The Glaakeen, an Old Threat for Delta Green

untitled 'doodle' by Asta Daily

In the Handler's Guide, in Glaaki's part of the Great Old Ones chapter, we learn about the Glaakeen (or Servants of Glaaki as they're called in CoC). Most of them hang around Glaaki and presumably do his bidding, but they also show up in Glaaki cults, most famously under the leadership of the Fate's Belial/Robert Hubert in Holy War in Eyes Only. In fan content, they're well suited for the dual role of 'muscle' and 'ascended elders,' a bit like how Deep Ones act in some Cthulhu cults. We're given 'stats' for them in one of Glaaki's abilities in the Handler's Guide, but it is incomplete if you want to actually use them.

Simplifying B/X's Saving Throw Matrices

I like the old saving throws. To no one's surprise, my favorite incarnation of them lies within the pages of Moldvay's B/X. However, they're not perfect. They rely on a series of tables that aren't the easiest to reference quickly. It's not uncommon for one's eyes to slip and read off the wrong number. This is more of an issue for the Dungeon Master than the player, but it's not the primary problem: the saving throw progressions aren't smooth.

"But Top Hat," I hear you say, "why does that even matter?" I will admit, it's a bit of an obsessive mathematical yearning but it's in contrast to almost all of the rest of the game's mechanics. HP progression is smooth, each level, you get more HP. Spells and spell slots are smooth, barring a few levels where you get multiple at once, you get a new spell slot each level. THAC0...okay THAC0 isn't quite as smooth but it's still smoother than saving throws. Thief skills go up by 1% or 5% each level. A cleric gets incrementally better at turning each level. In contrast to that, saving throws do nothing for three (or five if you're unlucky enough to be a Magic-User) and then improve by several points all at once. And the rate of advancement doesn't even hold constant. It's a mess!

Guest Post - Locked Doors and Investigative RPGs

If you play Delta Green, or any other investigative RPG, for any length of time you will inevitably run into a ‘locked door’ — an obstacle in the path of the investigation that seems insurmountable, at least with the skills you personally have. However, if you apply some critical thinking and creativity to the problem there are often quite a few ways through that locked door well within your grasp. This blog post offers some examples for getting through a literal locked door and hopefully will inspire Agents and Handlers alike to think more creatively about solutions.

This list is hardly complete and in several circumstances different skills could very validly be used for the same purpose. It is not meant to be a definitive list of ways to get past a lock or a guide to breaking and entering. It is merely meant to serve as inspiration.

Guest Posts!

Some friends of mine are going to be writing some posts for this blog. They didn't feel like making a blog of their own and I'm happy to host their ideas that would otherwise go unseen. So hopefully you can expect a slight uptick in posts in the future.

An Analysis of SAN Loss in Delta Green

When Agents (and theoretically NPCs) encounter unnatural beings, they usually have to make a SAN test and risk losing some SAN. Most SAN losses in Delta Green follow a rule of thumb set out in the Agent's Handbook's Sanity chapter.

If the cost of failing a SAN test is 1D6 or less, the cost of success is usually zero. If the cost of failure is 1D8 or 1D10, the cost of success is usually 1. Some unnatural events and encounters are even more catastrophic (AH, 66).

You can map out the progression of SAN loss like so: 0, 0/1, 0/1D4, 0/1D6, 1/1D8, 1/1D10, 1D4/1D12, 1D6/1D20, and 1D10/1D100. We don't find 1D10/1D100 until we open the Handler's guide, and 1D4/1D12 is purely a theoretical SAN loss that fits very nicely between 1/1D10 and 1D6/1D20 but I've never seen it in any published DG material. 

EDIT: as of Fall 2021, we actually now have an official 1D4/1D12 SAN loss in ARCHINT.

Some listed SAN losses deviate from this progression. Most of these anomalies are unnatural, but first I'll cover the mundane anomalies found in the Agent's Handbook.

Rolling up a Wizard for Begone, FOE!

One of my friends, mellonbread, wrote up a dungeoncrawling game. If you follow the blog, you've seen me mention it before. I've been helping him turn it into a complete system by writing up a bestiary. Most of my inspiration was drawn from B/X, though I grabbed some cool monsters from AD&D and other editions and retroclones. A lot of these monsters are people, or rather, humans with class levels. 

This poses a particular problem for magic-users, as their spell selections are to be determined randomly. Lots of other games make this pretty easy. A wizard has a number of spells of a certain level that they can cast per day. You consult the table and roll up the appropriate amount of spells. WotC made it even simpler in 5e by giving archmages and priests set spell lists in their statblocks.

However, that doesn't work for Begone. There aren't any spell slots per day of a certain level. It's more vancian than any TSR or WotC edition of D&D ever was. The more powerful you are, the more powerful spells you can hold in your head. This could either by one big spell, a lot of little spells, or a mix of something in between. So how do we decide what "loadout" a wandering wizard has?

Top Hat's Home Delta Green Campaign: Session Seventeen

This one's been a long time coming, but to be honest, I just kinda forgot about it for a while.

The team decided they needed to scope out the compound first. And what better way to do that than to seduce the reverend. Sadie hit him up with a booty call and said she'd bring two of her friends. The reverend was excited and gave Sadie, Barbara, and Gina a tour of the place. Using Demolitions and Stealth, Gina picked out two spots for the two IEDs she'd created with Barbara's help. One was hidden in the living quarters to cause general chaos and destruction while the other was planted on the wall of the radio station. The latter was supposed to punch a hole in the wall and fence to make it easier for the team to get into the building.

Sadie lied and said she had to use the bathroom and so Father Gauss-Wernstrom took her out to the outhouse that they'd hooked up to a septic tank. This was to cover for Gina while she placed the IED inside the radio station. The reverend was expecting some sort of outdoor sex situation, which it eventually turned into. He left his hand-radio on one of the tables inside. Gina and Barbara figured it was important, but forgot to do anything about it. After that, Gina and Barbara lied that they weren't feeling well and everyone went home.

Bears Fruit Dungeon Review

Woah, what's this, top hat? A post about an OSR game? We thought you'd totally abandoned the Old School Renaissance for Delta Green.

My internet friend Jojiro wrote a solo module called Bears Fruit and people thought it was pretty cool. I also thought it was pretty cool and decided to review it since no one else had. Also my blog was in some desperate need of some Spears-related content. You can find Joji's blog, Dungeon Antology, in the sidebar of this one! There's some cool stuff there.