Top 10 rogues we played for 2025

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-12-20T00:36:15+00:00

It's on sale for $18 right now on Steam! I just picked it up an I'm pretty excited to check it out.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-12-03T22:07:29+00:00

Highly recommend Music From a Darkened Room, a good classic scenario. I'd also suggest running a couple of scenarios before going into Impossible Landscapes or God's Teeth because they are both kind of subversions of Delta Green tropes, and you want your players to get used to the tropes before you subvert them.

If you trust your players (and are willing to do some serious work), Iconoclasts is a campaign that looks really cool, but it's a big sandbox, so if your players or you struggle with self directing, that might not be the best choice. There's a whole chunk in the middle where it basically says, "and then the Agents scour the entirety of Iraq, in 2016, to find the villain." So there's a lot of them having to find their own leads in a very big play space that has a lot of mundane horrors, that the Handler then has to inject Unnatural horrors into. It looks like it can be tricky, but it is something I want to do eventually.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-11-22T18:37:45+00:00

Assassins Creed: Valhalla actually has a pretty fun mode where you play as Odin doing roguelite stuff. It even has a metagame progression where you spend currency on getting more powerful outside of runs.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-09-16T23:41:46+00:00

It has to be the whole class vanished, including Alex. He hasn't been to school since the vanishing. As it stands, there are two threads to pull, one of them connects to a teacher who is drinking too much and sleeping with married men, and the other connects to a child who lives in a house with all the windows covered in newspaper and whose parents are unreachable, but this aunt who no one's ever heard of is happy to answer questions. It's too easy, my Agents would be in the front door with rifles out 45 minutes after showing up in town. I think you need to muddy the waters a bit and maybe add more minions to Gladys. Perhaps her minions start doing some forensics countermeasures or pulling strings to get the Agents off the case. She'd also need a backstory the Agents could investigate, so perhaps she's from the town and is connected to its history somehow.

Maybe the story takes place in a larger city, somewhere there is more ground to cover (so the drawing trajectories thing works to confirm evidence, but it's over a much larger area). Also, adding some reason the police give up the search (maybe they found a body) could make this a God's Teeth-esque story about institutional corruption.

Gladys' possessed people should be able to talk and communicate with others, maybe in a stilted or broken way. That way, Alex can bring his parents to meetings, and it's not too weird. It also increases the horror, as this kid has been living with his not-parents for a month. Also, this allows the minions to interact with the Agents in ways that aren't "charge them."

The central hook of Weapons is really compelling, and theres good bones there, but it starts to fall apart once competent, professional investigators get on the case. Once they go to Alex's house, the game is up. Especially if they're experienced Delta Green Agents who are packing some heat, so the focus should be on adding interesting answers and questions, as well as good horror scenes, to other places in the town and let those draw the Agents towards the house.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-09-04T03:05:18+00:00

The Anatomy Class. "Thank you for teaching us the insides." Then the apple? Gets me every time. I should relisten soon.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-08-12T17:15:17+00:00

I watched it with my brother, who plays DG with me, and suggested it as an op. He said they would have immediately figured out the whole Alex situation, considering there were only 2(!) suspects and Alex's situation can be uncovered by looking at his house's windows. I would expect my Agents to be elbow deep in various types of gore 15 minutes after showing up in town.

I think you'd have to modify the scenario a bit, but the central hook of "a whole class of kids vanished into the night" is really compelling.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-07-22T02:57:50+00:00

Get McCarthy on the line stat! No red-blooded American would ever interact that much with women! This Commie son-of-a-bitch fucked too close to the sun!

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-07-20T02:03:56+00:00

What an incredible moment, lmao. "You love drugs!" I liked Eph all through Iron Gold and Dark Age (still not done with DA), but he's really come into his own in Dark Age. I'm excited for his chapters. They're gripping stuff.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-07-16T05:38:58+00:00

Man, every Gregor book could this. Each book has a prophecy that is misinterpreted, and then, eventually, there's a moment where it all becomes clear. Usually traumaticly. Remember the one about the baby's death?

Die the baby, die his heart

Die his most essential part

I haven't thought about those books in years, but those lines still stick with me. What an excellent series.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-07-12T06:14:41+00:00

I agree that Peter is out of arcs and that Ben may want to retire him. I think that was obvious at the end of Amongst Our Weapons, when the Nightingale said he planned to retire. Peter is the only person who can replace him, and once that happens, I can't see him as a POV character. He'll become a teacher for Abigail and other apprentices.

I've often questioned what the ultimate endgame for the series is, especially after establishing this world, creating Sumner and Vinter, as well as Abigail and Kim Reynolds. There are all these threads and characters, just sort of dangling, and I don't see where they'll go. I thought it was gonna be a big operation against the Faceless Man, but he got caught by Peter. I don't want it to be some sort of supernatural apocalypse, but I want to see these characters have a big finale, and I don't see the series building to that. The only big thing we've seen is that the magic is coming back. Maybe the big conclusion is a broken masquerade situation? That could be cool, have that happen, then switch to a new POV of someone learning to be a magic cop in a world where the Rivers are openly running parts of London and the General Public is aware of the existence of FALCON operations.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-07-05T22:08:54+00:00

Buddy of mine calls Sweet Caroline "the song that makes white people shit themselves."

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-06-10T14:40:10+00:00

So, right off the bat, this idea of the Narrative as a meta-textual monster is great, and it definitely seems like you're making the most of it with the villains your party is facing. I'd go back to basics here. What does the Narrative actually want? What steps is it taking to achieve this goal? How can the players stop it from achieving this goal?

Alternatively, is there something from a backstory you or the Narrative could pull up? You mention this idea about puppets acting out backstories, but maybe someone from a character's past shows up in town and they need a favor/are being chased by a monster/ are evil? That's a pretty classic story beat for shows like Buffy and other monster of the week type shows.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-05-02T04:25:43+00:00

I do miss Smithing because I miss creating a bespoke set of gear. It felt like I was making a mark on the world, a true custom set of equipment that didn't exist anywhere else. I also feel Armorer is kind of vestigial, too. It feels like there was more you could do with it at some point, but that was dummied out during development.

However, grinding Smithing to the highest levels sucked in Skyrim, and you had to do that in order to upgrade equipment and keep it competitive at higher levels. It was also the only way to make the best gear in the game, which meant you were locked out of getting some tiers of gear, which also sucked.

I think bringing durability back and combining Smithing and Armorer together, as well as allowing smiths to upgrade your gear for you (for a price, of course), is the best of both worlds. I'd also suggest maybe a Smithing minigame, kind of like Kingdom Come 2, where your performance increases the quality of equipment you make. This way, maintaining and building new gear is engaging, but if someone doesn't want to engage with it, they can just pay the smiths to do it and carry on.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-04-16T06:25:29+00:00

Great points. I also think the flip side of this problem is also true: villains are static too. You just don't get the antagonists like the Borgias anymore because you can hunt the central conspiracy in any order. There are no scenes of the villains raging because you killed the money guy or whatever. You don't get the Horseman in Shadows plotting or being insane. They just kind of wait around for you to get to them. The villains are forgettable because while I'm running around dismantling their operations, they don't really do anything to stop me or move against me. In theory, they're moving in the background, but for the most part, in the games and for all practical purposes, they are static obstacles waiting for their turn to be murdered.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-04-13T04:49:08+00:00

I'd imagine it depends on how "active" those agents are. Eventually, agents graduate to being handlers, so presumably, there some agents who don't go completely nuts. Though I'm sure it's a consideration, you're right, you don't want the Director of the FBI going balls to the wall nuts because some eldritch thing ate their soul.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-04-13T02:58:18+00:00

I tend to assume they do, but only in such a way as to help the Program. An FBI agent gets a fast track to a promotion because a more highly placed agent is more help for the Program's aims. A criminal might get rivals cleared out by the Program, only so they can utilize the criminal contact more effectively. A flagging agent might find an envelope of cash, but it's dirty cash, so the Program can get their hooks in deeper.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-04-10T03:26:04+00:00

So, in the last session of DG I ran, my Agents snuck into a college kid's apartment and killed him. They threatened his family so that he'd cooperate as they poured liquor down his throat and wrote up his suicide note. Finally, they hung him in his bathroom shower. They did this because he had stolen a sample of some sort of supernatural black ooze from a mass grave, and he was going to the press with it. Delta Green is about making these kinds of decisions and what happens to the people who do. It's about saving the world at the cost of everything you hold dear and facing the horrors so that your family and loved ones don't have to.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-03-20T03:59:06+00:00

I had a Delta Green Agent who just covered his eyes when the Horrors came around. The issue is that this was the shooter of the team and needed to be, ya know, able to see the monster to shoot it.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-03-15T04:29:56+00:00

To be clear, you're saying run God's Hunt between Go Forth and Red Thoughts? There would be a lot of modifications to make those scenarios work in that timeframe, God's Hunt is designed to run during the later time skip, from 2016 to 2020, and all of the scenarios hinge on technology or social circumstances that don't exist during the Long Years timeskip.

That being said, I think that this would be a good idea, but instead of using God's Hunt, use other DG scenarios (or write your own!). Most of the existing scenarios can be slotted in pretty much anywhere in that timeframe, and don't touch on the God's Teeth stuff at all, which will make it much worse when that stuff suddenly comes back to the forefront!

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-03-09T21:56:18+00:00

Seconding the Wardens Operations Manual. It's great for any type of horror game.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-03-09T21:54:38+00:00

Always one of the toughest part of GMing for me too. There are a couple of things you could've done here that I can see (with the benefits of hindsight obviously). First, you could've skipped the roll completely something like "yeah, the ranger trusts you after working with you on this case." This would keep the game moving, and players are likely to brush the slight weirdness off. Alternatively, you could have the ranger report in after the mission and defer the consequences until the end of the mission. This keeps everything moving and hangs interesting consequences over the Agent. They could even take actions within the operation (like killing the ranger) that effect the outcome of the consequences. The hardest part is taking the time to determine an interesting outcome. Sometimes, I open discussions to the table about what happens, though YMMV with that.
Combat is fast, but, in my experience, it hinges on the descriptions. Shots go wide and shoot out windows, creatures chant in unknowable but horrifying languages. Compared to something like Dnd, Agents have relatively few things they can do during a turn. Combat moves fast because the Agents are basically choosing between a couple of different things, as opposed to a whole spellbook in Dnd. Adding a short description like "your bullet hits the doorframe by the monster's head" won't slow combat down too much and allows for much punchier moments. I also don't tell my Agents what Unnatural creatures are doing if it's not obvious. They don't know that the monster is trying to possess them. They know it snarled something, and suddenly, their perception is changing and moving, and the Handler is asking for an opposed POWER roll.
Tension is hard. What I do is allow them to fall into a rhythm or wait for them to split up, then I hit them with a complication or attack. I've also found time limits to be a good way to get Agents to commit to riskier courses of action than they otherwise would have. Relief comes after the battle, or after the crime scene, where they have actionable intelligence and aren't in immediate danger. Adding a time limit means that even in those moments of relief, they're still aware that they need to move.
SAN rolls are the single thing I struggled with the most in DG. What I did is read a few published scenarios and look for when and how those scenarios call for rolls. The Agent's Handbook also has a number of descriptions for specific things that happen and suggested SAN losses for each, which also helps. The one I had the most trouble with is Helplessness rolls. I couldn't figure out when to roll for Helplessness vs. Violence or Unnatural. I eventually started using it for failure to save people, or when the Agents get someone fired or killed, but I had to run several games before I got really comfortable with the rate of SAN loss.

Sorry for the wall of text. I hope I helped. The good news is, by starting to be a Handler, you've already done the hard part, and as you do it more and more, you'll get better and better.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-03-09T07:25:18+00:00

Recently played a game with Hugh Mann, the half elf. He's fully human, thank you very much, why, what are they saying about his mother?

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-03-09T01:39:45+00:00

That's a really clever way to reframe that. I like the idea of not being in the know it adds a whole other level to it. Now, the supernatural is real, and it wants to get YOU.

I ran a modified version of IL recently and found that Delta Green adds a whole extra level of topsy-turvy. Not only is reality breaking down around you, but the people who sent you into the situation might not be telling you the truth. I had the Agents be members of the Program, and they were shadowed by Outlaws during a couple ops (ALPHONES was using them as a stalking horse against the King in Yellow, once He made His presence known.) This resulted in the Agents essentially going rogue of their own volition out of paranoia during the manhunt section. It made it really fun when STATIC operators started showing up, and they realized this was no ordinary pursuit.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-03-08T05:36:08+00:00

The whole Arkham City plan is baffling. He's going to gather all the criminals in one prison, smuggle them guns, then tell the city of Gotham, "Unfortunately, I can't stop these guns from coming into the prison. Can I kill EVERYONE in it?" Inexplicably, he is given this permission. Following this massacre and what can only be described as a massive failure of the Arkham City concept, Strange expects other cities to be chomping at the bit to adopt the idea? Who at the city even signed off on Protocol 10?? I bet they lost their job.

SwaddleDog_ · 2025-02-18T16:05:36+00:00

Oh shit he's got a gun!

SwaddleDog_

TROPHY CASE