/ysg/- Yog-Sothothery General - Delta Green Edition

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Just as a heads up, there's a tendency for direct links to mediafire and mega to get nuked. You may wish to obscure then via Pastebin or something.

So YSG, I ask thee, should I use Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green for my campaign? It's set first in the 70s, then there'll be a time jump to around 2003 or so. Most of the characters are pretty average-joe types, which is what makes me hesitate to use DG.

My plan is to have the game start with child characters who escape a minor Thing, probably a Mi-Go or something I made up. Later in life, they find themselves pursued by a group which has already kidnapped one of their number. The kidnappers are lead by one of the peripheral victims, perhaps a sibling of someone who dies in the first game and wants to confront the Thing.

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Sounds like you definitely wanna go CoC over DG.

DG and CoC6e are basically the same, DG is just a little more streamlined and does a sort of mix of the sanity mechanics from CoC and Unknown Armies which is nice for running games with time gaps or longer campaigns. On the flip side, the skill list is more tailored to military types and special agents rather than regular joes obviously but that's nothing a little PDF editing can't fix.

Bump

Cheers anons, I'll probably just go with CoC, thanks for reading my 1am rambling before I fell asleep

DO NOT

DIE ON

MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

So anons, what are your favourite locales to set games in?
I'm currently partial to far North Canada, Alaska and the European Artic. Have an old fortress in the vein of Nazi secret bases up in what would eventually be Nunavut -there's an island up there where what is believed to be the last remnants of an ancient human culture-Dorset, if you're interested- survived until around 1903.
In the game I'm working on, they're still there, they just went further North, faked much of their death and live as they have for thousands of years, as nomads who travel from underground (ice) bunker to bunker, known as kashim. Only in two circumstances do the Tuniit or Sadlermiut (their current names) ever disrobe: in the dark safety of their Kashima, and during the new moon of October. Those who remove their furs then will not be able to don then again until the spring.
Haven't decided what they look like under their clothes, but it's a play on the selkie myth. Any cool suggestions are welcome, I originally thought they might became sort of polar bears.

I don't have any suggestions for you, but your post did remind me of one user who posted a while ago (was it /ysg/ or some other thread?) detailing how he lives in Northern Canada in a small coastal town where strange things wash up on the beach and the town is hush hush about it... Anyone remember?

That does sound familiar, and it is definitely something I recall.
A friend of mine lives on the East coast and had said similar things

I'm pretty partial to Southeast Asia and classic Lovecraft Country but after running Cold Dead Hand recently I'd love to run something about the bit of Delta Green lore where the Soviets started uncovering ghoul colonies in Siberia.

What do you think about the new Delta Green rules?

There are a lot of mechanics that fall apart if you push them too hard or examine them under a microscope, but overall I prefer new DG to both old DG and new CoC.

Agreed, new Delta Green just seems like a great game all around.

Yeah, it's pretty freaky to think about. Didn't the user say he'd post pics at some point?

Yah I'm pretty sure the Deep Ones got him at this point.

On that note, a shameless bump for my North Canada game, any ideas and suggestions are welcome!

Anyone feel like summarizing the new Delta Green vs old DG & CoC?

Bump

Why are these always so dead?

we strange eons now

archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/53281203/
Suspect you mean this one.

Didn't show much of a reading on my spookometer but perhaps it will inspire some of you.

>CoC
Regular joes getting wrapped up in Mythos business. Usually set during the 1920s but there are sourcebooks for pretty much any time period. More suitable for "purist" Lovecraft gaming.

>Old DG
Secret government anti-paranormal organization turned defunct illegal conspiracy misappropriating government resources to combat Mythos business and other rival organizations. Originally created to address the problems that come with running a long CoC campaign

>New DG
DG is now both an official organization and an illegal conspiracy made up of former Agents who didn't want to come in from the cold. Most of the old rival organizations have either died off, splintered, or reorganized enough that they aren't as much of a threat as they were in the 90s and now the focus seems to be more on combatting isolated incidents of Mythos business and internal distrust. Comes with a very nice new set of rules that are basically a more narrative focused version of CoC 6e.

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Yeah I think that's one of the threads I've been looking for, thanks!

As a native Canadian with a lot of family and family friends who are immigrants on one side, then family who's been here further back than there are records on the other, I love Northern North America weird shit.

That's enormously helpful, thank you!

Are these games...fun?

I'm asking because I love HP Lovecraft and all the apocalyptic themes therein but I have only ever DM'd Dungeons and Dragons. Most of my group consists of fantasy dorks who haphazardly turn everything into a comedy. To make things worse, they will not read rule books although they pick up rules by playing pretty well. I just have an extra heavy burden of learning a new system and explaining it to them. Because of that, I favor rules light stuff.

My question is: is it possible to take these guys on a haunted Lovecraft ride? How do I get them out of Harmonquest mode and into The Thing? What system is best for these chuckleheads?

These games are all way lighter and easier to learn than D&D but these games come with a different set of roleplaying expectations to really "work". I've played Mythos games with serious roleplayers and more casual jokey groups and they've all been fun but at the end of the day these are high lethality horror games and your players aren't gonna be scared if they don't want to be and they're gonna be in for a pretty rude awakening if they go into it expecting to be able to get away with D&D level heroics.

The players have to be on board. They don't have to be serious all the time or "act scared", but they have to agree to play a character interested in solving a mystery.

Just like with D&D, where you are obliged to play a treasure hunting adventurer instead of a baker or a scribe.

I suggest a session zero.

what these anons said:
You need to set everyone on the same page and expectations beforehand, to make sure they understand what the game is going to be like. If they know and expect the game to be horror-based and not comedic antics-based, then you shouldn't have a problem.

Why is /ysg/ always dying? :'(

Sleeping user, never dead.

>After summer is winter, and after winter summer. They wait patient and potent, for here shall They reign again.

Finally this went available
chaosium.com/masks-of-nyarlathotep-companion-pdf/

/DG/ lore question:

Do the Outlaws even have a chance of lasting longer than the rest of the decade? After reading the Case Officer's Handbook, I've just got the impression that a DG Civil War sounds inevitable, and completely disastrous from the Outlaw's perspective.

The Outlaws have decentralization on their side as always. DG civil war would probably look a lot like how it did when MJ12 was the BBEG

The Outlaws are basically in the same place the Cowboys were in during the 70's/80's: an aging bunch of veterans who could be wiped out, but could cause chaos vastly disproportionate to the effort needed to do so. It only takes one lone old Agent to dump info on the internet.

I think the fact the DG mostly tackles Lone Wolves as opposed to huge organized groups puts it in the favor of The Outlaws surviving a little bit longer.

>open email from grizzled old Vietnam War veteran but loveable grampa
>"Re:Re:Re:Re: Don't open this email or else you'll go mad!"
>"Haha, good old gramps, always playin' jokes on us... OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK"

I thinnk that the Outlwas will survive only if they can get new recruits

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So in new DG

Is fucking everyone gone? PIECES, Skoptsi, Cult of Transcendence?

I don't want to run just fucking X-Files, you know? I want something genuinely scary and compelling, a long term plot.

I might do something involving esoterrorists

Officially Cult of Transcendence is splintered, Skoptsi is dead, PISCES is still around but I think DG is still keeping them at arms length. I know PISCES is gonna have its own book somewhere down the line so there's probably some shit still going on with them.

Right now the major threats are King in Yellow stuff, Tcho-Tcho, a reformatted GRU-SV8, and Delta Green's distrust of itself. The Fate is in a real bad way, Alzis bugged out of New York and is rumored to have set up somewhere in China, but they're also getting their own sourcebook later so who knows what's going on there.

As always, everything is the book is exactly as canon as you need it to be for your game.

Great ! But dear god, 41 euros for a pdf :/ Aside from that, the old cover was way better in my opinion

From what I remember when I skimmed through the Case Officer's Handbook manuscript they really cleaned house in terms of world spanning conspiracies and cults, either severely under powering them of knocking them off completely. It's a bummer because that's a lot of potential plot to flush down the drain but I kind of get why they did it. By the time the last old DG book was released MJ12 was basically supervillain tier and there was a secret government paranormal agency or major cult in almost every country that matters, if they'd kept all of those going for the past 15 years I'd have been surprised if new DG didn't end up being a series of gunfights with Mi-go and G-men in the streets every session.

To be fair, it's apparently over 700 pages. The only thing I'm concerned about is whether or not there will ever be print versions for sale, I hate using pdfs.

Shit I forgot that's around 80-90 in Burgerbucks I retract my statement.

All of the non-KS copies are sold out already. Half sold at UKGE, half sold on DriveThru RPG in under 3 hours.

They know they're sitting on a goldmine but they are also bound by Kickstarter promises to never make it available again (huge fucking mistake) and the Chaosium licensing agreement

Original user who posted Tbh, I also read the case officers handbook as well. It was pretty fucking disappointing; Delta Green has become stronger and more organised or at least a portion of it has, most big cults are dead, dunno a thing about GRU and PIECES, my second favourite DG antagonist, feels smaller.

Why does new DG feel so much safer?

It kinda is in the sense that it isn't a bunch of domestic terrorists running around without any kind of sanction.
To be honest, I'm glad they wiped out the bigger, more obvious cults. The Cult of Transcendence was particularly dumb.
There's a sort of progressing rivalry between GRU and DG which Dennis uses to explain the Russian election hacking meme. We don't know much about PISCES yet.
I think this is the "humans are the real monsters" edition. There's still a lot to do with cleaning up MJ-12/Fate loose ends.

The Outlaws, as they are now, will fail. That's baked into the writing. There's a desperate, angry, scared man in charge who has been put by chance in a position he has no means of fulfilling. He is far and away the most accomplished combatant-killer they have, but simply not equipped to lead and control the mission in front of him - and he knows it. But his terror at being in charge is eclipsed on by his terror of anyone else doing it, and by the time someone genuinely suited comes along, Poe will only be willing to leave the job feet-first, leaving his replacement to pick up the pieces of an increasingly ad-hoc conspiracy.

Exactly like Reginald Fairfield before he died and Joe Camp took over.

That's the big thing about the Program and the Outlaws; it makes it clear just how utterly central Camp was to Delta Green, as a man actually capable of running a mythos conspiracy without cracking. And it also makes it clear that in the violence of transition, only the most capable agents managed to earn the right to define a new course - but most capable of killing and surviving, not most capable of leading.

Eventually some crisis will nearly break one of the Delta Greens, it will almost be destroyed, but out of the ashes will come someone actually equipped to handle it. And the pieces are all in place for the two to merge without ever realising it - as long as Poe and James die, and someone manifestly suitable impresses the back-office crew.

Split Delta Green is not sustainable for either and that's the point.

Shit is coming. You went from four massive books of stuff with three devoted solely to new content - don't be surprised that there's a quarter of the content. More major threats are coming.

Right now Delta Green's biggest threat is itself, because it is hopelessly divided and it has men utterly unsuited to their posts in charge, terrified of staying in charge but even more terrified of ever handing over.

CoT and the Fate were my least favourite parts of the previous enemies.

King in Yellow was the best. Tiger Transit/Skoptsi were cool and I really liked the idea of the Shub elements from TT getting into contact with Skoptsi and trying to plan a take over of TT.

Like, the fact DG is out of the cold now, while great, will really fuck up the tone if they can't make it feel like that really isn't much of a difference to the coming Apocalypse.

See, I didn't get that vibe. Because the new Adam, he's rock solid. At least one of the other A's is still alive and in charge. Plus, you have the cream of MJ mixing in with at least some of the cream from DG. It's not going to be a clusterfuck.

And the thing is, even if the Outlaws are caught, it's nowhere as grim a fate as what would happen to them if MJ caught them back in the day.

So the loss of MJ already really fucks up the stakes.

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How would you do lovecraftian fantasy without being a hack?

The fantasy races are all various breeds of human which were created through artificial selection from an eldritch precursor race

Don't make it heroic.

I've been considering running a short CoC for my usual group with a length of two to three sessions.

Any advice I should take running mythos game?

I think small heroic sacrifices is an important part which makes lovecraftian horror so great.
Sure; we're tiny insignificant beings that have no chance in hell to actually grasp the bigger picture; but I personally think it's the individual sacrifices in the face of such horrors that makes the genre so great!

Like the captain of the white ship; boldly going into the darkness of the abyss simply because of his wanderlust. Sure he ends up broken and changed, but he got to experience the other side!

Describe details; Smells, colours, feelings.
Never give summarized information.
Never say; "There is a dead guy in the room. He was the king."
Instead say; "The sudden course smell of iron hits your nose as you see the body laying face down on the floor." A precursory inspection will tell them there is a liquid congealing around his torso. It's his blood.

When I say "heroic" I mean "Don't make it D&D with Sandy Petersen's Mythos Creature Book replacing the Monster Manual". Heroic sacrifice is fine.

Seems like good advice in general.

Any pitfalls that I should try to avoid aside from summarizing?

This, more often than not the darkness of lovecraftian style horror and gritty fiction in general falls flat to me because the characters are so unlikeable

so who are some good authors to read expanding the mythos or who write similar cosmic horror, I know the "Expanded Universe" as it where is a bit hit or miss so i would like to know where to start.

Thomas Ligotti and Robert Chambers are my two go-to guys for excellent cosmic horror.

What are some good lovecraft/supernatural like TV shows to watch?

There's an old pilot episode floating around the internet for an BBC show that never got picked up called Rough Magik that was PISCES: The TV show in everything but name.

Also season one of True Detective is probably as close to a Delta Green show as we're ever gonna get.

What is the best module and why is it Beyond The Mountains of Madness

Yeah, I've been binging X-Files and Supernatural in preparation for my delta-green campaign.

I never knew True Detective had horrors, gotta get a look at it.

Can anyone recommend a good scenario for new investigators. I've got all the ones that come with the base materials (Keepers, Handbook, Quick Start), but I still want to run a few others to ease them into the roles.

A band of cultists ala Hot Fuzz with some Eldrich things lurking in the background

Not a bad idea. Could be that instead of wanting to be a good town, they have to sacrifice tourists and others to keep living.

It's arguable whether or not the horrors are legitimate but it's about two detectives, one with a failing marriage the other has become completely unsuitable for normal human interaction because of drug use and nihilism, who go off the books to hunt down a serial rapist/murderer who goes by "The Yellow King"

Season one is great, Season two follows different characters in a different location and is pretty boring and really unsatisfying by the end and you aren't missing anything by not watching it.

Stranger Things is an amazing lovecraftian story! Would heartily reccomend!

Dreamlands. Done.

Barring that? Personally I hate the "special snowflake" aspect of fantasy RP. I'd do it so players can only be a human with a "mundane" occupation that befits the setting. No classes imported from another system, no "adventurers' guilds" (re: lazy plot hooks). Furthest I'm willing to concede is one unique skill per player that makes sense for an ordinary human in an extraordinary setting

>Your pic related
I feel like there's a sense of humor in FFG Cthulhu products that I've found doesn't exactly translate back to CoC RPGs

Like there's always the traps that players get into, which are hilarious when you read to yourself. Then you try it in game, and you say "boy, you done fucked up," and you tell them in excruciating detail about their agonizing death/brainmelt, or their last moments before they were never seen or heard from again. And they just stare at you blankly and everyone's like "sorry bud" or "heh, glad I'm not you." Everyone's a good sport and it's still a good story but it's not actually funny to them.

Anyone know funny campaigns or have a funny story?

Full clarity of information and literal descriptions to Mythos occurances. Weird things should be kept weird, and the player's understanding of things should match the character's misunderstanding.

Don't heaitate to describe everything as if you have synesthesia. It is a great way to keep players interpretting information rather than cataloging it, if you describe a color as being like the buzzing of flies behind your ear or that a room smells like hollow laughter.

This 100%. Learning to describe things abstractly makes the game so much more horrific and really emphasizes the unknown aspect of it.

Please don't die

>Now neither of us will be virgins!

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Post horror monsters

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>Playing in two Delta Green games this weekend
>Potentially running one too if I can drum up enough interest

bump

how do you do horror pacing?

I usually try to make at least one completely mundane encounter as tense as possible before the real spooky stuff starts happening. One of the most on edge I ever had my players is when they were inspecting an empty camp site.

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