Go Bag. Catch you on the next one. See ya.
This episode of Go Bag, produced with help from the following friendlies, field operatives, special agents and black ops directors.
Joe Swick, Roger French, Merkel Froilich, Tony Sugarloaf, Baker, Polish Ogre. Who's Carl Farty McMutterpants, Laramie Wall, Eileen Barnes, Hepto Lima, Aaron Railia, Wayne Peacock, Jeff Walken, Jorcus Rex, Eric Salzweedle, Phil McClory, Jason Hobbs, Michael Holland, Remy Billido, Crystal Eggstad, Eric Avia Fornak, Brian Kurtz, Chad Glamen, Jim Ingram, Orcas Dorcas, Chris Shorb, Brian Rumble, Victor Wyatt, Kevin Keneally, Andy Hall, Jason Weitzel, Salt Hart, Tad Lechtman, Nicholas Abruzzo, Matthew Catron, Curtis Takahashi, Angela Murray, Mr. White. White 20, Jason Connerly, Shannon Olson, Ryan West, Kristen McLean, Larry Hollis, Glenn Seal, Jake at Faded Quail, Grink, Jake at Faded Quill Gaming Test Trekkie, Tim Jensen Nubis, Christopher Lang, Qualog, Peter Skaines, Wendy Forcon, James Fraser, Ronald Durigible, Chaplin, Grimaldis and Mark Mequez. Thank you, operatives.
