Yog Sothothery /ysg/

...

Ideas for a pirate themed 1700 oneshot?

I have a couple but I'm interested in what would you want so in such an adventure.

Something like The Fog would be fun. Other things that I would like for cosmicism on the high seas:
>Shipewrecked in the Dreamlands (or some cyclopean lost island)
>Raid on a shipping vessel leads to some occult artifacts. Cursed Pirates time.
>A storm takes the ship to the Arctic. Survive. Oh, and you find a cult.
>A strange algae/barnacle is spreading up past the waterline on the ship. A cabin boy has gone missing. Deckhands are keeping secrets.
>The captain of the ship you've joined is weirdly slimy for a pirate. Palid, too. And you've never heard of where you're going.

>So how's the new delta green book? I liked the rules in the sampler they gave us but haven't read the full release yet.
Linking the draft, again.

>>The captain of the ship you've joined is weirdly slimy for a pirate. Palid, too. And you've never heard of where you're going.
With the party I usually play it will end up with. Firsy 5 minutes: we are taking control of the ship, and kill anyone who isn't with us.

So, are there any movies which properly handle lovecraftian horror? I have Alien and The Thing so far

And that is when it turns out that you've arrived, run aground, and the captain was the only one with any knowledge about where you are now stranded!

A great deal of that requires clarification. Because when people say "Lovecraftian Horror" there are about a dozen and green different interpretations of what that means.

Are you asking about spoopy unknowable monsters?
The infinite meaninglessness of human endeavors?
Facts that exist so far outside of human understanding that to learn them is to shatter the very fabric of your mind?
Never trust the ghosts of long dead relatives that look just like you?

You could just wing it in that whoever is the captain of the ship (which would be the players if they mutinied) are contractually bound to some eldritch entity to make periodical trips to their realm of mindfuckery.

I Miss the cooking oft children, great regional tradition, fucking sjw's took it away.

>aborting kids: ay okay
>eating the leftovers: problematic

Fucking Tumblr man

you interrupt a deep one religious ceremony

Hey, I'm in a similar situation as , except I've never ran a game before. I got some good advice from the last thread, but I wouldn't mind some more.
>will run Last Things Last
>have Baughman's apartment and cabin made in roll20(we're separated by some distance, so it's kind of necessary) so I don't have to solely rely on my amateur descriptive skills
>have places both the apartment and cabin in real places I'm actually familiar with
>players overall are Group, but one is a mole for the Program
>also plan on having some Program guys follow them

Currently I'm planning out hooks to put in the footlocker.

The Mponeng Gold Mine in South Africa suddenly and unexpectedly tunnels through the roof of K'n-yan.
cracked.com/article_24792_6-insane-workplaces-that-put-your-dumb-office-to-shame.html

>tfw I have a bunch of scenarios planned and I'm really excited to run a game of Delta Green, but my players can never organize a time when we are all free to play

I GM'd a two year long campaign of sandbox Delta Greeen. Ask me anything. Pic unrelated but useful

I'm so I kind of don't even know what I should be asking. Any advice?

Tell me what you think you can't handle ? Tell me what you alreadfy have. tell me where you want to go with your game

>>Tell me what you think you can't handle
I'm not entirely sure how I'll do with my players doing stuff on the fly, like stuff I haven't really anticipated. Which I'm confident they're going to do.
>>Tell me what you already have.
I have both Baughman's apartment and cabin designed, I have handouts detailing the operation, Baughman's family history, and the standing orders. I also have a handout for the Program mole specifically giving him an objective. And I have 5 things in the footlocker already.
>sawed off shotgun
>old flak jacket with a map in one of the pockets
>audio reel tape that I modified a bit from the suggestion in the book
>A folder filled with corporate info on that company also detailed in the book, modified a bit for what I would like to do with it
>And an old book that may or may not be De Vermis Mysteriies.

>>Tell me where you want to go with your game
Ultimately I just want tell a story, about some people confronted by a potentially terrible choice that would ultimately be the "right" thing. I'd also like to see how I do running a game, and if things go well, develop it until a whole campaign.

Bump.

I run a online DG open table and we can always use more people running games. I started it because I was in the same position as you: I had more content prepared than I could ever run with my existing group

Bumpity bump.

Post movies that could be Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green scenarios

Pretty on the nose, but certainly this.

These are pretty cool. Source?

I think there's not that much of the usual "doomed thirst for knwoledge" Lovecraft flick.

youtube.com/watch?v=HURzsrZjTm8
Not a movie, but it screams Delta Green scenario

Are you suggesting their pirates should be seeking the real treasure? The friendships they made on the way?

Alternately that is supposed to be to a different post. But personally I think that most Clive Barker stories-turned-movies do a reasonable job of having a thirst for knowledge end questionably at best.

oh shit, Hastur's nearby

Has anyone else here played Cthulhu Dark? I've run some pretty creepy games with it.

Bump.

Nah, I'm just thinking about the idea. I'm not sure how one could really do a pirates pirating + Chtulhu if being faithful to HPL. I think you could easily do a Ahab idea, oddly enough, a captain of a ship like an exploration ship that is slightly obssessed with something a tiny bit stranger than a whale or a lost island (and the officers might well be the PCs, even), but pirates? They'll go full walk the plank on the madman.

Oddly enough the original Alone in the Dark did it... by putting pirates as backstories.

A bit unconventional, but I think this could actually work, the twist is exactly the kind of thing that would throw Delta Green agents off

Just watched this on your recommendation. This is absolutely a perfect example or a 1-2 session scenario.

Though not a movie, the first season of True Detective would be a great CoC campaign as well.

Most of the hooks you can give can easily be formatted so that the choice to plank the madman is the wrong choice and they only feel the repercussions later. You have to frame it like a news article and work backward. Or a letter. The same way a lot of Lovecraft's stories were formatted. His stories are end points. You fuck everyone over with the in between.

...

Basically anything that is directly out of a Clive Barker story.

Rawhead Rex
Hellraiser
Hellraiser II
Nightbreed
Candyman
Lord of Illusions
The Midnight Meat Train
Book of Blood

Especially with the reference to The Void and Thing. Given that The Void is basically what I think a Carpenter/Barker collaboration would probably look like. A lot of Carpenter works (specifically the Apocalypse Trilogy and They Live) would work really well, too. At least as jumping points.

A few others for things that aren't quite as mainstream:

The Objective
Devil's Pass
Outpost
Deathwatch
The Bunker
Deep Rising

Any tips on how to write DG scenarios? I've read Detwiller's tips and everything else I can find, but I'm still not any good at brewing up a story. (Also - want to share any of your writing here? I'm looking for any content I can get my hands on.)

How do you sandbox a game of DG?
>How many PC's?
>What was the plot?
>How did it all end?

Sure thing

Here are a couple of mine

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

...

First this
palinola.com/projects/lab/greenbox/

It's good that you prepared some stuff, cause the only thing your player will do is everything except what you preprared. They will search everycontainer but the footlocker and go everywhere but the apartment. Here's the trick : anything leads to your notes, always. Let them search two ro three container then give them the content you want. The "footlocker" part is the least important thing. Same goes for everything : give them the impresssion that a good search always pays off, while running the story like you prepared at the same time.

Do try to get your player to do the "right thing". Eveybody askthem that all day and all night eveywhere. They are here to play a game, try stuff, be someone else and in the end, make mistakes. Just make sure they see and feel what they have done. Ultimately, they can only do the "right" thing, since you decide the outcome. Sacrfice the guy : cthulhu stay asleep. Don't sacrifice the guy : Cthulhu awaken but it's not Cthulhu, it's a star spawn, that eats the arm of him, hit her a good 17SAN then fly back to the star, leaving the PCs with a bigger picture and wet pants.

Could use a better title for this one

This one I haven't run yet

For 4 to 8 players, we chew about 20 PC in two years i think.
The plot was that something went wrong during a operation and the team was sent from 1994 to 2014. Delta Green was gone and they had to find out how and why. And eventually go back.
It ended with only ONE agent from the original team and another one, on a greek island in 1756, hiding their notes of the future, until Alphonse find them, read them, and kill himself, triggering the whole stuff again.

We wrote down almost everything, but it's in french.

Same with this one

And this one

I will be running Call of Cthulhu with my group who are all very familiar with the rules.
They will play as your sort of "average joe" character who for one reason or another finds themselves driving on a very secluded road in Northern Alberta, the weather will quickly prove too much for the vehicles and they will have to pull over or walk to the only building for miles, a small ol timey diner.
From there I was going to have your average creepy patrons, Gross & greasy diner owner, old nearly blind lady, young supple waitress who always looks around nervously, pampered jewish lawyer, old native man in a military jacket who reeks of alcohol and urine, & a fat arrogant greedy cop.
The Diner patrons will be snowed in, they will also quickly realize there is little food, and what they do have seems to be expired or moldy. They will also hear howls from a pack of hungry wolves who will only get closer. When they sleep they will dream of being chased by these wolves, only to have them change into a decrepit bony white creature when it pounces upon them (some PCs may escape the dream creature, those that do not will think they are going insane, or suffering from wendigo sickness which will be brought up throughout). The lights and generator will go out and some brave soul will have to travel to the rotten wooden shed out back to fix it, what they encounter out there will shake them to the core.

Im have yet to tie in the last bits but im hoping to centralize the story around a Wendigo who may or may not be the native diner patron, and the diner may or may not be on an indian burial ground.

>Any tips for trying to tie this all together?
>Anything I should add or change?
>Any ideas of how I can hint at the native being connected to the wendigo? Or how the diner is on a native burial ground?
>How could I create suspense with this?

>Ultimately I just want tell a story, about some people confronted by a potentially terrible choice that would ultimately be the "right" thing. I'd also like to see how I do running a game, and if things go well, develop it until a whole campaign.
Making the creature escape after setting the dilemma up is even better if you ask me. It's even better for setting up a "sequel" leading to a campaign.
There's no logical way for the agents to actually be able to pull the gasoline dump trick off anyway as the creature has superhuman strength and agility; unless they can dump every jerrycan simultaneously it should be able to jump to the hatch and escape (after briefly attacking the agents). I did that with my group and it's been pretty successful.

Usually DG players tend to make the supposedly hard choice of murder very very easily (possible exception is players who are brand now to pnp RPGs period). The only time they might hesitate is when they have plenty of ambiguity and they're unable to tell whether they're going to be killing an innocent human or not. So you will want to set up a number of hints that imply that Baughman himself might have gone loony, and also plan various dialogues with the creature ahead so that she sounds convincing.

Absentia, AM1200, The Borderlands (Final Prayer as shitty alt title), Cure, In the Mouth of Madness, The Last Wave, The Void, Phantoms, YellowBrickRoad, Blair Witch Project, Prince of Darkness are my nominations.

I hear The Endless, recently showed in Tribeca(?) is fantastic but it's not commercially out yet.

>kriegaffe

Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms, yo.

>They will search everycontainer but the footlocker and go everywhere but the apartment.
Maybe it's kind of railroady, but they don't have much of a choice regarding the latter. Part of their explicit instructions: go to Baughman's apartment. And ya, from there I can drop the cabin in ant number of ways. I had planned them finding a note with coordinates in his office, but I can easily put that anywhere in the place.

>There's no logical way for the agents to actually be able to pull the gasoline dump trick off anyway as the creature has superhuman strength and agility;
I had two ways I planned on approaching this.
>some time of small opening they could poor gasoline in, if they want to do that right away:
>they get interrupted by someone who's ultimately trying to kill them, but they'll kill him(though they may get fucked up in the process)
>proceed to burn Marlene, the Other moves into the new corpse and runs away

If they chat with Marlene a bit, I'm willing to let it go down differently. I do want to make Clyde look like a loon though.

Nobody else said it yet: Holy shit thanks for dumping these. Going to be some great reading!

Yeah don't worry, they will go to the apartment in LTL. The scenario is extremely restrictive and built upon "discover what/if he was hiding", once the players find the files that indicate he had an apartment in the woods -that no one knew about- and they also find the key, they will certainly go.

Nice job actually managing to put scenarios together lad. I want to make some comments if I may.

I like it when DG itself plays with the unnatural "for the greater good". Lots of good opportunities for human conflict in a way that can strike close to home for the agents instead of just shooting a bunch of non-entities, plus good possibilities to instill paranoia about DG in its entirety.

Manhunt scenarios usually seem to yield interesting results; this one seems like it would reach its maximum potential if one human-impersonating NPC gets involved. Plus it can actually be resolved normally if agents are professional enough.

Very nice all around; I think it just needs some padding related to how/why Nikolai is communing with the Servitor. The difficulty is in making sure the agents don't choose letting the Servitor take him casually.

Kriegaffe! This seems to be a pretty solid little scenario, easy to play around. The only negative is that, owing to the source material, it seems likely to turn into outright pulp.

Good stuff yet again. A few things: canonically, Ghouls aren't especially resistant to physical harm- remember Pickman killed one without any trouble using only a few normal bullets from a revolver. They're certainly strong but not inhumanly so either, if I remember their trip with Carter in Kadath correctly, though I might be wrong. I'd readjust the stats and skills, and make it so that more than one Ghoul comes in to rescue the one imprisoned in the basement. There also needs to be some explanation about why Megan wants to make other people share in the ritual with the same meal, since they aren't members of the Fate.
Also, ideally agents should be at least momentarily be at a loss about whether to do something about the Ghouls or not- at least part of DG would consider them threats to be eliminated without hesitation. Also 2, it would be interesting to have Megan's suggestion power used to create strife among Ghouls...

Didn't like this one too much. It's got too much magical thinking in it, and no Lovecraftian anything should have actual souls in it. Plus it basically just leads to an arena combat.

This one is interesting, but it seems hard to do realistically. How's SV8 going to steal a find this big without getting bit in the ass later? How indeed are the agents even going to steal and move it secretly? If SV8 has the necessary pull to avoid consequences, wouldn't it be easier for them to insert one or two scientists in the team and do research on the spot? Personally I'd run this with the research team being persuaded/coerced into working with SV8 scientists. The agents are there maybe to simply make sure that nothing awry is going on. Instill an atmosphere of uncertainty regarding the scientists. Then, either before starting the move or during it, they all get infiltrated by the Tcho-Tcho who start replacing people from the team. And at the same time, the creature in the ice starts thawing...

Somehow seems more fitting to include this within a greater scoped scenario or campaign.

Interesting core idea but not a strong enough antagonist as is IMHO. I guess the doctor has to be developed pretty robustly first before using this.

Y'Golonac is always (un!)welcome in scenarios. Sounds good enough as a core to me, I'd make the whole setup being tied to Y'Golonac wanting to perform some kind of ritual (for himself, perhaps for Glaaki?) and/or getting someone to become a priest for him (like what he was doing in Cold Print); in general broaden the scope from having Y'Golonac play merely as a powerful sex pervert.

As it is, I don't find this satisfactory or plausible.

Seems like this should be included alongside Chopstick Headcount as part of a campaign revolving around brain-eating knowledge-obtaining people.

Yeah, I'm not too worried about getting them from place to place.

>tips on how to write DG scenarios
I like to take strange things that happened in real life, apply some supernatural anomaly to it, and see how a Delta Green investigation would go.

Example:
>9 Russian ski hikers disappear in a remote part of the Ural mountains. Their tent was cut open from the inside, and their bodies were found months later in various states of undress, hundreds of meters from their campsites, as if they had been fleeing terrified from something. They all also had strange and inexplicable injuries. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident

Or alternatively just use the plot of a suitable movie, and change it up a bit so it's not obvious

This looks great! Thanks.

Two questions.

1. CoC 7e vs earlier editions. Buy/use old stuff or is 7e worthy? If not then why?

2. Mind if I share a scenario idea and you guys help me craft it into an actual adventure?

1. V7 is alright, nothing change much between eds anyway

2. Go on

Lay it on us.

> Go on
First a link to get the basic concept across: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)

Second I had an all-too-simple thought: "MaMa." Double negative space. Space in which "nothing" does not exist. Now what if it turned out that that was true, pure reality while ours is the negative space expelled from that layer of existence? Do you get me?

Yes, and I'm sure it's pretty cool and unique and stuff, but it makes no sense and only you will enjoy anything out of it

I had actually been thinking of using this movie, in conjunction with the 2016 clown sightings.

Glad you liked it

Sick digits

>Manhunt scenarios usually seem to yield interesting results; this one seems like it would reach its maximum potential if one human-impersonating NPC gets involved. Plus it can actually be resolved normally if agents are professional enough.
Yes. When I ran this one, I mated it with 'Hazardous Materials' from the Fairfield site here fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/hazardous-materials

>The difficulty is in making sure the agents don't choose letting the Servitor take him casually.
In the first playtest game I ran, the players threw him in an FBI holding cell and it came through a portal and grabbed him in view of a security camera and several agents. The second time, they realized he was the locus of the unnatural phenomena and shot him as the Servitor descended - which made everything worse

>The only negative is that, owing to the source material, it seems likely to turn into outright pulp.
It's true, but that's what WWII Delta Green is at its core. Fiddle with the tone all you like, at it's core you're already fighting Nazi super scientists and wizards to stop them taking over the world.

>canonically, Ghouls aren't especially resistant to physical harm
I agree completely, but you'll need to take it up with ARC DREAM. I copied the ghoul stat block straight out of the rules text.

>no Lovecraftian anything should have actual souls in it.
That cat is already out of the bag. Lovecraft's characters project their consciousness across space in "light beam envelopes", or across time to inhabit other bodies. If the Yithians can swap a human mind to a body in the past, they can digitize it and store it in a big memory card.
>it basically just leads to an arena combat.
Could you explain what you mean by this?

(cont)

>How's SV8 going to steal a find this big without getting bit in the ass later?
In the new DG canon, SV-8 is now a legitimate intelligence agency with remit from the Kremlin to pursue and utilize unnatural and alien technology for the benefit of Mother Russia - essentially a new Slavic MJ12 under Putin's control. Having said that, here's how it went in our game.

The players arrived at the dig site with two of them, an anthropologist and an archaeologist, claiming to be there from MSU to assist with the dig. They were able to sabotage the expedition by clandestinely sabotaging a bunch of the equipment in a way that looked like natural failures couldn't be traced back to them. They wrapped up the creature and got a GASPROM helicopter to air lift it back to the train station. The train ride was uneventful until they spent the night at the rail depot (the Yamal line isn't currently connected to the broader Russian rail network). They woke up to the Tchotcho trying to steal the monster, got in a shootout, chased them off, and decided to load the creature into the refrigerated truck the cannibals had brought, along with the body of one of their assailants. During the drive out, they hit several obstacles and damaged the truck's freezer mechanism. The creature was able to thaw enough to guzzle the dead Tchotcho's blood (they opened the back of the truck to find it still frozen like a statue, but hunched over the dead body with its chelicerae embedded in him). They bought some ice at a gas station at the nearest town and packed the creature in, but with the blood it had sucked it was already capable of movement in subzero temperatures. They thought they heard it rattling around in the back, so they opened up the truck and it attacked them. One of them had a very heavy rifle and managed to do some serious damage to it, but it ultimately killed two Agents and escaped into the woods.

(cont)

>Somehow seems more fitting to include this within a greater scoped scenario or campaign.
It looks like this is going to be a persistent difference in philosophy between us. I think that there's no reason for any pre-written adventure for a game like DG to go beyond two sessions tops in laying out plot elements. After that point, the players will have picked their own direction to go in, and it's up to the GM to plot out a new course.

That doesn't mean that I don't like connections between adventures - characters that show up again, similar threats or thematic cues. But even that can be a risk. This one relies heavily on that, but it's easy for the primary NPC to die in , meaning he has to either be replaced or written around.

>Interesting core idea but not a strong enough antagonist as is IMHO.
There's nothing that says she has to be an antagonist. Killing people who break into your home isn't against the law - and doing so with MJ12 super science just means the Program will have a job offer for you.

(This one got really crazy when I ran it. Two of the players had eaten Scott Craken's brains and had him living in their head, so he was able to feed them all the right MJ12 code words. Then Abe Boskovsky the NROD guy was already on the loose, so he showed up right as they were handing Doctor Ludd over to the CORAL NOMAD retrieval team - resulting in an apocalyptic final confrontation)

>(for himself, perhaps for Glaaki?)
Gollynack and Glaaki are enemies in the DG universe. Check out the scenario "Holy War" in the Eyes Only book (which can be found in the pasta)
>like what he was doing in Cold Print
I've never heard of this one. Could you elaborate, or point me to the document in question so I can read it myself?

>As it is, I don't find this satisfactory or plausible.
Could you be more specific?

>These are pretty cool. Source?

They're from the Malleus Monstrorum. Check the pasta.

Has anyone taken a look at the Fall of Delta Green raw text? Apparently the kickstarter sent it out today

Is 7th edition best start for playing CoC?

Do you make your players to put their fears under Phobia, or do they make them up for their characters?
It seems better if the players and characters have same fears.

Triangle
youtube.com/watch?v=17XqBdCiHOI

High Rise
youtube.com/watch?v=e4pujABeKuA

Or some mix of the two.

If you want audio drama, this is the best:
The Thing on the Fourble Board: youtube.com/watch?v=ilRbcBhD9_0

Eh, depends on the player. Some players have hard lines, where they would prefer not to confront their own fears in a hobby of entertainment - others don't mind if it helps the atmosphere. This is pretty basic discussion with your group. Don't force anything into the scenario which would make people uncomfortable beyond having fun. I don't remember which part of the "story game" revolution from the last decade came up with lines and veils but it's a solid system.

To say nothing of GMs, I have a full-blown irrational phobia of bees and wasps, and I use that all the time to freak other people out

But how do you make something scary when they aren't afraid of it?
I was thinking of making story around irrational fears mixed with fears of death, oblivion and so on.

I also enjoy weird fears mixed with feeling of hopelessness and downright nonsensical grotesqueness, something you'd describe as Lynchian or Kafkaesque. But I don't know how I would make that in a PnP.

Anyone care to post stories about favourite campaign they ran or played in?

Well, actually trying to make players afraid/scared at the table is hard.

You're much more likely to hit a creepified, disgusted, startled or unnerved type of response, which makes sense given the genre this is based on. People reading HPL and similar materials rarely have a jump scare response, more you come to the end and go "well, this was unsettling, I don't want to sleep for a few hours" or a similar level.

This is much easier to do, you can totally present twists or set pieces in a scenario which make players go "aw shit" when they confront them. Or you leave enough open to interpretation to have their own feelings of paranoia and dread take over. You can however occasionally come out of nowhere and blind-side them, kind of like a jump scare.

Yes, this is exactly what I want, to demoralize players, for example, G-Man in Half Life 1, the guy isn't scary, he's just a man in a suit, but why is he there and what does he want? - That's why he's creepy, he's seemingly omnipotent, and he could probably kill you in a most gruesome way, that's why you need to be wary.
Or like Lynch does it with his every film, show a perfect world to the audience, make them comfortable, and then totally de-evolve it and shatter their dreams and make them feel their darkest, innermost thoughts.

This is a lot easier. You'll probably want a high-level concept first, like figuring out what mythos or otherwise Unnatural thing is going on and use that to keep a consistent theme and direction, but from there the best thing I find is to look at any scene, set piece or just bullet point in the story and go "How can I make this creepy and unsettling?" and related whatever answers you get back up to your high concept.

So you don't just find an hitherto undiscovered ruin of a lost civilization, you also find a bunch of brutally murdered skeletons with equipment from like 100 years ago. You don't just find a dingy mansion hallway, you find a hallway filled with eerie paintings of Gorgons - a seamless and unsettling blend of woman and monster. You think the VIP party is all well and good then you go into the drawing room and they're serving human ganglia-paste, or you step into the Roman-style garden and actually think you're in Ancient Rome for half a second, stuff like that.

And avoid the common problem to people who play/read a lot of cosmic horror fiction, where you just casually refer to everything by name - "Yeah so the tcho-tchos lead you up to the giant mural of Yig with the text in Aklo under it, where you're ambushed by Serpentmen who summon up some Dark Young..."

Triangle is good shit.