Whispers of the Dead (Dagon and Hydra)

pixel art by Brian "ink" T

Mutable Godhood

The exact nature of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra's existence is unclear. Some say they're a pair of alien gods, some say they're just extremely powerful Deep Ones. Others claim this distinction is meaningless. The two leading theories are that they're either the ancient progenitors of the Deep One 'species,' or an aspirational future goal, when the children of the ocean become just like the Old Ones. 

Likewise, the ritual can be performed in two modes: communing with Dagon and Hydra as if they were Deep Ones of immense power or as if they were Great Old Ones in their own right. The only difference seems to be the operator's perspective on the matter and how willing they are to push through the boundaries of reality. If contacted as Deep Ones, the ritual costs 9 WP and 1D6 SAN. The operator gains an overarching sense of the Deep Ones' plans. Without a high or critical activation roll, the visions are mostly limited to wherever the operator performs the ritual, or the locale of whatever tradition they learned the ritual from. If they spend 1 POW, the operator contacts the pair as Great Old Ones and loses 1D8 SAN. They are overwhelmed with visions of the Deep Ones' past, present, and future.

ARCHINT: The Five-Sided Ankh

Last month, I ran a short scenario centered around an unnatural artifact. The scenario leaves the exact mechanics up to the Handler, so I thought I'd write them up, plus some spot rules for Raise From Essential Saltes. I recommend making Potemkin an archeologist of some sort and having journals from the dig he recovered the ankh at. They contain sketches and descriptions of the ankh enough for an Agent to guess at the later clues, but not draw any solid conclusions.

When an Agent wears the amulet for the first time, they lose 0/1D4 SAN from a brief moment of dissociation as they feel a wave of dry heat. Ask the the player if they want to shut it out (ie: project onto a Bond). What they learn from the vision depends on the amount of SAN lost after projection, if any.

Whispers of the Dead (Azathoth)

 

The Ritual

It must be conducted under the sky on a starry night. Attempting it on a rooftop in a city clogged with light pollution imposes a -10% penalty to the activation roll. The operator plays an atonal melody on a wind instrument, though no Art skill is needed. It's like a musical form of automatic writing. Most versions of the ritual include sheet music or instructions for writing your own. Part of learning the ritual is understanding that while great skill is required manipulate Azathoth's dreams, it is also completely irrelevant, as everything is destroyed as it comes in contact with His maelstrom of creation.

Whispers of the Dead (Masterpost)

The Premise

The Whispers of the Dead ritual can be used to contact an unnatural creature, but also a Great Old One or similar. However, there’s not much reason to do so. It’s a serviceable ‘contact spell,’ but the text tells the Handler outright that using it to commune with a god is basically useless. Additionally, the spell costs a point of permanent POW when used that way. Ordinarily, I'd rule the spell is more useful than the Handler's Guide suggests, like I do for a lot of other lackluster rituals. But it doesn’t feel right here. Gods should still maintain that air of mystery. 

My Proposal

Successfully activating a Whispers of the Dead (Great Old One) ritual leaves the operator with a vague sense of the Old One’s will and desires, but also marks them with a supernatural ability or characteristic as a fraction of the god’s power, a Boon. 

Crits and Fumbles for Rituals

The Premise

Magic, excuse me, hypergeometry, is supposed to be weird and scary. These rules exist to add a bit of mystery and tension to the existing mechanics of Ritual Activation rolls.

Basic Overview

Ritual Activation rolls critically succeed on a success with matching dice or a roll of 01. The operator loses the maximum amount of SAN listed for the ritual and the effect is stronger. Activation rolls fumble whenever they fail with matching dice or roll a 100 (00). This carries negative consequences dependent on the specific ritual activated. If a character spends a point of POW to force a connection to the unnatural, fumbles become critical successes. Assistants are partially insulated from the raw power of critical Ritual Activation rolls. They only roll for normal SAN loss and can roll INTx5 to avoid the negative effects of fumbles.

Ankhs but no Thanks - A Play Report

 

a plaster cast of the titular ankh

I ran Ankhs but no Thanks, a Delta Green scenario by mellonbread. The party consisted of:

Karina Lask, AKA 'Rowan,' a woman in her mid forties who still looked twenty-five thanks to a vampire bite that so far has had no other effects.

Sophie Walley, an actual twenty-something who worked for the CIA's Covert Influence Group who would look more at home on someone's Instagram feed.

They were told a coroner friendly in New Jersey had found something weird and wanted Delta Green to check it out. The coroner's office was a converted bungalow with a climate-controlled shipping container shoved through a hole in the wall. It served as a relatively more secure lockup and after sealing the gaps between the metal and the bungalow's drywall with insulation, it kept the office cold too. Despite the ramshackle nature of his workplace, Dr. Goldberg was a real doctor and kept his certificates framed on a wall. He showed the Agents over to his find.

The Stats Chamber: A Tool for Handlers

How This Came to Be

Sometimes when you're writing a scenario, you want to know exactly how dangerous an attack is to ensure a certain game experience. Maybe you've killed a bunch of Agents before with situations you thought were relatively safe and want to avoid making the same mistake. Maybe the narrative pacing requires an enemy dangerous enough to command attention but not so dangerous that it wipes the party. In either case, you have some math to do so you can make an informed decision on what damage to use.

2022 Shotgun Scenario Contest Reviews

I managed to review 51 of the 53 scenarios submitted to this year's Delta Green shotgun scenario contest. But it's okay, because I didn't really understand the last two scenarios and didn't have anything important to say about them.