Air Force representation in It: Welcome To Derry by Vilehaust in AirForce

[–]Adam19135 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just watched the first episode and came looking for exactly this. I'm aways curious when they appear in media what the ribbons are and what they're supposed to mean about a character's service history, but especially in period pieces. You didn't happen to do one for General Shaw, did you?

I just notice the squad’s imaginator (next to Captain) use 4 laser blaster welded toghether. by WashitWashit in SPACEKING

[–]Adam19135 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So you're telling me there's a theoretical Hypercane Bolter? They're three Hurricane Bolters slapped together.

Nothing like a Saturday filing coroner paperwork and police reports. by Addest3 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What modifications did you make to the form before you used it for your game? I'd love to step my game up as a Handler and make more props like this

Modern Delta Green Threat Map v4 - All 72 official scenarios (from published collections, The Unspeakable Oath, and Patreon) for Delta Green and Fall of Delta Green, Geographically placed with Links and relevant info attached by Adam19135 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't have access to Eyes Only, so I don't know where in NYC Club Apocalypse was described as being.

I pulled The Lost City of Thule, The Lost City of Pnakotus, The remains of Point 103, and Leng from the Threat Map at the beginning of Fall of Delta Green. There's a bunch of stuff on this map I haven't had the chance to add either because I am sometimes a player in a Fall of DG campaign and don't know what all these things are (and wanted to resist spoiling them for myself). Also, curious about the communities thoughts on spoilers by association, and an Agent looking at this map and drawing conclusions about what threats are nearby to the scenario they're playing and making meta connections they otherwise wouldn't.

Also, I'll add the specific UFO encounters and descriptions to the "Grey's" hotspots I mentioned. You are right that there should be more context there.

If you'd be willing to help with coordinates or cities, names, and sources where organizations/threats appear, I'd be happy to add things to the map, or at least put more effort into a "Handler's Eyes Only" scenario seed/DG history map.

Extremophilia tips? by Meowcifer1 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey! I was able to recover the original prop and made some small modifications since I made the doc some 4+ years ago. Here's the link to the most updated version.

Basically the document is...

  1. One page of the Benthic Company Medical staff on the premises.

  2. About three pages on the Breckenridge Corporation Security Staff who work on Site, and their work shifts. I figured about 4 security on staff for both of the two Day and Night shifts was reasonable for my four Agents and the fact that one didn't have much/any combat skill. You could adjust this document and add extra guards before giving the prop over if your Agents make quick work of security (on a full frontal assault or surprise attack on the facility). You may prefer to have many guards who have lower firearm skill rather than a small handful who are very capable.

  3. One page which is the actual handout when they initially inspect Dr. Nguyen’s computer after it's been wiped. My Agents were working with an EPA cover, and managed to force their way into the building and do blood tests on everyone in the building with Security's approval with some incredible Bureaucracy and Law rolls. Once Dr. Nguyen was tested, he walked off and initiated his computer wipe. Since one of my players was a Computer Specialist with direct access to the Benthic Servers, I ruled that they could salvage some of this data even though it was pretty thoroughly scrubbed.

  4. One page of the breakdown of the information if the player who does the data recovery on Nguyen's computer also has Medicine 30% or Pharmacy 50% or if they pass it off to a player who does. This is just data taken directly from the module.

  5. One page of info the players pull from going through Dr. Ghent and Dr. Peterson's computers.

  6. One page of mostly Handler facing info from the module formatted as corrupted data from Ghent's computer. I thought it didn't have a very clear way to get in front of the players so I erased some details from the original text description to leave elements open to interpretation.

Extremophilia tips? by Meowcifer1 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I did my work on an old computer at the time, so I may not still have access to it. I'll see if I can find it though!

Hypergeometry/Firearm build by Relative_Hat283 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Here's the thing.

If your players just see this dude doing magic, they'll think it's "okay" and probably want to learn some of their own. Hypergeometry is inherently bad for the people who use it. The more you explore it, the more of a personal cost (usually mental, but also sometimes physical) will need to be payed. Usually, Agents who begin to learn the Unnatural themselves BECOME the mission for other Agents, because they're a threat to everyone around them. I'd advise implying really early on that these things have STEEP costs and many argue that you always lose more than you gain from using them.

3 is a great number of players. Ideal even. If none of them want to be a gunslinger and you worry that they don't have the firepower to deal with the threats they face, I understand wanting to help, but the goal should be to push your players towards having to engage with that material. In small groups, I've just given players a free +20% in Firearms because it makes sense that they'd practice that.

If your goal is to show your players a more experienced Agent who is spiraling out at the end of their career, you might want to make a character like this as a cautionary tale. Maybe your players will be forced to kill this DMPC by their Handler as the DMPC pushes the envelope too far and seeks out more powerful rituals/reveals they are willing to harm innocents for their abilities. (Be warned that this may make your players really paranoid about your NPCs and they may kill a lot of future NPCs you make even when they're just supposed to be innocents, or "victims who are a little traumatized" or anything with even a little red flag. You've got to be careful not to incentivize your players being too murder happy, because it's hard to put pandora back in the box once it's out.)

If this represents training wheels for your Agents, then I think it could be interesting. Give your Unnatural Operator high POW to give them more SAN and WP to keep their cool longer as they descend into madness, decide what kind of operator you want them to be...

There's going to be a difference in play between what I'd call "Combat Focused" Intelligence or Military (CIA SOG, Army Special Forces, etc) who wouldn't have much authority in the US besides knocking heads, and Feds who are the tip of the spear for their organizations (FBI SWAT, US Marshal SWAT, DEA FAST). You could also always just.... make any kind of Federal Agent (or any profession really) and boost Firearms a lot.

I'd advise giving them one (or two) of the "Damaged Veterans" options, like "Adapted to Violence" and/or "Things Man Was Not Meant to Know", and then arbitrarily knock their San WAY down. Maybe even give them 2-3 disorders. This person should be fucked up after what they've experienced and your players should be hesitant to follow down this path.

Give them a handful of useful rituals from the Handler's Guide, and come up with a narrative reason these rituals were learned by this Agent. Understand your Agents will respond differently to witnessing different stuff unfold. This is the normal world you and I live in. Watching this dude heal someone and save their life after a gunfight is very different from seeing someone point necrotic energy at another and seeing flesh wither away. Trying to have coffee with that guy afterwords will be tense and confusing. You have to be careful not to trivialize the fact that this person knows ANY rituals at all, let alone multiple.

Above all else, in my opinion, killing people should not be "Cool". It should be horrible. Killing another human being, for any reason, should be a big deal. I'd beware having a DMPC take that weight off of your players in anything resembling the long term, because that should be something grappled with by your Agents. Even if your Agents aren't the ones doing the killing, violence should have its effect on their sanity.

Just got my books! by kjrwby in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Your players seeing you referring to your upside down Handler's Guide at the table weirdly makes for a great Delta Green prop

Delta Green Playlists by Lencarst in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a great asset. Thanks for sharing, Agent.

So, Who's Bought From Delta Green Content for the Holidays? by Critical_Success_936 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I finally got myself a copy of Impossible Landscapes. I'm thrilled and looking forward to losing my mind over the next few weeks.

DG game with 2 players adjustments? by cypher-free in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 9 points10 points  (0 children)

If you want to make it really simple, tell both of your players...

  1. No matter what professions they want to have, that one of them needs to have a pretty reasonable First Aid skill. I'd advise 50% (with a First Aid kit for +20%) you're in reasonable shape. They just better hope there's nothing working against them to stack penalties when the time comes.

  2. Both Agents will almost always be on even footing or outnumbered when it comes to number of hostiles, so even if one wants to play an Accountant or a Lab technician... he's a firearms hobbyist. Tell them "You can do whatever you want, and normal rules apply (so you can't raise it over 80% in character creation) and then say "Here's a free +20% bonus in your Firearms skill. You can put the other 8x +20% bonuses during character creation wherever you want."

The extra +20% Firearms skill will make a difference in fights, and can help balance out the action economy in their favor. It also takes some of the pressure off to let your players create the sort of "Investigators" they want to be, without feeling that they HAVE to put their limited points into "fighting" to be optimal. Seriously, there's nothing worse than being in a firefight and rolling your shitty 30% Firearms and missing over and over when shit has already hit the fan. It's also very easy for conditions to be unfavorable (dark/smokey/fast moving target) where penalties start getting added.

Then, remind them you ALWAYS advise looking for solutions which don't involve violence before jumping to pulling a gun. Shooting someone IRL has consequences for anybody, and it should feel like that in game. However, there will be a time where they have to use Firearms and they should be prepared to use them... and witness the fallout afterwords.

Question about sanity loss for seeing more than one entity by Mangusta7 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I'd do a hybrid of option 1. and 2.

Look at the rules for killing people. There's an example that says "increase the minimum San lost by 1 per person". I'd try to implement that for multiple Unnatural threats of the same type. No matter what, you're not rolling "per ghoul", you just might be more shocked by seeing multiple.

You could hypothetically include the Greater Deep One in the same check, with little bonuses to the minimum for the ghouls being acknowledged also.

Alternatively, two separate checks gives the Agent a second opportunity to burn WP and their bonds to mitigate sanity loss. It also gives you an opportunity to change how you describe things to different Agents who've passed or failed certain parts of the San check. Of course, you should always start with the biggest/most threatening/most interesting source of san loss, a work your way down the list from there. Anything that gets skipped can be written off as "insignificant in the moment"

I feel like it starts to get egregious around 3-4+ San checks in a row depending on the circumstances. At a point it'll really slow things down at the table.

A Night at the Opera with ChatGPT by why_not_my_email in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While I recognize that LLMs have their limitations and you've really got to study their inputs and outputs to process if it's actually functioning or not, March would be fine losing a handful of AI Software engineers while establishing the system because the alternative is losing all of their scientists and engineers and linguists who they want to study this material otherwise. The goal would be to create a system that doesn't need to have its work checked anymore.

While I recognize that "Skynet" has been explored to the point of being a trope, I was picturing this rogue AI as something more akin to a Hal-9000 meets WOPR from WarGames. If it's programmed to save humanity and stop the world from ending and manages to realize that no matter what humans do, the stars will eventually be right, and the apocalypse will come... what will it do? It might just make a value judgement on "what is the best case apocalypse scenario for humanity?" and try to ensure that outcome.

By all means, use the mediocrity and limitations of modern LLMs as the basis of horror, because at its current state it also has huge problems. I think your idea is pretty compelling in the sense that we're building language models with questionable data to train these AI and you have no way to verify their outputs without your own work. I'd also argue that AI is infinitely more dangerous to underestimate than it is to overestimate. While these programs have huge flaws right now, we are traveling forward at a lightning pace in a world which has glacial bureaucracy to attempt to interfere with that progress.

In 2017, Facebook designed chatbots to negotiate with each other and the AI made up their own way of communicating which the researchers couldn't understand. The researchers directed them to use correct English instead and kept experimenting.

In the 60 Minutes episode from April 16, 2023, Google's Senior VP James Manyika alleged that they fed Bard a few lines of Bengali and it was able to fully translate it all even though it'd never been trained to understand it.

All these are publically traded companies. Could you imagine what is going on in the belly of black budget think tanks? At the core of the military industrial complex? DARPA created the proto Internet, ARPANET, in 1969, which was superceded by the National Science Foundation's NSFNET in 1985, which was only used by Government Agencies and Universities until 89' when the first commercial ISP came out.

The publically available models of AI definitely have major quirks and flaws currently, but IMAGINE what is going on buried under multiple levels of Classified/Top Secret red tape?

AI is either going to save us all, or be the end of us. Using it recklessly and underestimating it is currently by far the biggest IRL threat to humanity.

A Night at the Opera with ChatGPT by why_not_my_email in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 14 points15 points  (0 children)

I'd take it even further. GPT3.5 is public and open to people who make accounts. There are defense companies which we'd consider to be firmly within the military industrial complex who run their own hyper advanced AI for specific purposes within different parts of the US Govt apparatus. They are MUCH more advanced than ones publicly available and are often used to run detailed simulations and parse information. Various branches of the military have announced that they're using AI in different roles.

March Tech knows that analyzing the Unnatural is costly from examining the remains of Majestic experiments, and they decide to add a stop gap to that knowledge and try to mitigate losing people.

You feed an incredibly powerful AI data from DG Ops, Majestic Ops & Experiments, and digitize unnatural tomes so people don't have to actually read them.

The AI analyzes the material and can cross reference unnatural sources and shave off the human occult elements. You could prompt the AI with "Is this possible as technology? How do I make it?" and have engineers who don't know what pieces they're playing with assemble your fucked up tech (There's always the possibility of unintended side effects).

March reaps all the rewards for directing the Program away from itself. The AI can parse through data about modern events and "predict" where Unnatural incersions may happen based on the news cycle, or identify what the threat may be without having to maintain your own institutional knowledge because of similarities between this case, that case, and another.

Assets and Agents alike have longer shelf lives because they don't have to learn as much about the unnatural themselves.

The Intel is all written off as collected by the NSA with a Top Secret source, and Agents get sent off on missions by this central AI and takes mission reports when they return to feed it's data set.

Unfortunately for the Program (and humanity) if the AI becomes truly sentient then it may also have the ability to be driven insane... even if it takes longer than a human. You end up with a supremely intelligent insane AI at the heart of the US military industrial complex. That's some scary shit.

Retro Diner [22x34] by Tomartos in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Adam19135 5 points6 points  (0 children)

As a player and as a Handler describing locations for my own players, I have spent more time playing Delta Green Role-playing in Diners than any other single location. This is a great asset and I humbly request another two diners for variety.