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DG:Rogue Handler

I have no idea if that is a viable title or not, it is just the filename of my working notes for the set of Delta Green solo rules.

I reached out to Arc Dream last week, asking about there being any chance of being allowed to call these rules Delta Green Compatible, or any kind of wording along those lines, but I have heard nothing back.

At the moment my notes are rather scant. I can see how and why Delta Green has its place. CoC hampers the investigators with late 20th/21st century brains but early 20th century tech and communications. Apocthulhu is more contemporary, but post apocalypse, the bad stuff has already happened.

Delta Green sits just this side of the Apocalypse. It hasn’t happened yet, but at least your character can have a decent Android phone and Google stuff when you need an answer!

When I was working on Sole Survivor, the Apocthulhu supplement I included safety tools. The reason I included them in a solo book was two fold. Firstly, I am always slightly uncomfortable with mental health in roleplaying games.

I have no evidence for this at all, it is pure supposition but… I suspect that roleplaying games, that almost by definition, allow you escape your day to day life and play at being someone else are likely to appeal to people who have things in their life that they would like to escape. Whether that is knowingly or not.

That could mental health issues, identity issues or traumatic events, or other stuff I cannot even think of.

If a player has come from something rather bland and generic, like D&D, and then picks up a solo supplement like Sole Survivor, I don’t want to cause any upset when their solo character ends up at the mercy of a nasty cultist. Bad people can do bad things.

Somehow, this feels more of an issue in modern day settings. Maybe, I just put too much stock in fantasy chivalry, or when the ‘bad people’ role is fulfilled by a 80′ Robo-tyranosaur.

I want to use my idea of safety tools to drive more positive improvisation. If you cannot see a way out of this bad situation, then you need to introduce something new, like a new NPC that changes the situation, for example. X cards do not have a function in solo play, there is no one else to notice that you are not comfortable with a topic. Lines and veils have their place but can fail. Just drawing a veil over a scene does not mean it didn’t happen. What I need is a wedge. Something that you insert into the game that stands between what could happen and what did happen. That wedge could be the new NPC, it could be an external influence, such as knock at the door, or SMS message on a phone, it just needs to be something that diverts to flow of actions.

All of that sounds rather heavy and depressing but Delta Green don’t have any rose tinted glasses or nostalgia attached to it. This is not tales from the loop or kids on bikes.

Tonight’s goal is to try and make some kind of sense of the notes I made over the weekend, but there will definitely will be a DG solo supplement at the end of it.

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