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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Deadlands having to resort to "actually, it feeds the mega demons from double hell if you go stomp out the Confederacy or if someone else does so it's bad if you do" really does show their whole rear end, politically. Night10194 posted:Actual Helldemons Exist So We Can't Address The Nazis is a constant of genre fiction I wish would go away Reasoning along those lines always makes me wonder if we wouldn't be better of with just feeding those mega-demons. The image of them feeding on Nazi-killing makes them sound kind of awesome. Now, Nazis summoning or serving demons, that makes more sense. At least as long as the demons in question are evil. Non-evil demons should still be allowed to eat Nazis, or their suffering or whatever
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Jan 1, 2021 20:30
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Mors Rattus posted:
Looking forward to Ghost Elf.
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Jan 1, 2021 20:40
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JcDent posted:Funny you should mention that because I recently wrote a post about how demon Nazis is something we desperately need to make Weird War 2 in any way fresh or original.
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Jan 1, 2021 20:54
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Ni- hey wait, I think I specifically called out Nazi vampires 
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Jan 1, 2021 21:32
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quote:While these pilgrims approach Teclis and Celennar with great reverance, they pay only basic respects to the mage-god compared to the honors given to his companion, and it is often said that it is best to learn from the source, not the mouthpiece. Teclis does not show how much this proverb annoys him, but his brother is aware of that annoyance and thinks it's hilarious. Okay. That bit kind justifies the Lumineth's existence right there.
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Jan 1, 2021 22:23
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JcDent posted:Ni- hey wait, I think I specifically called out Nazi vampires
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Jan 1, 2021 22:32
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Red Markets: a Game of Economic Horror Part 10: Playing the Market - Core System Skipping directly over “Lost Things” in the Guide, because it’s not very good. It boils down to “there’s Blight magic that creates weird and special casualties sometimes”, but it’s all presented as rumors that are player-facing, so you can’t really spring the “surprises” here on the players. Let’s FINALLY talk system!  Displaying the section header at click-open size for those who don’t want big ol’ creepy zombie in their face; work-safe, don’t worry. A genuinely good header, too. That little guy? That’s you! Red Markets is officially the Profit System, a semi-contested 2d10 system. That’s all you need for the system at all, actually; two d10s, the Black and the Red (actual colors up to you). Everything else runs off of the results of the 2d10 roll, so no need for separate dice. Players roll both dice; the GM (going forward, Market) only generally rolls for setting/narrative forces (generating casualties, encounters, contracts… you get the idea). Each die represents one side of the check. Black covers the player’s efforts, and modifiers apply to it; Red represents difficulty. You may notice I mentioned modifiers only apply to the Black die; this is one of the problems I have with the system. Flat dice leave too much to random chance, especially in a game with critical successes and failures (and this system sure has them). Direct resolution is simple. Roll both dice; if the Black matches Red before modifiers, crit success on evens and crit fail on odds, so assuming my math hasn’t completely failed me that’s a 10% chance for a critical result on every roll that ignores any potential bonuses you spent. Again, flat dice. Otherwise, Black higher than Red is a success, Red equal or higher is a failure. (Market always wins on ties.) If you really gotta do better, you can spend Will (the main metacurrency) to flip the numbers, negate a crit fail, or make a success critical. One of the ways Red Markets reinforces the materialism-driven mindset of the world is that dice checks aren’t free. Purely mental and purely social actions don’t cost resources, but you can’t get a second roll on tem without spending Will or tapping a Reference (contacts that exchange favors); both will come up in detail, but they’re not in huge supply. Other than that, everything costs “charges” on equipment. Physical actions cost a charge of rations, representing how much energy you have/were able to sustain off your supplies between restocking; everything gear-based uses “charges” dependent on the item, but usually 10 per item. Certain gear, and any ration-based activity, let you spend extra charges on a 1:1 basis for a +1 to the roll; other certain gear lets you spend charges to do things on a failure. It’s pretty neat, and one of the main mechanics reinforcing the gameplay loop. Pinning charges almost entirely to the paradigm of “10 charges per item, expensive quality halves that” limits the flexibility of the charge system severely, though, and the only exceptions are dependent on upgrades. Red Markets gives the whole “only roll when it matters, failing has consequences, but failing doesn’t stop the game entirely” spiel and does it pretty well, though there's nothing new here for people who are familiar with RPGs (and it's a contrast with the earlier "we aren't explaining poo poo about what an RPG is" from the opening). It also has a “succeed at a cost” mechanic that lets failed rolls partially succeed in exchange for a heavier penalty. That’s not strictly mechanized and largely falls to GM discretion. Explaining the rest of dice check mechanics requires getting into a part of the system that I really appreciate: Profit System is partially modular, with Boom and Bust rules. If you’re familiar with Shadowrun, renaming them “pink mohawk and black trenchcoat” wouldn’t be far off at all. Implementing Boom rules shifts the game towards a more heroic tone, while Bust shifts it more towards… well, “poverty simulator with zombies added”. I’m sure someone can think of zombie media parallels to draw. Boom and Bust rules are generally intercompatible, barring a few that affect the same mechanic (like the first ones we’re going to talk about), and are designed to be applied in whatever manner a group prefers. So the first place Booms and Busts come up is that you have two methods for allowing rolls. The Bust variant requires you to have at least a basic level of the skill (+1) to make any check that requires some experience; for checks that don’t require any skill you let the player succeed and move on. Encourages finding solutions suited to the character over entrusting the random flat dice. The alternative is to allow defaults based off a skill’s linked attribute (Potential), rolling just the Black against that fixed difficulty (no bonuses from charges). High stats are expensive and increasing them far enough that defaults are effective pulls resources away from other vital things, but they allow the full range of options for everyone, even someone who hasn’t invested at all. The lack of any difficulty effects on the Red die means that actually adding difficulty to a roll is hard. For that matter, there’s only a couple ways to do it on the GM side; declare a Precision check (extra charges can’t give bonuses) or declare a Difficult check (Precision effects and critical success required, whether through dice or Will). These are huge jumps in difficulty to have as your only non-combat levers as GM! Combat has a set of Advantages that allow more modifiers, but they’re similarly significant jumps in difficulty overall and are explicitly designed to be rare. If there’s anywhere I think the system would run into issues in practice, it’s the lack of GM-side modifiers for difficulty. Opposed checks exist for PvP. Good, because Red Markets is the kind of game that drives serious intraparty conflict. It’s just rolling skill checks normally and comparing success (and margin if both succeed). Very simple. No Market-facing opposed checks. The rest of the section is very brief summaries of the mechanics of Will and Charges, both of which are explained in much more (and better) detail in their respective sections. And that’s about it. Overall I think Red Markets has a solid core system deeply let down by its reliance on “single” flat dice on each side for resolution. I’ve never liked flat probability in games, and it has a strong tendency to lean towards random chance winning out over skill or careful planning. A ton of the system keys off alternate interpretations of the Black/Red resolution method directly, though, so it can’t easily be translated to anything with a “curve” or moved to a fixed-difficulty system (that, bafflingly, only exists in the Default mechanics). It works, but it could work so much better. Next time we’ll talk about character creation and I’ll actually have page art to post again. This section is a drought.
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Jan 1, 2021 23:31
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So if I'm understanding this right, rules as written: You always have a 10% chance of a critical success (doubles). Your difficulty is going to move around completely independent of your actual modifier. And you have to expend finite resources at some length in order to try to influence that roll, possibly in vain. My surface assessment here is that you actually have, statistically, a good chance to succeed with possibly comical results on just about anything, but it's entirely possible the red die could be hot and gently caress you over. It seems like you'd want to just keep trying from as many angles as possible. But I guess the idea is that rolls should be more for things like "does your helpless dependent's boneitis respond to the dangerous expired medicine ampoule you sacrificed three other PCs to acquire," rather than "So can we jimmy open the storage unit?"
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Jan 2, 2021 00:10
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10% chance of a critical. Half of those are critical failures. Otherwise your assessment isn't far off, though I'm not sure either of those would be a check (short of getting it open under significant pressure, time or otherwise).
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Jan 2, 2021 00:16
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SkyeAuroline posted:10% chance of a critical. Half of those are critical failures. Do you max out at a possible roll of 10? Like if I roll a 9, plus two charges (for 11) and the red die is a 10, do I win or lose?
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Jan 2, 2021 00:18
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Nessus posted:Can you add more than one bonus to your roll? Like could I spend 3 charges to get +3 on a roll? The exact mechanics will come up in the equipment section, but the two main categories of equipment are charged and capped. (Manpower is just Charged that uses ration charges instead of charges on the item, and there are a few items that don't use charges by virtue of being single use.) Charged items, like guns, can spend multiple extra charges for a +1 each time; capped gear (I'm not at my desk atm so I don't have an example off hand) is a flat charge to use it and no extra charges. Black modifier is not capped at 10. Final result above 10 will always win unless it's a critical failure. (edit: or it's a Difficult check)
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Jan 2, 2021 00:22
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SkyeAuroline posted:The exact mechanics will come up in the equipment section, but the two main categories of equipment are charged and capped. (Manpower is just Charged that uses ration charges instead of charges on the item, and there are a few items that don't use charges by virtue of being single use.) Charged items, like guns, can spend multiple extra charges for a +1 each time; capped gear (I'm not at my desk atm so I don't have an example off hand) is a flat charge to use it and no extra charges. This is just a d20!
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Jan 2, 2021 00:46
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Everyone posted:So the priest who does not believe in the Divine (AKA an atheist) is able to steal magic/power from these deities in which he does not believe? Okie-dokie then. You don't have to believe the Divine are actually Gods to believe that they have a real amount of magical power that you can steal. Also "atheist" is only one of the possibilities for Ur-Priest. Another possibility is "worships an actually dead god and is very angry about it."
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Jan 2, 2021 00:50
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Nessus posted:Ah, so using charges won't neutralize a crit. Yup. This is a very complicated d20. Will can be spent to neutralize a crit, but it's limited. That's the only way.
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Jan 2, 2021 00:52
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Is it this section or the next where Caleb put the sidebar bragging about ignoring the playtest feedback on the skill system?
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Jan 2, 2021 00:53
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mellonbread posted:Is it this section or the next where Caleb put the sidebar bragging about ignoring the playtest feedback on the skill system? Pg 197, part of this section. quote:“But a +1 Is useless!” Since criticals are always triggered on natural doubles and ties go to the Market, playtesters have argued that having a +1 in a skill is essentially useless. This isn’t entirely true. For example, if the dice for a Shoot check roll B2/R3 and the Taker spent an extra charge of ammunition beforehand, the check is a success (B2+2/R3) where it would have failed with only the +1 skill or the extra charge separately. More importantly, the Taker had the ability to aim that gun at all. Defaulting to Potentials isn’t allowed in a Bust game. In most situations, characters that don’t have at least a +1 in a skill don’t have enough expertise to even hope for success. If the check is such that even a total layman might pull it off, the Market shouldn’t have the player make skill checks in such low stakes situations. If using Boom defaults, a +1 skill, as opposed to a +1 Potential, increases the probability of success by 35%, allows extra spending on charged gear, and permits the use of Will. Even default checks to a Potential of 4 have worse odds than that.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:02
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I remember being a little annoyed by that when I read it. It's great that he knows how the math of his own system works, a lot of game designers really don't. But if the players are telling you that something feels bad, that's a separate problem. It's very difficult to capture what makes a dice mechanic feel good or bad, but the trick is to tweak the system so that the mechanics are satisfying to use from a player perspective, while still preserving the underlying numeric balance. I know it's petty, but "designer directly addresses why he's not out of touch, the playtesters are wrong" is something that irks me wherever it shows up.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:23
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Yeah, I thought it would be a lot swingier and dismally unpredictable, and in the individual rolls it would be even if the curve is still going to look basically the same as d20, DC 10 over time.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:32
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The main flaw of a system that the Profit System has is the defaulting rules or initial lack thereof and this is something he's known for years ever since the first alpha tests. It wasn't built to have defaulting, and I get the arguments on both sides, but the one thing I do like about it is that, like. It does encourage some character growth as a whole. Initial character generation encourages building specialists who are very good at particular things because that's going to be real expensive down the line, but what's less expensive is putting a +1 in a skill that was a weak spot and got your rear end kicked last time around, or just doing that for a few skills that feel like they may be niche and never coming up, but that way when they do you at least have a +1. When it flows like that it really does feel like your character is learning from their experiences and growing a bit more along the way while still having a wheelhouse but having the ability to shore up situations in a pinch, and I really like that feel.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:42
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I generally align with the Bust rules, and this is one of them, yeah. Defaults don't seem suited to the game or its genre.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:56
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:However, there is one prestige class that people actually take from this chapter, and that's the ur-priest because it is both bonkers good and extremely cool. The ur-priest is an evil atheist cleric who instead of worshipping gods steals power from them to fuel their magic, and as you level up in the class you can copy monsters' spell like abilities and use them for yourself. It's an extremely cool class that no knowledgeable DM will ever let you play because it has a completely busted spellcasting progression. The ur-priest starts with first level spells as a sixth level character, then gains a new spell level every level, so an ex-cleric 5/ur-priest 9 casts 9th level cleric spells. The other busted thing is that your caster level is your ur-priest level plus half your levels in other spellcasting classes, which you can combine with poo poo like mystic theurge to gain insanely high caster level bonuses and just blow people away with holy word/blasphemy/whatever the gently caress. Did I mention ur-priests ignore alignment restrictions? I'm legitimately mad, because dark cleric who steals spells from gods is a legitimately cool character concept I wish later editions actually supported, but it's ruined by Monte Cook's inability to write mechanics that aren't completely busted. Oh well! Just to step in, a truly knowledgeable DM may well allow the Ur-Priest depending on what level they want to start with or even ban it for being too weak; from levels 6 to 9 or so it sucks. It's only if you start at level 12 or above that there's actually a problem. Going into detail, you can't get in before level 6 (you need to already have 8 ranks in two skills) and I don't think you can get in with third level spells as you lose all divine casting, and you need a Fort of +3, which means you can't e.g. be a wizard 5 (IIRC the best route in was Bard 4/Barbarian 1). This means at level 7 you'll be casting second level spells at most - when the primary casters have 4th (which is also the mystic theurge's problem). Even at level 13 it may be weaker than a standard cleric; at Ur-Priest level 8 you need a Wis of 26 to get an 8th level spell which (in addition to a +6 enhancement bonus item) requires you to have basically gone all in on Wisdom, making you even more terrible for the first seven levels. And if you don't get that 8th level spell the level 13 cleric can out-cast you on 7th level spells thanks to having a domain and thanks to having a higher caster level. Which means that the ur-priest is only definitively ahead at levels 14, 15, and whatever they do with level 16 - while the ordinary cleric overtakes the ur-priest again at level 17 when they get 9th level spells. Even the Mystic Theurge combination isn't too bad. Bard 4/Barbarian 1/Mystic Theurge X this is absolutely fine as it means that your caster level is your character level-3. Bard 4/Barbarian 1/Ur-Priest 2/Mystic Theurge 10 as a level 17 character would only give you caster level 19 (2 ahead of the straight cleric) - but they get more 9th level spells and are only going to pull ahead. Even Wizard 4/Barbarian 1/Ur-Priest 2/Mystic Theurge X isn't as stunningly broken as it might appear because a wizard who's given up three whole caster levels is a long way behind (although it's probably objectively the most powerful choice). The Ur-Priest has a reputation of being far far more of a problem than it deserves because by combining a second cool class, the Nar Demonbinder from Unapproachable East you create a perfect storm that turns this into the most broken actually playable character in 3.X (counting infinite loops like Pun-Pun as unplayable). The Nar Demonbinder too is a very cool class - a spellcaster who wandered their way into summoning demons and decided to focus on that. They get their own (charisma based arcane) spell list that starts at 4th level and get to stack their caster levels on another class. On its own the Nar Demonbinder is fine - you stop advancing in your old casting class and start advancing in this new one. Cool concept, a little underpowered for most people. The problem is that the Ur-Priest, Nar Demonbinder, and Mystic Theurge react together in ways that were unintended. Ur-Priest and Nar Demonbinder are each on their own fine with having their caster level be based in part on your other classes but when you mix them it turns out their caster level is based on each other causing a nasty feedback loop that requires simultaneous equations to work out your caster level. Adding insult to injury the Nar Demonbinder doesn't qualify you for Mystic Theurge as it only gets 4th and higher level spells and not second so although you can qualify for the demonbinder with a divine class you'll need to spend levels getting those second level arcane spells and by that point mystic theurge kicks in too late to be useful. But because the Ur-Priest is a prestige class you can also use the levels qualifying for the Ur-Priest to get second level arcane spells and then get the fourth level spells to qualify for the Nar Demonbinder out of Ur-Priest. And then you use Mystic Theurge to pump the caster levels of both at the same time, feeding back into each other. Honestly this isn't a class ruined by Monte Cook's inability to write mechanics, it's a class ruined by 3.5 bloat and sprawl. It's also Exhibit A in why you can have much cooler mechanics in a "true" class system where you keep things in silos rather than have a class system that's packaged point buy and where things can interact in massively unforeseen ways.
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Jan 2, 2021 01:57
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It's also worth remembering that characters who differ too much in their class levels are supposed to receive less XP - 20% penalty per class that's more than 1 level away from the highest level, ignoring the favoured class - this includes prestige classes. This means that Wizard 4/Barbarian 1/Ur-Priest 2/Mystic Theurge X takes a -20% XP penalty once they hit their third level of Mystic Theurge, and -40% from fourth level onwards (assuming human, or else someone with one of these classes as favoured class). I know a lot of people didn't bother with that, because it was kinda clunky, but this is one method by which the game reduces the impact of ridiculous class combos (though it admittedly only works if people are actually having to gain the levels rather than starting with the combo).
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Jan 2, 2021 02:31
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Nah, Prestige Classes didn't count against multiclassing XP penalties, only Base Classes did.
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Jan 2, 2021 02:51
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hectorgrey posted:It's also worth remembering that characters who differ too much in their class levels are supposed to receive less XP - 20% penalty per class that's more than 1 level away from the highest level, ignoring the favoured class - this includes prestige classes. This means that Wizard 4/Barbarian 1/Ur-Priest 2/Mystic Theurge X takes a -20% XP penalty once they hit their third level of Mystic Theurge, and -40% from fourth level onwards (assuming human, or else someone with one of these classes as favoured class). I know a lot of people didn't bother with that, because it was kinda clunky, but this is one method by which the game reduces the impact of ridiculous class combos (though it admittedly only works if people are actually having to gain the levels rather than starting with the combo). Nope. Prestige classes are explicitly immune from the XP penalties. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/prestigeClasses/prestigeClasses.htm The SRD posted:Prestige classes offer a new form of multiclassing. Unlike the basic classes, characters must meet Requirements before they can take their first level of a prestige class. The rules for level advancement apply to this system, meaning the first step of advancement is always choosing a class. If a character does not meet the Requirements for a prestige class before that first step, that character cannot take the first level of that prestige class. Taking a prestige class does not incur the experience point penalties normally associated with multiclassing. neonchameleon posted:Just to step in, a truly knowledgeable DM may well allow the Ur-Priest depending on what level they want to start with or even ban it for being too weak; from levels 6 to 9 or so it sucks. It's only if you start at level 12 or above that there's actually a problem. The usual build is Wizard 5/Mindbender 1*/Ur-Priest 1/Mystic Theurge X, where you use something like Southern Magician to get second level divine spells and advance the ur-priest while losing only 1 wizard level. You require 4 or 5 separate splatbooks to do it, and I'll admit the bard/barbarian is easier for the skills (hope you have an 18 int human!). You're right that ur-priest mostly sucks on its own because it's a mess of starting underpowered and transitioning to overpowered, and I honestly think it gets as much flak as it does not for the Nar Demonbinder combo but because people use it as part of hoops to desperately make absolute garbage like True Necromancer good. IMO the ur-priest should have just been a base class or realistically an alternative class feature for clerics where you trade domains for the SLA stealing stuff, but I don't think those really got started until late 3.5. Like you point out, it's a completely busted class - you either don't have useful spells for much of your career, or you pull ahead at higher levels when it just doesn't matter and the DM just shuts down the game because the wizard got Polymorph any object. Even this build is...ok? You end up with 9th level spells in both cleric and wizard, but the base cleric list kind of sucks compared to wizard and your spell DCs are lower because you need both intelligence and wisdom. You can stack cleric and wizard buffs to become the nightmare from hell, but either spell list is capable of turning a spellcaster into a monster combatant so who cares. *Mindbender has a good fort save progression. No one knows why, but you get telepathy and a wizard spellcasting level for essentially free, so grab that poo poo!
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Jan 2, 2021 02:55
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Nessus posted:Like Dracula wants these nerds hanging around forever, he'd use what he learned at the Scholomance and save his dark kiss for the real babes. I have a vague memory of one of the Rod Serling's Night Gallery episodes that dealt with something like this. Basically a unit of Nazis takes over some lord's castle and learns it's full of werewolves or vampires or something. Things go poorly for the Nazis after that. senrath posted:You don't have to believe the Divine are actually Gods to believe that they have a real amount of magical power that you can steal. Also "atheist" is only one of the possibilities for Ur-Priest. Another possibility is "worships an actually dead god and is very angry about it." See, now that would be an interesting take on an ur-priest, especially if you opened the class up to non-evil alignment. Say some god/goddess died and the ur-priest is steal the power of other gods to bring his/her god/goddess back to life. Everyone fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Jan 2, 2021 |
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Jan 2, 2021 02:55
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Everyone posted:I have a vague memory of one of the Rod Serling's Night Gallery episodes that dealt with something like this. Basically a unit of Nazis takes over some lord's castle and learns it's full of werewolves or vampires or something. Things go poorly for the Nazis after that. Aliens meeting humanity under the leadership of Dracula or Draculas would probably assume that's the apex form of humans, wouldn't they?
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Jan 2, 2021 03:07
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Nessus posted:Reminds me of a short story I read which was about the alien invasion and reduction/extermination of the defiant humans which was going pretty badly for old Homo sapiens until some guy sort of just materialized on the fleetlord's bridge. Long story short, it was Dracula.
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Jan 2, 2021 03:11
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:*Mindbender has a good fort save progression. No one knows why, but you get telepathy and a wizard spellcasting level for essentially free, so grab that poo poo! I'd forgotten about some of the shenanigans you could get up to in 3.X optimisation including Southern Magician. And Mindbender, which was one of those prestige classes that was only ever used as a one level dip because the second level didn't advance your caster level so no one ever took it, making it basically a waste of ink except for that +2 fortitude.
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Jan 2, 2021 03:13
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Nessus posted:Reminds me of a short story I read which was about the alien invasion and reduction/extermination of the defiant humans which was going pretty badly for old Homo sapiens until some guy sort of just materialized on the fleetlord's bridge. Long story short, it was Dracula. I think Blindsight is the canonical sci-fi text about aliens meeting vampires
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Jan 2, 2021 03:23
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New year, new review! It's time for: Delta Green: Handler's Guide Chapters One and Two: Introduction, The Past The first chapter of the Handler's Guide is your typical "How to run a roleplaying game/how to run a horror game" spiel. Instead we're gonna start with chapter two, which covers Delta Green's timeline from 1927 to 2017. There is a whole hell of a lot in this chapter, and the timeline and sidebars alone would take up multiple posts to cover, so I'll be skipping those and focusing on the main text of the second chapter. Delta Green got its start after the 1928 federal raid on the coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachussetts, called Project PUZZLEBOX. A combined force of the Navy, Treasury Department, and FBI rounded up everyone that survived the raid and seized a bunch of occult artifacts. Those artifacts (and the Deep One hybrid prisoners) wound up with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and ONI brought in the Black Chamber to make sense of the artifacts. After the Black Chamber was dissolved by Hoover, some of its members joined ONI's Parapsychology, Paranormal, and Psychic Phenomena Desk, P4 for short. P4 mostly focused on Deep Ones and the Esoteric Order of Dagon throughout the 30s, until the US got pulled into WW2. In 1942, the OSS approached P4, and after P4 made them aware of Nazi interest in the occult (specifically that of Karotechia, a subunit of the Ahnenerbe) the OSS decided to absorb P4, giving them DELTA GREEN clearance. At no point did P4 reveal that they actually believed in the efficacy of the occult; they'd learned their lesson after Hoover shut down the Black Chamber following its original report on Project PUZZLEBOX's findings. The newly formed Delta Green mostly focused on battling the Karotechia during WW2, as well as Japan's Gen'yosha. They briefly cooperated with the UK's PISCES, up until a PISCES team attempted to assassinate an Delta Green team in hopes of seizing the alien artifacts that the team was trying to destroy. After thwarting a number of Karotechia operations throughout the war, including Aktion GOTTERDAMMERUNG (an attempt to summon Azathoth to destroy the world), the war ended and Truman dissolved the OSS, and Delta Green with it. Delta Green was reactivated two years later when a flying saucer crashed in Roswell, and was subsequently organized as an intelligence and psywar unit aimed at keeping unnatural tech out of the hands of America's enemies. The researchers that were actually tasked with handling the crash and its survivor were later formally organized into MAJESTIC, Delta Green's eventual rival. The following decades involved operations of all kinds around the world, and in 1961, Robert McNamara increased the degree of civilian involvement in Delta Green, allowing handlers to temporarily bring in civilians for specific operations, designating them as Delta Green friendlies. It was only a few years later that things went sideways; in 1969, a Marine colonel with Delta Green clearance launched an unauthorized mission, Operation OBSIDIAN, in Cambodia. Almost three hundred Marines died fighting some alien horror, and the survivors made their way back to Vietnam and fragged the colonel. When US troops later invaded Cambodia in 1970, the locals were already riled up enough to put up much stronger resistance than anyone had been expecting. This entire fiasco triggered a Senate investigation that ended with the formal dissolution of Delta Green and the deactivation of its clearance. A handful of feds that formerly had Delta Green clearance kept up the fight, re-organizing Delta Green as a criminal conspiracy within the government, fueled both by an awareness of the unnatural threats endangering the US, and also a deep distrust of MAJESTIC's motives. From there Delta Green continued to operate in relative quiet and secrecy, and with little in the way of records or institutional memory, until a Delta Green old guard named Reginald Fairfield was assassinated in 1994 by an NRO DELTA team dispatched by MAJESTIC. Fairchild had managed to send his own personal research on MAJESTIC to the few remaining Delta Green members before his assassination, and this spurred Delta Green to reform itself under Fairchild's former right-hand man, Joseph Camp, and to take the fight to MAJESTIC. Delta Green quickly formed a better organized, cell-based structure, and expanded its recruitment efforts. Things took a turn when MAJESTIC's head of counter-intelligence, Gavin Ross, recruited a Delta Green agent named Forrest James (a disgraced, court-martialed alcoholic formerly with the Navy) and gave him a new identity as Captain John Smith in ONI. Ross pretended not to know about James's membership in Delta Green, and when James later revealed his affiliation to Ross, Ross talked up the idea of Delta Green and MAJESTIC joining forces for the greater good. James ended up bringing Ross into Delta Green as a new recruit over Camp's objections, making Ross a member of A-Cell. James ended up wiping out NRO DELTA after they mutinied and assassinated one of the twelve members of MAJESTIC's Steering Committee, and quickly allied with three other members of the committee that had always opposed the Accord with the Greys. While 3/12 is hardly a majority, it's a lot more convincing when that 3/12 includes your largest and strongest military arm, BLUE FLY. BLUE FLY rounded up the remaining members of the committee, brought them in, and ordered them to vote for James as the new director of MJ-1 (and head of the Steering Committee). James then extended an offer to the rest of Delta Green to join the new MAJESTIC, but they refused. The new MAJESTIC then contacted the Greys to demand a renegotiation of the Accord, but they never responded. All known Greys subsequently dropped dead, and all Grey devices stopped functioning. Knowing that much of MAJESTIC's influence had always come from the alien toys they had access to, a bunch of the Steering Committee's members (ones that hadn't allied with James) left for the private sector, after having already embezzled plenty over the years. MAJESTIC had one final encounter with Delta Green; in mid-2001, Delta Green, MAJESTIC, and Russia's GRU SV-8 launched a joint operation to finally wipe out the Karotechia, razing their base of operations and executing its last remaining original members. It was 9/11 that finally ended MAJESTIC and turned it into the other Delta Green. The end of the Accord had meant the end of the Report, and while Director James hadn't seen fit to inform George W. Bush about MAJESTIC or the Report, Bush Sr. did already know about both, and when he asked his son whether the Report had been of any use, there were problems. MAJESTIC was already busy trying to scrap all of the unsavory poo poo they'd been doing before their recent reorganization, and they were forced to scramble before the Executive Branch caught up with them, so they recruited a former Delta Green agent and Air Force general, who now worked as a research director for the NSA. After being briefed about full reality of humanity's position in the universe, and the sorts of toys MAJESTIC had managed to create, the former general managed to filter all of MAJESTIC's resources and personnel through multiple layers of the NSA, and covered up the whole mess with the Report by inventing a fake called Project DULCIMER. Supposedly Project DULCIMER was a weird NSA machine learning project that processed global comm chatter and turned them into useable data, but the shift to asymmetric warfare had left it useless. With all of the MAJESTIC assets and people now in the NSA, MAJESTIC was shut down and the NSA started a new project called the Special Studies Group that was authorized to form inter-agency task forces as needed, with the full cooperation of the DoD, DoJ, and DHS. They also reactivated an old clearance for the SSG's use: DELTA GREEN. So from here on out we have the Outlaws (the old Delta Green) and the Program (the SSG) running in tandem, but rarely cooperating and never trusting one another. As for other some notable groups: GRU SV-8 was completely re-staffed after a couple of its officers revealed the existence of hypergeometry to the Russian government in hopes of getting more funding. Now they work to acquire and weaponize hypergeometry and the unnatural for the good of the Russian government. PISCES managed to purge the Shan from its ranks and the British government as a whole, and is now trying to find its feet again. There have been tentative contacts between them and both Delta Greens. M-EPIC now works with the Program, and the two collaborate frequently. The Cult of Transcendence collapsed following the deaths, disappearances, and defections of its various bishops. The Fate descended into infighting after Stephen Alzis up and vanished one day. Delta Green mopped up what was left of it, and in the aftermath, received a final note from Alzis: "Thank you for putting away my toys." Tiger Transit is now a perfectly legitimate corporation...at least as far as the public is concerned. Next: The Unnatural
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Jan 2, 2021 03:27
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Atrocious Joe posted:I think Blindsight is the canonical sci-fi text about aliens meeting vampires
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Jan 2, 2021 03:29
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Everyone posted:See, now that would be an interesting take on an ur-priest, especially if you opened the class up to non-evil alignment. Say some god/goddess died and the ur-priest is steal the power of other gods to bring his/her god/goddess back to life. You're not wrong, but as with most prestige classes, that's also just a neat character quirk for... a normal-rear end cleric.
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Jan 2, 2021 03:35
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I still love one of the final nails in MJ-12's coffins being Bush Sr. telling Dubya about the Accord and just being like "why not have aliens help you kill bin Ladin" so the conspiracy has to scramble to deal with this suddenly uncovered landmine.
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Jan 2, 2021 03:42
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Nessus posted:Were there any defenestrations
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Jan 2, 2021 03:48
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Nope. Prestige classes are explicitly immune from the XP penalties. Huh, fair enough; I wonder when that got errata'd, because in the DMG, it definitely does not mention the lack of penalty for prestige classes. I mean, it makes sense because you don't want PCs to be restricted to prestige classes that complement their race's favoured class, but it seems to me that part of the point of such a penalty was to avoid five class combos and multiple single level dips.
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Jan 2, 2021 04:54
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Everyone posted:I have a vague memory of one of the Rod Serling's Night Gallery episodes that dealt with something like this. Basically a unit of Nazis takes over some lord's castle and learns it's full of werewolves or vampires or something. Things go poorly for the Nazis after that. There's also the scenario in the movie Dead Snow where you're dealing with a bunch of Nazi (fast) zombies for whom it did go poorly back in the day - that's why they're pissed off now.. One of the best low-budget horror films, highly recommended.
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Jan 2, 2021 06:59
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Nessus posted:Reminds me of a short story I read which was about the alien invasion and reduction/extermination of the defiant humans which was going pretty badly for old Homo sapiens until some guy sort of just materialized on the fleetlord's bridge. Long story short, it was Dracula. You're thinking of David Weber's Out of the Dark.
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Jan 2, 2021 11:16
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Which is inexplicably, somehow getting a sequel. https://www.fantasticfiction.com/w/david-weber/into-the-light.htm Everyone posted:I have a vague memory of one of the Rod Serling's Night Gallery episodes that dealt with something like this. Basically a unit of Nazis takes over some lord's castle and learns it's full of werewolves or vampires or something. Things go poorly for the Nazis after that. That's also the plot of The Keep
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Jan 2, 2021 12:45
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Deptfordx posted:Which is inexplicably, somehow getting a sequel. This pre-dated The Keep by quite a few years. The book was published in 1981. The Night Gallery episode which can be watched here came out 10/27/1971.
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Jan 2, 2021 17:48
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You know, David Weber is living the life he wants to and I just have to be OK with that.
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Jan 2, 2021 17:51
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