Post Script - Grief Old and New

Breaking down Operation Broken Ace and short retrospective on Part One

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Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-of-human-eye-326536/

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I find Solo play interesting for many reasons, but one of the things I have noticed with myself is that the moment I feel like I’ve been mechanically kind or nice to my character, such as not making the monster tough enough or handwaving a chase scene because I don’t want to roll it minute by minute, I feel this sudden urge to be narratively unkind. I think Broken Ace stemmed from that. I know that Kat has nearly died a handful of times and that, logically, she’s still alive because the dice love it when she shoots things, but the more I consume Delta Green media and read the sourcebooks, the more I felt like Lost Herald turned out too good for her.¹ Maybe I was also feeling angsty and wanted to take a step away from the more blood pumping, adrenaline charged action and let my character be sad for a while. I had a few inspirations for this one, so let’s take a look!

Inspirations

• Shadow of Innsmouth - Arguable Lovecraft’s most well known story, it was the first one I read, and while I knew the main beats of it purely through it’s presence in pop culture, I didn’t know how it ended. The book concerns the Deep One’s, who feature prominently in Delta Green’s backstory, while rarely (if ever) making their way to a published scenario. Off the top of my head, I actually can’t think of a single Delta Green scenario that handles Deep Ones. Ostensibly, it’s because they’ve been through a lot in the 20th centaury and have decided that they are content to just sit and wait for the inevitable apocalypse, and that was the vibe I went for with Clyde. I’ve seen some discourse online about Deep Ones that likens them to Orcs or Goblins of Fantasy Lore. The discussion can be boiled down to the idea that a sentient, free thinking species as a wholly evil race doesn’t make sense. I agree to a point but I also like scary fish monsters in my Horror story, so now we have Clyde, who just wants to be left alone. I think if I turned into sentient fish person with functional immortality and I could go see my sleeping octopus god at the bottom of the sea whenever I wanted, I would be pretty chill.² I’ve wanted to include a Deep One or their spawn since I started, but I’ve come to realize that they are much more prominent in Call of Cthulhu, and that does kind of make sense. We’ll see if they pop up again, but if they do, it will because their attempts to be left alone have failed.

• The Shotgun Scenario Contest - The Shotgun contest was going on while I was writing this and some of Lost Herald. The Shotgun Scenario Contest is an annual submission in the Delta Green community to submit a full formed Delta Green scenario that is 1500 words or less. The goal is to make it punchy, fun and compact - ideal for an actual one shot³ or convention play. I love the idea of it and there were lots of great submissions in 2024, but I didn’t have the time or experience to submit one myself, largely because I didn’t know what one would look like in play. Broken Ace, and to a lesser extent Lost Herald, were attempts to capture shorter, more direct missions that could translate to a 1500 words piece. Writing up Broken Ace as an actual scenario would take a lot of work, seeing as there were few non-smell based clues and a massive personal connection, but still. The idea persisted. I’ll be submitting something in 2025, either way!

• God’s Teeth (Again) and The Magnus Archives - Synchronicity is a big theme in the campaign God’s Teeth. It’s the idea that, even accounting for free will and human autonomy, the entity (or entities) involved are so alien and powerful they warp realty itself to suit it’s needs. Think of it like a dream. When you find yourself underwater in a dream, and you take a desperate breath in only to realize that, of course, you can breathe underwater! Why wouldn’t you be able to? That’s reality to The Entity. At least, that’s what I have in mind. That’s why Kat arrives on her Mom’s doorstep moments after the enemy leaves, it’s why Kat’s seemingly random missions always seem to involve the Order, and it’s why Jasper was in town, less than an hour away when Kat needed him. The other inspiration for the Entity and the general Vibe of the Scions is The Hunt Fear and it’s avatars from The Magnus Archives. I want to keep things vague because I think the only way Kat will fully understand what she is, is when she hits 0 Sanity. If she survives that long. Still, there are certain things I want to establish so that, narratively, things make sense.

• Love - I’m secretly a romantic, for all that I write about the psychological trauma of being alive. I honestly think that love can inspire great things and makes the world a better place. I also think love can make people do very, very bad things and make the world a worse place. I think Kat, for all that her life sucks, is a loving person. I think the only way Kat gets out of this alive is by keeping her bonds intact. Which is fantastic, because the only way she keeps her sanity high is by burning those bonds, so it’s a wonderful catch 22. Also I saw this meme and thought it was so hilarious so I decided to make it a plot point.⁴

American Romeo and Juliet

Mechanics

• Sanity - I would say for all of my missions so far, I have not rolled Sanity as much as I should. I think it’s because I started with Last Things Last, which only really has one sanity roll, maybe two, that is required to get through the scenario. Even now that Kat is double adapted, there were at least 3 unnatural events that just bounced off her because I forgot to roll SAN. As a result, she still hasn’t hit her second breaking point. I think I was hesitant to drain her Sanity too quickly, but I need to remember that her Sanity is also a Plot Point and some of the fun of the game is watching that Sanity Score tick down and seeing what effects it has on your character.

• Skills - On the flip side, I’m still rolling skills like Search and Persuade way too much. In the future, I’ll try to redirect that to the Oracle, assuming that If I get a ‘Yes’, my skill is passively good enough to get the answer. If I play with new characters, that will be something I’ll do from the get go to keep the story flowing.

• Mythic - I feel like all of my Random Events in Broken Ace were to do with Threads I didn’t particularly care about, apart from the first two. The police investigation wrapped up on it’s own, and I had 3 or 4 that almost exclusively dealt with Tommy the Bastard.⁵ This highlighted the importance of list management when using Mythic, especially in a tighter, shorter scenario. It mostly worked out, because it meant I didn’t have to tag on 5k words at the end failing to cover up the unnatural event, but still, getting another NPC action for an NPC that hasn’t been relevant form the get go can stall the pace a bit. It’s also perfectly acceptable to just choose something that feels better, but I never want to feel like I’m taking too much control of the narrative. Otherwise I’ll just end up writing about Kat and Jasper’s elopement and early retirement.

Part One Retrospective

I feel like Broken Ace is a good place to pause and end the first section of Kat’s adventure. There’s been a lot of disparate threads that have mostly been wrangled into place to form a somewhat cohesive narrative. The main two threads are

• The Order of Midnight

• The Scions of the Hunt

There’s also a few other things in there, I still have Walter Sims⁶ on the list, but I didn’t really find out enough about him to tie him in anywhere yet. Part Two will start with a Home scene that wraps up a couple of minor threads (and opens up a few more, of course). I really liked generating completely random missions for Part One, but I do want to feel more focused moving forward. As such, Here are a few things I’m going to be trying out for Part Two.

• The Progress Tracker - Anyone who has played Ironsworn or Starforged will be familiar with the concept of Vows as a quest tracking system. Mythic 2e has an optional rule around using a ‘Progress Tracker’ which functions in a similar fashion. You assign it to a Thread and when you progress it, you fil it up by 2 boxes. There are in built “Flashpoints” so that every 5 boxes, if you haven’t had a dramatic, thrilling scene, you trigger one as a Random Event. I’ll be interested to see what effect this has on the mission as sometimes the starting Thread isn’t the ‘main’ thread, so to speak, but I’m hoping it gives the mission a bit more focus, and helps to feel like the Agent’s actions are guiding the story, rather than the other way around.

• Roll more San, Roll Less skills - As mentioned earlier, I’m going to be directing more investigative questions to the Oracle with the assumption that Kat’s now crazy high skills would reasonably pick up anything that is there to be picked up. On the flip side, I’ll likely trigger Sanity checks for anything overtly Unnatural⁷ and try to remember that being adapted to Violence/Helplessness doesn’t actually make you immune. Acts of Extreme Violence or Extreme Helplessness still cause 1 Sanity loss on a success. This should keep the story beats flowing without feeling like I’m cheating because I’m rolling on a skill that has a rating of 90+

• Increase Focus at Mission Start - While I’ve loved the open ended situation Kat’s found herself in for some of these missions, I want the next step of the narrative to be focused on our main Two threads, preferably tying in some of the smaller campaign threads where possible. As such, I’ll be tying any hooks I start off with directly to either the Order or the Scions, and I’ll roll on my Minor Threads list to see if there are any complication/tie in’s to try to start moving the plot forward.

• More Lore - While I’m still not a lore expert, I’ve been loving the stuff I read about both the 90s setting and the modern post 2016 setting. The story will still be about Kat and all my homebrewed jank lore, but I will be attempting to tie in some Delta Green Lore when appropriate. There’s just so much good stuff in these books, and tying them in feels nice.

Part One Names - Explained

Because This is a shorter Post script, I thought I would finish with something fun that I had intended to include earlier - an explanation of the Mission Names. I usually pick a name based on the opening hook, and when the plot progresses, I keep an eye out for ways to give it that juicy double meaning found in some of the good published and fan scenarios or canonical missions.⁸ I’ve included the titles that Kat has given these missions in her head, as none of them would be named this way in story.

• The Prologue - This is self explanatory, and I didn’t want to give it a name as it already has one.⁹ Kat thinks of this as ‘The Baughman Op’

• Operation Haruspex - Latin for Butcher¹⁰, I hadn’t read many DG scenarios at this point, so I wanted something that sounded cool. In universe, I think Nolan Landry has a classical education, and gives all his missions Latin or Greek Names. It worked double later on, because Haruspex was also the name given to Roman priests that divined things from animal organs, which kind of fit the Vibe of Tabitha Abel, our unhinged veterinarian. Kat think of this as "The Abel Mess”

• Operation Kerberos - The Greek pronunciation for Cerberus, the three headed dog that guards Hades. The initial hook had dogs, and I was a little stumped on a name. It kind of worked, as I ended up viewing the Lake as Hades/Hell, and the Dogs and other animals protected it, but there is a reason I stopped with the Classical names after this. Kat remembers this one as ‘That time I met Tracy’ along with it’s exact file number in the FBI records, as it was technically an official case.

• Operation Winter Strain - I started using the more traditional, two word Mission titles form here on out. I knew it was winter and there were sick people at the start, but there was a nice double meaning by the end. The Primordial Mushrooms could be described as a ‘Winter Strain’. Kat thinks of this as ‘The Arizona Shitshow’

• Operation Lost Herald - This one is slightly complicated. I use UNE for major NPC’s and Palmer’s descriptor was ‘Conniving Herald’ who wanted to ‘Create Force’. I always took this to mean she was a deep thinker and maybe a bit more manipulative than her absent expression would make her seem, but that didn’t really come up in play. Either way, ‘Lost Herald’ is actually the most directly descriptive of my chapter titles. Kat tries not to think about this mission, but when she does, she remembers it as ‘The Last Time I Saw Palmer’

• Operation Broken Ace - Broken Ace is the catch all term for a trope I like. It descried someone who is, from the outside, a little bit too perfect. The kid at school who was the star of their sports team, has good grades and a fulfilling social life. And yet, they are a mess on the inside, filled with self hatred and doubt. Double Adapted and a few points away from her 2nd breaking point, Kat’s more broken that she’s ever been, but she still rarely misses a shot and her skills and stats are still going strong. This is the only one I didn’t name at the beginning. Calling it Operation DeadMom seemed a bit much. Kat remembers this as ‘The Worst Day of my Life’¹¹

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And so we close the book on Part One of Kat’s journey. I’ll kick off Part Two with out Home scene - The Long Year, and then we’ll jump straight into Operation Shadowed Past. Thanks so much for reading along with me ! Please consider subscribing if you haven’t already, and drop me a message if you’ve been playing Delta Green Solo or with a group! I love to hear from people!

1. I recognize that this is a somewhat ridiculous statement, given that LH ended with her taking a big step away from being human by literally devouring a heart.

2. I think Human is my least chill form, I would be more chill as literally anything else.

3. By this I mean something you actually do in one sitting. Every One-shot I’ve done has actually been 3 sessions at least.

4. I found the meme afterwards, but it was randomly on Instagram so I really wanted to include it

5. On my Threads list he was just ‘Bastard’

6. This is the the escaped reverend from Winter Strain

7. Knowing me I’ll dramatically over compensate and roll SAN for every minor things for a while.

8. Operation Southern Hospitality is one of my favorites

9. Last Things Last, and excellent starter scenario

10. I have an Ancient History Degree and it has a lot of hold over me

11. So far, anyway