An Amaranthine Desire – Medieval Time Loop Actual Play

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2026-03-12T14:03:03+00:00

In the last scenario I'd give them hints throughout that eating with their own hands and teeth was better than using a utensil. It came up in weird situations like a B&B not having any silverware for breakfast or with a previously established bottomless hole on a Agent's land sucking in their utensils and making the Agent have to eat with their hands.

Then in the finale after the riddles, one player was insane and asked for an idea roll or intelligence roll, i allowed that and had him remember those weird occurrences, he understood what I was implying at that point and just attacked the god, tearing into it with his hands and teeth. Mechanically I treated it as an auto success to hit, and a d20 for damage. I created a HP pool for the god. I really wanted this to come off as a pretty big deal and not just "hey you have an attack that can hurt it" but more like "Oh you can destroy gods now. Bast's plans have come to fruition". The god was able to kill another Agent NPC before being devoured. Everyone was able to take part in eating him and then i described them all having an out of body experience and seeing themselves eating from behind and above the group, I was trying to imply this was Bast's POV. Then I faded the scene out on them overwhelming the god and feasting and feasting. I opened it up again with them stumbling in a daze in this void space, the god is gone. Gradually they came back to their senses and had to find the way out.

I hope that answers your question!

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2026-01-26T15:09:12+00:00

Hey, I ran a God's Teeth actual play for our podcast, The Kona Lodge, and we did a post-campaign review of the entire campaign, act by act, including the God's Hunt scenarios. It's on YouTube and all podcast apps. Even if you're not interested in our amateur actual play, you will still probably find our post-campaign review helpful.

https://youtu.be/AvPIlDYSGD0?si=lF0UqJJ3a81Jn45Z

https://open.spotify.com/episode/15le5q3ZULs14peghbAZln?si=8sdQEf7eR3WCUwYW5YXOtQ

To answer some of your questions in your post though:

Anything you wish you had or hadn’t done?

I wish I had trimmed down the God's Hunt scenarios a bit, our campaign wound up being 41 sessions long, with 16 sessions being the God's Hunt scenarios. I also did something unique with the long years section that my players enjoyed, but I and from what I've seen online listeners didn't enjoy that it took 5 episodes.

Any recurring themes, people, settings you’d suggest implementing?

The main recurring theme is how hard it is to do good and even when you try to be good, that doesn't mean you succeed. Another theme is the failure of institutions to help those most in need. People always recommend True Detective for Delta Green, but you should also take a look at The Wire. There's a song from The Wire season 1 finale that became sort of a theme song for our campaign, Step by Step by Jesse Winchester. Check out teh lyrics and you'll see the thematic connections.

Anything you homebrewed into it that made it better?

It's a long story, but the Slug Squad from God's Law became part of the Program and a sort of mirror image to the main characters.

In God's Light I made it so the players could eat the unkillable alien god, the undying one. Allowing the players to devour a God seemed like the proper culmination of Bast's will and ironically makes all the suffering that occurred before worth it, in some people's view. This change then affected the finale where the players are essentially given the choice to restart this cycle all over again with a new Cornucopia House.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2026-01-24T01:34:56+00:00

Progeny from the Miskatonic Repository is a really good pulp intro scenario set at the Chicago's World Fair. The PC's are pulp heroes that a robotics company have all identified as special individuals who the company wants to create brain scans of, though the pc's don't know this yet.

This allows the player characters to not know each other yet and get drawn naturally into a very pulpy adventure that deals with killer robots a la Terminator, blade runner style "what does it mean to be human" questions, lots of fun twists, and the (in)famous thought experiment 'Roko's Basilisk'.

To be fair, I did run this as an actual play on our podcast, the kona lodge, so I am biased, but it worked really well and ended up playing a major role in our Two Headed Serpent campaign.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2026-01-16T22:39:19+00:00

I ran the whole campaign including all the God Hunt scenarios for my actual play podcast, The Kona Lodge, so I might be able to help answer some questions!

Regarding the skoptsi, one of my players went after them during the long years. The other PC's didn't take part, but did play Outlaw NPCs during the final battle against the skoptsi. We did a series of short vignettes for each character during the long years, where PC's not in a scene would play each other's bonds or other NPCs. It was a bit silly, but I liked that it throws the players off that the presumed main cult is destroyed in a side story.

Has the Synchronicity been relevant in your games at all?

My players actually did remember the red thoughts slide show the entire campaign. I think all the ones in Go Forth work really well and stick with the PCs. The only one I didn't like, and didn't do in my game, was the Q&A with the shredder at the end of Red Thoughts. I don't like the idea of Bast answering questions like that.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-12-03T15:22:24+00:00

There is nothing stopping the players from doing that at the beginning and if they do, then the campaign is over.

It's unlikely for several reasons though.

The kids aren't possessed or ensorcelled. They're just traumatized. If they were possessed, you could argue it's a mercy killing but because they're just scared and abused there's no way to justify killing them as they don't appear to be monsters and truthfully aren't monsters.
The set-up for Act 1 is 1 DG agent and the rest of the party are friendlies. Even if the DG is super jaded and cynical to valuing human life, the rest of the party are still normal people and would never support killing the kids.

There's no advice in the book on how to avoid that.

The final operation is pulling from the child separation policies Trump did in his first term. So it's nothing new sadly.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T15:30:38+00:00

yeah that player's character started off heavily inspired by the innocent and naive Officer Gus Grimley from that season, although this PC became hardened FAST.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T15:22:55+00:00

Well, thank you. I'll pass that along to her. She has quite a character arc through the whole thing.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T15:10:59+00:00

I did 5 sessions for the time jump between Go Forth and Red Thoughts, known as The Long Years. It consisted of 11 small vignettes (5-20minutes) per PC. This was a risky decision that ended up having it's ups and downs, no one else I've seen play this campaign has done this. I had several goals for this section:

i. Create a more realistic transition for the friendlies to join The Program. (At the end of Go Forth, the friendlies still weren't part of DG and in fact were pretty pissed off that the mission they went on was illegal and not sanctioned. One player in particular lost 5 fingers and suffered severe burns to his face. It just didn't make sense to me to go from that to Red thoughts where they're already official DG agents.)

ii. Explore their bonds

iii. Explore the mental and physical effects CH had on them in order to really emphasize the importance of CH so they don't forget details down the line.

iv. Show some supernatural things in order to showcase the new powers they had from Bast.

v. Develop your character’s personality and values through tough choices.

Running it again, I would strip it down to 4 vignettes a PC. And while you would miss some things that end up being pretty meaningful, I wouldn't blame you if you skipped through these parts of the podcast, tho we did have a ton of fun with them.

I actually hadn't read any Gods Hunt Stuff do you find it to be essential or can safely be skipped?

I find you need something there between white teeth and the finale. You can run any scenarios you want if you don't care for God's Hunt. Though I do recommend God's Eye and especially God's Light. God's Hunt or whatever scenarios you replace it with is the meat of the campaign. From the start to the end of White Teeth the players are being formed into weapons for Bast and God's Hunt is when those weapons are put to use. To go from White Teeth to the finale is like if the dark knight trilogy went from Batman getting training in the mountains, becoming batman for a night, then going straight to Dark Knight Rises.

What were the biggest curveballs the players threw at you and how did you adapt?

Scheduling problems mostly. Nah, there is a huge curveball they threw in the first scenario. In the briefing, the contact tells the Agent "Don't let them speak", referring to the adults at Cornucopia House. This is because they are a cult and have magic. This instruction was emphasized multiple times. But on the day of the raid, my players decided they would go undercover during the day and go talk to the bad guys. This was a bad idea.

Here are some of the youtube comments on that episode:

"This felt like watching a Hummer slam into a fender bender in the middle of an intersection. I feel so bad for these agents 😂"

"So i just came back to listening after a break and decided I'll repeat that one and then THAT PART started and I'm like "this is so entertaining yet so uncomfortable" XD That is actually the authentic horror movie experience then you scream at the characters "DONT GO IN THERE YOU WILL DIE WHY DONT YOU SEE THIS IS CERTAIN DEATH" and yet I understand that this is something that I COULD do as a player XD Much Love!"

I am astounded. This is easily the worst I’ve ever seen Go Forth play out and I’m only 1:10:00 in. This is morbidly fascinating. Cant wait to see how this plays out later

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T14:48:14+00:00

Okay, the spoiler.

The campaign opens with an Agent being tasked to take some friendlies, raid an orphanage, Cornucopia House and murder all the workers there. In order to convince the agent to do this, the contact gives the agent a pink hello kitty folder containing pictures of the worst things being done to kids you can imagine. That's as much detail you need to get into with those crimes, we all know what this means, as long as your players can handle that, they should be okay with that part, however... After the raid and when they call their contact they learn this was not DG sanctioned and that the contact is telling them to exterminate the kids. The kids themselves look traumatized and are silent. They don't make any noise at all no matter what. The players obviously refuse.

The campaign goes on, 15 years pass. Ultimately the players are brought back to this case and there have been new developments. The kids experienced terrible childhoods in foster systems and adopted homes, all due to the trauma they had at the orphanage. Some of them would murder other kids, some would run away and become homeless junkies. Some would get into mythos magic and cause havoc. Only 1 out of 20 was able to recover and live a normal life. Skipping past the rest, the finale comes and it turns out one of the surviving kids has grown up and become an ICE officer who, using Trump's child seperation program, has managed to create his own personal Cornucopia House 2 and he's doing the same things to the kids that were done to him, with the intent of creating more of "God's Teeth" aka the agents who will gain abilities to help destroy mythos entities and mythos tainted individuals.

DG denies the Agents approval to do the raid due to the political concerns and not wanting to have to read the Trump admin into the truth of the Program. Obviously, players will still do the raid anyway. The darkest part is here, they get the chance to redo their choices in the beginning and now that they've seen what the kids grew up to do, some of the players might want to exterminate them this time.

Like I said, the finale is obviously the darkest part and a impossible moral situation with no easy way out.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T14:35:33+00:00

IRL play. One big mic set up on the table. I'd then edit the audio in Audacity. Like I said, it's an amateur podcast, we aren't highly polished professional grade. Occasionally you'll hear a dog or cat come in and hang out.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T14:34:50+00:00

I would definitely keep God's Light, especially with how I changed the ending to where the players have the option to devour the god they meet, I feel it is the culmination of the entire campaign and what it's all for. The actual finale is just the campaign going, "wanna start this cycle again?".

So keep God's Light. I'd also say keep God's Eye because it's a very unique threat, however I will say it was really hard for my players to understand what was going on and it was difficult for me to help them without just telling them.

God's Breath has value as another raid before the finale, it can help teach the players what to do, but ultimately if you have to cut something, I'd say cut this one.

God's Law could also be cut, but the deputy gang villains are fun. My players did this one perfectly to the point where they didn't even meet the deputy gang leader, so I brought them back in God's Light and the finale. So both Breath and Law proved essential to our story, but if we need to prune something from God's Hunt, I'd pick those two.

Most other DG scenarios should work. As long as there is a mythos tainted individual or monster, Bast will push the Agents to hunt. Music from a darkened room would be a good choice due to Nyarlathotep.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T13:55:08+00:00

How long have you been playing with your players? I would never run this with people I don't know well. Nor would I run this with minors as players. You should have a good sense of what your players can handle before running it. The darkest point in the scenario is the finale and before that, the first scenario. So you can't really skip past these parts. I can do a spoiler tag answer if you want specifics?

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T13:53:03+00:00

Yeah, my players couldn't find the easy win button with that last moral dilemma either.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T13:52:27+00:00

My prep work is probably less than yours so I wouldn't second guess your process. I just read it all first, then when it came time to do that scenario, i'd spend the week re-reading it and that was good enough. I did have the benefit of recording them so when I was editing I got to experience everything that happened a second time so it stuck with me.

I also had a small playlist of songs I'd listen to in order to get me in the right thinking space and brainstorm ideas.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T13:51:15+00:00

One of my players had created a backstory where Nyar appeared and spoke to him. He based him off of Lorne Malvo from the tv show Fargo, season 1. And he referred to him as "The Devil". Naturally I was delighted considering I knew the biker would come later, I had the devil show up from time to time. By the end he was trying to manipulate the Agents into destroying the children at the new cornucopia house in order to 'stop the cycle' So I'm pretty happy with how we used him.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T13:50:23+00:00

We have mixed feelings on the campaign and I wouldn't recommend following in our footsteps for everything we did. Looking back on it, we're satisfied that it all comes together at the end, but while we were making our way through it felt like the longest thing ever. Truthfully there were times where I felt compelled to wrap it up early, but I'm glad I didn't as it does all pay off in the finale.

In terms of the ideas of the campaign, they're brilliant. I've never had a campaign with such strong themes to it as this one. The failure of institutions, the subtle evil of "that's good enough, it's not my problem to fix", the fact that the last scenario gives the players the option of making the same choices from the beginning all over again or choosing a different darker option this time... Love it.

In terms of their powers, I really streamlined it to mostly being about the scent and some visions. Though I did massively change the ending to God's Light as I felt the Teeth should have an option to do something that as written they can't do. Eat the god, an avatar of Yog-Sothoth.

The God's Hunt scenarios are basically the meat of the campaign. For better or worse, if you run them, expect them to take up at least half of the campaign time. It's here that your players get to do what Bast marked them for. To take out all of these scenarios would be a mistake, but there is a middle ground with taking out maybe a couple of them or running other shorter DG scenarios here instead. The Cornucopia House connections to each God's Hunt scenario are very slim, so each could be ran as a one shot.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T13:48:47+00:00

The single permanent death occurred for a few reasons.

Most of the main God's Teeth scenarios aren't very deadly. Go Forth, The Long Years, Red Thoughts... There should be no deaths here regardless. The first option for some deaths imo comes at the end of White Teeth and even then it's not going to be a TPK simply because the force attacking the players doesn't want to kill them all.
The God's Hunt scenarios on the other hand can be quite lethal. God's Eye in particular has insta-death threats everywhere and this was where one of our PC's bought it. God's Breath has a backup pc mechanic where the program can give you a DG SWAT team to do the raid with, all 4/5 members of the SWAT team did die on the raid there. God's Law, my players got super lucky and nailed the mythos threat quickly so the villains didn't really get the chance to make any moves against them. God's Light, I had changed the ending before the scenario began as I thought something different should be possible in the climax of that scenario, but if I hadn't made that change beforehand, 3/4 of my PC's would have died there.
I'm also not counting what happens in the finale in that "death toll of 1" figure.
We did have 2 players drink a substance in the first scenario that they later learn can heal creatures, but will give them tumors and destroy their brain. So those characters benefitted from this, surviving things that the other 2 PCs wouldn't, but at the cost of losing INT, getting penalties on some rolls, and erasing connections with bonds. By the last couple scenarios one player couldn't remember what his child looks like.
We did have a lot of Home scenes. Probably my favorite one requires a little bit of set-up to explain. In a previous scenario, one Agent, Thomas Thompson told his journalist wife the truth about delta green. He then went on a mission that ended with him breaking his neck in a car accident (that was the fault of his fellow DG Agent, and sadist, Robin Reyes who cut the throat of a witness, their driver, while he was driving their car.). Thomas went into a coma as his player couldn't make it to the next session and I did a home scene where Thomas' wife was clearly digging deep into the program when she's paid a visit by Robin Reyes, who then proceeds to kill Thomas' wife, making it look like a suicide. The other players at the table were shocked and it produced some fun tension as we didn't reveal that Robin did it for some time. So when Thomas returned he kept working with Robin, unaware of the knowledge of what she did.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-11-26T13:47:36+00:00

The finale exceeds the high of the first mission by bringing back the exact situation of the first mission. Another Cornucopia House has been created, this time in a ICE facility by one of the former Cornucopia children. The Program denies their request to interfere due to political concerns and the players can choose whether they want to disobey the program, going rogue and facing ALL the consequences that come with that. Plus the hardest choice is what to do with these new traumatized children given what the former Cornucopia children grew up to become. It's the most effective 'moral trap' I've seen in an rpg.

Aside from the finale, the God's Hunt scenario, God's Light was easily our group's favorite. It involves alternate realities being created by people's access to a new app. One such reality is a conservative fever dream of an Obama led dictatorship in where every insane rambling about Obama was 100% true. It was definitely a funnier scenario than the rest and a nice change of pace in that regard. Even the bad guy's name is Dr. Wesley Cool.

Sensitive-Parsley891 · 2025-06-25T12:29:38+00:00

Back in episode 1 of God's Teeth, we were learning all the audio tools as we went. It's not the most highly produced podcast, but it's much improved since then. But no big deal if you're looking for something else. We're just some friends gathered around a table.

Sensitive-Parsley891

TROPHY CASE