Hey gang. I paused billing on this Patreon and plan to shut it down next month. I just don't have time to contribute to it like I should. It's a shame, because we have half a dozen different projects in the works even apart from Delta Green that always benefit from close attention. But we tend to hold those pretty close until they're well enough along that outside review is useful. Watch for news on those things—Godlike, Brimstone (formerly Gunslinger), Swords & Sorceries, Black Scrolls...
2022-12-24 22:23:44 +0000 UTC
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Canada’s Environmental Policy Impact Commission (EPIC) reviews the effectiveness of government environmental policies. Hardly anyone has heard of it. You’ve already forgotten what EPIC stands for, haven’t you?
Far fewer know that its history began in a secret RCMP unit called M-Section. Only true insiders know that in one form or another, M-EPIC has hunted unnatural threats since 1903. Delta Green may have grimly emerged from the Innsmouth raid of 1928, but Canada did the jo...
2022-11-09 18:10:45 +0000 UTC
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For a long while now I've been developing a fantasy adventure game. It started as kind of a lark. I wanted a version of AD&D—the ancient original, all but unplayable yet played by millions—that leaned into the elements that most grabbed my imagination. At first, I had a heck of a time figuring out what exactly those were. I decided it had to do with a focus on myth and history that came out in isolated mentions and asides. This was before D&D became a genre in itself, remember. So...
2022-08-12 22:12:07 +0000 UTC
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This treatment of skills, specialties (formerly special training), and professions is a work in progress. Its goal is to add flexibility and utility to Delta Green skills and professions that may currently be too specialized. It does away with “Type” skills altogether, merges some skills, leans more heavily on specialties as a Handler’s tool...
2022-08-02 21:45:17 +0000 UTC
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I drafted this short combat variant a few days ago. "Blooding" is meant to replace the usual combat rules with a quicker back-and-forth likely to leave one side pulling back and the other wondering what the hell just happened.
I've tinkered with it a bit, but before I could put some real time into it, I got clobbered by illness (some horrible kidney thing) and am still recuperating. If you could put it through some sample encounters and post notes here, I would certainly appreciat...
2022-07-01 22:47:16 +0000 UTC
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A mathematician inexplicably vanishes from a secretive surveillance company in Reno. She is only the first. Can the Agents recognize a pattern of killings and disappearances in time? Or will they be next to fall under the unblinking gaze of a pitiless power?
Back in 2015, Caleb Stokes ran a scenario called <...
2022-06-17 23:37:12 +0000 UTC
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If violence might defeat an unnatural threat, Delta Green expects even Agents with no training in weapons or self-defense to kill. If academic or scientific Agents feel overmatched by that challenge, remind them of some creative possibilities.
CAT’S PAWS: America is swimming in guns and haunted by gun owners who daydream about using them. Many of those are police. Agents in trouble can easily get armed men on the scene. Make a Luck roll to see how wel...
2022-06-05 00:30:48 +0000 UTC
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Losing 5 Sanity Points or more in Delta Green has an obvious impact. The game explicitly says your Agent loses all self-control and either flees, goes berserk, or collapses. But when the loss is less than that, we tend to take shortcuts. "You lose 3 SAN." "Got it. OK, what do we see next?"
In my home games I have made a point of pressing players to explore those lesser losses. After all, losing even a single point of SAN means long-term trauma. It's psychic scarring that wil...
2022-05-12 20:58:01 +0000 UTC
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The historical book Regnum Congo appears in in Lovecraft's "The Picture in the House." Elements of that brief story informed a key figure in the Karotechia, a cult by Adam Scott Glancy in Delta Green. I developed it as a tome for Delta Green: The Conspiracy.
In German. Study time: weeks. Unnatural +1%, SAN loss 1D6.
“It is a remarkable fact in the history of this people, that any who are tired of life, or wish to...
2022-02-12 01:02:34 +0000 UTC
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A new ritual for Delta Green: The Conspiracy.
Elaborate ritual. Study time: weeks; 1D4 SAN; +1 Unnatural. Activation: days; 1 POW, 1D4 SAN.
This ritual requires the operator or an assistant to forge a knife, spearhead, bayonet, or larger blade of an unalloyed, elemental metal such as iron, copper, silver, or titanium. The oper...
2022-02-07 20:42:02 +0000 UTC
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Inspired by Lin Carter and excerpted from Delta Green: The Conspiracy.
In English. Study time: days. Unnatural and SAN loss special.
Miskatonic University Press, 1907. Author Henry Coburn purports to present a new annotation of an 18th-century manuscript hand-written by a New England sea captain, which itself Coburn says was a translation of an ancient codex created by the prehistoric priests of Nan Madol in Pohnpei. Linguists and histo...
2022-02-06 22:10:51 +0000 UTC
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A tome for Delta Green, excerpted from Delta Green: The Conspiracy.
In English. Study time: days. Unnatural +3%, SAN loss 1D4.
This boxed collection of tapes and transcriptions describes a little-known, highly classified episode during a historic submarine recovery effort.
On April 10, 1963, the USS Thresher nuclear attack submarine sank with all hands about 200 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The ne...
2022-02-05 20:31:20 +0000 UTC
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Excerpted and adapted from "Feds in the Nineties," a new appendix in Delta Green: The Conspiracy. By Shane Ivey, © 2021.
THE REIGN OF THE MEDIUM PISTOL
Police and federal agents train for self-defense and the risk of deadly attacks. In Delta Green terms, every law enforcement agency and military branch issues medium...
2021-12-06 16:00:01 +0000 UTC
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In English. Study time: days. Unnatural +5%, special training in ghoul lore, Foreign Language (Ghoul) +1D100%, SAN loss special.
Dreams of the Changeling is a worn, ancient octavo bound in light brown leather, soft as calfskin but shiny with age and use. It bears no title or label on the outside nor any frontmatter to indicate author or publisher. Close examination finds it to be an especially old example of anthropodermic bibliopegy, bound centuries ago: The ...
2021-11-29 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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When we were developing Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, the Bonds rules quickly proved immensely important. They keep disorders and temporary insanity from setting in too quickly, and they affect the tone of the Sanity rules by giving players a fleeting hint of control over their Agents' fates. Perhaps most crucially, they make Sanity damage more intimate by showing that what happens to an Agent affects...
2021-11-25 15:00:06 +0000 UTC
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A fog of exhalation and a breath inhaling bitter cold. A wince in moonlight that glared pitiless from snow. Catalina walked the frozen grass, soft boots crunching. She bore a heavy shovel, had left the cart and its balking mule a quarter-mile down the trail. Scorched timbers jutted where a fine house had stood.
It had been three years and she had come home in a frost that would torment the dead. Years alone in the mountains that rose around the valley like arms embracing. Years hunting ...
2021-11-22 17:00:01 +0000 UTC
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A rules variant for playtesting. Post comments below.
An Agent with the Foreign Language skill can learn a loosely related language as special training with the same skill rating. This option applies only to the Foreign Language skill, not an Agent's native language.
EXAMPLE: Special Agent Martinez has the skill Foreign Language (Spanish) at 50%. He wants to learn Italian and Russian. The Handler decides Italian is close enough to Spani...
2021-11-15 15:00:07 +0000 UTC
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A rules variant for playtesting. Post notes below.
Exposure to the unnatural scratches at an Agent’s memory like a scar that never heals. Familiarity can alter an Unnatural skill roll result.
Gaining points in the Unnatural skill also grants special training (described on page 30 of the Agent’s Handbook) with the Unnatural skill regarding that source of forbidden lore.
When confronted with something that relates to that lor...
2021-11-11 14:00:05 +0000 UTC
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Firearms can be a comfort to Agents who come to see death in every shadow. It's usually a shallow comfort. When guns come out, it's a good bet that the mission has already gone wrong. But Agents and their players will always seek to wring every last chance of advantage out of the instruments they bring the the opera.
SILENCED PISTOLS
Agents kill. Careful Agents kill quietly. What does it take to fire a gun without being heard?
The movies and TV shows where most of us hear ...
2021-11-08 15:00:09 +0000 UTC
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"9:18 a.m. Officer James Eichel arrives in his vehicle as the suspects flee on foot down the narrow alley. One suspect continues to run southbound in the alley, while the other suspect stops and ambushes oncoming officers from a partially covered elevation drop. This allows the suspect to be in an advantageous position to fire upon approaching officers with little warning." —2021-11-01 15:58:45 +0000 UTC
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"The SI operative must be able to live according to his cover, often in constant contact with experts in his cover activity, without arousing suspicion. He must know how to employ uncensored or underground methods of communication without undue risk to himself or others. He must be able to report accurately and explicitly and to evaluate information he receives. The ability to evaluate requires not only an understanding of persons but familiarity with the military, social, politi...
2021-10-29 16:00:00 +0000 UTC
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A silver cord of cause and appalling effect connects the hills rising wild in Vermont with a haunted woman in Alabama. To save her, Delta Green must follow it to a terrifying and lethal consecration.
A few years ago I ran an off-the-cuff Delta Green scenario that I called "Falling Out." You can watch it here, but be warned, it's half-baked. I just finished a first actu...
2021-10-25 14:00:08 +0000 UTC
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My home (well, Discord) group is playtesting the first scenario of Operation TORCH, a looooooong-gestating GODLIKE campaign about the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942. The opening scenario features American Talents recruited by the OSS's
2021-10-21 16:00:07 +0000 UTC
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An optional GODLIKE rule in need of playtesting. Try it at your table and let us know how it goes. Illustration: Tom Lea, "The Two Thousand Yard Stare." EDITS: I reduced the difficulty to make it more attractive to low-Cool and low-Command characters. I added a note about the Esprit de Corps motivation to the interference rule.
2021-10-14 18:42:18 +0000 UTC
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The image above is from a 1995 issue of The Unspeakable Oath, two years after Delta Green first appeared in "Convergence" and two years before the book Delta Green finally saw print.
We're reworking that book for its 25th anniversary in Delta Green: The Conspiracy. You've probably heard about its Kickstarter. It has an hour or so to go if you're a l...
2021-09-10 22:39:32 +0000 UTC
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I have run TONS of Godlike games over the years at conventions, stores and game clubs, but I have been a player in a Godlike game exactly once: in a demo that co-author Greg Stolze ran at Gen Con 2001, when I was learning the game to help promote it. So it was exciting when Allan Goodall offered to start a campaign f...
2021-08-18 23:16:16 +0000 UTC
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"In a moment of overwhelming stress—after losing 5 or more SAN in a single roll—your Agent loses self-control. We call it temporary insanity. For a short time you cannot control your Agent’s actions. Your Agent’s primitive brain switches to pure panic, with one of three possible responses: Flee, Struggle, or Submit. Work with the Handler to determine which stance your Agent takes. Each is more likely in some circumstances than others." —Delta Green: Agent's Handbook
2021-08-15 18:35:14 +0000 UTC
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Static floods all radios in the area and rises over the course of a few seconds to a whine beyond audibility.
A brilliant flash silently erupts in the snow and clouds over Crow Lake. It lights the whole area blue-white for an instant and is gone.
Half a dozen bolts of lightning strike the earth around the Crow Lake shrine and light the entire snowstorm blue-purple. A brilliant aurora hangs immediately ov...
2021-07-22 20:34:14 +0000 UTC
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"Some of the miscreants leapt into the sea; others hid in dark recesses, where they were found by Slightly, who did not fight, but ran about with a lantern which he flashed in their faces, so that they were half blinded and fell as an easy prey to the reeking swords of the other boys. There was little sound to be heard but the clang of weapons, an occasional screech or splash, and Slightly monotonously counting: five—six—seven—eight—nine—ten—eleven." —J.M. Barr...
2021-07-17 20:16:52 +0000 UTC
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Caleb Stokes from Dead Channels corners me and Dennis Detwiller on microphones and asks us your questions. We don't know how to use our microphones very well so we sound like garbage. Not Caleb. Caleb sounds wonderful. Caleb has that little round fabric disk thing over his microphone. Caleb remembers to lean in real close to the mic. Caleb does not have a loud fan causing white noise that screws with his Discord voice detector. Caleb knows all the tricks. Except how to put a mono tra...
2021-06-28 19:16:00 +0000 UTC
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