In the Broken Empire, orcs, ogres, and all their goblinoid kin are said to descend from Orcus, the Zyirran underworld demon-god of oathbreakers and traitors. Legend says Orcus sent his children, strong and wrathful, up to the mortal world to send him the souls of oathbreakers. But being the children of betrayal, they betrayed their purpose. They remained, formed tribes, and set out to conquer and devour a...
2020-01-21 17:36:40 +0000 UTC
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Riches Beyond Counting…or the Storm God’s Revenge
My newest 5E adventure, Swords & Sorceries: The Tomb of Fire, is available in PDF and in full-color paperback.
And it comes with a 24-hour bonus just for Patreon backers: Get the paperback edition at a $5 discount today only.
...
2020-01-09 18:59:48 +0000 UTC
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A few weeks ago I posted a very rough draft of a Star Wars-inspired RPG that I called "Starwalkers" with tongue firmly in cheek. Well, I kind of liked the way it continued to take shape. It's way farther along now, and I think it deserves a proper name. I'm calling it Rebellion.
Rebellion is very rules-light by my standards. That was a deliberate choice when I started imagining what I most want a Star Wars game to feel like at the table. I have played every
2020-01-07 21:23:48 +0000 UTC
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No tiers. That's the lesson I've learned the last couple of months. From now on, every backer gets every item.
Back in October, I switched from charging of $1 per item to flat monthly of $2 or $5. I was publishing a lot of material and I worried that charging for every single thing would get out of hand for patrons. Prominent Patreon veterans recommend the $2/$5 monthly model.
But what happened here was that lots of backers didn't change from the original $1...
2020-01-07 21:05:54 +0000 UTC
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This is the audio track of a video tutorial. Click here to see the video.
This episode shows you how to take a video clip and turn it into something that looks like surveillance camera footage. This tutorial is just the basics. It’s for those of you who are looking to bring a little something extra to your gaming session, but who aren’t looking to create their own footage f...
2019-12-23 20:55:48 +0000 UTC
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This episode shows you how to take a video clip and turn it into something that looks like surveillance camera footage. This tutorial is just the basics. It’s for those of you who are looking to bring a little something extra to your gaming session, but who aren’t looking to create their own footage from scratch. A future tutorial will show you how to plan, film and edit custom clips for your games.
Rachel K. Ivey is Arc Dream Publishing’s director of marketing. She also is the le...
2019-12-23 20:54:48 +0000 UTC
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My Swords & Sorceries campaign and adventures are inspired myth and history. I am fascinated by the challenge and opportunities of playing 5E adventures in a setting that evokes the mythologies that inspired D&D, and that inspired the sword & sorcery fiction that inspired D&D. In my campaign, a large part of that is rethinking the way magic works.
Magic in the Broken Empire, as I run it, is not a...
2019-12-16 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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If you have time during the busy month of December, I would love to get your feedback on "Jack Frost." It's a scenario about Delta Green agents infiltrating a deadly MAJESTIC operation in 1998, before the MAJESTIC war went hot and before the schism split Delta Green apart. Those were the days of old! The Twin Towers still stood, personal video required a camcorder, and no phone was smart.
You can download "Jack Frost" below, along with a map for the Handler and one for the Agents....
2019-12-09 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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History is an inexhaustible well of deep mystery, action, comedy, and tragedy to inspire and feed even the most fantastical RPGs. Join game designers who specialize in historical gaming for tips on making it an easy and powerful resource.
PANELISTS
At the beginning of November, I changed my pledge system to two options for a flat, monthly amount. If you're still at the original $1-per-item amount, here's what you missed. Long-form works (10 to 20 pages or more) are in bold.
COSMIC CHAMPIONS, $5/MONTH
Download revised at 3:29 p.m., 28 NOV 2019.
As near as I can tell from social media, every person in the world is jaw-droppingly inspired by The Mandalorian and trailers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Me too.
I also have spent the last couple of weeks doing mind-numbing technical work trying to get a computer to work properly. It's work that constantly interrupts the flow of my writing for Delta Green. But it doesn't interfere as much wit...
2019-11-28 02:57:19 +0000 UTC
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Watch Part 1 on YouTube or listen on the Arc Dream Presents podcast.
Adam Scott Glancy playtests Delta Green: The Garden, a scenario set in the last days of World War I. The Garden is part of a multipart campaign that sees agents facing a threat...
2019-11-22 14:00:03 +0000 UTC
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Watch Part 1 on YouTube or listen on the Arc Dream Presents podcast.
Adam Scott Glancy playtests Delta Green: The Garden, a scenario set in the last days of World War I. The Garden is part of a multipart campaign that sees agents facing a threat that recurs and grows across the de...
2019-11-22 14:00:00 +0000 UTC
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“You have to think. If you look scared, you’re dead. So smile.” —Hèléne Deschampes, OSS code-name “Anick”
The Office of Strategic Services was an American wartime agency dedicated to espionage and sabotage in enemy-held areas. Its officers included both military personnel and civilians. In the default 2019-11-18 13:00:03 +0000 UTC
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My friend Amber was a brand-new gamer when she played Delta Green for the first time. I ran Music From a Darkened Room, using a playtest version of the new Delta Green rules. Her first ...
2019-11-15 01:22:57 +0000 UTC
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Adam Scott Glancy playtests Delta Green: The Garden, a scenario set in the last days of World War I. The Garden is part of a multipart campaign that sees agents facing a threat that recurs and grows across the decades. Hear more about the campaign in The Taste of Ashes.
Handler: Adam Scott Glancy, publisher at 2019-11-08 14:01:00 +0000 UTC
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Adam Scott Glancy playtests Delta Green: The Garden, a scenario set in the last days of World War I. The Garden is part of a multipart campaign that sees agents facing a threat that recurs and grows across the decades. Hear more about the campaign in The Taste of Ashes.
Handler: Adam Scott Glancy, publisher at 2019-11-08 14:00:04 +0000 UTC
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One inspiration for my Swords & Sorceries adventures and the Broken Empire setting was Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. The Mouser especially feels like he doesn't quite have a niche in 5E. He is clearly a rogue, expert at stealth and burglarly. But he is also a famously expert swordsman, and not just when his opponent isn't looking. You could handwave that by saying h...
2019-11-05 23:56:43 +0000 UTC
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"The Road to Carentan" is a scenario for GODLIKE, our RPG of superpowered commandos in World War II. You are larger than life...but the war is larger than you.
"The Road to Carentan" follows a Talent squad's journey through the wreckage of D-Day, from Omaha Beach through the villages of Normandy, m...
2019-11-01 20:06:22 +0000 UTC
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Thank you for supporting my adventures on Patreon!
I've had a couple of months now to get a feel for my workflow and how that best fits the pricing models for me. So!
MONTHLY, NOT PER CREATION
I'm changing from payments model from per-creation to a single payment each month. That's going to make planning much easier for me (did I already charge them this month? how many times?!), and I hope for you.
TWO TIERS OF HEROISM
I'm replacing the sin...
2019-11-01 18:31:12 +0000 UTC
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SPOILER ALERT FOR DELTA GREEN: THE LABYRINTH. If you expect to be a DG player in a campaign featuring The Labyrinth, read no more!
The Labyrinth is ever so close to being released in PDF and going to press for hardback. It is a fantastic book by Delta Green originator John Scott Tynes, pr...
2019-10-31 21:09:17 +0000 UTC
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The Broken Empire world of Swords & Sorceries is inspired by ancient history as seen through the lens of Fifth Edition. Fighters have the "Protection" fighting style, of course, but I want a kind of elite fighter that fully evokes the heart of ancient warfare: the phalanx that dominated battlefields for millennia before the twenty-foot pikes of Macedonia and the legions of Rome. ...
2019-10-29 21:20:24 +0000 UTC
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I'm reposting this under Patreon's built-in Audio post format so it can be played in the Patreon app. In theory. If it doesn't work, let me know and I'll investigate further.
Please see the show notes from October 25 for details on this very fun panel discussion.
2019-10-28 20:18:40 +0000 UTC
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Arc Dream Presents: How to Game the Weird, a panel discussion on the ins and outs of designing and running a weird horror scenario. Moderator Daniel Harms leads a discussion with panelists Fiona Maeve Geist, Kenneth Hite, Shane Ivey, Badger McInnes, and Sandy Petersen.
Lovecraft’s creations featured in early iterations of role-playing games, and since the emergence of “Call of Cthulhu” and its spinoffs, RPGs have increasingly explored—or exploited—cosmic horror ...
2019-10-25 12:00:00 +0000 UTC
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I put together a new version of the Godlike character sheet. It has all the skills listed, so you don't have to spend time hunting for those that you wrote in the wrong order. And it has a Will reference to remind players how they can get Will points back and how they get burned up. It's form-fillable for easy use.
I al...
2019-10-22 23:10:55 +0000 UTC
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Summoning spirits and monsters has always been the province of arcane spellcasters. That leaves a gap in 5E that seems critical to me: gods and goddesses that represent the underworld or the abyss, the mysteries of death and spiritualism, and the mystical connection between the world we see with the magics and monsters that lurk beyond it.
I wrote the Summoning domain to accompany "The Fane of the Frost Giant," a 5th-level 2019-10-17 21:51:32 +0000 UTC
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Here you have a piece of my home campaign's history.
When I was running "The Last Equation" last year, one of the Agents got badly stabbed and the others were desperate to find someplace for treatment. Someplace discreet. Someplace they wouldn't have to waste hours talking to police. They asked about finding a crime-friendly veterinarian.
I...
2019-10-15 00:41:33 +0000 UTC
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"The Taste of Ashes" was an hour-long Delta Green discussion at NecronomiCon Providence in August 2019. This episode of Arc Dream Presents was recorded live at the Omni Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island.
“Elite government operatives fight a desperate covert war against Mythos threats and government conspiracies across the globe in this classic RPG. Panelists, including some of the founders and prominent DG authors, discuss the development, mythology, and history of the...
2019-10-11 14:35:23 +0000 UTC
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The barbarian has always been my favorite D&D class to play, but one thing irks me in the 5E version and its paths, even the berserker: their total self-control. Where is the blood-red rage that takes a warrior's mind, already addled with drugs and liquor, until her sword can't tell friend from foe? Hence the Path of the Blooded, developed for the Swords & Sorceries campaign setting. T...
2019-10-07 23:43:56 +0000 UTC
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Excerpted from the upcoming Delta Green scenarios Ex Oblivione and Hourglass, available soon at delta-green.com.
Agents can pursue information on Innsmouth, Massachusetts, according to their skills and contacts.
HISTORY: An Agent with a skill of 50% or higher, or who makes a successful roll, learns that Innsmouth is notable for the government raid that o...
2019-10-04 22:15:03 +0000 UTC
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