Monday, March 30, 2020

The God Who Drags Himself - an Abortive Attempt at the Spanish Civil War in Delta Green

I ran the famous Lamentations scenario The God That Crawls in Delta Green, set during the Spanish Civil War.

The year: 1937. The place: Spain, near the Ebro. The war still looks winnable for the forces of liberty. The May events have not yet shattered the fragile alliance between the Communists, Anarchists and Republicans.

But all is not well. Fearing a fascist uprising in the mountains, the Brigade commander has sent a handpicked group of loyal freedom fighters to a village in the Pàndols range. Its mission: to clear out the ancient church there, rumored to be a wellspring of nationalist sentiment.


It was easy to transfer most of the details from the scenario over to the Catalan setting. Augustine is Augusti. Father Bacon is Father Cansalada. The townsfolk will die to protect the secret of the church, but now they're armed with a handful of old Remington Rolling Block rifles and hunting shotguns in addition to their sharp agricultural tools.

The above ground section of the adventure went great. The players stormed the church, roughed up the priest, and were duly informed the "fascists" had hidden in the mysterious pit beneath the church. They got besieged by the townsfolk, broke the siege with a well timed grenade, and descended into the hole to root out the Nationalist insurgents.

I think most people have seen Jason Thompson's illustration based on the scenario, which makes The God That Crawls look like a whole lot of fun.

It turns out, the dungeon itself is pretty boring.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Five, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

We were joined by a fifth player, who had a character ready from a previous game.
  • Luchetti Bruschetti, Gay Italian Dentist, Masked Urban Explorer and Breakdancing Tomb Raider (Explorer, Level 2)
In addition to better Athletics and Stealth than the rest of the gang, Luchetti had a car. He picked Devin and Cobb up on the West side and ferried them back to Cobb's house in the suburbs, where he'd set up his lab. The mad doctor dropped the Ferret Hydra's spine in a vat of preservatives, then dropped some impromptu brain surgery on Devin, restoring some of his faculties. His hands still shook and he had trouble focusing, but he could walk, run, translate and charm people good as new.

(The bludgeoning result of 6 on the Horrible Wounds table give a penalty to both D20 rolls and skill rolls. The text says recovery requires brain surgery and physical therapy, and Devin only got one of those things. So I gave him a choice of whether he wanted to remove the penalty to rolls or the penalty to skills. He chose skills)

Luschetti hadn't found anything to drink in Cobb's fridge (just severed body parts and biological samples) so he was good to drive Devin and Cobb back across the river to meet with the group. Zeke and Johan piled into the car. Luschetti parked and they opened their map to plan the placement of the final sensor. They decided to head Southwest from the Blood for Sex basement and see where they ended up.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Five, Part One

Session five! A single in-game day after session four, another dive into the underworld to place sensors for the Men in Black. To help the MIBs hunt the paradox beasts, and get the police off the gang's back.

In attendance:
  • Johan Cilliers, Impulsive “Antiquities Dealer” & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic, Level 4)
  • Cobb "jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 3)
  • Zeke Witwer, Healing Sage (Occultist, Level 2) 
  • Devin Skull “The Punk Bard” previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 1) [Played by the same guy as Kaldron]
The group met at a grocery store Starbucks on the West side of the river, near the park. They planned out their approach: across the river, down through the nightclub under Blood For Sex, then North to place a sensor at the second waypoint.

Remaining Sensor Locations Circled... Wait, what happened to the Big Bridge?

Nobody had a car, as usual. It was an hour and a half walk to the club. But as they exited the store, a plume of dust and mist erupted from the river, followed a second later by the sound of an explosion and collapsing masonry. For a second, the ground shook like an earthquake. As the sound echoed through the city, they could hear gunshots, coming in bursts.

Esoteric Enterprises - Coal City Blues - Music

Music I use on Roll20

LOCATIONS

PEOPLE
More to come in this section

CONCEPTS

Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Gangs of Coal City

Just the ones the players have discovered so far

HUMANS
Ursus Cult
Worshippers of the great bear. Their public facing doctrine is all about personal fitness, building strong morals and a strong body through a supportive community that reinforces good habits. The esoteric doctrine adds living in caves, gluttony and occasional cannibalism. They grow in size as they increase in rank within the cult.

Mama Bear, High Priestess of the Ursus Cult, with a Bearskin Rug

The Ursus Cult is ordinarily friendly and hospitable to underworld visitors. The players have abused their trust enough to get on their bad side. The bears won't be fooled again.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Four, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

The sounds of roaring bears and shouting Unseelie Knights echoed down the tunnel as the gang entered the door to the bomb shelter. This was familiar territory. The gang had crawled it a couple weeks ago while looking for the Serpent Man ruins to the Northwest on a job for the mercenaries. They never made it there, but they did figure out the way through.

There was something new in the canned food room. A flashing light ahead. Zeke recognized the blinking as morse code, and translated for the group. It was the cousin of the living lamp from the library, talking about the group of vandals who had stolen a book. Whoever it was talking to didn't speak in flashing lights, so Zeke wasn't able to get the other side of the conversation until Kaldron loaned him his night vision goggles. The other creature was hideous. Eyeless, with baggy, hairless skin like a naked mole rat, and a necklace of human eyeballs, ingeniously preserved.

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Four, Part One

Session four went great. The house rules were a definite improvement and had a real impact at smoothing out the game's rough edges. One issue I identified in previous sessions really came to a head, and now I'm committed to solving it. We also had our first player character death.
  • Johan Cilliers, Impulsive “Antiquities Dealer” & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic, Level 3)
  • Kaldron Class, Antifa Nazi Killer and Hunter of the Elusive “Lichtler” (Criminal, Level 3)
  • Cobb "jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 2)
  • Tristan Vedhart, Babyfaced "Artist" & Fast Talking Limper (Explorer, Level 1)
  • Zeke Witwer, Healing Sage (Occultist, Level 1)
The group met on the roof of the hospital, where Tristan had just been fitted with a prosthetic for his missing leg. One of the duty nurses was up there for a smoke break with a little radio, and the cabal listened to the news before deciding on a job.

They agreed that they'd start with the missing kid. They met the parents in the park to learn more about the alleged kidnapping. The parents were working class joes, the dad in a rumpled interview/funeral suit, the mom poorly concealing track marks on her arm. Dad explained that he'd been at the Auld Tam gin palace after work with some friends from the job site. After having a few, he showed one of the servers a picture of his daughter. The next day, she didn't make it home from school. Bus driver says a man met her at the stop, and he assumed it was a relative. The gin joint is full of smugglers, right? They must be smuggling people. He gave the players a photo of the missing child.

The players weren't up for another restaurant assault just yet, after last session. They decided to meet with the MIBs to see about the sensor placement job, and if they could get any information on the smugglers while they were at it. Agent Karla met them at the library, and explained the mission: the suits and their masked chum hadn't had any success tracking the Paradox Beasts. Possibly it was a new type of magical camouflage that evaded their detection. The sensor arrays, if placed in the underworld at the appropriate locations, would give them the monsters' location.

One sensor had to be placed beneath each of the circled locations on the map

Asked about the smugglers, Agent Karla helpfully explained that the smugglers did lots of business with the Fairy Enclave under the museum. They'd be a good starting point for further investigation.

The mausoleum entrance was no longer patrolled by police, but the gang didn't feel like dealing with the Sunflowers in the necropolis. If they went through the museum into the Fey Grotto, they could get started on both the first sensor in the Northwest (an area they tried to explore in a previous adventure, but never made it to) and the missing kid.

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - House Rules - UPDATED JULY 14 2020


UPDATE DECEMBER 7 2020: The latest version of these rules can be found here.

SKILL CHANGES
Everyone starts with 1 extra point in Athletics, meaning average characters have a 2 in 6 base chance. If this takes you to 7 in 6, you must put the extra point somewhere else.

CLASS CHANGES
BODYGUARD
The Bodyguard class has the option to take damage in lieu of someone else taking it. This is subject to narrative plausibility at the discretion of the DM. You can dive in front of a knife or bullet, you can't take the damage from poison if someone else drinks it.

MODIFIED JULY 14, 2020: 

MYSTIC
  • Mystics now start with 3-6 charm, plus or minus CHA modifier. This does not increase as they level.
  • Blessings do not require a roll on the Cost of Holiness table if the recipient of the blessing passes their Charm roll.
EXPLORER
Explorers do not shrink the damage dice of their weapons. They roll damage normally.

ADVANCEMENT CHANGES
Multiply experience gained from treasure by 5. This results in the awkward expedient of dividing job rewards by 2 (since they give half XP), dividing that by the number of party members, then multiplying by 5. But it makes advancement fast enough to matter, instead of glacial. And it doesn't disrupt "balance", because the game has none and doesn't care.

Your character's Resources value functions rules as written during character creation. After character creation, buying items is done with cash. It's up to the DM to come up with cash prices for items, but the book has some guidelines (ex pg 134 lists 300 for a handgun, 600 for a heavy weapon, etc). In addition to money from adventuring, you get a weekly influx of money equal to the "budget" for your Resources level on page 56.

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Prep For Session Four

WORK
In addition to free exploration and the players picking their own work, the following jobs are on offer for session four.

The Fat Sun Mercenaries: Mara the Mercenary will pay 2,000 for help hijacking a shipment from the East Side.

The Union: Hooks the Stevedore offers 1,000 for help protecting a shipment to the West Side from hijackers.

The Ursus Cult: Titan Raul at Ursus Fitness is offering 1,500 to map the entrances and exits of a sewer cluster under the Belly.

The Men in Black: Agents Karla and Kid want someone to place three detectors in the underworld at key locations, to help them scan for the chaos beasts. In exchange, they'll talk to the cops and reduce the group's legal heat.

???: A family suspects a local smuggling outfit of kidnapping their missing child. They'll pay 1,500 for his safe return.

NEWS
A robbery gone wrong at the Pho King restaurant on the East Side left two dead and several injured. Our sources suggest the event is the flashpoint of a gang war between the Red Caps and the Fat Buddhas. The Chief of Police has reactivated the Major Crimes Unit, and City Leaders are expected to approve emergency funding to increase law enforcement's tactical capacity.

In semi-related news, the Coal City Police have ended emphasis patrols in the Necropolis district of the Hill. Community leaders welcomed the move, reactivating "local authorities" to handle the protection of the neighborhood.

Ursus Fitness is closed temporarily, after quote, an "unexpected hydrological event" caused the complete failure of the building's plumbing. Management was confident that the gym would be open again within a week, and offered no further comment.

This broadcast is brought to you by the Auld Tam Distillery. Auld Tam: Brewed from fifteen unique botanicals, our gin is a truly out of this world experience. Stop by for a sip today.

Monday, March 16, 2020

Operation SALTED GREASE - A Delta Green Scenario

Operation SALTED GREASE or: Every Day is Like My Birthday

Agents investigate a secretive UFO cult in an abandoned school outside of town.

Based on DUDES OF HAZMAT: Can of Whoop Ass by Drue Langlois

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Three, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

The next day, the occultists caught a union rep at You Have to Eat the Eggs and picked up their payout. Encouraged by their easy victory and overwhelmed by a lust for gold, they decided to go for a second payout. The Red Caps offered them a thousand dollar payout if they'd hit a restaurant owned by their rivals, the Fat Buddhas: The Pho King. The place was a stash house, surely full of riches. Easy pickings for an experienced cabal of dungeoneers. Encouraged by the barkeep's words of encouragement, the players decided to hit the place during the day, to REALLY make a statement. The barkeep gave them red hoods to conceal their identity, and make it obvious who was behind the hit.

Sunday, March 15, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Three, Part One

Session Three was the last one I'm running rules as written. The players all said they had fun, but hated the system. They identified the skill system as a sore spot, and I agree with them. I'll try and think of a way to streamline things without robbing the people who chose classes based on their skills (Athletics being the big one).


The Occultists for session three, one returning and three new players
  • Kaldron, Homeless Antifa Nazi Killer & Hunter of the Elusive “Lichtler” (Criminal, Level 2)
  • Cobb "jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 1)
  • Lionel Lemoyne, Scion of Dead Aristocracy, Seeker of Strange Cults (Bodyguard, Level 1)
  • Tristan Vedhart, Babyfaced "Artist" & Fast Talking Runner (Explorer, Level 1)
Faced with the job offers I prepared at the end of the last session, the players decided to start with the library robbery. Hooks the Stevedore met them at a union office on Harbor Island and pitched them the offer: a copy of the Catalogue of the Stygian Library in exchange for a cool thousand dollars. The location of their prize: an occult library in the Southeast corner of the map. Without a car, they took a bus to the entrance at Vinculum and descended into the underworld.

Friday, March 13, 2020

My Favorite Character in Disco Elysium

Rejoyce "Joyce" Leyton-Messier is my favorite character in Disco Elysium.


She's the first genuinely helpful character you meet in a world of total dicks. She drops some of the most important lore about the world of Disco Elysium. The Insulindian Miracle. The Antecentennial Revolution. The four political alignments. The shape of the world. She's got a totally bitchin' theme song.

She's also a real piece of work.

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Sousa the Scavenger and Sauza the Troll

A couple NPCs from the dungeon shops post


Now this dayback, ate one right in the fuckin' heart. Lady or Landgravine or something. I didn't get a chance to ask, as ya might imagine. ...What, you think I did her? Swear on the Weaver, I had nothin' to do with it. Anyway, buy anything an' I throw in the surcoat. Not like I can sell it with claret all over.

Three Dungeon "Shops" - Playing With Treasure For XP

Put these about halfway through a large dungeon - like floor 5 out of 10, or a vestibule between two realms of a megadungeon.

This assumes you're using treasure for XP, redeemed when the players get it back to the surface.


Yvalta the Anchorite
Heir to a great house after having her siblings assassinated, Yvalta was terrified by a prophecy that greed would kill her. Unable to control her cupidity, she had herself immured in the wall of a tomb, to shield herself from the temptations of the world.

The outside of Yvalta's cell is a bas relief carved in the tomb wall, in the shape of a woman. There's a hole where one eye should be, and a hole at the shoulder of one arm.


There's a pit in the center of the room. It is bottomless. If you're feeling cheeky, there's a wall carving that reads "DEPOSITUM CUSTODI" with an arrow pointing downward.

When she has visitors, Yvalta sticks her eye to the eye hole, and her arm out the arm hole. Both are those of a lovely, though slightly soft bodied woman. She makes an archaic hand gesture of greeting. 


Her voice is muffled behind the stones.
"Hello there. You've come to plunder these tombs, then? I haven't got anything you'd be interested in. I gave all that up a long time ago" 
And if the adventurers are loaded with treasure,
"Oh please, won't you cast it into the pit? I can see it's weighing on you. It's a sin, and it's so heavy. It hurts me to look at"
And if they refuse
"Just one coin. Just a copper. Trust me. You'll see. You'll feel so much better."
Treasure cast into the hole is awarded to the players at its full value in XP, but is lost forever, and obviously cannot be spent as money.

(The prophecy will come true one day, when a greedy adventurer pries open the wall in search of treasure, killing Yvalta. Inside the cell, only her hand and face have skin, muscles or organs. The rest of her is a skeleton, which falls to the floor lifeless if the chamber is opened)

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Prep For Session Three

WORK
In addition to free exploration, the following jobs are on offer for session three.

The Fat Sun Mercenaries: Last week, Mara offered 1,500 to map the Serpent Ruins in the Northwest area of the city.

The Lithic Courts: Last week, Anticline the Lithic Envoy offered "priceless jewels" in exchange for a geode hidden in a pond in the Limestone Caves, currently occupied by the Fat Sun Mercenaries

The Red Caps: The barkeep at the Blood For Sex offers you 1,000 to hit a restaurant owned by the Fat Buddhas.

The Ponda Ray Family: The barkeep at Vinculum says the smugglers are refusing to sell any "juice". She offers 1,000 for a cask.

???: A stevedore at the port offers 1,000 to steal a book from a wizard in the abandoned mines to the Southeast.

RUMORS
Perhaps you've already heard, but...

Some fuckin’ maniac let a buncha chaos beasts into the tunnels on the West side.

There’s these guys in suits talking to the cops up on the Hill. I saw a couple of ‘em go into the museum.

Ponda Ray had a sitdown with a squid made of rock. Not sure what they talked about, but the Earings looked happy.

Can’t hardly find any juice. Smugglers hangin’ on to every drop. Somethin’ goin’ down in the enclave maybe.

Jesus, this rain don’t let up. Don’t crawl any storm drains ‘less you can breathe underwater.

Sunflowers are fuckin' lookin' for you, man.

Monday, March 9, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Two Player Maps

By Johan Cilliers, Impulsive “Antiquities Dealer” & Interdimensional Parasite Host

West of the river

East of the River

Pretty good for a map made without any distance measurements given by the GM.

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Two, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

Annoyed by the roadblock from the Vinculum entrance, the Occultists hopped in Bruschetti's car and drove to the West side of town, to try their luck at the old museum.

The Red Cap bartender mentioned that the entrance was in the closed wing of the museum, the one facing a sheer cliff over the ocean. The museum was closed for the night, and nobody wanted to pick a fight with security and get the police called on them again. Thankfully, Bruschetti's athletic acumen and Kaldron's climbing gear let the gang rig up a set of pitons and safety ropes along the cliff side. They peered in through the window, down into the off-limits gallery.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Two, Part One

Session two highlighted the game's high points, but threw its flaws into sharp relief.

I updated the map of Coal City to reflect developments between sessions, and some new points of interest I came up with.


The Occultists, one returning and two new players
  • Johan Cilliers, Impulsive “Antiquities Dealer” & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic, Level 2)
  • Kaldron, Homeless Antifa Nazi Killer & Hunter of the Alusive “Lichtler” (Criminal, Level 1)
  • Luchetti Bruschetti, Gay Italian Dentist, Masked Urban Explorer & Breakdancing Tomb Raider (Explorer, Level 1)

Before offering the players a job, I gave a short "newscast" about the fallout from the previous game.
Mitigation efforts are ongoing at the belt sinkhole, which opened last week on the Western shore of the river, cutting through the belt. Engineers from the DOT are calling it a “freak liquefaction event”, which caused a cave-in through the underlying bedrock. 
Coal City Police emphasis patrols continue in the Hill Mausoleum, after a shooting last week left one dead and several injured. Community leaders decried law enforcement’s attempts to usurp their “sacred responsibility” to defend the tombs of their ancestors. The Chief of Police responded that vigilantism would not be tolerated.
This broadcast brought to you by Ursus Fitness. Ursus Fitness: strong body, strong morals. Follow the great bear to a healthier, happier you.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Party Animals - A Delta Green Scenario

Party Animals

A student with no legs is found with his legs cut off

By Thomas Dipaolo, Kevin Ham, and mellonbread

Based on a prompt by zomner

Friday, March 6, 2020

Night's Foul Legions - The Biopsy

Night's Foul Legions, an alternate setting for Night's Black Agents.
PCs are counter-insurgency special operations who discover a demonic conspiracy and must now find who is among the possessed—the rebels/insurgents, the local authorities, civilians, or their own forces.
When I read this, I thought of how you could take the conspyramid from Night's Black Agents and flatten it out to make a relationship map, charting the spread of the demonic conspiracy as it spreads like a cancer.

Let's take the author's advice and imagine a game set in Northern Ireland, circa 1972. The players are MI5 Agents, or SAS, or undercover with the Det, or some other elite unit that gets to do as it pleases without following the rules.

Monday, March 2, 2020

Delta Green NPC: Cal Buchanan

Cal Buchanan misses war. He misses being surrounded by people who would kill and die for him, instead of indifferent or hostile strangers. He misses being allowed to kill people who threaten him, instead of suppressing his urge to defend himself in unfamiliar and dangerous situations. He misses having a mission, instead of waiting to die of alcoholism and heart disease. That’s why he still takes Delta Green’s calls, even after they hung him out to dry.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

The Lord of Leaves - an M EPIC Scenario

The Lord of Leaves

An “ape man” kills a surveyor in the forests of British Columbia

Esoteric Enterprises - Session One Thoughts

I was told over and over again by the Throne of Salt guy that Esoteric Enterprises was like a slicker version of Delta Green, with better stat blocks, better rules, etc. Other reviews said it was like Unknown Armies. Imagine my surprise when I opened it, and it was actually a D20 dungeon crawler!

I don’t usually write up blow-by-blow reports of sessions, but this one illustrates the stuff I like about the game, and the stuff that could be improved.

Session one was fun. It confirmed a lot of the flaws I identified in the initial reading, and introduced several new ones. But the game is more than the sum of its parts and I’m going to keep running it.

I ran the game rules as written, except that I awarded 5 XP per unit of currency recovered, instead of 1. I’m happy with this decision and I’m going to keep doing it in future sessions.

Players were recruited from my Delta Green open table server.

Coal City, once a hub of industry. Somewhere in the old world, with catacombs and stuff named after the King. The downtown still shows signs of life, the old money on the bluff still show signs of undeath. Everything else is hollowed out and dying.

(The rules use a handful of dice dropped on a large piece of paper to create a map. I ended up genning a couple maps before I settled on a happy medium of two of each die size, from D4 up to D12, and four D20s. The size of the dice matters just as much as the number rolled for creating the connections between them. The system treats the 00 dice and 0 dice in a D100 set differently, with unique results that can only show up on the 00s die)

The Occultists, here to pillage the occult underworld
  • Johan Cilliers, Impulsive “Antiquities Dealer” & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic)
  • Zachary Brighton, “Cursed” Dissolute Aristocrat (Spook)
  • Connor Vasquez, Law Abiding Gun Owner (Mercenary)
(I asked people to arrive with characters already created. Chargen is pretty involved, and there aren’t any tables of starting equipment, forcing players to shop from a list of items)

Introductory Post

Several people have suggested I create a permanent web presence for my RPG content.

I run and play a lot of Delta Green. I appear on a podcast called the Green Box where I talk about it. This is a personal blog, not affiliated with that brand. I'm going to start linking my new Delta Green stuff here when I finish it.