Post Script - From Below
Breaking down Operation Fatal Diversion
Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this document are ©SolumProtocol, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.
Photo by JUNLIN ZOU: https://www.pexels.com/photo/shadow-of-a-hand-on-leafy-ground-in-forest-setting-32483276/
I’ll skip over the pages of me crying and jump straight to the meat of the matter - that was rough haha. I went into an interesting place playing through this, with Kat losing so much. Honestly, with where she was at story wise, I was ready to begin the finale once we wrapped up Network Outage. Kat had killed one of the leaders of the cult, her sanity was dipping low things were falling into place. The only problem was, Kat had about 10 damn bonds due to me setting her up with a few different teams. I really wanted there to be a chance of a 0 Sanity ending, seeing as she is proving increasingly hard to kill. That, combined with watching From and thinking, ‘This show has Delta Green written all over it’ is what made me say eh, let’s have a quick detour before the end. It wasn’t quick, obviously, and it is some of the worst stuff that has happened to Kat since I started playing, so it just goes to show, the dice know what they are doing. Let’s dive in~
Inspirations
From - This one is obvious, so let’s get it out of the way first haha. I really like this TV show and it’s fourth season is airing as this releases. As this an advertisement for the show? No. I also have a bad feeling they are going to botch the ending, but eh, that’s just standard fare for TV shows these days. One thing I like about the show is that I was so deep into DG when I first started watching it and there are so many moments where you can see a character fail a Sanity check. Sheriff Boyd has Delta Green written all over him, and while I won’t put spoilers here, I feel like you can see him hit breaking points and develop disorders in real time haha, just like Kat! If the show ended like this, it would be massively disappointing, of course. A fed shows up in the last season, starts killing people, kills the monsters and fucks the town over? Lame! But not when I do it.
The Magnus Archives - I listened to the whole run of Magnus archives early on in my Delta Green run. There are a lot of concepts I absolutely love, and I feel like so much of it could be cribbed for Delta Green, but it’s the various concepts of The Stranger that stuck with me, specifically the Not-Them. Kyle was my tribute to that, although he died very quickly haha. I had mentioned that the Hunt had been an inspiration in Kat’s backstory, tying it in with some of the Bast lore in the DG setting. The Lonely also has a lot of good DG fodder, but unfortunately there is already a DG concept called The Lonely, haha, so any future inclusions will have to be workshopped.
Oxenfree - So, this little indie game changed my life. I don’t know why it hit so well, it’s only one step up from a point and click adventure, but the dialogue, voice acting and story just always stuck with me. The handheld radio is a key part, using the dials to tune into radio waves that reveal clues, or hidden messages. It’s got a bit of a cosmic horror vibe to it, and the voice acting is stellar. I haven’t played the second one yet because I’m too scared it won’t be as good, haha.
The Mythic Horror Track
I’m a big fan of this tool. 20 boxes seemed like so much when starting out and I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it I found it really added some much needed structure to this arc. A few thoughts about it below
Shiver Scenes are awesome. I like that they are more thematic than the ‘Flashpoint” scenes of the standard Progress track - as long as it’s scary and horror coded, it is a Shiver scene. This falls naturally into Delta Green’s structure, in my opinion. Big Sanity hits, brushing up against the unnatural or a bigger action set piece all apply.
Leverage and Protection might take some getting used to. It is important to note that you, as the player, have ultimate control over game. If you find something and rate it as a Protection (+1 box) when you first find it, but then it turns out later it is more important, you can upgrade it to Leverage without having to make a roll or anything. That is something I struggled with, wanting to give up to much control to the system instead of relying on my own understanding of narrative. it is a fine line, and may take some getting used to. I split it up like this - Protections makes your character feel safer, Leverage
Discovery checks are great for when you are stuck, but don’t rely on them. The horror tracker is a supplement to Mythic’ s core system, in my opinion, and so works best for moments where you are stuck or the scene is open. It is more interesting and fun that asking “Are there any clues in this apartment” but if you go somewhere knowing that a key NPC, item or clue is supposed to be there, it should be there, like in normal Mythic.
The confrontation continues to be a bit of an issue. When I read the guidance, it sounds like it should be one final scene, but it always ends up being 3 or 4. and long scenes at that. I think this is fine for my own means, I like a drawn out satisfying conclusion in this system, rather than “You have found the final boss, let us fight!” But I do think I need to get a better handle on pacing in general.
The Bond Problem
At the end of Network Outage, Kat had so many bonds that I knew if I jumped into the finale, her sanity would have at least 20 points of protection, and that’s just for the characters that hadn’t been around much, like Jesse White and Shirley Campbell, Jasper’s 2 teammates. I knew I wanted to do a From style scenario, I knew I wanted to test the Horror Tracker and I knew I needed to throw sanity checks at her like it was going out of style to drain some of those bonds. I feel like this was a success on all fronts, as Kat now only has her bond with Jasper and Tracy left. She would still have 3 points with Markus…. But I’m not ready to joke about that. I think this brings up an important thing for future playthroughs.
Delt Green bonds are great for Roleplaying. You can project onto a bond, and then play out that loss in the next scene, during a mission. It can even have operational affects.
While it was fun having Kat be in a few different teams, she failed nearly every end of mission sanity check, and so bonded with pretty much everyone she worked with. Oddly enough, I think this suits her personality pretty well. But for future playthroughs, focusing on one team might be better, so that we can watch those bonds build at the expense of the non-DG bonds.
If I do decide to do a playthrough like this again with my main PC in different teams, skipping the check at the end of the mission or making sure it only includes those that the PC has worked with multiple times would make more sense than a blanket everyone.
If I’m unsure if someone should be added as a bond, don’t bother asking the dice. I’ll trust my gut and just leave them off of it, unless the character in question has no bonds to speak of.
The Story
So I cribbed the opening directly from the show, of course. I tried to leave it at that so that I wasn’t too guided by my various fan theories for the TV show. I knew the Monsters would only come out at night, and there would be some form of safety in the houses, but what that was I left up to the oracle. Worley’s Mark is partially inspired by the Voorish Sign and the Elder Sign, but specifically targeting the creatures. I imagine W-Cell being a bit more knowledgeable than Kat ended up being, and so it’s a custom ritual that someone like Palmer might have been able to work out. Kat isn’t about that though, so I had to make sure the key to victory was something that already existed - in this case the knife. Ultimately, the creatures aren’t the real horror of this story though. I don’t know the direction they are going in the TV show, but for me, the inability to escape and the long, inexorable wait for death is equally as horrifying at the ultra violent unkillable monsters. Once Kat had a way to kill them, it was almost a forgone conclusion. I could have had her fight them, and strung together a string of action scenes, but I’ve already done that. I wanted this one to have more weight, more of a cost. I think I succeeded.
When I first started playing, I wondered how much the townsfolk would feature. In the TV show, they are obviously the central narrative, but I’m sure they would never react well to a half mad woman coming in and trying to solve it all by herself, no matter how much more experience with the weird she has. Ultimately, they were a background threat, desperate people who make desperate decisions that negatively impact their lives. But in many ways, there was no way for Kat to save them in the first place. The dice creature wanted them, and it had to have them.
I wanted to test the bonds too. Kat has been a disastrous influence on Markus, and while she had helped Danielle a lot in home scenes, the amount of violence she brought to her friends like has had an impact. I told myself there was a small chance they get through this with bonds and friends intact, but only if we expose them to real danger. She ended up losing both of them in different ways. I think that’s fitting narratively. The reason I chose improve skills for the home scene is that with only Delta Green bonds left, there is no cost to improve them. There are no responsibilities to let lapse, Kat is now 100% on mission, either unnatural hunting or the ‘real’ job she has to take her mind off it. The short cuts she is taking professionally would likely catch up with her if she lives long enough for them to come to light. We will have to wait and see if she holds out long enough for it to matter.
Kat’s Situation
At this point, I think it is wroth checking in Agent Jones. She is going into this mission fully rested, and having trained up her stealth and melee weapons for her home scene. What else?
She has two bonds Jasper Westbrook (DG) at 5 Points and Tracy Castor (DG) at 7
Her Sanity Score is at 27 from a starting 65
Her Stats now all range from 12-14, thanks to adaption and eating….a varied diet
She now has three disorders. ‘Heart Hunger’ which requires a successful sanity check when killing an unnatural creature or she is overcome with the desire to remove and eat the heart. Depersonalization Disorder. Losing 2+ sanity in one go inflicts a -20% to all skills until she finds time to come back to herself. And he new one, Totemic Compulsion. She views the cursed knife from the Town as the main reason for her survival. She keeps it nearby at all times, and suffers a penalty if she loses it or does not have it on her person or in sight.
She has two motivations left. Destroy the Unnatural and Be Outstanding at her Job. This second motivation is why her career at the FBI hasn’t fallen apart, in my opinion.
She lost the motivation “Find out what happened to Dad”. I could have had her just stop paying attention to the fact her undead zombie father seems to be following her around, but I took it to mean that her other two motivations now took precedence. Killing him and handing him over felt hard as a player, because I knew there was a story thread there I never tapped into, but it feels oddly fitting. Kat will never know exactly what happened.
Up next
Before I launch into our finale, I have one more post (that might turn into two at this rate). We are at 200K+ words at this point, not including Post Scripts. That’s a lot of adventure, so I’m planning on releasing a mission by mission recap next week, which I’ll probably pin somewhere. If you joined part way through, are new to the adventure or just want a refresher on important folks, be sure to check it out. It should help give some context for why Kat is the way she is haha.
After the recap, we are on a straight run to the end! a scary thought. I finished playing this campaign a while ago now, but because of the edits and these Post Scripts, I’ve been able to hold onto the story for a bit longer, keeping it in my head and thinking about all the moving parts. It’s been awesome. Thanks so much for reading, and I am super excited to share the end of this tale with folks!
This has been fantastic, and I'm eager (and dreading) to read the final chapters!
I haven't followed from the beginning, but this last operation was my favorite. I'm a real fan of the anti-hero trope, so I'm just here in the audience with my popcorn yelling, "yeah eat that heart!" but better to leave us wanting more than stay on too long.