GM to DM

So, it’s been about a year, I though it would be easier to find inspiration for continuing, but it’s a struggle to keep my mind on a single avenue, but here I am.

What does that mean though? to be honest, it means that I bounce from creative thought to creative thought without giving a plan a chance to unfold. But what does that look like? It looks like a shelf full of RPG modules and games that I read and reread hoping to play someday. I’m sure I’m not alone on this front. But for the near future, my current fascination is with an TTRPG that goes by the name of Delta Green.

Much like with Mothership, my inspiration follows the media I devour like a hungry sandworm. First I’ll give an update on that realm before delving into the nihilistic depths of the federal government. After my last post, I proceeded to run a series of modules for Mothership building an ensemble cast for running a campaign revolving around Prospero’s Dream. We blew up an undersea laboratory in the time twist of Decagone, we nearly had a TPK on the rat infested Year of the Rat (okay, one player may be an ascended rat god, one OD’d on stims, and one was pulled to a cryo-pod in a coma by the lone survivor set adrift to be rescued by space rangers), and finally I pulled my players into a moss infected trap of an ice shelf research station on the frozen planet Murandal in Bloom.

Luckily the web of the AID (Azure Horizons, Ishiyama Dynamics, and Dyson Industries) continues to take souls at the cool liquid price of galactic credits as more of my player’s characters limp their way to The Dream to return in A Pound of Flesh.

But… Where does that leave the rest of the time since I’ve been gone?

It’s been diving into the depths of the secret conspiracy of The Program in Delta Green. If you aren’t familiar with Delta Green, it is a Lovecraftian Horror game that is set in the contemporary era. And boy do I love it. The base is a nihilistic horror story that watches the few true believers futilely fighting against the coming apocalypse.

And at the end of the day, it is futile, because in the scope of the great old ones and the elder gods outside of space and time is so vast, that the struggles of humanity isn’t even a footnote. But we’re human, the character’s are human, and what do we do when presented with an impossible task? We thrash and spasm all the way through our death throes.

It’s really a fantastic fantasy, not because it is a power fantasy, but because it is a self-sacrifice fantasy. How far can we bend, bleed, and beat our characters before they finally break? That’s what we hope to find out as we play through Black Sites (or most of it with Last Things Last as an intro).

But what brought me over to the temporary stop (hopefully intermittent like an ice hauler run between Saturn’s rings and Ceres Station)? Well Quinns Quest did. But then I very quickly lost myself like I was reading the Necronomicon.

I proceeded to produce a trailer (using Davinci Resolve and HandBrake) without any prior knowledge of video editing, spent weeks interviewing my players in background information on characters (I promise it wasn’t that bad… I hope), watched all of the X-Files with my partner, and then we finally arrived at our first session.

And that’s my next post.

Really my next post will be within the week and not in ten months.

-Cole