To offset the post production I was very glad that the Delta Green and Call of Cthulhu groups had more adventures to play to help me relax into Autum and winter.

First up was another pair of missions from Delta Green from Handler Steph – I won’t mention the name of the mission to keep the details below vague. Picking the wrong magic button had seen the end of the first Delta Green Cell so another lot was recruited. For the Agent I created I picked the same Delta Green back story as Agent Bevan and said that she was the Park Ranger who survived the awful night alongside Bevan. Sally Nelson or Sal to her friend is a Park Ranger with the Environmental Protection Agency criminal division, she’s very average in all ways and 50 years old. She has a Country Singing sister who has kids and a friend with benefits at the local hardware store. Being a federal agent Sal got a choice of some very choice hardware and weaponry not that it did her much good! Our Delta Green cell picked up where the other left off investigating the legacy of a local celebrity and their connection to a local monument. Posing as a husband a wife team was a good way to get some information as well as pretending to be a tourist to visit the local occult group who seem to be packing a lot of guns! Sal calmly spoke to the cult leader who surprised her by knowing that she was working for Delta Green. The showdown after a few play session saw Sal badly injured, not even able to get a shot off due to magic! I thought she was dead but, no spoilers here, let’s just say a combination of Sal’s fellow Delta Green Agents and friends she had met along the way meant she pulled through.

Keeper Sweet provided us with another TV show style adventure although Like Ripples On a Blank Shore was more of a Netflix miniseries. We were a university based Occult YouTube investigation channel consisting of an old professor, a tech guy and the presenter my character Denver Starr. Denver (honestly not named after the last dinosaur) was very healthy, very attractive and a very intelligent Psychology Major graduate with a secondary in the study of Acting. It was thanks to his Psychoanalysis that very early on in the game he knew that stakes were high. The game had just begun and we were arriving in the town where our lead was to be found. We thought we’d seen a UFO in a field. Denver though met a young women hitchhiker who acted very oddly and through his skill, Denver concluded this person was a time traveller most likely come to watch some cataclysmic event that was about to befall the town. It’s not very often a game gives me chills and the way Keeper Sweet built in the UFOnauts mythology was fantastic. We were the ones that felt like aliens in the town we visited as our witnesses disappeared, people who were helping us didn’t take our calls and literal Men in Black were following us around town! Over four play sessions we got to meet the people, the cyrptids in the area and explore the extensive mine system in the hills around down. We made it out alive, without the town being destroyed or having our minds wiped by the Government. Great fun!

The next outing for Agent Sal Nelson my Delta Green Agent came a year after her last mission in game time. Not directly related to the threat encountered during the last mission but something that only their Delta Green cell could handle. Vicious murders, medical experiments and the secret behind a town were all elements to get our agents on edge. The adventure also included a game situation that I really must do a video about – a horde of angry towns folk! Mythos investigators will regularly go into a situation where there is a cohesion of law and order that keeps the towns folk or other such people in check by a morality they share and agree upon. Take that comfort away and investigators can get in the way of torch and pitch fork wielding citizens hell bent on a lynching! In our Delta Green game we faced that situation. An investigators first response to a horde should be to run and that was Agent Nelson’s reaction but whilst fixing the slashed car tyre, she punctured the spare by rolling a fumble – The team would have to escape on foot! Sal took the opportunity to put on all her tactical gear she had in the car boot and as a player I got a great feeling that even though the chips are down Agent Nelson was prepared. With hostiles on every corner we chalked up kills left right and centre and we were able to track the source of the violence. One of the agents was killed by a very unlucky (critical shot) which would have killed Sal even in all her gear. Delta Green has different death rules than 7^th Edition Call of Cthulhu so there was nothing so we pressed on determined to complete the mission avenging the death of our colleague. The dice rolls came together nicely for a cinematic ending with an explosion going off as Sal made the rifle shot needed. I hope Sal gets another mission as the Delta Green down time is very fun to do as your Investigator can end more broken then when the mission ended!

The final Call of Cthulhu game was another production for the Miskatonic Playhouse – Swamp Song! I was John Edgar Sloane, a Dilettante from New York City and in a live game we streamed on twitch my character had the simple job of going to New Orleans for a book signing event. The clock was against us as we only had a single session to complete the game which was a bit of a shame as I wanted to really get into the mystery. You see our Good Friend Jackson Elias (yes that chap!) had gone missing and we needed to find him. Having played the Masks of Nyarlathotep I enjoyed the inclusion of JE and the opportunity to help him. We had great fun visiting the locations and found our way to the end of the game in good shape. You’ll have to visit the Miskatonic Play House to see how I got on.

I hope you’ve had fun in your games this year and a good few scary moments too. I do think Role-Playing is a great form of interactive media and with new releases from Chaosium I hope 2024 will be a great year for all us Mythos investigators.