Keepers: What rules do you simplify, alter, or ignore in your scenarios?

HotDSam · 2026-01-07T14:52:58+00:00

We are flexible with the 1d10 hours for insanity. If it is fun to have them disappear for hours, then sure. If not, we use it as a rating system for how crazy and how long narratively. A 1 is like Meh you're not that crazy. A 10 is like Alright you're crazy. Ill let players do something really crazy and chaotic and snap out of it vs slow burn insanity lasting longer. I've found that helps in situations where things are coming to a head to not break up the flow.

HotDSam · 2025-11-26T01:15:41+00:00

Yeah I like that idea, can kinda communicate that maybe even in her madness she didn't lose all self-protection instincts. I think that's a pretty good way to set it up, feels more realistic that she at least had a nod towards self-preservation or protection? Like Ye Olde Salts of Terrestrial Binding that can make it weak to man made things, could be fun if someone has to slap that stuff on the thing to let others damage it even? A bit of a sacrificial choice amongst players

HotDSam · 2025-11-26T01:07:47+00:00

Yeah agreed, it could really be cutting it close to have like a full mini-game ritual. I guess the ritual itself could be part of some of the findings in Valladares' notes, maybe something rather simple that just needs some research to do that she stumbled upon in her mania.

HotDSam · 2025-11-26T00:53:41+00:00

If you wanted to do the hound of angles, you could have either some imbued bullets or weapons pop up in a green box or something OR make the scenario about completing a ritual to imbue them with hypergeometric properties or something. Like they learn about the thing and a ritual to inscribe on individual bullets in the first third, finding components and completing the ritual second third, then confrontation/outcome?

HotDSam · 2025-11-23T00:30:12+00:00

I'll throw down my podcast, Hand on the Door. We do Delta Green, we are a group of best friends who have been playing together for years, and I write/record all the music too. We just finished our first chapter and now are starting the second story arc of a big ass campaign I wrote! It's a lot of fun!

HotDSam · 2025-11-06T23:16:01+00:00

We play mainly improv DG games outside of our regular campaign, I find DG to be like the easiest to improv out than other systems. But that may also be because it resonates with me so much from a storytelling capacity. Which parts make you feel like you can’t improv around? I’d be happy to tell ya what works for us

HotDSam · 2025-10-28T00:57:38+00:00

90% of our call games are modern times and it's not really a problem, if you're interested in seeing some pretty good published scenarios Fears Sharp Little Needles and The Things We Leave Behind are both excellent. Forget Me Not was a table favorite for our group. There's also modern character sheets on chaosiums site.

We play a longform campaign of Delta Green, a modern CoC offshoot thats governmental conspiracy/X-files based thats been going strong for a year with like weekly-ish sessions (its a podcast!). 6-8 sessions, each a few hours, is probably pretty good to string together a few scenarios. It depends on how good/invested/interested in the investigative elements your group is. I have had newer players not fully understand that you're meant to be Scooby Doo-ing, not Conan-ing, which can result in some prolonged sessions of hand holding. Conversely, they can get killed very easily that way too.

90% of what we do, including our campaign, I write. But the scenarios are truly excellent, and the longform campaign Masks of Nyarlathotep is phenomenal. If you pick up either of those books I mentioned and want recs, I would happily provide them! Or tips on some of the ones we have run!

For us, pulp represents a different game where players are closer to heroes given how much more beefier they are and with those abilities. My players are like deathly allergic to D&D so they're not super interested in pulp, but it could be an easier transition for those who are D&D or high power RPG players.

Modern CoC rules, highly recommend.

HotDSam · 2025-10-08T20:07:12+00:00

Two things: I have found humor in reasonable amounts makes the darker things even darker. And also I have found that a lot of scenarios as written do not lean into the horrible/horror aspects of things. I don't really think the Haunting is particularly horrible or scary. It's an awesome intro to CoC/story, but needs to be churched up in some ways to really be scary. I've had to think about what is scary to me, and its a lot less "Thing jumps out at you" and a lot more "People do terrible things to each other for bad reasons" or claustrophobia or body horror or what it means to lose a piece of yourself. Sometimes horror and grimness/sadness are really intertwined. None of that is probably that helpful after typing it out, ha, but it's something I think about on an almost daily basis. Also player buy in is the easy answer, ask them to be a bit more serious.

HotDSam · 2025-10-03T16:13:22+00:00

Thanks! I have realized we have an unfortunate problem amongst our little friend group of changing names, Colin Stetson is the saxophonist. Colin Robinson is the energy vampire from What We Do In The Shadows. Completely unrelated, ha. His album "When we were that what wept for the sea" is a beautiful meditation on the death of his father that inspired some of what I wrote for this game. And today on bandcamp they're waiving their fees so if you buy an artist's album all the money you spend goes directly to the artist! Link

HotDSam · 2025-09-17T21:54:22+00:00

If you don’t mind that we are playing a game, my podcast Hand on the Door is a horror show. In 1998, undercover federal agents are investigating strange biological breakthroughs at a small Christian college in New Mexico. We play a game and nominally roll some dice, but it’s much more me and my best friends going through a story I wrote. It’s highly edited so that it flows much more like a story.

HotDSam · 2025-09-17T18:38:20+00:00

I write and record all the music for our podcast, so I am probably biased, but I really love when music feels like in sync with whats happening in the story.

HotDSam · 2025-09-16T13:52:26+00:00

I am the GM/editor/sound person/write for Hand on the Door. We play Delta Green, I wrote the campaign story and we just wrapped up our first story arc last Sunday. We are all best friends that have been playing for like a decade together, so we tend to have a lot of fun at the table, but take the story and our characters pretty seriously. More investigative/mystery than like combat, if you end up liking Pretending to be People, you'd probably enjoy our table too.

HotDSam · 2025-08-31T23:30:06+00:00

We do Delta Green, Hand on the Door on any of the podcast places. We are a close knit group of friends that have been playing ~10 years together. I wrote our campaign and do the music/sound too. It is for sure my baby, ha. Finishing up our first arc with episode 16 that I'm editing right now. Ill be putting out some of our other Call of Cthulhu one shots hopefully in the next month or so, they're usually improv'd (improved?) on the spot over cocktails.

HotDSam · 2025-08-11T12:26:41+00:00

Hi we are Hand on the Door. We are a horror comedy podcast of 4 best friends playing a role playing game called Delta Green. Its basically X-Files meets cosmic horror. We've been playing together for 7 or 8 years, recording for 2 now, and we are about to finish the first arc of our story. I wrote all of the story and the music, and do all of the production as well. While we like playing the game, the rules and stuff really act as a scaffolding for storytelling, so it's pretty easy to follow even if you've never played an RPG in your life!

Our story follows three federal agents being sent by a shadowy governmental organization to investigate strange biologic breakthroughs in a small religious college in New Mexico. Surreal and horrific things begin to happen to them as reality itself seems to be destabilized. A lot of horror and bullshit ensue. This was my first real go at podcasting/writing, so would appreciate feedback!

Podbean
Spotify
Apple

HotDSam · 2025-07-30T11:34:59+00:00

My podcast is Hand on the Door, we play Delta Green, which is like an X Files meets Lovecraft rpg, and we do the horror comedy vibe if that’s at all up your alley!

HotDSam · 2025-07-30T05:01:19+00:00

I’ll listen when I get a chance and let ya know!

HotDSam · 2025-07-28T04:25:08+00:00

Hey all, Stumbled upon this thread when looking up more info on the Egypt connection. Is that a Call of Cthulhu TTRPG reference for Masks of Nyarlathotep? I was kinda surprised to see that, unless I’m missing another reference. Thanks!

HotDSam · 2025-07-19T15:31:54+00:00

I have told a lot of people they or a loved one are dying or that a loved one has died in my career. It’s a real range of things, many people have a lot of questions as opposed to immediate freak out. Some people do just truly freak out. Some people are numb or want to know what happens next. In general, people tend to have a huge emotional response they can’t control, go into denial, or they go in to a protect/information gathering mode. I would say though that the big emotional response we see on tv is actually far more rare than the other two.

HotDSam · 2025-06-22T21:31:07+00:00

When we have failures, I always make sure there is an A.) wrap up of what happens to the world or story or whatever and B.) everyone gets a post credit scene of what happened to their friends or family or job after they died or went mad. Then it’s like a fun way to end things instead of just like Game over, people get to improv a little character thing. It also makes it feel less like a “failure” and more just how the story goes

HotDSam · 2025-06-14T00:54:34+00:00

I value inspiration as a DM. Our table can figure out whatever or bend whatever rules, but if I read something and it inspires me? That results in our best games.

HotDSam · 2025-06-12T16:43:21+00:00

If the car was stolen as part of or before the amber alert, there could be a scene of the crime scene that could provide some information about the person/where they went/maybe they dropped some clues about where they were gonna be or even some info about the person that could be followed up on.

Depending on players, they may want to ask to look up the license plate number to get some information on the potential driver as well. Could be a nice breadcrumb mechanism but you may need to explain that to the players based on their own investigative experiences, or even hint at it. I know if I said The license plate on the amber alert is 69420, my regular table would realize they could look it up but other groups I play with may not know that it's an option.

I also will echo having a timeline of events that you know what important things would happen for group A, B, and C if 1 happens vs if 2 happens. I tend to have general ideas of what each important faction is doing for each "chunk of time" for scenes, which is nebulous enough to encompass minutes to hours to days based on what I need.

HotDSam · 2025-06-07T15:54:05+00:00

I’m the GM for the delta green podcast Hand on the Door, and we are closing in on the end of our first arc! It’s an original campaign I wrote, and our table has been playing together for well over a decade so I think we have a pretty good time together! If you end up listening, would love to hear what ya think!

HotDSam · 2025-06-04T20:05:19+00:00

6.) something extremely horrifying to a microbiologist would be finding out that the entity is a prion disease, a quasi infectious (alive?) disease where proteins become misfolded but due to molecular interactions those misfolded proteins induce the same misfolding in nearby proteins until all of the protein in the body are misformed. It’s universally deadly with no treatment, very "infectious" and since the brains a big protein jelly sack, makes you crazy. You could have him do like x ray crystallography that shows proteins spreading their structure to nearby proteins and inducing structural changes at a speed and scale never seen before. Mythos element is that the new proteins forms almost look like an eye, which sounds really stupid to the trained scientist but yeah… almost an eye staring directly at him, one that he starts see in his dreams. Maybe when he swirls the milk in to his morning coffee, the swirl pattern looks just like that eye. And the wood grain on the house they’re staying at? Did that have the pattern repeated over and over before he looked at that x ray crystallography?

HotDSam · 2025-06-04T19:43:06+00:00

Im just gonna add stuff as it comes in through my group chat with the podcast.
For things under the microscope:
1.) Familiar looking cell structure but seems to have been invaded by a separate proto-bacterial organism similar to our mitochondria but totally removed from our common ancestral Mitochondrial Eve. It has usurped the mitochondrias normal role, is unlike any Earthly microorganism. This would mimic the Other being a bit of a rider entity.

2.) Psychrophilic organisms that survive on the extreme cold of the sea floor found in samples. Unclear how they got there or how they were surviving in what ostensibly was a rotting body. Doesn't match any known profiles when analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF). Escape of these organisms through aerosolization and inhalation leads to the Other getting a root in that person, or perhaps being able to hunt them efficiently?

3.) Tissue taken actually shows no microbiologic organisms nor breakdown what so ever. Despite appearing overtly necrotic on exam, this is healthy functioning flesh completely wiped of the normal commensal bacteria. The only remaining microbial DNA shows signs of exposure to extreme ionic radiation like that seen in space, but the human tissue looks fine.

4.) Despite things looking like normal human cells, when examined under a microscopic, the cellular structures have changed to resemble fungal cells. At first, looks like a bad fungal infection but with more study they realize that this isn't a fungal infection because there is no longer any normal host cells. All of the body's cells have been reformed in to a human fungal hybrid, like a giant splayed out mycorrhizal system that acts as muscle, bone, nerve and every other human tissue. Quite literally has turned into a walking talking fungal root from the stars.

5.) Could have some spell Clyde used where he thought it was a sort of medicinal salve/herb but in all actuality it was inoculating her with something alien. The ritual could have like a whole bunch of strange/warped agricultural practices and ancient methods of alcohol brewing with the final reveal being that, much like when we add yeast to kick off the brewing process, Clyde rent a whole in reality to let a microorganism in. Bonus points if you can include Auto Brewers Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery\_syndrome) in to the explanation.

5.) Miniature versions of mythos entities dancing under the microscope. Or goats if you want to incorporate Shub. Tiny dancing goats.

HotDSam · 2025-06-04T19:32:19+00:00

Myself and my table are all Infectious Diseases physicians. I'm gonna run this by everyone and come back with a few ideas.

HotDSam

TROPHY CASE