The Role Playing Public Radio Forums
General Category => RPGs => : wilzuma April 21, 2016, 09:13:04 AM
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I just got the Agents Handbook pdf yesterday! Can't wait for it in the mail.
What games is everyone planning to play once you get your DG:KS booty?
I am new to the game. I have wanted to play for a while now. When this came out it seemed like a PERFECT point to start playing and joining in. I've been thinking about games I could run, to some fellow newbies as well. I am planning to run "Last things Last" for some friends, hopefully on my podcast.
For a longer-ish game, I loved how Caleb approached DG in God's Teeth. I like the idea of the game as a Police Procedural, mostly because I'd only have to plan one scenario at a time, and we could stop and pick it up at any time, and take breaks. Because... well Delta Green. Not everyone is so cynical and nihilistic as I am.
I like the idea of starting the pc's as Friendlies or "Norwegians". Caleb used Norwegian as a term in "Lover in the Ice" as people exposed to the conspiracy or mythos that are a liability. I thought, what if that was part of my jumping off point. Also I love Fargo, and I"m from Minnesota. Thus the title I came up with, "No Norwegians." The idea is that every player stumbles into the mythos and DG has to decide what to do with them. Their first instinct is to eliminate them, so part of the first "episode" is DG agents trying to silence them forever. If they survive, DG recruits them into the program and they become Cell N, which is based in the upper midwest.
I have a scenario involving the cult of Ithaqua based in a family farm next to a reservation perhaps Red Lake, Turtle Mountain, or Pine Ridge, maybe Mille Lacs. Bodies showing up feet ground down to bone and bodies windburned so hard they have 4th degree burns.
Another one dealing with Cthonians causing earthquakes in North Dakota because Hydraulic Fracking is killing them. Because water melts them. So a cthonian cult is trying to stop the company from drilling. There will probably be a chase / shoot out in a trailer shanty town. Oh man.
Anyhoo, I'm not certain how to start it. Obviously the character's come from different disciplines and jobs, but will have a government job of some kind. Just maybe more state level at the start of the game. Also no one has made characters for this either. But any ideas on how i could structure or set up the first introduction or am I TOTALLY trying something way too unfeasible?
Let me know or share what games you're gonna play.
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I just got the Agents Handbook pdf yesterday! Can't wait for it in the mail.
What games is everyone planning to play once you get your DG:KS booty?
I am new to the game. I have wanted to play for a while now. When this came out it seemed like a PERFECT point to start playing and joining in. I've been thinking about games I could run, to some fellow newbies as well. I am planning to run "Last things Last" for some friends, hopefully on my podcast.
For a longer-ish game, I loved how Caleb approached DG in God's Teeth. I like the idea of the game as a Police Procedural, mostly because I'd only have to plan one scenario at a time, and we could stop and pick it up at any time, and take breaks. Because... well Delta Green. Not everyone is so cynical and nihilistic as I am.
I like the idea of starting the pc's as Friendlies or "Norwegians". Caleb used Norwegian as a term in "Lover in the Ice" as people exposed to the conspiracy or mythos that are a liability. I thought, what if that was part of my jumping off point. Also I love Fargo, and I"m from Minnesota. Thus the title I came up with, "No Norwegians." The idea is that every player stumbles into the mythos and DG has to decide what to do with them. Their first instinct is to eliminate them, so part of the first "episode" is DG agents trying to silence them forever. If they survive, DG recruits them into the program and they become Cell N, which is based in the upper midwest.
I have a scenario involving the cult of Ithaqua based in a family farm next to a reservation perhaps Red Lake, Turtle Mountain, or Pine Ridge, maybe Mille Lacs. Bodies showing up feet ground down to bone and bodies windburned so hard they have 4th degree burns.
Another one dealing with Cthonians causing earthquakes in North Dakota because Hydraulic Fracking is killing them. Because water melts them. So a cthonian cult is trying to stop the company from drilling. There will probably be a chase / shoot out in a trailer shanty town. Oh man.
Anyhoo, I'm not certain how to start it. Obviously the character's come from different disciplines and jobs, but will have a government job of some kind. Just maybe more state level at the start of the game. Also no one has made characters for this either. But any ideas on how i could structure or set up the first introduction or am I TOTALLY trying something way too unfeasible?
Let me know or share what games you're gonna play.
I do think Delta Green works best in an episodic sense, where the overarching focus is on the characters and their descent into madness as they are exposed again and again to the Mythos, rather than a band of defiant investigators trying to stop the stars from aligning in an epic campaign.
Looking forward to returning to the misadventures of the Seattle K-cell once my group gets more time in our schedules!
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Sounds like a fun game! We might run some on the Technical Difficulties Podcast (http://www.technicaldifficultiespod.com/) once we've gotten the full package.
I'm contemplating maybe something involving a Midwestern nuclear plant, or disused emergency response "war rooms."
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Sounds like a fun game! We might run some on the Technical Difficulties Podcast (http://www.technicaldifficultiespod.com/) once we've gotten the full package.
I'm contemplating maybe something involving a Midwestern nuclear plant, or disused emergency response "war rooms."
here's a good one! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Island_Nuclear_Power_Plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Island_Nuclear_Power_Plant)
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Sounds like a fun game! We might run some on the Technical Difficulties Podcast (http://www.technicaldifficultiespod.com/) once we've gotten the full package.
I'm contemplating maybe something involving a Midwestern nuclear plant, or disused emergency response "war rooms."
here's a good one! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Island_Nuclear_Power_Plant (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prairie_Island_Nuclear_Power_Plant)
Nice! Or this one, near where I live: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_Station (http://"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callaway_Nuclear_Generating_Station")
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My group has already run a few games using the beta rules and the Quick Start, and we're talking about some different concepts.
Imaginal States (run by fellow forum-goer TRNSHMN) opened with R-cell being assembled in Pennsylvania following a blitz-attack on a DG safehouse that left two friendlies dead, as well as one attacker; a second attack on the city morgue stole the corpse of the attacker. Like a lot of good DG scenarios, it ended with a building burning down, at least one of us in jail, most of us mentally rattled and one of us grimly marching into the forest with a half-loaded SMG to do futile battle with a worm-god.
Mutatis Mutandis, run by yours truly, took place in Wamego, Kansas. Spoiler warning, it was a Carcosa/King in Yellow scenario, so stuff got weird. Taking place immediately after the events of this music video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8ixpuUpJAk), it has led to me basically not being allowed near the Hastur Mythos again. Did you know Wamego, Kansas is where an LSD kingpin had their lab in a literal missile silo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Leonard_Pickardl)? Did you know it's also got a pocket industry around the Wizard of Oz, so the colour yellow is prominently featured? Did you know that nearby Tuttle Creek Lake drowned four towns when it was formed? Did you know that Hastur starts as a falconer, but ends a king? Did you know his war of usurpation still rages? Well, H-cell sure found out the hard way as the walls of local reality started wearing a little thin...
Other ideas we've floated and are planning to run at some point using DG:
Blue Box is set around a DARPA-funded testing facility (its codename is the eponymous "Blue Box"), situated in a particularly anonymous and run-down part of North Dakota. Essentially, it's a warehouse full of mad science that periodically gets picked up, put on and studied to see if maybe it'll save a few soldiers' lives over in the Middle East, or make a better airport scanner. The security clearance requirements means the pool of testers is pretty small, and a bunch of them just went rogue - in the definition of "rogue" that involves raiding a nearby farm and leaving livestock entrails arranged in occult symbols across three fields. The poor unfortunates of our DG cell (ideally those with a military and/or scientific background) are tapped to essentially become replacement testers in order to figure out which of the many, many mad science projects in Blue Box accidentally went Mythos.
All Expenses is not a planned operation, rather an unfortunate confluence of events. During a luxurious conference on a Pacific island (your taxpayer money well-spent!) attended by various government agencies in relevant fields, strange things start happening. This being a large gathering of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, there are more than a couple of DG agents in the mix who realise just what species of south the conference is heading when a local astrophysicist very publicly commits suicide rather than "be here when it comes". As a panic breaks out among the convention-goers and things start going a bit Dead Island, the DG cell have to make do with what's at hand as they come up against a rising threat. (Why didn't we think to pack the flamethrowers?)
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i'm thinking one of two
the Blue Box: the name is probably two on the nose but a campaign that will last throughout the years of DG's existance culminating in two adventures in EP universe about an "old one" who arrives in a blue box, "fixes" things but creates havoc and death in his wake.
The Unkillable ones: this one is ripped straight from the RPBR archives...but with a twist. it's a story about a group of DG agents coming up against a team of "agents" from an unknown group that have an unknowable agenda. they can be killed with enough firepower but they just come back later sometimes in another body...."whatever you do don't let the monkey touch you!"
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Mutatis Mutandis is extremely my shit. Do you have anything typed up about that?
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Mutatis Mutandis is extremely my shit. Do you have anything typed up about that?
I don't - just my chicken-scratch handwritten notes, but I can type it up if you'd like.
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Mutatis Mutandis is extremely my shit. Do you have anything typed up about that?
I don't - just my chicken-scratch handwritten notes, but I can type it up if you'd like.
Count me curious as well!
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Mutatis Mutandis is extremely my shit. Do you have anything typed up about that?
I don't - just my chicken-scratch handwritten notes, but I can type it up if you'd like.
sure go for it
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Simply scanning the chicken-scratch notes and posting them is the DG thing to do.
but yah post dat shit plz
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Okay, I'm typing it up because a) it's actually kind of not written in order so it helps ME to get it all in one place, structure it right etc and b) it's a different take on the Hastur stuff from typical DG, which I felt was a little too.. whimsical, I guess? Plus it's kind of a "messy concept" by its very nature - reality breaking down etc - so summing up some of the mess into a neater format might take a bit of elbow grease.
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Mutatis Mutandis is extremely my shit. Do you have anything typed up about that?
I don't - just my chicken-scratch handwritten notes, but I can type it up if you'd like.
Or just chop your handwritten notes into scraps, pin them haphazardly to a cork board, and take a crooked photograph of it.
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Mutatis Mutandis is extremely my shit. Do you have anything typed up about that?
I don't - just my chicken-scratch handwritten notes, but I can type it up if you'd like.
Or just chop your handwritten notes into scraps, pin them haphazardly to a cork board, and take a crooked photograph of it.
That is the most perfectly mundanely DG thing someone has ever posted.
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(http://i.imgur.com/rhxowt3.png)
New episode of God's Teeth comes out after half a year and suddenly I am Delta Green trash again.
"Old Forgotten Things" and "Killing Time" are the two scenarios I've already run for my group, and when we get back to DG (Currently running Star Wars, then revisiting Red Markets for the Kickstarter) they'll get to experience the rest. They'll be my first attempts at running my own original scenarios for DG rather than adopting and modifying published ones.
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Jawesome! I have an idea or two for a one shot or two part game but I don't want to spoil it...
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I'm going to run a Venture Bros game with Delta Green. Just need to figure out how to handle, super science within the system. Maybe it'll cost power points or something. Not sure.
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So I just finished reading the Apocalypse Codex by Charles Stross (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apocalypse_Codex). And without spoiling anything for anyone. If you are looking for a frame for a Delta Green campaign then this novel is it. As I read it I kept thinking, "what would Ross and Caleb do".
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(http://i.imgur.com/rhxowt3.png)
New episode of God's Teeth comes out after half a year and suddenly I am Delta Green trash again.
"Old Forgotten Things" and "Killing Time" are the two scenarios I've already run for my group, and when we get back to DG (Currently running Star Wars, then revisiting Red Markets for the Kickstarter) they'll get to experience the rest. They'll be my first attempts at running my own original scenarios for DG rather than adopting and modifying published ones.
That's a beautiful drive you got there.
I've settled on FOR STARTERS running a solo or two man game about a Friendly(ies). Least if i can get my podcast mates to go along with it :)
A DG agent who goes by Frank calls in a favor to a friendly. He is tasked with retrieving a canister from a temporary locker. He has to break into it before the opposition gets it. Then he must make the long 8 hour drive to his destination. But something is wrong. He's not alone in the car. Someone begins talking to him. Someone able to look into his mind and read his very thoughts. Somehow he picked up a Hitchhiker. And he doesn't know how or who it is.
The canister is a smooth cylinder and bears strange markings. A printed label lists a serial number. He's been told not to look inside. But if he did he'd know it was a human brain (extracted by the Mi Go.) The victim was a DG agent, and he knew too much to let him die, but he knows too much for him to fall into the hands of the Opposition. He was also experimented on, or exposed to the Dreamlands, which is what has allowed him to astral project and communicate with the driver. The opposition is either a Majestic 12 agent or Pieces, depending on what era i base it in. they will provide the clearest threat, trying to gun down the PC and take the canister. But the "hitchhiker" as it were is far more dangerous to his psyche.
I'd call it either the "Hitchhiker" or "Third Man Factor".
After this I may start with some of the old scenarios, since i've never run DG before and none of my gamer friends have played it either, I can delve back deep into the depths of DG history and run whatever I want. I want to do Convergence, and eventually a night floors. I just want to find a way to... make them all connected. Classic Cosmic Procedural Horror Cop show. :)
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I'm thinking I may actually run one of my Civil War Cthulhu scenarios using an adaptation of the Delta Green system. It'll be about a group of agents commissioned by President Lincoln to investigate strange problems with the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
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I'm thinking I may actually run one of my Civil War Cthulhu scenarios using an adaptation of the Delta Green system. It'll be about a group of agents commissioned by President Lincoln to investigate strange problems with the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
The core DG system is OGL so you could write an entire game on that premise.
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I am probably going to start of with a scenario I am calling Hard Crypto.
It will start with the discovery of the disappearance of the entire core research team of a tech start up mostly taking its funding from Darpa.
It is basically a Boston Dynamics style company, but working on quantum computing and quantum cryptography.
The whole core research team have disappeared over a weekend, and the labs are in a state. Reams and reams of writing on the walls, signs of violence, but no bodies.
DG get involved when the FBI investigators who are the first set of investigators, start to have panic attacks, and witness hauntings.
As DG investigate, they start to discover that the mathematician and computer scientists had become increasingly obsessed with privacy in their private lives and compartmentalization in their work. They find evidence that one of the team, Bret Witham, had quite the group a week before the disappearance. Through leg work, they find him living rough, obsessively shunning human company, having gone to great lengths to destroy his own documentation. He has cut of his own finger prints and facially scared himself.
With information from Witham's personal notes, they discover that the group was using material from a grimoire and that the researchers have sequestered themselves in perfectly isolated little pocket dimensions, away from observation, free from predestination.
Sort of the DG version of Solid Geometry.
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I am probably going to start of with a scenario I am calling Hard Crypto.
It will start with the discovery of the disappearance of the entire core research team of a tech start up mostly taking its funding from Darpa.
It is basically a Boston Dynamics style company, but working on quantum computing and quantum cryptography.
The whole core research team have disappeared over a weekend, and the labs are in a state. Reams and reams of writing on the walls, signs of violence, but no bodies.
DG get involved when the FBI investigators who are the first set of investigators, start to have panic attacks, and witness hauntings.
As DG investigate, they start to discover that the mathematician and computer scientists had become increasingly obsessed with privacy in their private lives and compartmentalization in their work. They find evidence that one of the team, Bret Witham, had quite the group a week before the disappearance. Through leg work, they find him living rough, obsessively shunning human company, having gone to great lengths to destroy his own documentation. He has cut of his own finger prints and facially scared himself.
With information from Witham's personal notes, they discover that the group was using material from a grimoire and that the researchers have sequestered themselves in perfectly isolated little pocket dimensions, away from observation, free from predestination.
Sort of the DG version of Solid Geometry.
That is an awesome scenario. I love that the team is missing because of their own willful paranoid need to keep corporate secrets safe. I am wondering is it a vague paranoia or is someone actually trying to steal their research through either conventional or supernatural means.
I also like how it leaves the possibility that the researchers are just... going through the motions. this insane bit of hypergeometry and occult magic they pulled off and has them working tirelessly in a pocket dimension isn't... evil. it's just the extreme solution to a corporate problem these engineers implemented. It would be interesting if what they are working on is completely normal. Not tainted by the mythos. They have every intention of returning once their work is done, but as every DG agent knows, you don't just... come back from this. It could leave them with a very very hard choice.
Keep up the good work. You should post how the game turns out.
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I am probably going to start of with a scenario I am calling Hard Crypto.
It will start with the discovery of the disappearance of the entire core research team of a tech start up mostly taking its funding from Darpa.
It is basically a Boston Dynamics style company, but working on quantum computing and quantum cryptography.
The whole core research team have disappeared over a weekend, and the labs are in a state. Reams and reams of writing on the walls, signs of violence, but no bodies.
DG get involved when the FBI investigators who are the first set of investigators, start to have panic attacks, and witness hauntings.
As DG investigate, they start to discover that the mathematician and computer scientists had become increasingly obsessed with privacy in their private lives and compartmentalization in their work. They find evidence that one of the team, Bret Witham, had quite the group a week before the disappearance. Through leg work, they find him living rough, obsessively shunning human company, having gone to great lengths to destroy his own documentation. He has cut of his own finger prints and facially scared himself.
With information from Witham's personal notes, they discover that the group was using material from a grimoire and that the researchers have sequestered themselves in perfectly isolated little pocket dimensions, away from observation, free from predestination.
Sort of the DG version of Solid Geometry.
That is an awesome scenario. I love that the team is missing because of their own willful paranoid need to keep corporate secrets safe. I am wondering is it a vague paranoia or is someone actually trying to steal their research through either conventional or supernatural means.
I also like how it leaves the possibility that the researchers are just... going through the motions. this insane bit of hypergeometry and occult magic they pulled off and has them working tirelessly in a pocket dimension isn't... evil. it's just the extreme solution to a corporate problem these engineers implemented. It would be interesting if what they are working on is completely normal. Not tainted by the mythos. They have every intention of returning once their work is done, but as every DG agent knows, you don't just... come back from this. It could leave them with a very very hard choice.
Keep up the good work. You should post how the game turns out.
These are awesome posts. Really cool concept Zombieneighbours
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So that was my first Program scenario.
This is my first Group scenario. 'Going underground'
Alyssa Freemont was a friendly. She got dragged in during the last days of the conspiracy during weird events in NYC and the UN, while she was a low level civil servant.
After 9/11 her stock has rose in the US Diplomatic corp, to the point where she was instrumental in TTIP negotiations.
The Programming never learned about her, but the Group has long memories.
A week ago she was murdered in London while attending an important but low key TTIP negotiation. She had been out drinking with contacts in the British financial services industry, when a group of violent protestors in Mr Punch masks stormed into the pub, dragged her into the street and beat her to death with baseball bats.
The next morning, a Group member checking a email dead drop finds a message from her in the clear. "I have seen, and it is terrible to behold."
A couple of Group members have travel to London, to find white hall and the city a green zone, violet protest in the streets, politicians being burned in effigy and madness in the air.
Freemont's flat is filled with pictures of underground stations and homeless people. Their are signs of an absent lover and reams of anarcho-socialist philosophy books.
Meanwhile, Mr Punch strikes again, killing a Tory MP, calling for the Queen to abdicate. The MET raid Green Party HQ and the homes and offices of dozens of Centre left pressure groups.
All the while the protests continue late into the winter evenings.
Can the Agents find Mr.Punch before Judgement comes to London? What is Mr. Punch's obsession with monarchy about? Why does the city itself seem to turn against the Agents? And most importantly of all, why does it seem that everywhere they go, Alyssa seems to have gone before.
Mash up of Punch and Judy Shows, British Politics, Fight Club and the Hastur Mythos.
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Campaign Frame: Broken Promises and False Hopes.
My campaign is going to have two sides to it. One focusing on the Group and the other focusing on the Program.
Scenarios focusing on the the Group are all about historic land mine. Friendlies the conspiracy failed or hungnout to dry, bad decisions DG made in the past, and ways that moral bankrupt choices of the Groups past come back to haunt them I am going to include lover in the Ice in this side of the campaign. The Program side is about how humanity is making a whole new and terrible set of mistakes as our technologies and science push ever more up against the unnatural.
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Thanks guys for the kind words. Would you be interested in reading about more Ideas as they come?
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Thanks guys for the kind words. Would you be interested in reading about more Ideas as they come?
Yes!
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I'm thinking I may actually run one of my Civil War Cthulhu scenarios using an adaptation of the Delta Green system. It'll be about a group of agents commissioned by President Lincoln to investigate strange problems with the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
I am finally getting around to General Order 11! Haven't finished, but oh man! The history mixed with Horror, slow burning subtle tension is Glancy-Worthy man. Glancy. Worthy.
Great Job.
Also, this is an awesome setting idea. Reminds me of the Amazing Screw On Head, only not silly. I think from listening Trail would Work pretty well for that scenario as well.
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Program Op: The Cogs Of Law
Something is very wrong in Chicago. In the last six months there have been three mass killings, and it is starting to become clear that they are serial in nature, thanks to the repetition of certain markers, such as the victim profile (universally criminals and disproportionately people of colour). The strange graffiti at each scene with strange germanic over-tones. The fact that despite each scene looking like a war zone, someone has taken the time to leave a stylised, hand forged dagger stuck through the heart of the gangs leader. Worryingly, it seems that a group, not an individual, is carrying out the acts.
Meanwhile, the Chicago PD has a serious problem. There has been a staggering increase in allegations of police brutality. There has been a upswing in disciplinary proceedings thanks to brawls between officers as attitudes about how to deal with the apparent vigilante mass murder push tensions ever skyward. To cap it all off, an I.A. detective murdered in his home.
Behind it all, a vehmic court made up of a group of cops turned vigilante cult, who have stumbled into the worship of Yog-Sothoth, who they venerate as the personification of natural law. As they push deeper into their worship, they are being destroyed by it, but their ideology has an appeal, and it is spreading.
Punch line: full scale pitched battle between DG and Chicago militerised poilice turned sorcerers
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Punch line: full scale pitched battle between DG and Chicago militerised poilice turned sorcerers
So much for op sec there Bartleby! ;D
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In the Shadow of Heshbon
In the aftermath of the 2014 Carlton Complex Fire, the largest wildfire in Washington state history, a group of forest rangers, local deputies and volunteers go out into the ravaged wilds to assess the damage, search for the missing and map the devastation.
Where the lightning struck which sparked the fires, they find hatches leading to an underground facility. It appears that the heat from the fire has caused the pressurised air in the facility to expand and "break the seals". This former MJ-12 research facility contains files, objects and even a few "subjects".
This works as an intro scenario ("hey guys, oops, looks like you're DG now!") but also as a frame narrative ala Final Revelation; essentially, we can use the files, objects and subjects as leaping-off points for, say, a one-shot in the 80's about hunting goatmen in Missouri, or a 1940's scenario set in one of the internment camps the government ran for Deep Ones.
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Punch line: full scale pitched battle between DG and Chicago militerised poilice turned sorcerers
So much for op sec there Bartleby! ;D
In fairness, that is the ending I hope for. But that is the ending where they screwed the pooch hard.
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I need the RPPR PC-Hivemind or in this case GM Braintrust to help out with a campaign idea I have for Delta Green. I've been tinkering with the idea of a Minnesota based DG cell to make a game that's Fargo meets Delta Green. Highlighting the dark humor, strangeness and absolute clusterfuck pitched violent conflicts become. I have been trying to decide how to start it out with the first session.
The name of the game is going to be called No Norwegians. A joke on how there's lots of Norwegian ancestry in Minnesota and the term is used on the wiki: "as an adjective, anything too public for its own good." So here's the idea i have so far for the start. The games begins with Federal investigators called in to deal with a highly public crime or incident that has been declared terrorism. What they don't know is that this was a DG op gone horribly wrong. Innocent people are killed, civil rights are violated and they follow the clues to perpetrators. Men and women within their own government. As they close in they find clues to the mythos and must deal with the active agents who have basically been fed to the lions at this point. DG A-Cell however makes contact and makes them on offer they can't refuse. "You're in our program now because you know too much. If you try to expose us we'll kill you. No Norwegians."
Thus is born Working Group N.
I'm just trying to figure out what the details of this operation gone horribly wrong could be. Should the burned out DG agents be alive? What aspect of the mythos should they be dealing with. I know i want to have been a very illegal raid, but i have writer's block coming up with it. It's a complex sounding opening, but I think it can be executed simply. I just need help with ideas. Any advice would be appreciated.
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Looks like a good premise for a campaign. There are two caveats, however.
Firstly, if this is modern-day Delta Green, there is no A-Cell within the government sanctioned Program. A-Cell is the new leadership group of the cowboys who have refused to come in from the cold. So A-Cell wouldn't be coercively recruiting agents into a Working Group.
If you're setting the game back in the nineties, I recommend (re-)reading the original Delta Green sourcebook, there's a good section describing about how agents were supposed to be recruited back in the cowboy era. Needless to say, A-Cell tended to be assholes towards agents but I question the idea that they would made blunt coercive threats like that. You could hint at it and create a great sense of paranoia if you had some cryptic messages going on and/or some DG NPCs who know the score and are trying to give the new recruits a warning on how the game is really played ...
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I've actually worked up a campaign frame that resembled this format: new agents brought into the conspiracy by looking into the aftermath of a botched DG op. If I may offer some of my views:
(1) I would keep at least one of the burned DG agents alive. They will be useful for providing clues that will lead your Player-Agents to the Delta Green conspiracy. They are useful GM mouthpieces for dispensing clues. Even if the burned agent is on the run (presumably a suspect in the terrorist incident now), it will give the players something to chase that will lead them to your plot. Even if the players don't pick up on your other clues, there is at least a manhunt that will keep them on track.
(2) What aspect of the mythos is really a question you are in the best position to answer. What aspect of the mythos do you want your players to tackle? If the tone is humorous, then I think the oldest joke in Cthulhu RPG is the amount of excessive force players use to stop summoning rituals. It could be a summoning ritual for mythos entity of your choice, which the burned agents dealt with by using overwhelming firepower, thereby causing a lot of collateral damage.
For example, the cultists were summoning Ithaqua on the top of a Minneapolis skyscraper, and your burned agents decided the answer was to collapse the building using explosives. Now you have the terrorist incident to trigger your campaign. But who do the security cameras show as placing the explosives? Who flashed their badges to scope out the building a week prior?
(3) I would also find some other way to bring PC's into the conspiracy. Most RPG players I know are not motivated by death threats. In fact, it's usually motivation for them to go in the opposite direction. Within conventions of the genre, a death threat is like a challenge a villain throws down.
Besides, if your player-character are true-blue, hard-core law enforcement agents, I don't think they would let themselves be cowed by death threats from mysterious voices on the other end of the phone call, either.
How important is this motivation? Presumably your players know they are there to play a Delta Green campaign and are therefore on board with working for Delta Green. Do the death threats play some kind of role in your campaign beyond motivating the players?
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I've actually worked up a campaign frame that resembled this format: new agents brought into the conspiracy by looking into the aftermath of a botched DG op. If I may offer some of my views:
(1) I would keep at least one of the burned DG agents alive. They will be useful for providing clues that will lead your Player-Agents to the Delta Green conspiracy. They are useful GM mouthpieces for dispensing clues. Even if the burned agent is on the run (presumably a suspect in the terrorist incident now), it will give the players something to chase that will lead them to your plot. Even if the players don't pick up on your other clues, there is at least a manhunt that will keep them on track.
(2) What aspect of the mythos is really a question you are in the best position to answer. What aspect of the mythos do you want your players to tackle? If the tone is humorous, then I think the oldest joke in Cthulhu RPG is the amount of excessive force players use to stop summoning rituals. It could be a summoning ritual for mythos entity of your choice, which the burned agents dealt with by using overwhelming firepower, thereby causing a lot of collateral damage.
For example, the cultists were summoning Ithaqua on the top of a Minneapolis skyscraper, and your burned agents decided the answer was to collapse the building using explosives. Now you have the terrorist incident to trigger your campaign. But who do the security cameras show as placing the explosives? Who flashed their badges to scope out the building a week prior?
(3) I would also find some other way to bring PC's into the conspiracy. Most RPG players I know are not motivated by death threats. In fact, it's usually motivation for them to go in the opposite direction. Within conventions of the genre, a death threat is like a challenge a villain throws down.
Besides, if your player-character are true-blue, hard-core law enforcement agents, I don't think they would let themselves be cowed by death threats from mysterious voices on the other end of the phone call, either.
How important is this motivation? Presumably your players know they are there to play a Delta Green campaign and are therefore on board with working for Delta Green. Do the death threats play some kind of role in your campaign beyond motivating the players?
This! All of This! Thanks, this was VERY helpful. I love the idea of DG agents bringing heavy machine guns and explosives to a summoning circle. I can lay out an elaborate and absurd crime scene a la No country for old men (And then Woah Differences!).
I plan on ONE agent from team FUBAR is on the run. The other motivation I have is I am going to Bond one of the players to the family of one of the agents who did get killed in this madness.
This was helpful. I'm removing the threat of death. You're right. It's a bad motivator. I think that someone might say to them, "listen, if you know more than you should now, and you aren't dead, then you work for the Program now." Something like that.
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One for the [screaming internally] files.
The unsolved murder (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-36332528) of a homeless woman whose body was found on an island off the coast of Essex, England. Her body had a strange mask made out of gaffer tape. Her cause of death is unknown due to the near-skeletonised condition her body was found in. Over the course of two years, two men have been taken in over her death but later released without charge.
The island she was found on is owned by the Ministry of Defence and operated by a private defence contractor, because that's not shady at all.
The island's name is Foulness, because England apparently decided to have enough with the cheekily playful place names and just call a place disgusting. Foulness is a real place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foulness) that definitely does not have something sleeping under it and waiting to reclaim the world. Allegedly the name actually means "fowl-naess" (an old Germanic word for "promontory") but let's be honest, that's definitely not what the name really means.
I mean, this stuff writes itself. Even if the murder wasn't committed on the island, the fact that she washed up on MoD property easily makes it the problem of Pisces if we just throw in, say, that the mast is a certain shade of saffron. Or given the proximity to the sea (and the fact that Foulness Island also features Foulness Point and sits just south of Foulness Sands) perhaps she was an offering to something unsavoury. Hell, let's throw in the fact that the island can grow organically by a process of "innings" - salt-loving plants take hold of silt washed up on the tide, tethering it in place - means the island itself might well be a sort of genus loci, semi-sentient and carrying out an agenda all its own.
Either way I guess you could say this is... murder most foul.
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Ah. essex. Home sweet home. If your Agents are goinv to foulness, they better take their hazmat suits. A lot of our early nuclear research happened on that chunk of land.
Don't forget to visit Southend. One part clone town, one part bleak coastal poverty and decay, two parts essex working class anti-intellectualism and hypermasculinity. The blare of arcades under a slate gray sky.
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You might want to read Warren Ellis' latest non fiction Cunning Plans he has a whole thing about the local mythology and witch craft becaise He's from there
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Ah. essex. Home sweet home. If your Agents are goinv to foulness, they better take their hazmat suits. A lot of our early nuclear research happened on that chunk of land.
Don't forget to visit Southend. One part clone town, one part bleak coastal poverty and decay, two parts essex working class anti-intellectualism and hypermasculinity. The blare of arcades under a slate gray sky.
Just throw in some fishmen in trakkies! It writes itself.
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i had an idea for a campaign that would need to be fleshed out some more and mythosed. the idea came to me while watching orphan black, what if in 1996 when"dolly the sheep was born that was a cover-up by the cowboys, and there were a bunch of clone children at the"farm" they "sanitized." only the agents that were sent couldn't do the job, they couldn't kill the chldren. instead they secreted them to foster systems all over the US. Cut to present day where the players are these children, who have all suspisously been recruited/joined the goverment. go from that story seed...let's see what grows.
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i had an idea for a campaign that would need to be fleshed out some more and mythosed. the idea came to me while watching orphan black, what if in 1996 when"dolly the sheep was born that was a cover-up by the cowboys, and there were a bunch of clone children at the"farm" they "sanitized." only the agents that were sent couldn't do the job, they couldn't kill the chldren. instead they secreted them to foster systems all over the US. Cut to present day where the players are these children, who have all suspisously been recruited/joined the goverment. go from that story seed...let's see what grows.
I like this. Bonus points if you namedrop CATALYST somewhere.
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No Norwegians.
So I think I may have finally worked out how to begin my No Norwegians game. Minnesota is known for its lakes and so this story largely features a lake in it's dark foreboding landscapes, a symbol as it were for the darkness that lies just below the surface.
It begins on a cold and stormy night in Minnesota. Late May. But the night is unseasonably cold. Frost and freezing rain, even snow is reported in parts of the Twin Cities. But it's the winds that stand out. Those howling, destructive winds toppling trees and power lines knocking out half the Metro power grid.
A phone rings, an agent picks it up. it's his old partner from the Bureau. Naveed Olsen, assigned to the FBI anti terror task force tracking Al Shabob recruitment in the cities. At least he was until he was put on administrative leave for misuse of agency funds. His words are full of madness and regret, but they hint at something more… something the agent will soon come to learn. They hang up. There is a silence.
Another phone call. All hands on deck.
The PC’s are called to a very bloody and bizarre murder scene on a Hidden Beach on Twin Lake (a real place). The carnage includes the naked / stripped all sporting bullet wounds, a scorched body with its feet chopped off. There are some odd things that stand out, including a left boot that doesn’t fit any of the bodies. The other scene is the getaway van. The interior was lit up in flames, from the body burned after the vehicle lost control and crashed. The suspects fled from the scene back into the park where they could disappear.
The pc’s either join the manhunt or the investigation. Investigation ID’s the bodies as Norwegian nationals and their US counterparts staying at the nearby Regency Minneapolis. There are few from the trip that are alive, at the hotel and claim ignorance of the whole affair. Testimony has it that they went out to the lake for late night skinny dipping.
Those on the manhunt are searching through the park and nearby areas, a golf course and neighborhoods looking for signs and sightings of the suspects. These agents will stumble upon one of the attackers, as well as the sole survivor. A woman who doesn’t seem bothered by the strange coldsnap...
What’s going on? The victims are all Ithaqua cultists who gathered on this particular lake, when the stars were right to summon an avatar of Ithaqua to impregnate a woman with his spawn. The agents of Cell-K (our doomed DG cell) have been working on this case for a while. And rather than stop the ritual before it started decided to use it as a way to draw out its members, its figurehead the Occult Sorcerer Sten Fritjolf. The game was set.
During the ritual a storm of Icy Rain pours down, and howling winds hit the Twin Cities. They are about to move in then realize, that Fritjolf is not among them. K-Cell hesitates, one man goes back to check out the nearby hotel the targets were staying at. The rest move in. But hesitation was lethal. As they blow away cultists the avatar forms out of the air. The first agent who faces it down panics and fires at it. It simply picks him up on a gust of wind and pulls him into the sky. Only one shoe is left behind. The agents retreat as a huge murder of crows swarms them. They drag another fallen comrade through the park trails to their car. Unfortunately as they take off a swarm of ravens pelts their windows, they crash and their buddy in the back bites it. So they do what anyone else would do. Light him on fire. Then flee the scene.
The agents arrive at this aftermath. One or two agents still at large, though they don't know that. They still need to end Fritjolf before he leaves the country. As these are his coworkers and country men the pc's have to interview him. I'll let on that there is something off about him. That's the main thing, is there will be small inexplicable things that are totally off about survivors. K-Cell's priority though at the end is finding the woman the mother of the wendigo before she is whisked away forever.
There could be a violent scene at the hotel as they try to take out Fritjolf. K-cell may also attempt to go after the “Consort” and Fritjolf at the airport as they attempt to depart the country.
During one of these moments is when I plan to reveal Olsen’s involvement to one of the players. I’m not sure which way will be more disturbing, having them fight him or discover he’s one of the dead bodies. There is also the man with the missing shoe. I can imagine a very Fargo-esque moment where as PC’s are shocked as suddenly a body falls from the sky and lands on the trunk their car. This would involve a SAN check because A. That is f’ed up, B. where did it come from? As soon as they get a look they realize the body is missing a shoe. This guy was at their scene. Roll SAN again. This would also be a pretty quiet, strange moment to introduce this. They would want to know what happened to this guy. Especially our PC who got the call from him.
That’s what I got so far. Let me know what you guys think. I want this to be a single session type scenario. I don’t want things obvious at all, but i want to try to keep it not too convoluted. Essentially this was a DG mission in the vein of burn after reading. And they have to piece it together before DG higher ups arrive to “take over the investigation.”
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It's a good set up/intro to DG but I think it's too complex to be a single session. PCs have to unravel the murders of both cultists and dead DG agents, figure out what the cultists are up to and try to stop them. I think it could be 1 session if you reduced it to state or local investigator PCs called in on a loud noise complaint or feds investigating something unrelated to the cult and then have to pick sides during the inevitable DG team ambush of said cultists. If you don't mind multiple sessions, then it's fine as it is. You might read Cold Dead Hand from TUO for more ideas on Itahqua cult nastiness.
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It's a good set up/intro to DG but I think it's too complex to be a single session. PCs have to unravel the murders of both cultists and dead DG agents, figure out what the cultists are up to and try to stop them. I think it could be 1 session if you reduced it to state or local investigator PCs called in on a loud noise complaint or feds investigating something unrelated to the cult and then have to pick sides during the inevitable DG team ambush of said cultists. If you don't mind multiple sessions, then it's fine as it is. You might read Cold Dead Hand from TUO for more ideas on Itahqua cult nastiness.
I think i'm okay with it being more than one session. I try to plan out games as set-pieces, and try to make it one set-piece per session. The first set piece is obviously the crime scene and an action scene with one or two survivors of K-Cell. By the the end of the first session K-Cell will be all dead, and there will only be more questions. After that they have to try to put the clues together, before the Sorcerer and the Consort slip away in the night. The next set piece, or next session is a direct conflict with the cult's survivors, and a test of their resolve. They get away and come back in a later story, or the cult (at least this faction) are wiped out. The first session is the Question. The second session is The answer as it were.
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Idea for a scenario unapologetically ripping off The Teeth of God.
Thieves of Many Waters
The town of Olney, Oregon, is like many coastal towns in the Pacific Northwest - small, sleepy, past its prime, population barely peeking over 2,000. It was once a local centre for logging and fishery (for those brave enough to head out into the Graveyard of the Pacific) but now most jobs in the town come either from the local Big Box store, a smattering of a tourist industry or the bottling plant overlooking the ocean. The few kids that grow up in Olney rarely stay.
Some of Delta Green's files are integrated back into "legitimate" databases in the early 2000's and the conspiracy adapts to the new realities of computational policework at the speed of government. When a data management program is finally implemented in the early 2010's, it spits out an interesting factoid: a disproportionate numbers of violent crimes "of Programmatic interest" have been committed by people originating from Olney, including no fewer than five serial killers documented between the years of 1944 and 2012.
When local drug-dealer, Ethan Jacobs, is reported murdered in his Olney home, the case is immediately flagged as federal under the War on Drugs and the pretence of mapping out an Oregon drug-trafficking route through. Of course, the "joint agency task force" is actually Delta Green investigating why so many people from Olney wind up violent criminals and committing Mythos-related crimes. Jacobs was impaled with a pitchfork in his abdomen by a home intruder, who then carried on the assault by picking up some kind of folk art in Jacobs' possession and smashing it, using a shard to continue carrying out the brutal assault. Piecing together the "folk art" reveals it appears to be something Jacobs made himself - a monstrous thing that appears to be a mish-mash of sea creatures...
The source of the Mythos violence in Olney comes from a temple deep in the local cave system. The interior contains ancient cave art depicting men with spears wading out to sea in "whale-hunting" scenes and the floor is littered with interesting, sharp rocks. When kids get bored and need somewhere to get drunk, or where the occasional tourist passes through Olney to admire the nature, they almost invariably gravitate to the cave and pick up a "cool rock". The cave is, of course, a temple to Nodens. Those who spend a great amount of time in the cave, or who pick up one of the arrow/spear heads that line the cave floor like sand, receive Nodens' "blessing" and his mission. In this interpretation of Nodens, he is a "native" god to this world, as opposed to the many powers of the Mythos of extraterrestrial origin - and Nodens wants the aliens off his damn lawn. Piecing together the mythology of the cave stories will reveal many "thieves" being put to death by a giant chieftain and his spear-wielding tribe.
Those blessed by Nodens are compelled to hunt - anything extraterrestrial is their favoured prey, but the impulse is simply to hunt. The "serial killers" from Olney have been targeting, say, Cthulhu cults - Ethan Jacobs was a Cthulhu cultist, for example - or people who have been mind-altered by a Yithian, or possessed by a Shan. In ancient times, the natives of the region waged bloody war with the Deep Ones. But many of them are simply driven to madness by the newfound voice in their head filling them with the primal urge to stalk and kill prey. Ethan was murdered by the middle-aged waitress of the local diner, Meredith Shaw, who bought A Drugs from Ethan and used it in the cave to keep it secret from her husband. When she received Nodens' blessing, she sees Ethan as a monster and flees, later returning with the pitchfork to kill him. The final conflict involves her wading out into the Pacific to do battle with a Deep One that Ethan was communing with, who of course will kill her (and will attack the agents on seeing them).
Ideally, of course, at least one player gets Blessed. Mechanically, Nodens' blessing works as a "trade SAN for clues" mechanic - Nodens wants you to hunt and investigators are just a type of hunter, so investigators touched by his trident will receive clues that help them track their quarry or tell them how to kill it, or see who is being influenced by extraterrestrials, but are also bloody, horrific and unnatural visions that don't feel good inside your head.
Thoughts?
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Idea for a scenario unapologetically ripping off The Teeth of God.
Thieves of Many Waters
The town of Olney, Oregon, is like many coastal towns in the Pacific Northwest - small, sleepy, past its prime, population barely peeking over 2,000. It was once a local centre for logging and fishery (for those brave enough to head out into the Graveyard of the Pacific) but now most jobs in the town come either from the local Big Box store, a smattering of a tourist industry or the bottling plant overlooking the ocean. The few kids that grow up in Olney rarely stay.
Some of Delta Green's files are integrated back into "legitimate" databases in the early 2000's and the conspiracy adapts to the new realities of computational policework at the speed of government. When a data management program is finally implemented in the early 2010's, it spits out an interesting factoid: a disproportionate numbers of violent crimes "of Programmatic interest" have been committed by people originating from Olney, including no fewer than five serial killers documented between the years of 1944 and 2012.
When local drug-dealer, Ethan Jacobs, is reported murdered in his Olney home, the case is immediately flagged as federal under the War on Drugs and the pretence of mapping out an Oregon drug-trafficking route through. Of course, the "joint agency task force" is actually Delta Green investigating why so many people from Olney wind up violent criminals and committing Mythos-related crimes. Jacobs was impaled with a pitchfork in his abdomen by a home intruder, who then carried on the assault by picking up some kind of folk art in Jacobs' possession and smashing it, using a shard to continue carrying out the brutal assault. Piecing together the "folk art" reveals it appears to be something Jacobs made himself - a monstrous thing that appears to be a mish-mash of sea creatures...
The source of the Mythos violence in Olney comes from a temple deep in the local cave system. The interior contains ancient cave art depicting men with spears wading out to sea in "whale-hunting" scenes and the floor is littered with interesting, sharp rocks. When kids get bored and need somewhere to get drunk, or where the occasional tourist passes through Olney to admire the nature, they almost invariably gravitate to the cave and pick up a "cool rock". The cave is, of course, a temple to Nodens. Those who spend a great amount of time in the cave, or who pick up one of the arrow/spear heads that line the cave floor like sand, receive Nodens' "blessing" and his mission. In this interpretation of Nodens, he is a "native" god to this world, as opposed to the many powers of the Mythos of extraterrestrial origin - and Nodens wants the aliens off his damn lawn. Piecing together the mythology of the cave stories will reveal many "thieves" being put to death by a giant chieftain and his spear-wielding tribe.
Those blessed by Nodens are compelled to hunt - anything extraterrestrial is their favoured prey, but the impulse is simply to hunt. The "serial killers" from Olney have been targeting, say, Cthulhu cults - Ethan Jacobs was a Cthulhu cultist, for example - or people who have been mind-altered by a Yithian, or possessed by a Shan. In ancient times, the natives of the region waged bloody war with the Deep Ones. But many of them are simply driven to madness by the newfound voice in their head filling them with the primal urge to stalk and kill prey. Ethan was murdered by the middle-aged waitress of the local diner, Meredith Shaw, who bought A Drugs from Ethan and used it in the cave to keep it secret from her husband. When she received Nodens' blessing, she sees Ethan as a monster and flees, later returning with the pitchfork to kill him. The final conflict involves her wading out into the Pacific to do battle with a Deep One that Ethan was communing with, who of course will kill her (and will attack the agents on seeing them).
Ideally, of course, at least one player gets Blessed. Mechanically, Nodens' blessing works as a "trade SAN for clues" mechanic - Nodens wants you to hunt and investigators are just a type of hunter, so investigators touched by his trident will receive clues that help them track their quarry or tell them how to kill it, or see who is being influenced by extraterrestrials, but are also bloody, horrific and unnatural visions that don't feel good inside your head.
Thoughts?
I think that is a solid scenario. I like the interpretation of Nodens. I like how it makes the favorable light Nodens often appears in is changed into more of a fascistic or hyperpatriarch who claims ownership of everything, and only really cares about the rest of the mythos because they are on his lawn. Makes him much more jealous and monstrous.
I've had an idea for a Nodens cult somewhat similar. I wanted it to tie into more fascistic tendencies. Still has that hunting notion, and hunting the mythos, the cults of Nyarlathotep in particular, which he perceives as primitives, animals for him to hang on his walls as trophies. But his cults soon gravitate towards seeing EVERYTHING not like themselves as animals. He's the ultimate form of Racism and Tribalism. They attack that which is Other to them. This is why I make a lot of Nodens cults white supremacists. He attracts that kind of cultist and ultimately re-enforces their world view. Over time though his cults tear each other apart as they come to only view the self to be truly human and any slight human difference cause for murdering and skinning any abhorrent Other. In the end they are alone, paranoid, and cruel. More animal and monstrous than the Other they hunted. these truest of his devotees are carried of by nightgaunts when they are killed, like valkeries come to take them to valhalla, but they are taken to nodens lands and hunted by him and his dogs for sport.
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Yay, more evil Nodens takes. I like it. I've used Nodens in a Civil War scenario. He's got a cult that looks plenty weird, inhuman and fanatical, but happens to be pointed at something even worse, namely an avatar of Nyarlathotep. My take is that Nodens doesn't care about humans any more than any other Great Old One. He just treats them like bullets rather than snacks.
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Yeah, I always thought that the Derlethian interpretation of "there's good Mythos too!" kind of missed the point and always try to hammer home that ANYTHING supernatural in a Call of Cthulhu scenario should be a source of SAN loss. The idea behind Nodens telling you "KILL THE WHORES" and spiking your brain with a vision of you eviscerating a man on the step of town hall as his clue that someone in the government is a Cthulhu cultist, much like the primal imagery Caleb uses for Bast, is that the "patron" power is still a monstrous, awful thing and it's not pro-human - it just happens to be anti- the thing you're up against right now.
Been riffing off of the Olney idea and Final Revelation, toying with a frame narrative about civilians piecing through the aftermath of a wildfire that gutted several northern American towns, when they come across a bunker that used to house a Green Box and has signs that someone lived there. As they search for the resident amid the underground complex, they encounter research notes, after-action reports and case files that all link together; as with Fiinal Revelation, reading the case files triggers a one-shot about that case. It provides them a clue that might unlock a door in the bunker, or lead them out to a possible refuge the resident might have fled to escape the fire. Eventually they uncover a family tree document laid out by the resident of the bunker, Agent Olmstead, who comes to believe that the lineage is cursed or evil (due to the connections it has with all the cases) - and probably one or more of the party will recognise relatives on the tree. He's set out to assassinate a politician visiting the site of the wildfire for publicity (as he believes the politician is part of the bloodline) which forms the dramatic race-against-time finale and of course the potential for stand-off's, Mexican and otherwise, as dramatic debates unfold over whether the politician is a Mythos agent or not, if Olmstead is just insane...
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Double-posting months apart, but recently I listened to the People's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos do a dramatic reading of The Strange High House in the Mist and discovered I may have accidentally been making a really good allusion in my notes for Thieves of Many Waters?
I kind of drew Olney from the aether, the sort of quaint collaboration of syllables that seemed plausible for 'small fishing town' to my ears. It turns out that the protagonist of Strange High House is Thomas Olney and in the course of the story Olney meets Nodens in the titular house and the experience changes him deeply; after meeting Nodens, Olney moves his family out of Kingsport. In the course of the story, Olney goes from a rational philosopher with a well-disciplined mind but who despairs at the mundanity of his life to one who "never fails to smile correctly with pride when the occasion calls for it. In his glance there is not any restless light, and if he ever listens for solemn bells or far elfin horns it is only at night when old dreams are wandering." Which struck me as a strange description, as if he was mentally unsettled quite profoundly encounter. Like meeting Nodens changed him fundamentally somehow and that he left Kingsport with a new and terrible lease on life..
I must have read Strange High House properly years ago - during the Lovecraft phase a lot of 17 year old nerds go through, I expect - but didn't re-read it, so I wonder if this is just luck or the machinations of the subconscious (or something else?) Either way, it kind of fleshes out backstory for me - Thomas moves west from Kingsport to the Pacific, his contact with Nodens giving him a new terrible clarity and purpose. Perhaps HE writes Strange High House as a coping mechanism for the true traumatic contact with the divine power of Nodens - the house as a metaphor for an alcove, perhaps, that houses a similar temple to the one below the Oregon town. I think it also makes it a really fitting DG scenario by connecting it to a primary Lovecraft source (as opposed to secondary mythos writers or inventing something all my own) and one that isn't as widely known, making it a better twist.
I really need to run this scenario to see if it makes any more sense to people who aren't inside my head.