Delta green?

Anyone have experience playing it? anyone got the pdfs? is it fun?

Other urls found in this thread:

rpgnow.com/product/175760/Delta-Green-Need-to-Know
anydice.com/program/bfa7),
mediafire.com/download/3wewotnl3ns5vn3/CoC - DG - Rulebook - Delta Green Rulebook.pdf
mediafire.com/?njg3a0ne7v130
mediafire.com/download/f3ygcpda5cfitl7/CoC - DG - Rulebook - Countdown.pdf
dropbox.com/s/6vc7fuxg5n5jyfd/Delta Green Need to Know.pdf?dl=1
uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1461968691
drive.google.com/open?id=0B3puo-NNPA2bQVNTN2RlLURYX0E
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Just as a follow up, the Quickstart book 'Need to Know' is available at RPGNOW, it's pay what you want, so basically free if you don't feel like paying anything for it.

rpgnow.com/product/175760/Delta-Green-Need-to-Know

cheers m8

Why does Delta Green use a d100 when everything is in increments of 5% and 10%? They should just use a d20 if they aren't going to utilize the d100's granularity.

Maybe for compatibility reasons, being able to use old material for it would be a good reason to keep it that way

Does the older material make full use of the d100's granularity? I haven't ever read Delta Green before and wanted to see what the hub-bub's about. Sadly, not impressed.

Point would be, if you want to play some old case you don't want to calculate all the new stats for creatures and characters and whatever. Working with 5% increments allows you to do just that, being retrocompatible without effort, while simplifying the game creation.
So switching to d20 would draw a line on whoever wanted to play the old cases to put an extra effort to do so.

Because rolling doubles below your skill is a crit and doubles above is a fumble. Skills increase by 1% if they are used inbetween scenarios and when taking time to train them they increase 1d10%

I'm not sure where you're getting the 5/10% stuff from user

it's not in 5% increments dummy, look up how skills advance.

I don't find 1% increments a meaningful impact on something as swingy as a d100, and neither do the developers. All bonuses and penalties come in +/-20% and +/-40% sizes, and all characters are built with initial skill levels that are multiples 5 and 10, e.g. 80%, 55%, etc. Rolling a d10 for skill improvement and the checkbox for failing a skill is the only place in the system outside of an enemy's statblock, where a number that isn't divisible by 5 is used.

Also, why do stats have no impact on skills? You'd think that someone with better base stats would have it easier learning or using skills logically tied to that attribute, like INT for SIGINT or something.

Am I understanding opposed rolls right? You need to roll both under your skill and higher than whoever you're opposing? Why not use degrees of success and keep low roll = good like the rest of the system? What happens if you tie?

Assuming I did the math rigtht (anydice.com/program/bfa7), using this opposed roll system, the enemy at the back of the book only has a 22.5% chance of actually injurying McMarty, and the untrained Karmaroff evades injury 40% of the time. That's not really scary, is it?

>I don't find 1% increments a meaningful impact on something as swingy as a d100

Then why the fuck were you whining that the game 'doesn't use the D100's granularity'

>Also, why do stats have no impact on skills? You'd think that someone with better base stats would have it easier learning or using skills logically tied to that attribute, like INT for SIGINT or something.

If you want INT tied to skill gain, play the old school Fallouts and you'll realize why this is a bad idea

>Am I understanding opposed rolls right? You need to roll both under your skill and higher than whoever you're opposing? Why not use degrees of success and keep low roll = good like the rest of the system?

Nowhere else in the system is 'low roll=good'. You always want to roll as high as possible without going over your skill

>Assuming I did the math rigtht (anydice.com/program/bfa7), using this opposed roll system, the enemy at the back of the book only has a 22.5% chance of actually injurying McMarty, and the untrained Karmaroff evades injury 40% of the time. That's not really scary, is it?

If you think 'scary' automatically means 'high percentage chance to hit' then I'm glad you're not designing games

>Anyone have experience playing it?

Yes

>Old DG

>Delta Green 6th edition - mediafire.com/download/3wewotnl3ns5vn3/CoC - DG - Rulebook - Delta Green Rulebook.pdf
>CoC Delta Green - mediafire.com/?njg3a0ne7v130
>Countdown - mediafire.com/download/f3ygcpda5cfitl7/CoC - DG - Rulebook - Countdown.pdf

>New DG

>Need to Know - dropbox.com/s/6vc7fuxg5n5jyfd/Delta Green Need to Know.pdf?dl=1
>Agent's Handbook - uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1461968691
>Case Officer's Handbook Preview drive.google.com/open?id=0B3puo-NNPA2bQVNTN2RlLURYX0E

>is it fun?

Yes, I like it a lot. It has rules problems, although the ones people are talking about here
are actually irrelevant during play.

>Then why the fuck were you whining that the game 'doesn't use the D100's granularity'
Because it only uses large modifiers. I'd like to see them really try to flex the d100, rather than big +20% during a session or little +1% after a session.

>If you want INT tied to skill gain, play the old school Fallouts and you'll realize why this is a bad idea
I was asking why stats have no impact on skills, i.e. INT + SIGINT = final number to roll under, or DEX + Dodge = final number to roll under, or CHA + Persuade = final number to roll under.

>Nowhere else in the system is 'low roll=good'. You always want to roll as high as possible without going over your skill
Such as? I only see opposed rolls and stat/skill rolls, the later mostly ignoring d100 results outside of criticals. You certainly don't want to roll high for Lethality. There's no benefit to rolling high for SAN loss, or for bonds.

>If you think 'scary' automatically means 'high percentage chance to hit' then I'm glad you're not designing games
So you're not going to comment on the probabilities here meaning that a monster that can be killed has a difficult time killing others? Something that can't physically hurt me certainly isn't as scary as something that can. You'd think "Decades of experience or a grad degree" in unarmed combat would mean they're a tad more threatening than a 60% chance of punching a 46 year old physician.

Just admit you don't like D% systems then, because the system definitely uses the granularity of it. Bonus and penalties are also not limited to multiples of 5.

>Also, why do stats have no impact on skills? You'd think that someone with better base stats would have it easier learning or using skills logically tied to that attribute, like INT for SIGINT or something.

Mostly to stop them from mattering too much I think, characters get fucked up pretty easily and their stats can end up in the shitter. They also get used for catch-alls outside of skills.

>Am I understanding opposed rolls right? You need to roll both under your skill and higher than whoever you're opposing? Why not use degrees of success and keep low roll = good like the rest of the system? What happens if you tie?

The rest of the system uses the same thing, where higher but under rolls are better, it just doesn't matter as much outside of those checks. Ties go to the defender/status quo IIRC.

Active defense is your action, it's not automatic, which is why it's pretty powerful. You also can't actually dodge gunfire, just get in cover if its there. Someone getting shot at without any cover near has no active defenses.

>Why does Delta Green use a d100 when everything is in increments of 5% and 10%? They should just use a d20 if they aren't going to utilize the d100's granularity.

>I haven't ever read Delta Green

Which is it, faggot? Why are you complaining about it if you haven't read it?

Nice quads.

>Just admit you don't like D% systems then, because the system definitely uses the granularity of it.
I don't, but I still like reading systems to see how they do things. I'm not seeing granularity here, though. +1% to a skill you failed in a session, +20% for things like Aim/appropriate gear/attacking a pinned target. There's a real disparity here between the two. The small increments add up to something meaningful after five or so sessions, or fewer with training.

>Bonus and penalties are also not limited to multiples of 5.
Right, they're in +/-20% and +/-40%.

>Mostly to stop them from mattering too much I think, characters get fucked up pretty easily and their stats can end up in the shitter. They also get used for catch-alls outside of skills.
I guess. I don't really like the style of play where attributes don't have an effect on skills, but if they can be permanently damaged it's probably for the best, otherwise you'd be recalculating your sheet every few sessions.

>You also can't actually dodge gunfire, just get in cover if its there. Someone getting shot at without any cover near has no active defenses.
I feel like you should still be able to hit the dirt or something, although that really only buys a turn of life, but it might be what you need to survive.

>Active defense is your action, it's not automatic, which is why it's pretty powerful.
I've never liked this style of defending, it always feels so fake. People try to avoid getting hit by default. I do like counterattacking beind an option, though, since it makes it less like people only avoid getting hit and can't do anything in a combat or attacking without any consideration for their own personal safety.

I'm reading the quickstart rules for the first time. Hence why I said "I haven't ever read Delta Green before" and was asking about the older material (what I didn't read) as opposed to the newer material (the quickstart rules).

>I've never liked this style of defending, it always feels so fake. People try to avoid getting hit by default.

Which is why you have to "roll to hit" in the first place. If someone wasn't trying to avoid getting hit, you'd have a 100 percent chance to hit. Even a totally untrained guy can hit a stationary, man-sized object with a baseball bat.

The problem I have with that is that it doesn't take your individual's skills into account. 50% to hit is 50% to hit Kamaroff and 50% to hit McMurty, one of which is a physician who hasn't had any combat training, and the other is ex-specops. You'd think the latter would naturally be harder to hit without him having to forgo his action.

>Even a totally untrained guy can hit a stationary, man-sized object with a baseball bat.
This is actually not true, as so many youtube videos can proof.

>I feel like you should still be able to hit the dirt or something, although that really only buys a turn of life, but it might be what you need to survive.

Attacks represent multiple bullets, you'd just get shot on the ground.

>I've never liked this style of defending, it always feels so fake. People try to avoid getting hit by default.

They are, that's why you roll to hit. Targets not capable of defending themselves are usually hit or something crit automatically. I should note that if you attack in melee you use that roll to defend yourself from melee attacks that turn.
It doesn't really matter how skilled you are, you aren't fast enough to dodge a bullet.

Rules problems that have actually come up over a couple months of playing/running the game

>The bond system is overloaded, taking the place of a character's social network, finances, resources and job
>The double tap rules mean that shooting someone twice with a rifle does more damage than emptying the magazine into them
>The rules for recreating bonds mean that, if your sanity is low, you're better off letting a bond hit 0 and then trying to reestablish it with a CHA*5 test, rather than trying to salvage it by maintaining responsibility
>The interrogation rules are an opposed Persuade test. Instead of rolling POW*5 or Sanity to resist torture, you roll Persuade (to ask them nicely to stop?)
>The initiative rules mean that if you have a lot of characters with the same Dexterity, they all act simultaneously. This causes a clusterfuck as the GM has to adjudicate exactly what happens when
>Too many mechanics rely on characters having obscure skills. Creating faked documents uses the "Craft: Forgery" skill, as does identifying them. Thus, almost nobody can create forged documents, but if you can do it, nobody will ever catch you
>The agent's book gives bad advice about what stats to invest in. "Combat characters" need high DEX, but all the backgrounds suggest CON and STR instead
>Most of the published adventures have a mandatory shootout somewhere in them. If nobody in your party is kitted out for a fight, this can be a game ender, as one person shooting first with an automatic weapon can end a fight before it begins. Note that this is a problem with old school Call of Cthulhu as well, see Masks of Nyarlathotep
>The rules for activating and repressing mental disorders require the player to make the exact same SAN test three times in a row
>A bunch of other stuff that would take this post over the character limit

Rules problems that have not come up

>Everything else people are arguing about in this thread

Having played some DG I agree with all of this.

FUCKING BUMP

I can't wait for the Case Officer's book. I've got a mini-campaign to drag my players through, but I always want more ideas to make them suffer. Does anyone have a useful repository of DG style stuff outside of their shotgun scenarios, etc?

Stats impact on skills as they limit them. Max. skill score at character creation is stat x5.

The rule clearly states that you only roll if something is at stake or some risk is implied.

For example, the agents captured a cultist, brought him back in some safehouse for interrogation. For some reason they decide to bash his kneecaps with a baseball bat - no roll is needed.

Second example, the characters entered a cultist camp. As they hide in the shadow a guard passes them. Player A decided to take him out with a garrote to steal his clothes - roll is needed because on failure guard might alert the sleeping cultists.

Where in the book does it say this? Are you sure you aren't thinking of old DG?

>The bond system is overloaded, taking the place of a character's social network, finances, resources and job
The character's resources is mainly dictated by his job and his ability to secure resources (usually with the Bureaucracy skill).

>The double tap rules mean that shooting someone twice with a rifle does more damage than emptying the magazine into them
Double tapping is basically performing to separate attacks. Armor is deducted from each attack. With a rifle it would be 1d12 - armor plus 1d12 - armor.
Full-auto inflicts Kill Damage which has 10% chance of immediately killing each target within the area of effect (from 1 to 3m with small arms). If the targets don't get killed from that, the attack still inflicts 2d10 damage - armor to each. Even if the target doesn't get killed, it might get pinned down and lose sanity.
I agree that full-auto covers mostly suppressive fire and that a rule for short controlled bursts is missing. Nonetheless, considering that humans have usually 8 to 15 Hit Points, double tap and full-auto are both pretty lethal. Also, keep in mind the roll only if it matters. If you're executing prisoners, you shouldn't have to roll for damage.

>The initiative rules mean that if you have a lot of characters with the same Dexterity, they all act simultaneously.
That's not such a problem. It happens in many other games, too.

>Most of the published adventures have a mandatory shootout somewhere in them. If nobody in your party is kitted out for a fight, this can be a game ender,
The solution is simple: Don't play published adventures. Also, shootouts are deadly, especially if you fall in an ambush, unprepared. Finally, all experienced CoC player will tell you that you should always play a character who can handle himself in a fight.

>as one person shooting first with an automatic weapon can end a fight before it begins.
If you lay down an ambush you don't expect getting wiped out.

>Double tapping is basically performing to separate attacks. Armor is deducted from each attack. With a rifle it would be 1d12 - armor plus 1d12 - armor.

Carbines firing intermediate cartridges have 3 AP. Rifles firing full caliber rounds do D12+2 armor and have 5 AP. For a target to take more damage from 2D10 than D12+2-armor plus D12+2-armor it would need quite a bit of armor. There's also the fact that most monsters are immune to the instant kill effect of lethality (at least going by the preview material from the handler's book)

Best Call of Cthulhu setting. Convergence is a classic scenario that will almost always end in a TPK.

I take issue with only three things.

>>The double tap rules mean that shooting someone twice with a rifle does more damage than emptying the magazine into them
Actually double tapping is better on average than any attack so long as your firearms skill is 40+, but mostly: it's in a big sidebar labelled "OPTIONAL RULES". Just don't use the optional rule for double taps at your table.

>The rules for recreating bonds mean that, if your sanity is low, you're better off letting a bond hit 0 and then trying to reestablish it with a CHA*5 test, rather than trying to salvage it by maintaining responsibility
Wrong. Creating a new bond is EASIER, but the cost is higher; creating a new bond saps 1d4 from another bond. Now, as long as your CHA is higher than 9 this trade will work in your favor...so long as you never burn bonds during play ever again.

>The interrogation rules are an opposed Persuade test. Instead of rolling POW*5 or Sanity to resist torture, you roll Persuade (to ask them nicely to stop?)
Or, roll persuade to convince them you know nothing/are telling the truth? I agree it's a little odd but it's not unreasonable.

>The agent's book gives bad advice about what stats to invest in. "Combat characters" need high DEX, but all the backgrounds suggest CON and STR instead
No, the book gives advice on what stats would serve that profession in an in-game context. It's not mechanical char op advice, it's "a soldier would have good str/con because that's literally the job requirement"

Dang! You're right. I forgot the AP value of rifle rounds.

This discussion leads to the question of how much detail is needed in the combat system of a game that puts the emphasize on investigation and interpreting clues rather than combat?
Cyberpunk 2020 for example is a game which often emphasizes combat. Therefore, it requires a detailed combat system - it has rules for single shot/semi-auto fire, auto-burst, full-auto on specific targets, and suppressive fire.
Does CoC/DG really need that much detail? The authors thought no and so do I, but I'm also the kind of guy who has no problem making a house rule should I find something missing. If anyone wants more granularity because they want to turn classic DG into Rainbow Six: Delta Green, just do it - you're the DM of your group. Feel free to make differences between 5.56x45mm, .300 Black Out, 6.5mm Grendel, or between an Aimpoint Micro T-1, an EOTech 553 and a Trijicon TA01NSN ACOG.

>The agent's book gives bad advice about what stats to invest in.
First rule of a Delta Green operative: "Never trust anyone. Not even the Agent's Handbook."

>Does CoC/DG really need that much detail? The authors thought no

If so then they shouldn't have written so many adventures that end with a firefight. It's clear that "going loud" is intended to be a part of the game.

About that, how does it compare to Trail of Cthulhu? Do ToC also end the investigations that way?

Can't really say. The only published Trail campaign I've ever played was a conversion of Beyond the Mountains of Madness. We ended up going in a very different direction with the ending than the scenario designers intended, skipping the climactic battle scene entirely. But that module wasn't written for trail to begin with, so it doesn't count.

It's clear from reading the rules though that combat is even less a part of Trail than Delta Green though. Monsters are suitably deadly, but if you actually run them by the book, shootouts are almost silly. The way the damage values work, both sides end up chipping away at one another's health bullet by bullet. Automatic weapons merely grant a small improvement to chance to hit, and the biggest gun you can get your hands on will knock off two HP more than a .38 special.

For the one shootout at the end, I find the system sufficient. Like I said, if anyone wants more detail, he can make some house rules.

Depends on the scenario. Masks of Nyarly is pulpy as fuck and, I'm told, consists in large part of jetsetting around the globe, kicking in doors and blasting cultists - but I haven't personally played it.

I am familiar with The Friday Group, a four-part mini campaign in the style of Tales from the Crypt. I've run it twice.TFG is extremely purist, and the only fights that occur are the ones that the investigators themselves decide to start.

Love it! I have run Convergence about 4 times now for different groups and I enjoyed it every time. My favorite was when I ran it for just two players, that were going in Mulder and Scully style

>Depends on the scenario. Masks of Nyarly is pulpy as fuck and, I'm told, consists in large part of jetsetting around the globe, kicking in doors and blasting cultists - but I haven't personally played it.

I'm pretty sure that's Call of Cthulhu, not Trail. Is there a conversion?

>Does the older material make full use of the d100's granularity?
It's based on Call of Cthulhu, so yes.

Yes.

The majority of. ToC content is converted CoC stuff.

I'll stay away from the systems argument (because I'm the weirdo that likes CoC d20) but to me DG is primarily about two things:

>1) The enemy is human, and their motivations are human
While you can find scenarios where it's just the PCs against some random Mythos gribbly or some shitty cult, the enemies in DG are more than just robed assholes trying to bring Squiggly Tentacle Monster into this world so that it can devour all, robed assholes first. In DG enemies have perfectly understandable human motivations, even if they're otherwise horrible or petty. Look at the major enemy factions from the corebook: MJ-12 has several strains of thought going on, from the more patriotic minded types that either want to kick the 'aliens' out of the US or justify the Accord on account of the advantage it gives America over the world, to the shitty assholes that just want money or longer life. The Fate is a major player in New York's underground, both the criminal mundane and the occult, has both arcane might and the rationality to use it and what does it do? It sets up protection rackets, it kills people for hire. The defacto leader is a Servant of Glaaki defined by his need to remain as human as possible and keep away from Mythosy crap. The closest thing to the traditional Call of Cthulhu cult is the Karotechia, who are fucking Nazis - not even neo-Nazis, just a bunch of WW2 morons and their goons fighting a war lost over 70 years back. Their motivations aren't incomprehensible to PCs; the horror comes from their use of Mythos tools to work their petty ends.

(Cont)

>2) It's about the slow breakdown
Call of Cthulhu, being as lethal as it is, has a problem with it but DG isn't really about just "hey, PC is dead, roll a new one." PCs are ground down by the things they experience when at the Opera. Consider people in the real world that work in serious counter-terrorism or stuff like child abuse: their marriages and relationships suffer because of the bad shit they see that they can't really talk to others not involved about. And this is legal work, while the stuff DG gets up to is frankly illegal. Remember, the enemies are human, and the Squiggly Tentacle Monster cultist still has rights and people that might notice his disappearance when the PCs feed him to a wood chipper. And coworkers and loved ones notice the strange wounds PCs take when they go out hiking/to a friend's funeral/supposedly in bed because of the flu. It piles up, the killings and the dark truths, and it should fray the PCs.And when the heat is on their back, DG can only do so much - a pistol with a single bullet in the end. Less "lose d100 SAN," more death of a thousand cuts.

dg bump

This is why I never liked all that shit about the "Cult of Transcendence". An Illuminati organization led by Nyarlathotep trying to destroy the earth and bring about the end times totally doesn't fit with the rest of the setting. It was all just too campy. A lot of the lore with Majestic 12, especially the "grays" and "the accord" also verged on that.

One thing I'm very wary about in the new DG is that, in a reddit AMA, the devs said the new 'recurring villains' would be the Great Race of Yith and the Lloigor. The Migo being the main villain was something I never liked much about old DG, and this seems even worse. Metaplots in RPGs are bad enough without a fucking Temporal Cold War storyline.

Bumperooni

Also, check 'em

Holy crap it worked!

I mean, basic CoC is campy as hell already, and while I love DG it is an extremely '90s type of setting. The MJ-12 thing looks corny as hell to our jaded, post 9/11 eyes, but back then stuff like X-Files and Millennium was part of the cultural zeitgeist.

As for the Yithians, I assume they'll take the Future/Perfect interpretation of them, which was actually kinda neat and set them as an 'other' power, of the Mythos but not quite part of them. No idea how the Lloigor fit into that, however.

I thought the last act of Future/Perfect was the worst part by far. Everything in it was designed to negate the actions of the player, and to railroad them down a specific path. It's a microcosm of why I don't like the Great Race or find them interesting - they're better as something out of a short story than an RPG where the players have some pretense of control over their own actions.

It's sadly not uncommon for DG adventures to do that. The New Age in the corebook explicitly said that the PC's actions did absolutely nothing in the long run since the Mi-Go had no intention of actually dooming the world.