Adam Scott Glancy is one of the co-authors of Delta Green and is the man behind Pagan Publishing. I talked to him over Skype about the newest Delta Green book, Targets of Opportunity, a collection of new DG antagonist groups and M-EPIC, a Canadian anti-mythos organization. We also talk about the resurrection of The Unspeakable Oath, the legendary Call of Cthulhu magazine, a scenario about templar zombies and their mastery of the Dewey Decimal system and advice for running Call of Cthulhu for new keepers. This is a long interview but well worth the listen.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:17:54 — 94.7MB)
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Good interview. I loved the Zombie Templar story.
Fun interview, really sparked my imagination. It’s also great to hear from a mind behind the games we love.
Mr. Glancy’s comparison of Delta Green and MAJESTIC-12 really struck home for me: Delta Green as the “heroic, war-winning” America; MAJESTIC-12 as the “military-industrial complex superpower” America.
Another particularly cool metaphor was the Cult of Transcendance as the Cthulhu Mythos itself: really huge and destructive, with no real guidance behind it. Not only that, but ascending through the cult leads to the most dubious prize imaginable. A great way to summarize the impersonal universe presented in Call of Cthulhu.
I found it strange that testers and readers did not see Black Cod Island and the DeMonte Clan as a severe threat. They ritually sacrifice a few people and devour a few corpses, respectively. What’s the big deal? Well, I imagine it’s a fairly big deal to the innocents living in close proximity to these mythos-affiliated organizations!
We have a Zeitgeist and a spy agency CSIS , but it is so secret that no one knows about it. lol. I’m surprised you didn’t just give M-EPIC the issue of too much paperwork, little funding, and no respect.
For the multi-generational campaign, you can make the players care about their investigator by changing their new investigators access based on whether their investigator wrote and researched after the investigation. Also if they have to bring back something, then someone will have to survive.
I’ve heard the templar story before, it was in the interview Scott did with Yog forever ago and it is so much more entertaining to hear the man himself tell it. When I run a game of Call of Cthulhu with new players I always tell the autopsy body story and it will be amazing to have more of the story to tell now.
I am completely sold of Taregst of Op, I will preorder it tonight.
On a note for Ross, this is hands down the best interview you have yet done (though for some unknown reason you come through only on my left head phone and Scott only on my right one).
Thank you Ross. And thank you Scott, you are one of the top most entertaining people I’ve ever encounted on the internet.
You know, I too wanted to run a generation spaning campaign in CoC. Ironicly I was waiting for Horrors of War to come out before starting it.
Oh, and it wasn’t all Aaron’s fault for dying twice in Mysteries of Mesoamerica. I remeber it had alot to do with Greg Stolze’s very convincing dream logic based of fail occult checks.
“My character could not be happier….I the player not be any sadder.”
“Welcome to mythos. It sucks.”
Love it!
A recurring series of Cthuhlu anecdotes would be pretty sweet in my opinion.
Fantastic interview, great stories. Many many thanks!
Well, as both a Canadian and a Delta Green fan, I definitely want to get a copy of Targets. I can imagine small groups of “meteorologists” in government basements, low-budget teams borrowing real estate from larger ministries.
I’m not sure I agree with the absence of the Canadian zeitgeist, though. We had a huge (understated) involvement in World War Two. The Canadians hit the beaches on D-Day. Not to mention that we helped form one of the first modern Special Forces units in a joint operation with the US – the Devil’s Brigade, which operated in Italy and France. They painted their faces black with shoe polish to camouflage themselves at night, and marked their victims with notes saying, “The worst is yet to come.”
Nowadays, we’re fairly enthusiastic about international peacekeeping. Kinda makes me think that M-EPIC could bump into other agencies now and then, when interests overlap.
Great Interview!
This interview was packed full of great inspirational material. I am definitely interested in picking up the Targets Of Opportunity sourcebook.
Honestly, I’m not as interested in running a “modern” CoC scenario, although, if I were, Scott has some really amazing ideas.
What disturbs me most about the mythos is embodied by the spirit of the age that HP Lovecraft wrote in and that is an age of burgeoning technological accomplishment, but an accomplishment that fails to truly comprehend it’s stunning inability to predict the utter chaotic nature of the universe.
I think scientists of the modern era are still struggling with the same questions that HP Lovecraft himself (vis-à-vis the characters in his stories) struggled with. Of course, now we have cute theories (Quantum Mechanics anybody? String theory?) by which we attempt to rationalize Lovecraft’s primordial, terrifying chaos, but in the end they fall miserably short and disintegrate before the mythos. It sounds as if this realization, amazing and horrifying as it is, has found it’s way into the T.O.O. material.
Can’t wait to pick up the retail paperback version!
Thanks for the interview Ross!