19th Level

Taking a look at the 2018 ENnie Winners , it seems the Mythos kinda kicked ass. By my count, products in the Cthulhu family won a dozen awards: Best Adventure (Silver) - Delta Green: A Night at the Opera (Arc Dream Publishing) Best Art (Gold) - Harlem Unbound (Darker Hue Studios) Best Electronic Book (Gold) -Delta Green: A Night at the Opera (Arc Dream Publishing) Best Game (Silver) - Delta Green: The RPG (Arc Dream Publishing) Best Monster/Adversary (Silver) - Down Darker Trails (Chaosium Inc.) Best Podcast (Gold) - Miskatonic University Podcast Best Production Values (Gold) - Delta Green: The RPG (Arc Dream Publishing) Best Rules (Gold) - Delta Green: The RPG (Arc Dream Publishing) Best Setting (Gold) - Harlem Unbound (Darker Hue Studios) Best Supplement (Gold) - Reign of Terror (Chaosium Inc.) Best Writing (Gold) - Harlem Unbound (Darker Hue Studios) Product of the Year (Silver) - Delta Green: The RPG (Arc Dream Publishing) In addition, Chaosium collected a ...

Sure Samsung claims the batteries are overheating and causing their phones to melt... But isn't it just as likely that some cultist burned a copy of the Necronomicon into all Galaxy Note 7 phones? I've been getting my brain back into a Cthulhu state of mind (I guess one can do that by failing a SAN check). One of our possible games is a 21st century Delta Green game, dealing with a top secret organization dedicated to fighting the Cthulhu Mythos. One interesting exercise when dealing with a modern take on the Mythos is finding a conspiracy explanation for news stories. As I received a Galaxy Note 7 upgrade as a birthday gift, the fact that the batteries can potentially go boom got my attention... Putting on my Delta Green conspiracy hat (lined with foil) I thought of an alternate take. What if some cultist infiltrated the phone assembly factories and burned a copy of some secret tome into it - or, borrowing a page from Charles Stross' Atrocity Archives , a computer p...

“The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.” - HP Lovecraft Ghostbusters continues to be a fun campaign for us - it works especially well given we've had a number of sessions where just 2 players plus me have been able to make it of late, with real world issues often causing us to be missing 3 players (our group is currently 5 plus me). Icons was a reasonably fun game, working better than most superhero games I've done but I don't think I've found my "one true superhero game" as yet. Earlier I reflected on BRP being a system that works rather well for me so I might at some point repurpose the campaign material I developed for Superworld from Chaosium (which apparently was the game that George RR Martin was playing that led to the creation of the Wild Cards series). I've been thinking about a setting that I can call my o...

The first thing that struck me about the Delta Green Agent's Handbook  is just how dark a game this is. Reading through it I see a game that like it's parent, Call of Cthulhu , puts our protagonists on the front lines against ancient horrors with life and sanity on the line. But Delta Green has more ways to make the agents fall to pieces. There's rules for abusing stimulants on a mission, game-related reasons for seeking solace in the bottle. rules for sacrificing - or just losing - pieces of your personal life. If you are lucky you'll end up in Cthulhu's tummy. If you're unlucky you'll wind up losing your mind, your marriage, your job, and/or your freedom. What I really like is there's rules - simple rules - for all of this. A bit of a rewind is in order. Delta Green is a take on the Call of Cthulhu Mythos. First published in the 1990's as a Call of Cthulhu supplement, it dealt with dueling government agencies and conspiracies trying to des...

In my last post I spoke a bit about Delta Green. After posting I realized that my familiarity with Delta Green is solely through RPG supplements and I was very unfamiliar with the Delta Green. To be honest, I have a tendency to avoid most "gaming fiction" - I read and enjoyed Dragonlance and Drizzt once upon a time but generally speaking I tend not to enjoy it. However, I was curious as to the Delta Green fiction so I asked around on the Call of Cthulhu RPG Google+ Community .The people there spoke very highly of the Delta Green fiction, even those who, like me, generally don't read RPG fiction. With that in mind I've obtained some ebooks of what seemed to be available and did some searching online to compile a list of what seems to be available in chronological order. After I finish the first anthology I'll post a review. However in the meantime I thought it might be worthwhile to share what I've been able to find. Delta Green: Alien Intelligence . An an...

HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos have had an influence on various forms of entertainment. Many episodes of Doctor Who and Star Trek have had a Lovecraftian feel to them. The early Tom Baker episodes of Doctor Who with stories like Pyramids of Mars , Horror of Fang Rock, and Talons of Weng-Chiang have many elements to be found in the Cthulhu Mythos, like ancient aliens, god-like beings visiting the Earth, etc. Star Trek had references to the Old Ones placed by Robert Bloch in What Are Little Girls Made Of and many episodes dealt with the remnants of previous interstellar empires - the Iconians, known as "Demons of Air and Darkness" come especially to mind. And looking at the Mind Flayers of Dungeons and Dragons one cannot help but find influences from Lovecraft. What I've found rather interesting is those settings which go beyond mere influence from the Cthulhu Mythos but embrace their cosmos in its entirety yet put their own unique perspective on them. One of the...