It just came to me as I thought of campaigns to run when I return to Boston.

Delta Green/Call of Cthulhu... run using the Dogs in the Vineyard system.

It's not even that far off from the Dogs suggested settings. Dark, lonely crusaders against darkness. The prelude system could focus on not Dog initiation, but the Mythos contact that led to the agent joining Delta Green. Sanity could be a set Trait (or a pair of existing Stats or an extra, new Stat) and you could actually roleplay the conflict that happens when someone loses some Sanity. What goes through a PC's mind when they see a Deep One? Lovecraft always told us; that's what's so wonderful, in my opinion, about his prose. The DitV conflict system would allow for that. The PCs could use Relationships as an anchor to reality and Sanity in some cases. Psychotherapy (using drugs as Equipment, using their quality as the Rating, or even Relationships in some particularly powerful therapy sessions) could also be played out using Conflicts to "heal" a PC's Sanity. Each Mythos beast would have a Insanity rating that would directly conflict with Sanity ratings, and so would certain situations (finding the serial killer's oubliette, reading unspeakable tomes, etc.). Fallout would be applied to Sanity in most cases (to replicate the "slippery slope" from traditional Call of Cthulhu) or possibly to Traits, Relationships, etc. in other cases as fitting. Town creation would be "mission creation," giving the agents a new "Night at the Opera" to solve as a cell in each gaming session. Demons are the influence of the Mythos on everyday life (within the missions), whether actual Mythos beasties or possessed/insane cultists.

The Relationships ratings would really get at what I've been talking about with some of my friends with regard to wanting to run Delta Green with an eye towards the agents' interior lives, insofar as "what do the DG agents do in their day jobs? How about their families and friends? How much of that will they sacrifice to protect all of us sheep from the Mythos?"

Questions? Thoughts? Suggestions? (especially on how to implement Sanity)

Here's my take on Sanity.

You know how Ceremonial Fallout works? Make a similar list, but for Madness-inducing experiences.

Encountering another's madness, d4s.
Encountering another's violent madness, d6s.
Encountering Forbidden Knowledge, d6s.
Participating in another's madness, d6s.
Participating in an effective ritual, d8s.
Internalizing Forbidden Knowledge, d8s.
Participating in another's violent madness, d10s.
Performing an effective ritual, d10s.
Being possessed, d10s.
Like that.

Player: Dang, I don't want to do this, but I open the book.
GM: Bwa ha ha. [Reaches for dice.] What's at stake?
Player: Do I learn the secret name of the Oppressor?
GM: Cool.
[They roll dice.]
Player: [Raise] Mr. Sadiq, God rest him, told me what page it's on. I flip straight to that page.
GM: [See: Block or Dodge] The pages are all ragged-cut, you can't just riffle through. [Raise] On the page you first open to there's a diagram...
Player: [See: Taking the Blow] Aaii! I jerk my eyes away, but even the one glimpse unnerves me! [Raise] From now on, I stare fixedly at the page numbers.
GM: [See: Taking the Blow] Okay. [Raise] As you flip through, the little decorations beside the page number? They're moving, like a flip book, like a little coiling worm...

Then the player just chooses Fallout Traits that are sanity-related. "Whenever I read Aramaic, I stutter. 1d4." "I suspect that my little sister's eyes have been replaced by perfectly-matched cameras. 1d4."

Another possible approach - compatible with the above, mix and match - goes like this:

GM: Okay, you find and copy down the Opressor's secret name, no problem. I'm calling for a conflict, though. What's at stake is: does reading the book make you go home tonight and eat all of the meat in your fridge, raw, and then lick all the mirrors and windows in your apartment, leaving bloody raw meat tongue smears?

-Vincent

lumpley wrote: Here's my take on Sanity.

*snip*

I don't see why this would work, but the judgement element is what's missing here. What side are the PCs on? This is a tactical, "don't let them get us" thing, whereas Dogs is about healing the fundamental problems of the town. Add in this element and I think this will work great. Certainly entertainingly.

nikola wrote: I don't see why this would work, but the judgement element is what's missing here. What side are the PCs on? This is a tactical, "don't let them get us" thing, whereas Dogs is about healing the fundamental problems of the town. Add in this element and I think this will work great. Certainly entertainingly.

MajorKiz wrote:

nikola wrote: I don't see why this would work, but the judgement element is what's missing here. What side are the PCs on? This is a tactical, "don't let them get us" thing, whereas Dogs is about healing the fundamental problems of the town. Add in this element and I think this will work great. Certainly entertainingly.

Well, Delta Green assumes that your PCs are working to protect humanity from evil, alien forces. Judgement in Delta Green would generally lie in deciding whether or not the humans involved in the problem (the bad guys almost always have human accomplices, unwitting or not) can and/or should be saved.

Just to be clear, I was trying to say "I don't see why this wouldn't work."

That is, mechanically, it makes sense to me.

But what's missing is the personal morality element. There's no chain of sin inherent in summoning Cthulhu, except maybe a Frankenstinian desire to look where Man was meant to not, and even that's kinda ambiguous.

But if you figure out the relationship stuff, and how, perhaps, it sequentially violates increasingly important standards of humanity, I think you've got something there.

nikola wrote: But what's missing is the personal morality element. There's no chain of sin inherent in summoning Cthulhu, except maybe a Frankenstinian desire to look where Man was meant to not, and even that's kinda ambiguous.

Even in straight Dogs, God forbids them because they're sins, not vice versa. They'd be sins even without Him. Notice, for instance, that the Dogs just do not care what you do until you create Injustice.

So I don't think that the godlessness or uncaringness of the universe will cause any problems there.

Building a progression of community breakdown might be hard anyway, though. Aren't most cultists loners? Maybe here's what I'd try. I'm not a big Mythos guy - I haven't even read Delta Green - so I won't take it hard if I'm like totally off base.

A guy has a habit he enjoys.

Indulging his habit, over time he becomes jaded and curious.

Because he's curious, he becomes progressively prone to extremity. Extremity is measured in how much human harm it causes to others than himself.

Because he's jaded, his habit becomes increasingly baroque and ritualistic.

There's some threshold of ritualistic extremity over which he crosses. Some combination of ritual and human harm attracts the attention of some nightmarish thing.

The advantage of crossing is that it gives you access to nightmarish resources. Beetles that live in your ears and tell you which people want to kill you. Cultists with their eyes sewn shut. Books of that sort.

The purpose of the nightmarish resources is to make his indulgences even more ritualistic and extreme.

Once it gets so that to indulge his ritualized, extreme habit he has to kill, he gets real power.

Real power is: there are normal human people who will do what he tells them to. Including fight and die for him. Not because they love him or he's broken their will, but because he'll do unbearable things to them if they don't.

Real power is also: his depraved rituals are opening doors to those who'd destroy humanity.

Enter the Dogs! Dogs, you have to deal with people who will fight and die to protect this monster, who are his victims.

So here's a guy:

He likes to tip well.

Over time, tipping becomes boring and he starts to wonder what a waitress will do for a good tip.

He starts to construct increasingly bizarre scenarios to find out. At first it's play-acting. Then threats and force. Eventually he's kidnapping waitresses and forcing them through bizarre situations that're all about money and sex and power before he lets them go.

Imagine a scenario where, trapped in this labyrinthine ritual and under intense pressure, a waitress I dunno cuts off her own ear for ten dollars.

Now the guy has crossed. He finds that if he touches a waitress's hand, she'll tell him her phone number. If he steals her nametag, her life - especially her finances - will collapse around her - she'll be bankrupt, divorced, desperate within the week. Ten-legged spiders live under the seat of his car and tell him where to eat lunch each day. Waitresses who fight back die in terrible impossible accidents, suffer disfiguring disasters, lose their children and loved ones.

Waitresses, their friends, their families, diner owners, cooks - they're scared of him. They can't act against him, he could destroy people they care about.

Eventually, under the right baroque and ceremonial circumstances, who will a waitress kill? For how little money? Herself? Her family?

And now a) he's performing - with these poor waitresses' help - rituals that threaten the future of humanity, plus b) he's got dozens of people who hate him but who'll cover for him and protect him and they're so scared of him that they'll fight you.

That's kind of fun!

-Vincent

Yeah, V., I think you've cracked it there. That sounds like a good story in a Clive Barker vein.

lumpley wrote:
*snip again*

That's kind of fun!

-Vincent

I'm having so much fun with my waitress-eater that I'm'a keep going.

He poses no moral question. You're going to shoot him, right? The world woulda been a better place, unequivocally, if someone'd shot him already, right? He's like the Death Star: not the point.

The point of him is, how do you treat his victims?

So we use Relationship dice:

Every NPC in his power is in his power because of a "weakness." A "weakness" is a normal, good human emotion that he's preying on: I love my daughter, I'm loyal to my friends, I'm afraid to die. For each NPC, quantify how much power the guy has, via her or his weakness, in d10s. I'd start with 3d10 and go up. 1d10 and 2d10 for people outside of but touching his circle of victims. Adjust according to playtesting.

Whenever the PCs are in conflict with one of these NPCs about him, roll those d10s. I'd make it clear and explicit, by choosing distinctive black d10s and using them only for his power over them. When the players see those black d10s, they know what they're dealing with, though the PCs might not. Anyhow whenever you're trying to get at him through an NPC in his power, the NPC gets all her usual dice, plus those 3 or more d10s.

Consequently, to win the conflict, you'll probably have to escalate.

And that's the question: where do you escalate to? You're questioning a waitress to find out where he is. She's protecting him because she loves her daughter, and what, you're going to threaten her? Hit her? She won't tell you willingly where he is - and she has that ugly 5d10 Relationship with him to back it up. What do you do?

Not to mention that her fear for her daughter's life and safety is justified. The spiders under his seat can probably tell who betrayed him, or he'll read it on her face, or he'll open his book and discover that her name's been obscured by dried blood. You know that line in every movie ever made where we're not playing games here?

So! That seems like it might work. Add in the sanity stuff from earlier in the thread and I want to try this variation pretty bad. It sounds like getting hit in the head with a brick fun.

-Vincent

lumpley wrote:

So! That seems like it might work. Add in the sanity stuff from earlier in the thread and I want to try this variation pretty bad. It sounds like getting hit in the head with a brick fun.

-Vincent

I know this is a bit of thread necromancy, but I'm finally running a Delta Green/Dogs one-shot tonight and I need to ask something:

Would it be outrageous to use Heart + Will as the dice pool for Sanity conflicts?

Mike

OUTRAGEOUS! CRAZY! INSAAAANE!!

-Vincent

Nah. Sounds fine.

Dangit! Now I have to add Delta Green to the number of settings I already want to run using Dogs...

So now my list reads:
Delta Green
Judge Dredd
The Spanish Inquisition (doubt we'll be able to keep a serious tone)
Cons in the Yard (a prison-based, gang enforcer type of setting)
And of course the original

One Delta Green question though (have not read the Delta Green book), how do you get the protagonists involved in the story? There's no riding into town with mail and news thingie going on.

Vincent, perhaps a sourcebook full of setting ideas, and how to create them yourself, using the DitV system would be a cool idea?

Oh Mike, please tell us how the game turns out.

TTFN,

Yokiboy

Yokiboy wrote: Dangit! Now I have to add Delta Green to the number of settings I already want to run using Dogs...

One Delta Green question though (have not read the Delta Green book), how do you get the protagonists involved in the story? There's no riding into town with mail and news thingie going on.

Oh Mike, please tell us how the game turns out.

mgrasso wrote: They get called in for an op, or "A Night at the Opera," by their superiors. In modern Delta Green, by encrypted email or scrambled secure phone message. In this Vietnam-era DG op, they'll be assembled by brass at the Pentagon/Langley with Delta Green clearance.

mgrasso wrote: Will do. It had been so long since I'd looked at the Dogs rules I was afraid I'd be up the creek for tonight (I'm running this on, oh, about 48 hours notice). But I forgot how basically elegant the rules are. So here's hoping it goes well!

mgrasso wrote: Will do. It had been so long since I'd looked at the Dogs rules I was afraid I'd be up the creek for tonight (I'm running this on, oh, about 48 hours notice). But I forgot how basically elegant the rules are. So here's hoping it goes well!

yokiboy wrote: Oh it will be alright, if you're psyched for it, and the rules are so terrific that they should help bring your game to life.

How are you handling Initiation? Will you treat it as their Mythos trigger event, or perhaps an event occuring during some sort training at "headquarters"?

TTFN,

Yokiboy

More thread necromancy. Just call me Herbert West. :)

Okay, so the decision has been made for me to run a Delta Green game using Dogs in the Vineyard set from the 1960s to the 1980s (probably) during DG's "Cowboy" years, which fits the Dogs setting and rules pretty well, I think. We'll begin in Vietnam and probably have at least a couple of sessions set there, and then move back to the states to the post-war ramifications of said Mythos contact.

I'll set up a new thread in Actual Play after our first session. I know I've been a bit of a tease on this game, but apparently it's on for real now. :)

Mike

So... did this game ever get played? I looked for AP but no dice...

I am not sure if Delta Green in the Vineyard was ever played, but I just used it Dogs for a Call of Cthulhu adventure wherein the Dogs use the Elder Sign as a badge of authority, and in ancient history the use of that Elder Sign as a practical symbol of authority evolved into the common use of the "star as badge" we see in modern times.

The fit works well as long as my game is a Dogs game in a CoC universe as backdrop, and not a CoC game crammed into Dogs mechanics.  For me anyway.

So, like, is there an AP post about said game?

No there is not, not yet anyway.  I am still a novice at DitV, but the game was fun and flowed well, especially compared to some of the other games I have run.  We are still getting a handle on the system so it flows naturally!