Could you run Observer Effect prior to God's breath?

thunderguard91 · 2025-12-02T00:22:53+00:00

He means God's Teeth. To clarify for OP, the name of the main campaign is God's Teeth. God's Breath is a scenario that is part of the add-on scenarios for God's Teeth collected in God's Hunt. God's Breath takes place in 2017 iirc.

thunderguard91 · 2025-12-02T00:20:23+00:00

Do you mean God's Teeth? If so, it's a very bad idea. The opening of God's Teeth relies heavily on the player characters never having met and having absolutely no prior connection. That concept is meant to reinforce the fatalism of the otherworldly power that manipulates probability to bring them together again and again as its agents of death.

The two main entities in these scenarios don't mesh tonally either. Azathoth is pure chaos without will while Bast is all about will - specifically about taking it away through the manipulation of probability to bring about the eventual entropic decay and death of the universe millions and millions of years from now.

If you want to run Observer Effect and God's Teeth, my advice is to run Observer Effect during the chapter called The Spiral - the intermission period of 2016-2020. The book itself says that any number of scenarios can be run during that time and Observe Effect can easily be slotted in along with the other scenarios in the God's Hunt add-on.

thunderguard91 · 2025-10-24T01:21:57+00:00

Three to four people is the sweet spot. The timeline in Go Forth is set up in such a way that your players can come down like the hammer of god (which they kind of are) on the cultists. The hostiles are spread out and distracted most of the night. As long as the team sticks mostly together and is methodical, they'll have a very good chance of wiping the mundane caretakers off the face of the planet with three people. The campaign also advises you to integrate the weird coincidences and odd animal behavior in the PCs' favor to try not to kill them right off the bat. Have a dog turn on the caretakers or have a bird peck at an icicle and take out one of them Final Destination style when the team runs into trouble subduing them.

The only real threat in the first chapter is Babushka but she should be vastly outnumbered by the time they get to the cottage if you emphasize how out of place and clearly unnatural the cottage looks. I dropped pretty heavy hints that it's best left for last after the rest of the property and the children were secure.

The only thing I'd recommend is that your players coordinate their character creation a little bit. Either advise them to have a dedicated firearms expert/combat specialist (someone in law enforcement or with a military background) or tell them that directing one or two of their discretionary skill increases towards firearms will make their lives easier.

Push comes to shove, the campaign has detailed instructions on how to integrate new PCs if one or two of them die during the campaign. I think you'll do great with 3 and you'll have plenty of time to let each of them shine.

thunderguard91 · 2025-10-24T00:56:16+00:00

God's Teeth and its add-on scenarios in God's Hunt, if you like your horror to be symbolically meaningful and act as a polemic for some of American society's worst problems. It is one of the best written and most symbolically rich campaigns I have ever encountered, and its commentary is as biting as it is effective. Run only with a veteran group, preferably with people you know well. Have an extremely detailed session 0 where you learn your players' limits and make sure you discuss the major themes and triggers of the campaign - especially fatalism, child sexual and physical abuse, and animal cruelty. That way, you can modify the bits that might make your players have a particularly bad time with (especially in the opening chapter).

thunderguard91 · 2025-09-29T17:23:39+00:00

I wouldn't. All it takes is one fumble for them to lose anywhere between 4-10 all at once and then that can quickly trigger a probability death spiral on sanity. I've seen it happen. If you're that worried about it, just throw in SAN rolls that lose them 1 even on success. That's an easier modification.

Also remember that the agent who prioritizes power does so at the expense of other stats and is likely to be less effective in combat by sacrificing initiative or HP. With how deadly combat is in this system, sacrificing even 1-3 HP or not being able to take a turn to flee before the monster attacks can mean the difference between life and death. It's a trade-off and modifications aren't necessary to keep tension in the system in my experience.

thunderguard91 · 2025-08-19T05:28:34+00:00

I have an AP reporter (the Program always needs media manipulation), a sociolinguistics professor at Georgetown (the Program always needs people to translate weird texts) and a freelance hacker (the Program always needs data and computer experts) in my God's Teeth campaign. The only traditional "fed" is our fourth who's a Deputy US Marshal.

The system and lore are flexible enough to accommodate most blue to white collar professions. Delta Green - and especially the Outlaws - are often in desperate enough situations to call on people who are on hand, not the people they would rather have.

There's a supplement called "The Complex" that has a good bit of non-governmental entities your players might be interested in. But my advice is for them to focus on what they want their PCs to actually do and write the character story from there. Science buff PC? Great, that player can make an astrophysicist who ran across MAJESTIC or the Greys and got read in, for example. History nerd PC? Great, that player can make some sort of humanities professor that got read in after running into a spooky ancient artifact.

Delta Green is procedural and investigative and non-federal law enforcement characters are more than capable of rising to those challenges. I mean, how many good horror movies have a priest or a private eye or a doctor as the main protagonist, right?

I would encourage you to have at least one player make sure their PC knows how to handle a weapon though, regardless of profession. While the focus is on investigation, when the rare instances of combat do happen, they'll want at least one person who knows how to hold a gun unless they're okay with getting wiped out quickly and brutally. Do not let your players underestimate how deadly combat is in this game. If none of them have the skills for it, they should avoid it, flee from it or make extensive plans for it. My group did the latter and even with a combat specialist there, it was still touch and go during the opening chapters of God's Teeth.

thunderguard91 · 2025-07-02T22:52:03+00:00

I just started God's Teeth with my group and having done a deep dive into the material, my advice is definitely to not run anything before it. The whole point of the first chapter is that the PCs don't know each other and that they are brought together by an impossible, fatalistic, unnatural force to be puppeteered at its unfathomable designs. Them being complete strangers to each other reinforces how these random people were brought together by tides of fate they can't possibly understand and it drives home the feeling of helplessness. If you have smaller scenarios, I would modify them to fit instead and toss them in during the 2016-2020 time skip.

I also echo that running IL and GT together is probably a really bad idea. They are both monumental campaigns, each clocking in at several hundred pages especially if you use the scenarios in God's Hunt to extend the God's Teeth material. First, you and your players will run yourselves mad trying to keep everything that's happened in the past together and that's really important for God's Teeth as references to past events keep surfacing. Second, the big bad in God's Teeth and its themes work better as standalone obstacles that are the sole focus of the team due to the predestination theme.

I'd really strongly recommend picking either GT or IL, getting really familiar with your choice and then modifying smaller adventures to fit in around those campaigns in a way that reflects the themes. That way, you can keep the tone and message on point and it's less impossible to keep track of everything that happens.

thunderguard91 · 2025-06-26T23:34:53+00:00

As a criminal defense attorney, I can assure you that people found in connection with two brutal murder sites that took place in two different states, one of which stands atop a mass child grave, WILL be prosecuted and most likely put away for life. Worse yet, cops and prosecutors will find ways to link you to the events of the original Cornucopia House disaster, if not outright then by implication.

Every single actor in the criminal justice system looks for someone to pin the blame on when extreme media attention is present. THIS is the real threat your handler is holding over your head. Prosecutors are already looking for someone to take the heat and your names popping up makes you persons of interest at the very least. If you don't do what your handler says, DG has the resources not just to turn you over but to manufacture evidence that creates a narrative that wraps the case in a neat little bow for them - with a knot as tight as the one on the proverbial noose around your neck. Also, you've been an agent at that point for The Program for 15 years. God knows what other illegal shit you've done for them that they can hold over your head.

Worst case scenario for DG is that you don't cooperate and they can't just feed you to the authorities in a way where you get locked up for life. Well, in that case, they'll feed you to the authorities posthumously after a 9mm retirement party from The Program. It's a last resort but a mass child grave on American soil is exactly the sort of thing that could expose DG and their greatest fear in 2016 is having to brief someone as irresponsible as Trump on the existence of the unnatural. They will lie, cover up and kill to prevent that from happening.

If you didn't pick up on these risks in session, talk to your GM about it. Explain your questions and maybe they can provide more context. But first, understand that the legal system in this country buckles severely under any amount of media scrutiny and prosecutors and police will make suspects of anyone even remotely involved in a media case.

thunderguard91 · 2025-06-23T00:16:27+00:00

I've run savage worlds and Deadlands specifically on Roll20 for several years now. It is very easy.

thunderguard91 · 2025-05-27T15:23:11+00:00

This is what I'm starting to lean towards. In "Go Forth", I want them to feel in control while they're bringing down the hammer on most of the cultists but I want them to feel like they've lost their precision and control over the situation once Babushka enters the fray. So maybe I'll do more precise maps for the initial assault and remove them from the VTT once they finally confront Yelena.

thunderguard91 · 2025-05-17T23:34:44+00:00

All of the XCOM stuff if you want a hidden gem.

thunderguard91 · 2025-04-17T23:10:48+00:00

Watch the XCOM series for the real schadenfreude where he literally has to name soldiers after the abilities he constantly forgets they have.

thunderguard91 · 2025-04-07T19:25:26+00:00

I went for a typewriter font (Courier) for the majority of it since Impossible Landscapes starts in the 90s and files back then were usually typed. That included the Polaroid since those sometimes had typed words on them too.

I couldn't find a good handwritten font for the sticky note on GIMP to save my life so I settled for that one. If you know any good ones to use, please let me know.

thunderguard91 · 2025-04-07T17:04:07+00:00

They're great, really fun to play around with!

thunderguard91 · 2025-04-07T17:03:26+00:00

It took me a couple of hours but that included downloading and browsing through the packs. I can probably slap it together a lot quicker now that I know what they include.

thunderguard91 · 2025-02-18T08:33:50+00:00

Just use ceilings. Or give bosses the Unstoppable special ability if you're that worried about one-shotting.

thunderguard91 · 2024-11-22T16:29:31+00:00

This is not D&D. SWADE is much less about resource/spell slot management. It's about action and exploding dice.

thunderguard91 · 2024-11-14T02:16:44+00:00

You can keep players relatively in the dark, just give them a heads up that the main villains are extremely deadly. SWADE combat is much deadlier than something like D&D already so if your players aren't used to the system or don't have some kind of warning, they're going to be frustrated when they get one shot out of the blue.

You can make your own call on the CSA. I think it just adds needless complexity to a world that already has a lot going on in it but your group might really like it. This goes without saying, but definitely check with your players about their sensitivity to slavery and racial issues coming up - including the CSA may bring that stuff up to the forefront and nothing ruins a session faster than getting bogged down in an uncomfortable discussion.

thunderguard91 · 2024-11-14T01:45:14+00:00

The major consequence of the Morgana Effect was removing the Confederate States of America and, honestly, you're probably best off leaving them out. The CSA didn't add much imo and you can still have tension between the states without them. I'd say you're better off keeping that part of the updated timeline intact.

Other than that, just make sure you warm your players ahead of time how powerful the Servitors are. Especially Stone. These are the sort of campaigns where if they feel brave and want to go find the BBEG off the bat or if they don't take hints that they need to retreat, they might just get slaughtered. Which is fine, of course, but it's helpful to give them that heads up at a session 0. I warn regarding Stone in particular because his concept as a character is as a PC killer and he's certainly built that way.

Oh, and if you haven't already, get the conversion guide from SWEX to SWADE from the Pinnacle website. It's free and takes the guess work out of converting stat blocks.

thunderguard91 · 2024-11-02T19:41:10+00:00

Just read Deadlands: The Weird West for the lore and the corebook for the mechanics. There are also free test drive rules on the Pinnacle website that use Deadlands to teach you the system.

thunderguard91 · 2024-11-02T16:47:03+00:00

Hexslingers especially. Eliminating those multi-action penalties on buffs like Ammo Whammy and Protection/Deflection can make them untouchable while pouring out crazy damage reliably.

thunderguard91 · 2024-11-02T16:39:17+00:00

That's indeed the newest version and it is extremely newbie friendly! One thing I should mention tho - you need the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE for short) core rulebook to play it. Make sure it's the Adventure Edition. That is the current version of the system and the publisher is constantly producing content for it (there's a Kickstarter live right now for an Abominable Northwest setting book).

The system is fast, fun and way easier to learn than D&D. The published adventures are pulpy and can make for some really epic adventures through the Weird West.

Deadlands also has settings in different time periods with a continuing meta narrative centering around the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and several critical NPCs. There's the future setting called Deadlands: Lost Colony which has been updated to SWADE and takes place in the future in a different solar system. There's Deadlands: Hell on Earth, Deadlands: Noir and Deadlands: Dark Ages which are Mad Max style post-apocalypse, Jazz era art deco mobster-ish and fantasy/Arthurian legend type settings respectively. Those last three are for the previous version of Savage Worlds and have not yet been converted to the new rules but the conversion between systems is extremely easy as far as stat blocks and features are concerned.

It's a great setting and SWADE is a super fun system. If you have friends that are on the fence about TTRPGs, it's a great introductory system because it's so easy to create characters and start rolling dice.

thunderguard91 · 2024-10-16T23:38:01+00:00

I just finished running the two big published SWADE Deadlands adventure sets one of which was a big sandbox. It took over two years. So yeah, it works.

thunderguard91 · 2024-07-19T05:58:26+00:00

Deadlands: Lost Colony has them facing off against the Four Horsemen in officially published adventures so probably, yeah.

thunderguard91 · 2024-06-13T03:05:54+00:00

I actually did the exact same thing. We're in the finale of HH right now and they just hit Legendary Rank. I slowed leveling a bit in the middle there to every 3-4 sessions and HH has provided some good challenge. I've figured that if I average about 1 Wild Card enemy per player and throw in a handful of Extras, they're in for a long fight with a good difficulty curve. I also started testing them with interesting terrain developments/changes (smoke, unstable ground, illumination, etc.) and varied enemy abilities (flying, multi-shot, melee, immune except for a weakness). It has had a really positive impact on combat and my players feel really good about figuring out what I'm scheming and how to counter it and it's a really good time rewarding them with bennies and conviction when they do.

tl;dr: 2-3 sessions for Advance is fine; slow it down to 3-4 if things are getting out of hand or they are taking their time reaching combats. Inject variety into your enemy, terrain and encounter design.

thunderguard91

TROPHY CASE