From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 4:28 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. From: Gil Trevizo >Under the current DG, the only resources the cell can bring to bear Under the current DG, the Cell is not alone. A-Cell can call upon all sorts of resources. I mean, one of our ex-Members is sitting pretty at the head of Naval Intelligence fer chrissakes. And one of our top shooters was the Commanding Officer of a US NAVY SEAL team until the "shattering personal cost" fine print of the DG Contract caught up to him. >Under the new official DG, the cell has significantly more resources to >bring in. At the very least, this new DG will create some kind of >rapid-reaction force, a Mythos HRT. Such a team will be well-prepared with >heavy weapons (for a commando force) I imagine there are more than a couple of DG Cells that exactly resemble this sort of Fast Reaction Squad. Of course, the whole point to Delta Green is that you do not allow the situation to escalate into an armed confrontation. If "filling dem varmints fulla lead" was the solution to mythos outbreaks, then there would be no need for Delta Green; Joe Bob and Billy Ray could bring their shotguns to the hoe-down and blow away all the bad guys from their beat-up pickup truck. > but they can be much less cautious than >old DG, because whatever government inquiry can limited because these guys >now have proper clearance, I seriously doubt that... the government is not the monolithic juggernaut some people percieve it to be. An official organization has to be MORE cautious or the political winds will shift and blow you right out of existence. There will be more than a few people who won't like the concept of an official Delta Green. Senator Anthony Ditorrio (D-Missouri) comes to mind, if he manages to get a seat on the Senate Ways and Means committee, or the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Delta Green can look forward to some major league bend-over-and-beg-for-more shafting. > and whatever media attention will now be subject >to government stonewalling - it's not just DG's butt on the line if the >raid gets on CNN, it's also the butts of every govt official that signed >off on this new outfit, probably including the President himself. The administration's method of stonewalling the media will probably be to just shut down the operation. After all, it worked brilliantly the first time the shit hit the fan. Just because you manage to gain official status, doesn't mean that you have any guarantee of keeping it. >There are wrinkles than can be thrown into this, and I'm not saying it is >bad idea. All I'm saying is that we should start thinking as much as to >how the cause of DG can be harmed by going official as we are to thinking >of how this now makes DG into SHIELD. Funny you should mention that, because alien mutant cockroaches demolished the SHIELD Helicarrier and then later on, LMD robot clones mounted a spooky body-snatching takeover of both SHIELD and Hydra forcing a paranoid and disenfranchised Nick Fury to disband the organization and reform it as a small cadre of "PC" like characters. I think they were later all killed by the Serpent Men secretly running Roxxon Oil, but since they're Marvel characters, they got better in a few issues. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Eckhard Huelshoff [EHuelshoff@t-online.de] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 4:38 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. Good Evening! The Man in Black schrieb: > > This is exactly what a good "epic" roleplaying campaign does. It alters > the Status Quo, or at the very least, threatens to do so in a major way. I agree on this one. Some of us have campaigns going on for several years. If you want your players to take you seriously, it is necessary that they at least feel the possibility that things might change if they either succeed or fail in their missions. [snip] > > I'd say there's a long way between James Bond and Tom Clancy. But > regardless of that, Thrilling Politics is not an impossibility for the > current unofficial Delta Green. What do you think being investigated by > the United States Senate Sub-Committee on Intelligence is? What do you > think guys like Agent ERNIE (Paul MacLester, Special Assistant to the > President for National Security) or Lisa Simpson (Asst. US Attorney) do? > They certainly don't go out and spy on cultists at 0'Dark-Hundred Hours, > shooting and looting when the flare goes up... > > It's simply a difference in Gamemastering styles. Good point! And in the end it might even be the more satisfying way of gaming, depending on your players. And it is definitely totaly different to what many Strange-Aeons-listmembers think as typically DG! > I think Delta Green > could use a shift in gears. It's been nearly seven years since initial > publication, and I think Delta Green is getting a little bit stale. Even > the creators seem to have moved on to other projects (Unseen Masters, > GODLIKE, Our Darkest Hour, etc). > > My big fear is that will turn into some sort of self-indulgent Meta-Game > crap like White Wolf likes to put out. The feel that you MUST > immediately return Delta Green to an official status in your game is not > what I want. I want a campaign outline of how the DGML would do it. All these are good points! Actually I would very much appreciate a 2nd edition of DG to see what's the creators' opinion on what happened in the last few years. Especially when you thing of the ages of the main NPCs from the original books. J. Camp for example hasn't been that young back in 1996, he might very well be dead now or finally driven over the edge and now sitting in a lone cell in Arkham Asylum. Who will be the next Agent Alphonse? > > But it makes perfect sense for A-Cell to move towards a return to > official status. It's exactly what's needed to effectively combat > international threats like the Cult of Trancendance, Severn Aerospace, > and the Black Brotherhood. It a logical progression of the history, > allowing for a defeated Majestic and a well-maintained bulwark against > the Mythos. I don't know. I'd really prefer to keep MJ12 as a recurring villain. Sure, DG might have had its share of victories over them, but I do not really see them as an organization to be completely defeated. They are too powerful in my opinion. [snip] > My assumption is that these threats will have been dealt or are in the > final stages of being dealt with by the time the GREY WAR gets into full > swing. EMERALD HAMMER presupposes that the Karotechia lasts for exactly > ONE campaign after all. But a long campaign I hope... And even if the players think it's over it might not yet be over: There's still plenty of new and old Nazis to who might rediscover the occult traditions of their forefathers. Anyway, I think we have one big problem in the moment: There is no canon of what has happened after the publication of DG [ or at least Countdown ]. Everything we do discuss here on DGML is nothing but speculation. I would really like to hear the creators' opinion of what has happened/changed and what will still happen/change. eckhard _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Gil Trevizo [furrylogic@mindspring.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 4:53 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. At 12:28 PM 12/6/2001 -1000, The Man in Black wrote: >Under the current DG, the Cell is not alone. A-Cell can call upon all >sorts of resources. I mean, one of our ex-Members is sitting pretty at >the head of Naval Intelligence fer chrissakes. And one of our top >shooters was the Commanding Officer of a US NAVY SEAL team until the >"shattering personal cost" fine print of the DG Contract caught up to >him. But I'm talking personnel here. Clearances, equipment vouchers, documents, and most important of all, information, can easily be moved around by Delta Green. But even Harley Patton can't send in a small team from SEAL Team Six without having to answer some seriously nasty questions. Agent ERNIE was in the same position that Condoleeza Rice is in now, and while the man must've had access to all kinds of fantastic intel, I doubt he could have gotten the NSA to decrypt a single page of a Mythos tome written by John Dee without a very good cover story. Official DG changes all that. Suddenly the cover story of "national security" isn't a paper tiger, it has meat, because DG does have official sanction somewhere up the chain-of-command. A key element, brilliantly made explicity in THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, is that no matter how much power the law enforcement, intelligence, and military agents of Delta Green may have in their day-to-day jobs, they can only use that power against the Mythos is they can create sophisticated cover story that protects them from exposure and minimizes the danger to the personnel brought in. This element often leaves DG agents no better off against a Mythos threat than any other CoC '90s investigator, and is why DELTA GREEN is not the "call in the SEALs" game so many think it is. Without this element, the campaign can easily degenerate into bartering with the chain of command. I've played in a campaign like that. It sounds all Tom Clancy and supercool from the outside, but after a few sessions, it gets old. Now can GM style deal with that? Sure. Is this a fatal flaw of official DG? Hardly. It's just something to keep in mind. Gil _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Gil Trevizo [furrylogic@mindspring.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 5:25 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Delta Green, 2nd Ed (was Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within) At 11:38 PM 12/6/2001 +0100, Eckhard Huelshoff wrote: >All these are good points! Actually I would very much appreciate a 2nd >edition >of DG to see what's the creators' opinion on what happened in the last few >years. A second edition of the Delta Green sourcebook would be most excellent. Replace the scenarios with whatever material from COUNTDOWN will fit (add the Outlook Group to the MJ-12 section, PISCES and the Insects From Shaggai section, maybe the Tong Shugoran section if it'll fit). Update the material to 2002 (especially the agency templates), though I wouldn't go as drastic as to put in a section re-officializing DG. Print it in hardcover. Probably got a snowball's chance in hell of ever seeing anything like that, though. Gil _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of ElLocoToro@aol.com Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 5:37 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: [DG] The New Delta Green [was Bureaucracy...] I'm pretty sure that it was the Lizard King's recent response that prompted this, so I guess the credit goes mostly to him. If it wasn't him, sorry and sorry. The point seems to have been made that this new official "DG" is not the old DG. There was mention of staffing it with government appointees, thus leading to an inesxperienced and perhaps corrupt group driving the organization [or organization within an organization, whatever.]. The Lizard King, if indeed it was he, branded this a "new Majestic." Descriptions of corruption, misappropriation of funds, and other idiocy followed. Mention was made of the old rogue DGers being unwelcome, though I would say they'd be hunted down, if only for INTENSE and AGGRESSIVE debriefing. My thought: if an official DG is eventually accepted in canon, it would be very appropriate to portray its staffers as freeloaders, or newbies. Depends. But they SHOULD be portrayed as le Carre-esque; by that I mean, self-serving and edgy, though not as corrupt as Majestic. They should be clearly good guys -- allies against the Mythos -- but watching out for their own asses in the end. DG should NOT become a new Majestic. Not totally. --Mark _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Machiavelli132@aol.com Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 5:44 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. Delta Green, second edition? I dunno. I'd rather see the "Our Darkest Hour" book and the "Cult of Transcendence" before any kind of revised edition. Delta Green was pretty much perfect right from the get go, methinks. _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 5:55 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. From: Gil Trevizo >At 01:22 PM 12/6/2001 -0800, The Lizard King wrote: >> Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. >> A new official Delta Green would be Majestic with a new name and some new >>agendas. > >Exactly. In fact, the only way I think DG can subvert MJ-12 would be by >handing the reins over to Lepus. ALPHONSE retires, ADAM is dead, no one >has ever heard from ANDREA (and lived), and A-Cell becomes a one-man >show. ADOLPH uber alles. I dislike this. I'd hate to play in a game like that. As the consequence of a failed attempt to disband Majestic, I might be able to live with it... The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 6:10 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. -----Original Message----- From: Gil Trevizo > Agent ERNIE >was in the same position that Condoleeza Rice is in now, and while the man >must've had access to all kinds of fantastic intel, I doubt he could have >gotten the NSA to decrypt a single page of a Mythos tome written by John >Dee without a very good cover story. Now you've exposed yourself as a fraud... A FRAUD I SAY! Noted cryptologist William F. Friedman of published all sorts of papers about attempts to decrypt the Voynich Manuscript while working for the NSA. The Agency even published an annotated version of the enigmatic tome. See NSA Technical Journal XII. You make me sick. WHAT? You're pathetic. >A key element, brilliantly made explicity in THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, is >that no matter how much power the law enforcement, intelligence, and >military agents of Delta Green may have in their day-to-day jobs, they can >only use that power against the Mythos is they can create sophisticated >cover story that protects them from exposure and minimizes the danger to >the personnel brought in. An top secret blacker than black official government version of Delta Green isn't going to create all sorts of deceptions to mask their clandestine activities? I don't know where you get this idea... > This element often leaves DG agents no better >off against a Mythos threat than any other CoC '90s investigator, and is >why DELTA GREEN is not the "call in the SEALs" game so many think it >is. Without this element, the campaign can easily degenerate into >bartering with the chain of command. I've played in a campaign like >that. It sounds all Tom Clancy and supercool from the outside, but after a >few sessions, it gets old. > >Now can GM style deal with that? Sure. Is this a fatal flaw of official >DG? Hardly. It's just something to keep in mind. No matter how much the boys in Washington tell you how much you're appreciated, they will hang you out to dry the moment something goes wrong. A MAJIC clearance Delta Green will still be operating in a shadowy nebulous world of "trust no one". The fundamental flaw in your thinking is that no matter how much organization and backing and firepower you have, confrontations with the mythos will STILL take it's toll in lives and sanity. Nothing can prevent this, and this is why all Mythos Investigators are the same. Besides, in the political world of today's America, calling in the SEALS will only get the New Delta Green disbanded again. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 6:15 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] The New Delta Green [was Bureaucracy...] From: ElLocoToro@aol.com >The point seems to have been made that this new official "DG" is not the old DG. There was mention of staffing it with government appointees, thus leading to an inesxperienced and perhaps corrupt group driving the organization [or organization within an organization, whatever.]. > >The Lizard King, if indeed it was he, branded this a "new Majestic." Descriptions of corruption, misappropriation of funds, and other idiocy followed. This is what the New Delta Green CAN become, if the PC's don't spend time fighting the good fight in the halls of power. It provides serious incentive to turn it into a political game. >Mention was made of the old rogue DGers being unwelcome, though I would say they'd be hunted down, if only for INTENSE and AGGRESSIVE debriefing. Again, this sort of abuse of power will have to be prevented by the sane members of the New Delta Green. >My thought: if an official DG is eventually accepted in canon, it would be very appropriate to portray its staffers as freeloaders, or newbies. Depends. But they SHOULD be portrayed as le Carre-esque; by that I mean, self-serving and edgy, though not as corrupt as Majestic. They should be clearly good guys -- allies against the Mythos -- but watching out for their own asses in the end. This is how Delta Green Agents SHOULD operate, NOW. You always have to check your six when you're in the spy game. >DG should NOT become a new Majestic. Not totally. Unless the Agents fail to play the political game... The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Gil Trevizo [furrylogic@mindspring.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 7:45 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. At 06:44 PM 12/6/2001 -0500, Machiavelli132@aol.com wrote: >Delta Green, second edition? > >I dunno. I'd rather see the "Our Darkest Hour" book and the "Cult of >Transcendence" before any kind of revised edition. Delta Green was pretty >much perfect right from the get go, methinks. Oh, damn straight. But 2001 is a whole other world than 1996, and some minor updating of just what's happened in the DGverse since then would be nice. I would also like to see the events of THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT incorporated into the canon and follow their fallout. But I'd rather see OUR DARKEST HOUR come out first. I'd sell my left nut to see OUR DARKEST HOUR come out. I'd hunt down and steal Hitler's missing left nut and sell it to Pagan to perform some dark Nazi ritual to see OUR DARKEST HOUR come out. Detwiller's DG WII novel, Cult of Transcendence, Crowe's book on vampires in CoC, and a Delta Green Player's Handbook would also be nice. And a full DG campaign book a la Realm of Shadows would make my fucking day. But ODH has my heart. And my left nut. Gil _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Lizard King [lizardrex@charter.net] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 8:14 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Man in Black" > Now you've exposed yourself as a fraud... A FRAUD I SAY! Noted > cryptologist William F. Friedman of published all sorts of papers about > attempts to decrypt the Voynich Manuscript while working for the NSA. > The Agency even published an annotated version of the enigmatic tome. > See NSA Technical Journal XII. Sure, why not? The Voynich Manuscript appears to be a language instead of a cypher (AFAIK the last time I checked) which would make it as secure as Navajo with many fewer speakers, as deciphering an unknown language without a Rosetta Stone is a task that (apparently) even the NSA isn't quite up to. As far as we know. One benefit (or threat) of a legitimate official DG would be just that sort of project aimed at any number of tomes. The major difference between the original DG and a new incarnation is the learning curve. The originals didn't know much about the Outside initially, but learned under fire. Much of the knowledge came as the result of seeing spells and tomes and rituals and liaisons with non-human contacts being used by the sorts of people that usuallly do that sort of thing in scenarios and Lovecraftian fiction. This would tend to reinforce the lesson that Mythos=toxic, at least for the Operations types. Former Delta Green personnel were permanently transferred to MJ-12 to help cover up what the Air Force's Project SIGN couldn't explain away. I think we can assume that some became true believers. Some Delta Green personnel would make a good fit in the teams that studied the Grey language, and they'd already be cleared for hinky stuff. So some Delta Green people became MJ-12, and some eventually became Cowboys. I think the difference went beyond whether they suspected there was something else behind the Greys. Some want to study the weird shit that turns up, and others want to destroy it because it's toxic. I think a revivified Delta Green would lean towards studying the stuff to get some advantage since those are the former Delta Green personnel that stayed on the job and didn't get involved in some conspiracy of rogue government agents. In fact, those rogue agents would end up being an argument *for* the study and utilize faction. The present clandestine DG would have to fight the good fight in the halls of power, but they will do it handicapped by the inability to cite their experience with an illegal conspiracy as evidence. The study and utilize faction of former DG personnel will be able to put on a dog and pony show of way cool technology and biotech to demonstrate the benefits of their approach. Therefore, I think even if there is a new improved Delta Green, there will still be a conspiracy of people who have seen the Elephant. Mark McFadden _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 8:30 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. From: Gil Trevizo >At 06:44 PM 12/6/2001 -0500, Machiavelli132@aol.com wrote: >>Delta Green, second edition? >Oh, damn straight. But 2001 is a whole other world than 1996, and some >minor updating of just what's happened in the DGverse since then would be >nice. I would also like to see the events of THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT >incorporated into the canon and follow their fallout. Pagan Publishing has expressed their anti-meta-plot stance on several forums, especially given the example of White Wolf's failure to implement such a strategy successfully. I believe the Pagans plan to treat the novels and related material as a sort of "House Campaign" and seperate continuity. However, the core Delta Green background is growing less and less contemporary, especially in light of the events of Sept. 11th. The violent shake-up of the Law Enforcement, Military and Intelligence communities that make up Delta Green and Majestic-12 needs to be expressed, and soon, or the intellectual property will rapidly lose what little commercial viability it has. Perhaps more importantly, it will lose it's relevance to the world. The choice to avoid the revisionism and continuity issues of a metaplot can be handled in a fairly straightforward way: Publish a campaign which alters the background. Battletech did this several times over, meeting with moderate success (or perhaps outstanding success for such mediocre background material). Car Wars had it's AADA which kept the background from stagnating. Delta Green has a strength here that these other games lack: it doesn't have to produce new rules/equipment/mechs/widgets to update itself. It just has to extrapolate from current events. The GREY WAR is my nascent attempt at this sort of 21st century update. Pagan will eventually have to do something like it in the next few years, unless they decide to abandon Delta Green in the 20th Century. Given their current schedule (GODLIKE, Unseen Armies, Our Darkest Hour, and getting blind drunk off of their homemade alcohol) it seems unlikely that we'll see anything of the sort in the near future, or even the far future. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Gil Trevizo [furrylogic@mindspring.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 8:35 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. Stone Cold MiB Austin took a moment from getting punked out by Kurt Angle to write: >The fundamental flaw in your thinking is that no matter how much >organization and backing and firepower you have, confrontations with the >mythos will STILL take it's toll in lives and sanity. Nothing can >prevent this, and this is why all Mythos Investigators are the same. Whoa there, pardner. If that was the case, DG would be nothing more than the Theron Marks Society with assault rifles. And that's exactly what a lot of folks who criticize DG think it is. But it ain't. Sure, there's horror in watching the HP of your PC drop below zero and your SAN score creep into the single digits, but makes DG special is that it adds paranoia to the mix. Back in the '20s, Johnny Dilletante had to worry about the Cult of Cthulhu or the Esoteric Order of Dagon hunting him down*; but, Johnny DG has to worry about all that and also internal reviews, media attention, personal betrayal and the Bronsons finding out. This illegal conspiracy of DG is what so revolutionizes the game of CoC, and making DG official (without an internal conspiracy) tames that aspect. Not entirely, yes. Of course, official DG still has to be careful. But not as careful. The bureaucratic paranoia of what factions are trying to screw your project, what agency wants to horn in on your action, how much you can get away with before an internal review brings you down, and so on... that's interesting, but that can't compare to the threat of what MJ-12 or public exposure can do to DG as it exists. And I'm not so sure the political game is quite where DG should head. It doesn't exactly do wonders for the "horror" of White Wolf games. I think having an internal conspiracy within an official DG makes for the best of both worlds. You keep the paranoia of old-style DG and add the labyrinthine politics of new-style DG. And the Keeper can emphasize either or both as they see fit. Gil * If anyone takes this as a slam on CoC, don't. CoC is great in it's own way. While DG has the paranoia of its illegal conspiracy and its technothriller cool, CoC has its historical atmosphere and gothic pulp. Both are great games. Here endeth the disclaimer. _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 8:45 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. From: The Lizard King > I think a revivified Delta Green would lean towards studying the stuff to >get some advantage since those are the former Delta Green personnel that >stayed on the job and didn't get involved in some conspiracy of rogue >government agents. In fact, those rogue agents would end up being an >argument *for* the study and utilize faction. These people are long since retired. I mean, really... Delta Green disbanded in 1970, that was over 30 years ago. People have had entire careers come and go and then come and go again since then. Two or three generations of institutional memory have passed since now and then. The only Delta Green people who will be a part of the New Delta Green are Rogues and Cowboys. Justin Kroft was around 35 years old in 1970. Adolph Lepus was a whippersnapper at 23, still in his first military term as a snake eater. > The present clandestine DG would have to fight the good fight in the halls >of power, but they will do it handicapped by the inability to cite their >experience with an illegal conspiracy as evidence. The study and utilize >faction of former DG personnel will be able to put on a dog and pony show of >way cool technology and biotech to demonstrate the benefits of their >approach. I have a feeling that this "dog and pony" show you mention so blithely would be a parade of horrors so disturbing as to force me to have the perpetrators shot for national security reasons. > Therefore, I think even if there is a new improved Delta Green, there will >still be a conspiracy of people who have seen the Elephant. Yes, but the events of the GREY WAR will alter their Pachydermic Psyches. You see, you're living in the present, not thinking of the consequences of the stark revelation of the Grey Harvest, and the subsequent exposure of the Mi-Go themselves. Furthermore, the aftermath of SPIRAL CHALICE and the Antarctic Conspiracy also affect Majestic in some fairly dramatic ways ...BUT PERHAPS I'VE SAID TOO MUCH, MR. MCFADDEN... The Man in Black is : creepy when he looks at you that way. Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 9:09 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. -----Original Message----- From: Gil Trevizo >This illegal conspiracy of DG is what so revolutionizes the >game of CoC, and making DG official (without an internal conspiracy) tames >that aspect. Not entirely, yes. Of course, official DG still has to be >careful. But not as careful. You have to be More Careful, not less, with an official status. You have a lot more to lose. Anyhow, when I run 1920's Cthulhu, I use the FreeMasons as my "Delta Green". The internal paranoia of the Masonic Conspiracy is much worse than any internal distrust Delta Green has had to face as of yet. Some chapters actively worship the mythos in secret, others fight it fanatically. The entire Shadows of YOG-SOTHOTH campaign involves tracking down and destroying one such corrupted chapter of Masons also known as the Hermetic Order of the Silver Twilight. >The bureaucratic paranoia of what factions are trying to screw your >project, what agency wants to horn in on your action, how much you can get >away with before an internal review brings you down, and so on... that's >interesting, but that can't compare to the threat of what MJ-12 or public >exposure can do to DG as it exists. The stakes are much higher in an official Delta Green. If you fail to stand and deliver, the ENTIRE WORLD falls with you. And as McFadden points out, the dismantling of Majestic and reabsorbtion by Delta Green and pther agencies can easily lead to an American version of the Karotechia. The enemy is no longer merely outside agencies and cults, but your own people turning against you. That is the world of the New Delta Green. >And I'm not so sure the political game >is quite where DG should head. It doesn't exactly do wonders for the >"horror" of White Wolf games. It takes away the only thing Delta Green agents had, their self-rightous idealistic conviction that what they were doing was the right thing. Now, they get bogged down in futile struggles for turf and jurisdiction. Officialdom makes the job harder in any number of ways. It also greatly expands the scope of what you can do to fight the mythos. Besides, the political aspect to White Wolf games made them an industry leader, with a TV Show and everything. >I think having an internal conspiracy within an official DG makes for the >best of both worlds. You keep the paranoia of old-style DG and add the >labyrinthine politics of new-style DG. And the Keeper can emphasize either >or both as they see fit. After the long hard fight to regain official status, I'd place the ruthless desperate folks who want to squander their sanity by exploiting the mythos as this internal conspiracy. The idea is to invert the current paradigm and truly have a "different" flavor to Delta Green. More of the same is not what I'm going for here. After all, the whole point to regaining official status is that Delta Green has finally WON! Majestic has been beaten. It should be a New Era, and everything should be different. I have no doubt that the occasional "Cowboy Operation" will occur in the New Delta Green, and this will cause serious problems for the organization, just as it does now. I doubt that any internal conspiracy will be anything like the tightly controlled nature of the current Cell-Structure incarnation of Delta Green. However, it's easy to imagine a tight-lipped ad-hoc group of folks "in the know" -- a modern day incarnation of the Spartan Krypteia (or Secret Police) who would execute troublesome slaves after a secret Star Chamber trial -- developing in the New Delta Green. Of course, it may be that the Internal Security "ANDREA" division of the New Delta Green will already be very much like the Krypteia, thus eliminating the need for such a beast. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Gil Trevizo [furrylogic@mindspring.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 9:21 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. At 05:09 PM 12/6/2001 -1000, The Man in Black wrote: >The stakes are much higher in an official Delta Green. If you fail to >stand and deliver, the ENTIRE WORLD falls with you. But, Black, my man, we have that *now*. >The idea is to invert the current paradigm and truly have a "different" >flavor to Delta Green. More of the same is not what I'm going for here. That "same" is what makes Delta Green the fantastic setting it is. If that's gonna be replaced, no problemo. But let's replace it with something as equally good as fostering paranoia and horror. >After all, the whole >point to regaining official status is that Delta Green has finally WON! >Majestic has been beaten. It should be a New Era, and everything should >be different. We could always get rid of the illegal conspiracy and turn Delta Green into GURPS Black Ops. But why not just play GURPS Black Ops? Because what you're describing is pretty much GURPS Black Ops with the Mythos. Which could be a great game. Hell, I planned to run GURPS Black Ops before I found out about Delta Green. This is a great thread, and these ideas are superb. It makes me want to speed things up with my own DG campaign to get the PCs closer to the point where DG will go official. I love the idea of the PC's choppering into the smoking ruins of Majestic HQ, Lepus coming up to them with a smoking gun in one hand, ready to tell them that the King is dead, long live the King. But when that happens, I'll be going the internal conspiracy route. I'm not saying it's superior or anything - it's just closer to what I run DG for. Gil _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Lizard King [lizardrex@charter.net] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 9:45 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. ----- Original Message ----- From: "The Man in Black" > I have a feeling that this "dog and pony" show you mention so blithely > would be a parade of horrors so disturbing as to force me to have the > perpetrators shot for national security reasons. Yeah, that's why the guys who saw the original stuff without any spin decided to push harder to get more from that parade of horrors. The dog and pony show will be put on by people out to save their various projects, and I'm sure it will have things to show that are much more impressive than the first results of the Glomar Explorer. > Yes, but the events of the GREY WAR will alter their Pachydermic > Psyches. You see, you're living in the present, not thinking of the > consequences of the stark revelation of the Grey Harvest, and the > subsequent exposure of the Mi-Go themselves. Furthermore, the aftermath > of SPIRAL CHALICE and the Antarctic Conspiracy also affect Majestic in > some fairly dramatic ways ...BUT PERHAPS I'VE SAID TOO MUCH, MR. > MCFADDEN... Yes, but *you* are studiously ignoring the optimistic feel good fuzzy misinterpretation of the events in Operation STINK FINGER, that led to the ill-advised MALIBU BARBIE protocols. Due to the institutional wishful thinking engendered by the accidental revelation of Grey Flannel, the exposure of the Mi-Go resulted in an attitude of "Hey, flying mushrooms. BFD." In the aftermath of RHODESIAN JUNGLE ROUND most of the pessimistic factions have been co-opted by the Evil Clown Conspiracy and have been reassigned to creating cool names for projects. > However, it's easy to imagine a tight-lipped ad-hoc group of folks "in > the know" -- a modern day incarnation of the Spartan Krypteia (or Secret > Police) who would execute troublesome slaves after a secret Star Chamber > trial -- developing in the New Delta Green. Of course, it may be that > the Internal Security "ANDREA" division of the New Delta Green will > already be very much like the Krypteia, thus eliminating the need for > such a beast. Glad you mentioned ANDREA. That provides a different avenue for something new in the Delta Green world. With ADAM and ALPHONSE out of the way through death or retirement or being co-opted, what happens with the mysterious ANDREA? With no description in the sourcebook and only the most tenuous presence in fiction, we are free to make all kinds of speculations about the nature of ANDREA that go beyond the role of cleaner. Even if the cell conspiracy remains unchanged, a whole new methodology and mission could result from having ANDREA at the helm. Mark McFadden _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of David Farnell [daf@fukuoka-u.ac.jp] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 9:55 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. From: "Gil Trevizo" > This is a great thread, and these ideas are superb. Hear, hear! Man, I wish I had time to jump in (time to go teach another class)--but just right quick, I want to say that the kind of wimps who come to this list, get scared off by stuff like this, and then run over to Strange Aeons and whine about what jerks we are would take a look at this thread and think "What a bunch of argumentative jerks!" When what's really happening is this "argument" is building a seriously kick-ass campaign. Keep it up, brothers. Dave _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 10:21 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. From: Gil Trevizo >We could always get rid of the illegal conspiracy and turn Delta Green into >GURPS Black Ops Or we could get rid of the illegal Conspiracy and turn the old Delta Green into the New Delta Green. > Because what >you're describing is pretty much GURPS Black Ops with the Mythos. Have you read GURPS Black Ops? What I'm describing and what you think I'm describing are two different things. 750 point characters with TL8-9 gear who work for a nationless "company" and use cinematic rules does not resemble the New Delta Green in the slightest. Black Ops is Sci-Fi Action-Adventure with a sprinkling of conspiracy. The New Delta Green is conspiracy horror, just like the old Delta Green. It's just that the conspiracies have been shuffled and rearranged in a three card monty scheme to shake things up and make Delta Green relevant to current events. >This is a great thread, and these ideas are superb. It makes me want to >speed things up with my own DG campaign to get the PCs closer to the point >where DG will go official. I love the idea of the PC's choppering into the >smoking ruins of Majestic HQ, Lepus coming up to them with a smoking gun in >one hand, ready to tell them that the King is dead, long live the >King. But when that happens, I'll be going the internal conspiracy >route. I'm not saying it's superior or anything - it's just closer to what >I run DG for. The conspiracy will lie in the dismantling of Majestic-12. And I percieve the New Delta Green to be very much like the 1942 version, only instead of a security clearance granted to people withing the newly formed Office of Strategic Services, it will be a security clearance granted to people within the newly formed Office of Homeland Security. For this reason, I'd be very interested to see Our Darkest Hour, so that I can pervert the ideas therein to present a shattered reflection of the glory days. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 10:26 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. From: The Lizard King > Glad you mentioned ANDREA. That provides a different avenue for something >new in the Delta Green world. With ADAM and ALPHONSE out of the way through >death or retirement or being co-opted, what happens with the mysterious >ANDREA? With no description in the sourcebook and only the most tenuous >presence in fiction, we are free to make all kinds of speculations about the >nature of ANDREA that go beyond the role of cleaner. Even if the cell >conspiracy remains unchanged, a whole new methodology and mission could >result from having ANDREA at the helm. I'm thinking that ANDREA was left "as an exercise for the astute keeper" and that the DGML simply projected their kinky desire for femdom onto her... I also think that ANDREA is simply Agent NANCY after she EATS ALPHONSE'S BRAIN! OH... MY... GAWD... THEY ATE ALPHONSE'S BRAIN! The Man in Black is : opposed to brainophagia. Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Shane Ivey [shane@revolutionsf.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 10:34 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: RE: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. <> But brainophilia is, of course, quite okay. Shane Ivey www.revolutionsf.com SQUICK~! -----Original Message----- From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com [mailto:owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com]On Behalf Of The Man in Black Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 10:26 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Greg Muir [gregmuir@adelphia.net] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 1:36 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: RE: [DG] Mi-Go\Serpent Men connection > In _The Annotated HP Lovecraft_, editor ST Joshi makes the following > observation in a footnote on p193: "Lovecraft himself was notoriously > sensitive to cold, although the causes for his ailment are not well > understood. He was uncomfortable when the temperature dropped below 70 > [degrees F], and would lose consciousness in temperatures below > 20 [degrees > F]." > That always struck me as an odd ailment. Any medical possabilitites? One thing, it shows where some of his ideas came from, personal creeps. Cool Air, Mountains of Madness, the cold was an alien and uncomfortable environment for him. He also really hated the sea so could think of nothing more horrifying than creatures that lurked in the depths beneath. Thank God he wasn't afraid of bunnies or Cthulhu would hop. :) _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Joseph Camp [alphonse@delta-green.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 11:14 PM To: dgrpg Subject: [DG] New Private-Sector Ally http://www.flyinglab.com/ be seeing you, Alphonse _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Shane Ivey [shane@revolutionsf.com] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 11:16 PM To: DGML Subject: [DG] Well, well, well... http://www.flyinglab.com/ Check the links on the right. Love the Timeline, by the way... Shane Ivey www.revolutionsf.com _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Greg Muir [gregmuir@adelphia.net] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 1:56 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: RE: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. > I find it interesting that folks now want to move DELTA GREEN from being > about a ragtag conspiracy to turning them into "Men in Black vs. the > Mythos." I'm not saying this is bad - whatever floats your boat - but to > do so seriously changes the essential nature of DELTA GREEN. For me, it > destroys the appeal of the game, from X-Files/James Ellroy conspiracy to > James Bond/Tom Clancy political thriller, as well as cripples many of the > game balance issues that so many vanilla CoC'ers have criticized DELTA > GREEN unfairly for - that the PC's can just call in a SEAL team and That's just the natural human urge to kick a story into new territory. Things get boring when you know the rules, the basic formula. Babylon 5 enjoyed doing this sort of thing, just when you think you know what's going on bang, something happens to change the universe. No instant reset button, no comfortable formulas. Nothing says people have to play DG a certain way, you can choose to stay clandestine or go MIB. Personally I think the proactive approach is interesting, and from a story-telling perspective it would be neat to see how power corrupts. I trust no one has any doubt as to what would happen if DG became a major player, it's the Who all over again: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. DG would become as corrupted with the power as Majestic is. "Civil rights? Those were Deep Ones, only justice they need comes from my gun. Or at least I think they were Deep Ones. Maybe they were Mexicans. Ah well, an illegal alien is an illegal alien." And you can imagine the kind of hardball they'd need to play with the other steering members. "MJ-6, you know and I know that you cannot be killed, it would raise too many questions and you undoubtably have made precautions that would be unpleasant for us if such a thing were to transpire. You will live. However, we need to ensure your cooperation. Your daughter, Jessica, a lovely girl, she has your eyes. Speaking of that, I have something for you." tosses a ziplock onto the table. Inside is a bloody human digit. "It greatly pained me to have to do this. I'd rather not have to send you any more of her. Think we can come to a deal?" In such a situation DG and Majestic become damned if you do and damned if you don't. The average person is either going to get killed in an offering to the Mythos or killed in the struggle to fight the Mythos. Either way, bad for the average person. In such a situation you could end up with a clandestine counter-DG conspiracy. :) _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Greg Muir [gregmuir@adelphia.net] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 1:56 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: RE: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. > > > And beyond all this, it's interesting from a metagame > perspective that we > > all wanted to play the whistleblowers in the postmodern '90s, and now we > > want to play the jackbooted thugs in postmillenial 00's. > > Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. > A new official Delta Green would be Majestic with a new name and some new > agendas. Don't expect the Cowboys to be recruited or taken back into the > fold. They are illegal loose-cannon conspirators, and besides they don't > have the right sponsors. The new Delta Green would have to be > infiltrated or > doubled whenever possible. Argh, I hate it when I type a big long reply and someone beats me to it. ;) _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Ethan Butterfield [primus@veris.org] Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 11:36 PM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] New Private-Sector Ally -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 09:13:49PM -0800, Joseph Camp wrote: > http://www.flyinglab.com/ > All good, except for this: "...fight alien horrors in real-time small-unit combat." Real-time? Argh. Prolly won't buy it unless it's something unique, so make sure to put out a demo beforehand. :) - -- "You forgot the first rule of a fanatic. When you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy." - Cmdr. Jeffrey Sinclair, Babylon 5, "Infection" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE8EFUuAmwSMwnpLHgRAtNLAJ0dtnTNl97o8eG90O8R07I1g+/FqACfSldw HDMnFAWCzUO1korP7/R0FdQ= =AtFd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Gil Trevizo [furrylogic@mindspring.com] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 12:36 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: DG, circa 1942 (was Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within.) At 06:21 PM 12/6/01 -1000, The Man in Black wrote: >The conspiracy will lie in the dismantling of Majestic-12. And I >percieve the New Delta Green to be very much like the 1942 version, only >instead of a security clearance granted to people withing the newly >formed Office of Strategic Services, it will be a security clearance >granted to people within the newly formed Office of Homeland Security. We had a big discussion about this on the dgww2 list that echoed many of the points made in this thread. My personal opinion is that DG circa 1942 does bear many of the traits you've laid out for New DG, but it doesn't become unbalancing because DG was part of the OSS when the OSS just wasn't much, and P Division before that was even less. When you realize that ONI had something like two intelligence officers and a clerk for their entire Far Eastern desk around the time of Pearl Harbor, you realize how far removed American intelligence was from the large well-financed organizations they would become postwar. OSS just didn't have that many resources to play with in 1942 (or 1943 for that matter), had at best tenuous ties with the military, were inching through a thorny relationship with British intel, annoying established American military and naval intelligence, and are an outright enemy to be quashed by Hoover's FBI. DG agents circa 1942 will be as isolated and outgunned as DG agents circa 2001, moreso in fact, because they lack the sixty years experience modern DG has and probably have much less personnel to work with. This will change by the end of the war, when DG has enough personnel to field several agents in multiple operations, and as part of an OSS that is much-better integrated into the government heirarchy, can call upon significant resources - but they won't, because by then DG will be well-enough aware of the Mythos to adopt the Cowboy mentality of lone wolves scorch-earthing whatever threat they uncover. To bring in all but the most skeletal of crews would expose American boys to That Which Should Not Be, and to study the Mythos would be to end up like the Karotechia, the poor damned bastards. But these ideas are still in-flux, and will depend on how it plays out as we work through the material on dgww2, something I hope to do more of during the Xmas break. Gil _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of ialdaloboth *genzundheit!* [ialdaloboth@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 1:23 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. >Delta Green, second edition? > >I dunno. I'd rather see the "Our Darkest Hour" book and the "Cult of >Transcendence" before any kind of revised edition. Delta Green was pretty >much perfect right from the get go, methinks. I'll agree with Machiavelli. DG was bang-on. I can see the worth of printing an 'update' in the next DG book to cover what the new setups have done for (and against!) the group, but on the all, it's a beaut. J. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Lizard King [lizardrex@charter.net] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 1:39 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: [DG] The Ursus Mark VI vs a Kodiak bear After 10 years, $150,000 and a documentary, Troy Hurtubise is finally going to get to test his armored suit against a bear attack on Dec. 9. http://www.improbable.com/news/2001/nov/troy-bear.html Damn, this is something that calls for a live webcast and all we get to see is some guy guillotining his feet instead. Mark McFadden _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Lizard King [lizardrex@charter.net] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 1:45 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: [DG] List synchronicity I check the Cruel Site of the Day daily, and often find something that gets mentioned here. Now it's going the other way. I spend some time yesterday writing about the "Is your son a hacker" message on Adequacy.org, and guess what's waiting for me today on http://www.cruel.com/ ? Mark McFadden If they present a link to a site about "nigger-toes" tomorrow, I'm outta here. _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of Jürgen Hubert [jhubert@gmx.de] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 5:05 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within. > From: Gil Trevizo > > > >I find it interesting that folks now want to move DELTA GREEN from > being > >about a ragtag conspiracy to turning them into "Men in Black vs. the > >Mythos." I'm not saying this is bad - whatever floats your boat - but > to > >do so seriously changes the essential nature of DELTA GREEN. > > This is exactly what a good "epic" roleplaying campaign does. It alters > the Status Quo, or at the very least, threatens to do so in a major way. And it fits in nicely with my own plans - after all those years lurking and participating in the List, I actually get to GM Delta Green... My plans are to start shortly after Delta Greens reorganization into the cell structure (late 1994/1995), and then progress gradually to the timeline outlined in GURPS Cyberworld/Cthulhupunk. My players are going to freak out when Boris Yeltsin gets assassinated in 1996 - or a highly lethal plague breaks out in 1997 that will ultimately kill off more than a tenth of Earth's human population. Now all I have to do is figure out how to make the PCs feel responsible - or at least feel involved with these events. Ah, the joys of GMing... ;-) People familiar with GURPS Cyberworld will also remember that the USA ultimately evolves into a dictatorship that persecutes "satanic cults" and other members of the occult fringes heavily. To my eye this suggests that Delta Green veterans were involved in the takeover, and that they preferred a dictatorship over allowing Mythos cults run free. There are a lot of stories in there... - Juergen Hubert -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 8:25 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: [DG] New Private-Sector Ally From: Ethan Butterfield >"...fight alien horrors in real-time small-unit combat." > >Real-time? Argh. Prolly won't buy it unless it's something unique, so make >sure to put out a demo beforehand. :) I play and enjoy Myth and Myth 2 Soulblighter, which does real-time small unit combat quite well. However, when you add firearms to the mix it loses quite a bit. I have my qualms about this. Then again, turn based combat sort of sucks, and Rainbow Six proved that you CAN have decent small unit tactics in a computer game. I pray to gawd that Flying Lab isn't going to use the Myth 3 Engine, which is the most defective piece of code since Windows ME. Although we have the Delta Green Partnership authoring the plot, and thus are fully justified in expecting a storyline that will shoot our socks into the stratosphere, we can also fear disappointment from a dumbing down mentality driven by marketing concerns. This is likely in the videogame market, which targets teenagers and has more commercial failures than successes. The commercial viability of a Delta Green videogame has issues to deal with: it's adult and complex, it has comparisons to the X-Files and X-COM to deal with, and it involves obscure elements of the Mythos. Many of the things which make Delta Green great also place it outside mainstream appeal. Altering these things also removes it's appeal as a whole, but marketing people rarely contain the mentality to see this. Sandy Petersen (you know -- the author of Call of Cthulhu) helped with DOOM and QUAKE, and we've seen the bastardization of the Mythos that resulted in. It looks like Flying Lab has a stronger committment to plot and storytelling than ID Software's juvenile "powerup" mentality, but you never can tell... I think my largest concern will be that there won't be any opportunity to investigate and learn/use tradecraft in a video game. The limitations of the medium and it's demographics seem likely to place surveillance, shadowing, wiretapping, warrants, and the other trappings of the business into cutscenes. Simulating the operations of A-Cell logistics (Green Boxes, intelligence analysis, investigation assignment, task force creation) seems to me to be an nearly insurmountable obstacle. I hope some thought goes into putting black budget resource management into the game. Whether such a beast can be implemented properly or completely remains to be seen. Finally, I have grave misgivings about the software industry as a whole. No other industry would be able to get away with such a frightening lack of quality control. If a company produced stereos or televisions as defective as the software being produced in the world today, they'd be sued out of existence by consumer protection lawsuits. The software industries development track and the rapid pace of hardware acceleration forces products to market long before they are ready. Bug-Free software is by no means an technical impossibility, but if software companies implemented this sort of quality control, they'd be releasing obsolete products instead of defective ones. Moore's Law has been driving the computer industry since Babbage, who rapidly abandoned one design after another, never quite able to get a working model as he continually started from scratch to build an improved design. It's a Red Queen Syndrome, and until we hit the quantum computing barrier, it seems as if we will continue to be plagued by the release of defective software. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/ From: owner-deltagreen@revolutionsf.com on behalf of The Man in Black [scrogginl001@hawaii.rr.com] Sent: Friday, December 07, 2001 8:38 AM To: deltagreen@revolutionsf.com Subject: Re: DG, circa 1942 (was Re: [DG] Bureaucracy: The Enemy Within.) From: Gil Trevizo >We had a big discussion about this on the dgww2 list that echoed many of >the points made in this thread. My personal opinion is that DG circa 1942 >does bear many of the traits you've laid out for New DG, but it doesn't >become unbalancing because DG was part of the OSS when the OSS just wasn't >much, and P Division before that was even less> You fail to realize that nothing on the human scale is ever going to be "balanced" with the mythos. Even superhuman forces like the Heralds of Hypnos are dwarfed by the Great Old Ones and their servants. I don't perceive the problem of game-balance. The New Delta Green is a completely different game than the old one. > DG >agents circa 1942 will be as isolated and outgunned as DG agents circa >2001, moreso in fact, because they lack the sixty years experience modern >DG has and probably have much less personnel to work with. In FEB 1942, P Division is absorbed into the OSS. In Late 1942, DG mounts it's commando raid disrupting the Karotechia Mass Sacrifices off the coast of France. Thus, Delta Green goes from a single group of investigators (P-Division) to becoming capable of mounting a Battalion sized force against the Mythos in less than a year. This is typical of the rapid growth made possible by a wartime budget. Of course, the New Delta Green would be a clandestine group, and not able to mount overt actions of this nature at all. They are, in many ways, much more limited in 2012 than in 1942. The Man in Black is : Kenneth Scroggins Novus Ordo Seclorum : Annuit Coeptus : E Pluribus Unum http://home.hawaii.rr.com/maninblack/seven/ : [SPIRAL CHALICE] http://www.emerald-hammer.org/ : [EMERALD HAMMER] _______________________________________ The Delta Green Mailing List http://www.delta-green.com/comint/dgml/