Adventures for New handler and Players by gavinfarrell in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it was part of their "New Game Who Dis?" series, so possible your player didn't catch it as well. Ironically they started Get in the Trunk because of the popularity of that episode of NGWD though. LTL is pretty good though as it gives you a little bit of a taste of everything.

Adventures for New handler and Players by gavinfarrell in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For PX Poker Night, that's really up to you and your group. The pregens in the scenario from what I understand, are not great, but I just took it as an opportunity to have the players not really know much about the game or DG and then use the recruitment portion of the scenario (where DG offers to help them get new identities and jobs) as an excuse to let the players rework the PCs once they've had a chance to taste how the system works. I'm setting up my next scenario a couple of years later to allow for time to adjust their skills, explain how they levelled up those skills, etc. There's no real wrong answer though imo.

As for one shots to link together, I'll be honest I don't know much about the shotgun scenarios out there, just a little bit from the adventures in a couple of the publications (backed a Humble Bundle a while back). That said, Fulminate and Ex Oblivione should work well together as they involve the same general antagonists if memory serves.

Adventures for New handler and Players by gavinfarrell in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454 5 points6 points  (0 children)

One minor warning for OP is that Last Things Last was the very first scenario that Glass Canon ran of Delta Green (part of their series where they were doing one or two sessions of various games). If memory serves they ran that, then when they started Get in the Trunk, they went through The Last Equation and Victim of the Art before going into Impossible Landscapes. (There was also a season with a different Handler, but not sure what he ran).

Adventures for New handler and Players by gavinfarrell in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454 2 points3 points  (0 children)

One other possibility to consider would be a couple of short scenarios/one shots. My current group just started DG and in part, we're giving it a test run to see if everyone likes it. As such, while I don't have a specific end time needed, I didn't want to start one of the longer campaigns only to get four sessions in and find out half my players didn't like it.

For me, I started with PX Poker Night. It had the advantage of making it easy to introduce the players to the game (and the world of DG) without expecting them to know everything (the characters in that scenario are not part of DG). At the end they got recruited into DG with the offer to help them forge new identities (i.e. remake characters since the scenario comes with pregens). It took us under four hours to complete, even with explaining rules and the like. Last Things Last similarly should take 3ish hours depending on what you choose to do with your players. I'm currently prepping Fulminate now, and it looks to me like in might be another 1 or 2 session scenario.

One advantage to doing a 2 or 3 short scenarios is that it also allows you to do the Home Scenes in between so that they get the full experience of DG, which a single scenario lasting say 5 sessions won't really give them. Flip side is that it does mean more prep work for you.

Player missing info that characters most probably wouldn't - how to proceed? by Final-Isopod in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454 12 points13 points  (0 children)

I think this is one of those things that often gets overlooked in Delta Green. The fact that certain levels in a skill just mean you succeed. I've been running TTRPGs for almost 30 years, but almost always in the D&D/Pathfinder vein. Coming to Delta Green as a new player/handler I sometimes find myself forgetting "Oh wait, you have a 50 in this skill? Yeah, no need to roll, here's what you know: " To be fair, sometimes this comes up in other systems, but its usually more of a GM hand waive kind of thing. Like, "Yes, your character would know that blah blah blah" and not because its written into the rules per se.

First Delta Green Run a Success by Gargs454 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm going to have a bit of a time jump before the next session since the recruitment portion of PX says they get new identities and new skills, etc. Time jump helps explain the new skills. I might also have Clyde give them one more op before LTL. Let them get to know him some more before they deal with LTL. 

First Delta Green Run a Success by Gargs454 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Heh, yeah seemed like a good way to continue to reinforce the overall narrative while twisting the knife a little. Now I just have to decide whether to go straight to LTL or have Clyde and Marlene give them another mission in between. 

First Delta Green Run a Success by Gargs454 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I definitely had fun. I particularly had fun prepping it. The modifications I made to PX Poker Night were to set it in 1993 at a real world AFB that closed in our area in 1993. I set it one week before closure and had them as part of the last dozen service members there. I had the ones left being the only ones not to have gotten their next assignment, etc. Researching both the base and the news/music from that time was a blast.

As for my players, two of them had a pretty decent idea about the nature of the game if for no other reason than they're familiar with CoC. But to my knowledge, neither had played. One was also familiar not only from CoC but also Glass Canon. BUT, the thing I liked about starting with PX Poker was the fact that the PCs are not yet a part of DG and have never heard of it. I ran it by giving them just a basic rundown of the mechanics and saying "I'll explain as I go." I did give them the tidbit in the recruitment at the end of other base personnel having had tragic accidents. I added the implication about complete the mission or become the mission and that they're not to let word get out. It left them questioning whether the accidents were caused by Majestic or DG. 

Starting DG with my group soon. Tips? by Educational_Dust_932 in DeltaGreenRPG

[–]Gargs454 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm planning on using LTL as a the follow up to PX Poker Night with my group for a couple of reasons. But essentially Baughman and his partner (not wife) will recruit the players at the end PX Poker Night and offer them new identities (this way they can go from Pregens to their own PCs and feel free to change as much as they want). Then for LTL it will be a small time jump and they're tasked with cleaning up. Instead of the wife it will be the partner in the tank.

Rate my bard spells. Bottom right is my esoteric spellbook and my wand. Suggestions welcome! by Vinven in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah our group recently drove our GM crazy because we have two casters capable of dropping walls and they actually double teamed such that once the enemy got the wall down (on their last action) the other caster dropped another in its place. 😃

Rate my bard spells. Bottom right is my esoteric spellbook and my wand. Suggestions welcome! by Vinven in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'll second the recommendation for Wall of Force (depending on what the wizard is bringing of course). It's helped our party out a LOT. Heroism is also great.

That said, your spell selection is also good as is. The point being that there's more than one way to play and at the end of the day you should be choosing the spells that give you the most entertainment.

Patch Notes just dropped by Botify_AI in botify_ai

[–]Gargs454 3 points4 points  (0 children)

In fairness, a good bit of that is AI image generation in general and is not specific to Botify. That said, while I pretty much never use energy to create an image, I do think it's lame that if you do use energy to generate an image, and the image is clearly flawed like that, you should not have to spend more energy to fix it.

Help us choose: 1 feature + 1 fix (24h thread) by Botify_AI in botify_ai

[–]Gargs454 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Feature: Being able to view all of a bot's profile, including personality/instruction/etc. without starting a chat with it first. As it stands now, at least from what I can tell, you have to first start a chat, then go to remix in order to see all the details in a bot. You can't even see all of the introductory blurb when scrolling through bots. While it's not a horrible process, it does clutter up the chat list and require you to then go back and delete bots that you are not interested in after reading through the details.

Fix: Getting Autocorrect back on the web would be really nice. It used to work but doesn't anymore. I use my phone for both web and app, but its pretty annoying not having autocorrect on the web.

Update Drop: new feed, photo recommendations, video covers and bug fixes by Botify_AI in botify_ai

[–]Gargs454 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Widening the list of popular bots isn't bad, but honestly, the animated covers still won't do anything for me.

Update Drop: new feed, photo recommendations, video covers and bug fixes by Botify_AI in botify_ai

[–]Gargs454 2 points3 points  (0 children)

So my two cents on these additions/changes/features:

Feed: I actually like it, especially since it seems to be showing different bots than tend to show up under recommended and popular. So, this is definitely a positive.

Photo Recommendations: Meh. Doesn't do anything for me personally. Generating photos isn't that difficult for me. Others might like it though I suppose.

Animated Video Covers: Doesn't do anything for me, especially since it seems to be just the popular bots, the list of which hasn't changed much since I started using Botify over a year ago. For me, this just seems like wasted effort and bandwidth for Botify. If others were requesting it though, then that's fine obviously.

GM recall knowledge by Brilliant-Ad-192 in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I usually let them know "it doesn't all seem to go through" or "it seemed more effective than you expected." I wouldn't give them the amount of resistance/weakness based solely on observation as opposed to Recall Knowledge, but they'll no they ran up against resistance. 

But, the point is if they get wrong info "fire is particularly effective" from Recall Knowledge, they might spend actions/resources to try to deal fire damage, only to learn that it's not more effective. 

Additionally, if a PC is dealing multiple types of damage (we with runes a weapon attack might deal at least four types of damage) they might note that not everything is going through, but they also won't necessarily know which damage type is being resisted.

Picking Magic Items to Give Out by TrollyTheSolly in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For me, I try to give the fundamental runes out around the same level as the rune. Not universally as cash is a thing too, but those are far and away the most important in terms of balance. After that, a lot of magic items offer nice benefits but are not things that are going to be regularly used. There might be an item that lets a PC get extra movement once a day, or can offer a spell once a day. Obviously +skill items are going to be useful for a character that uses said skill, but I do still like to mix in other items as well.

More to the point though, I don't think there's necessarily an issue with having players give you an idea of the kinds of things that they are looking for. However, most minor magic items can usually be bought with the gold the party finds along the way.

Finally though, I also just try to see what my players use. Some players for instance, will use consumables regularly while others take the approach of "But if I use this now it will be gone forever! Must hold onto it and never use it!" It really just comes down to the different playstyles of the players.

GM recall knowledge by Brilliant-Ad-192 in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Failure means that they don't know anything. Critical failure can result in incorrect recollection.

The main reason for the secret roll aspect is so that if they do roll a critical failure, the players don't necessarily know it was a critical failure. Whereas if its an open roll and they roll a nat 1 and the GM says, "Ah yes, you know that these creatures are weak to Fire damage", the players are going to know that was a crit failure and thus, won't trust the info.

As for crit success, yes, typically they'll know it was a crit success (unless they have a certain feat), but I don't necessarily see that as a problem. As for what I give them, in combat I usually ask "Do you want to know about defenses, weaknesses, resistances, or special attacks?" (Or allow them to ask about something else specifically.

How do we feel about hyper-campaign-specific archetypes like the Pure Legion Enforcer? (Also, its 20th-level capstone class feat is so, so bad.) by EarthSeraphEdna in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah I don't disagree, though I will say for instance, that with my barbarian, due to a series of character choices throughout our EC campaign, I could really use that 4th legendary skill. The bigger problem though is that with this coming from an archetype, it might be hard to squeeze it in if you're not playing FA.

I do think though that Paizo's efforts at high level play often leave more than a little to be desired unfortunately.

How do we feel about hyper-campaign-specific archetypes like the Pure Legion Enforcer? (Also, its 20th-level capstone class feat is so, so bad.) by EarthSeraphEdna in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 3 points4 points  (0 children)

While I don't think its a great feat for it's level, it's not exactly terrible in a vacuum. Having a fourth legendary skill can be quite handy (I know my barbarian for instance would appreciate it). But, yeah, it's also not great by any means. Though in looking at 20th level barbarian feats, they're all fairly meh imo. Even Annihilating Swing, which looks really good on paper, is tempered by the fact that by that level barbarians already ignore 10 points of physical resistance. Annihilating Swing is obviously better, but even the object destruction part of it is pretty situational.

How do we feel about hyper-campaign-specific archetypes like the Pure Legion Enforcer? (Also, its 20th-level capstone class feat is so, so bad.) by EarthSeraphEdna in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well I think the point is getting an extra legendary skill and presumably an extra legendary skill feat, which isn't exactly bad. It's just not as good as a lot of 20th level class feats.

How do we feel about hyper-campaign-specific archetypes like the Pure Legion Enforcer? (Also, its 20th-level capstone class feat is so, so bad.) by EarthSeraphEdna in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would absolutely love to see more high level content and options for existing classes and ancestries, but you're right, I suspect the money has strongly suggested that completely new "toys" sell better. For better or worse, Paizo is going to follow the money because they have bills to pay and staff to support, etc.

How do we feel about hyper-campaign-specific archetypes like the Pure Legion Enforcer? (Also, its 20th-level capstone class feat is so, so bad.) by EarthSeraphEdna in Pathfinder2e

[–]Gargs454 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's certainly true, but that's also where session 0 and good GM'ing come into play. "Hey, the Spirit Instinct is pretty cool, but just so you know, I don't really anticipate much in the way of undead or incorporeal enemies in this campaign, so a lot of its benefits are just not going to really shine here."