The Delta Green Sunsetter Campaign - Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays Play Report
In June 28 me and the Sunsetters began a new Delta Green campaign, and the module I chose to begin with was Puppet Shows and Shadow Plays, as it is supposedly designed to ease the players into the conspiracy. It starts off as a regular FBI missing person's case that takes a dive into the unnatural, not as a Delta Green operation.
Me and the Sunsetters played it in June 28 for 3 hours and then again for 2 more hours on July 5th. The first session was where the bulk of the investigations happened. Agents Pitt, Royce, and Welling (only these last two a part of Delta Green) went up to the San Carlos Indian Reservation out of Phoenix and found out about the murders, details on the case, discovered a strange cave with an artefact, and had a brief shootout with a shadowy figure.
That session worked pretty well. I had my notes together, the players were curious, Weird Writer devised a crazy scheme to take notes, and we ended the session on an interesting cliff-hanger.
The second session was mostly a manhunt after the culprit which culminated in having him surrounded in the bushland of rural Arizona and Agent Cornwell joining the party. A strange group of USAF g-men also showed up and started taking over the investigation.
The module was followed decently by the book except for this last part, as I had it that these g-men were also on the manhunt, subdued the culprit, dragged him to the helicopter and handled the clean-up. It ended up being a lot less climactic than expected. I think this would have been more interesting had it taken place at the tail end of a 4 hour session, rather than as a session of its own; that killed part of the momentum. I also took a bit too long to introduce the g-men, they should have been in the shootout of the end of the previous session.
Overall though, the response has been positive. The players seemed engaged and enjoyed their characters and the way that the Bonds characterise them, and the dip in quality of this last session didn't deter them from being interested in their Home Scenes - the Delta Green equivalent of Downtime. It is a shame that Cornwell only arrived for the weakest part, but I expect good things from the following sessions.
Regarding the module itself
I don't have many complaints. While reading it I thought it was a bit too linear, but it ended up being quite open-ended on the table. My major point of contention is that it has too many rolls for things that don't need to be rolled. If a doctor makes an autopsy, she shouldn't need to roll for Medicine, this is just her job.
It's extra strange that this is the case because Delta Green modules tend to be quite good about this, so I don't know if they wanted the players to roll and not get bored due to being the first session or something like that. I wouldn't recommend this as a Handler's first module because they might get the wrong idea of how many dice you're meant to be rolling, as it contradicts the rolling philosophy of the Agent's Handbook itself.
The other complaint I have is the way that Coyote is treated. I won't go into it due to spoilers, but I just think it's far too big and unnecessary a thing to run by the book. You could remove it and give small hints instead and nothing of value would be lost. Another issue is that Coyote is... not some obscure mythological creature. It's Coyote! That's like putting Br'er Rabbit on your Delta Green investigation. Also, it is a bit too worried around the topic of "marginalised persons use the Mythos to protect themselves", it would actually be more interesting if this had been played straight and cast Delta Green in a much more ambiguous light.
That aside, my last point of contention is that, for a starter module, it leaves the Handler with far too many options and moving parts on how to handle the opposing team. I think it would have benefitted from being more specific and having less of a "play this up as much as you'd like" attitude, because it's easier to remove these elements than it is to add.
Having said all that, I enjoyed it and the game. Any alterations I ended up committing to were minimal in the grand scheme of things.
Further reflections on investigation games
I don't know what it is about investigation games that light up my brain like this.
Thinking rationally, I know that an investigation is, theoretically, basically the same as a dungeon. It's informational warfare where one side tries to obtain as much information as possible slowly until either violence erupts, or an objective is reached. In that sense, it's not very different from any RPG scenario - you slowly obtain information and then use that information to make an informed decision on a permanent course of action.
Yet I'm much more captivated by the idea of "There are these missing persons, find out what happened to them" than I am by "Walk around these dark tunnels until you figure them out", and I'm thinking about why is that. Some of my guesses until now:
Investigations are people-oriented. Most dungeons and scenarios as such involve obtaining information about cold, dead rooms and dealing with mindless hostiles. Investigations aren't very good without intelligent and interesting actors, and I'm much more often interested in people than I am in settings.
The content of dungeons are less appealing. I'm a bit iffier on this one, as I've had plenty of fun in dungeons, but what I mean by it is that despite the scaffolding being similar, the kind is not. The information acquired in an investigative game is categorically different than the one obtained in a different sort of game.
Investigations don't assume a framework of ruthlessness. This isn't necessarily a mark against dungeoneering so much as against the mindset that players get into when dungeoneering. I've seen way more characters become unscrupulous assholes who don't really care about anything that can't be converted into money in dungeon gaming than I have in investigative gaming, because investigators need to care about it, even if they're simply efficient professionals. And acting antisocially in a dungeon game by assuming hostility and ill-intent is pretty much rewarded, whereas that sort of paranoia might lead you off a cliff in an investigation.
Violent challenges aren't the standard expected. Even in deadlier OSR style dungeon games I've played, players expect there to be some sort of boss battle, or to eventually solve at least some of the conflict with swords. Investigation games don't have that as assumed - you might never pull a gun in a Call of Cthulhu game and still find it satisfying, whereas in a game where the main elements of the character sheet you associate with progress are Health, Attack Bonus, and Magical Items, it becomes boring when you can't use your cool toys. Why have "Fighter" on your sheet if you're not fighting? And I'm not very good at running fights, even though I do enjoy them to some degree. I prefer negotiating other kinds of challenges, such as chases, which while possible in dungeon games, somehow feel more at home in investigation ones.
Downtime and community are built-in, a lot of the time. In all of the investigative games I've played, the players were expected to know their character background, a rough idea of what they wanted out of life, and when the mystery was done, they returned to their normal lives. This is all perfectly possible in a dungeon game - and is assumed by Downtime - but Adventurers almost never are a part of the society. The Adventurer doesn't go back to their village on the downtime to spend their cash; they're more likely to be travelling around, or to be far from home in unfamiliar lands, because there are genre conventions to be followed. I think this semblance of normalcy might be more appealing to me than playing as persons detached from any kind of regular life.
Modern day and science fiction might just appeal more to me personally. I can't say this with conviction because I have had plenty of fun in medieval and ancient style games, but I'm considering that I might simply enjoy the shared context of a world that operates roughly in a way that I understand, rather than an entirely fantastic world. Or perhaps I just find those harder to pull off. Or maybe it's simply the mindset that it puts me in, going back to the previous point.
These are all the germs of thoughts I've had ever since I ran that investigative session on Glorantha, so it's nothing very developed. One of the settings I have cooking is a dungeoneering game, which I have run preciously few in a way that really interests me, so I expect all of these feelings to change in the future. We'll see.