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Delta Green Digital Assets: Public Interest Pack 1
by Chris W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/31/2022 16:28:52

These packs Arc Dream has been putting are amazing.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green Digital Assets: Public Interest Pack 1
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Delta Green Digital Assets: Law Enforcement Pack 1
by Chris W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/31/2022 16:27:21

Amazing, high quality assets for your document creation needs.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green Digital Assets: Law Enforcement Pack 1
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Monsters and Other Childish Things: The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor
by Matthew R. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/30/2022 09:50:23

Most RPG books are useless. This is one of those.

In Neil Gaimen's "Sandman", there is a scene where Dream curses a character to have endless ideas. One of the points that Gaimen intends to make, and it's a good one, is that an idea is in itself not even worth a penny. It's easy to have ideas. If you have any creativity at all, you could easily spout out a million ideas. But ideas are in and of themselves worthless. What makes an idea valuable is the blood and sweat that goes into turning that concept into a useful product. Having an idea for a story is a starting place, but it's not even the first step down the journey of having a story. All the value is in that work to turn an idea into a story.

Which is why as a guy who GMs a lot, it frustrates me to no end when RPG publishers publish works that are all ideas and almost no substance as if all I really needed was inspiration. I have almost limitless inspiration; what I don't have is limitless time. When I buy a book it isn't for inspiration. It's because I want to pay for the hours of time it would have otherwise taken me to make something. But invariably when I do buy a book these days I find that the author did only the easy work of putting down a bunch of loosely connected ideas on paper, but has left all the hard work of making those ideas usable up to the purchaser. I read through the concepts and most of them are pretty good if obvious, but the impression I get is, "This will take a further 20 to 100 hours of work just to get these concepts fleshed out enough to start play."

"Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor" is billed as a campaign setting for the RPG "Monsters and Other Childish Things". As I'll explain in my review of the RPG itself, the RPG "Monsters and Other Childish Things" has a system that I really admire. As a GM and often amateur game designer, game designs are something that I collect and study, but a game system without an example of play is pretty useless because an RPG is much more than just its rules. Rules influence the play of an RPG, but how you go about structuring the play of an RPG and thinking about how to play it - what's called in RPG theory the metagame - ends up influencing the game more. D&D famously includes very concrete examples of play in the form of "modules" or adventures that lay out the expectation of how the game is expected to progress. What's interesting is that regardless of the game system, if you write a D&D style adventure for it, it plays very much like D&D. The mere act of preparing to play like the game will be kicking doors down, killing monsters, and taking their stuff creates a game that will be familiar to a D&D player, while subverting those tropes lets you play a different game while not even changing the rules. And often you can create completely new games by plugging in new subsystems into an existing ruleset.

Because I loved the rules of "Monsters & Other Childish Things", I very much wanted to also own an example of play that would tell me how it could be played. But in this I have been frustrated, because instead of being an example of play for the game described in the rules of "Monsters & Other Childish Things", this is actually an example of play for a completely different game with a completely different metagame that just happens to share some but not all of the same rules. And honestly, it's a lot more obvious how you would go about playing the game that is described in this book than the game described in the rule book, but that still doesn't solve the problems I have with the rule book for "Monsters & Other Childish Things".

The game described is heavily inspired by works like 'The Gashlycrumb Tinies' or 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' or perhaps 'Umbrella Academy'. The hook might be, "Imagine you were Wednesday or Pugsley Adams but you had been unfortunately orphaned and didn't know who you were or where you came from, and you were in an orphanage that held other similarly lost souls somewhere in HP Lovecraft's Arkham Country." This is perfectly fine as a concept for a game. It's a good idea. But that's all this book is: the idea for such a game, and about 160 pages of similar 'obvious' ideas about such a setting which ought to immediately occur to anyone well read, without any of the hard work to actually put in any substance that would be needed if you were going to have stories here. You'd need to write another 160 pages of notes just to yourself have any idea what was really going on, and you might could start the game with only a loose notion of where it was going, but I could point you to any number of million dollar writing disasters that happened because the authors started the story without really working out where it was going - Lost, the 4400, the Star Wars sequels, Game of Thrones, Wheel of Time, the Sherlock TV series, etc. etc. Maybe you'll start well, but you'll never finish well with that sort of beginning.

The excuse RPG authors always have is that they want to leave it up to the GM to decide what they want the mysteries to be so that they can tell their own stories. But if I have to do that, I might as well really tell my own story using entirely my own material. I buy other people's material to save me the hard work of making up my own stories, not to give me "inspiration". The real truth is that by avoiding the effort of executing the story and filling out the conception, it can always exist in the vague space of it could be a good story without needing to find out if by hard work they could actually make it so.

It's not an entirely useless book. I've seen "sandboxes" that are much more devoid of starting content. It's not entirely a rowboat world where the PC's have to work hard to find anything to do. And in fact, the most detailed aspects of the book are really quite good. For example, a lot of the monsters in the setting are very creative and both well-conceived and well executed. I would say the 15 monsters are by far the best thing in the book, and almost make the book worth the price of buying it just for that. But in terms of the value I get from the book, it fulfills neither of the goals I had in purchasing it. It doesn't tell me how you'd actually play "Monsters & Other Childish Things" as presented in the rulebook in a way that would be both social and gameable, nor does it present me with a ready made set of adventures that I could whip out without preparation if I happened to have four or six misfit teens in the house with a desire to try RPing.

I don't entirely regret the purchase the way I often regret an RPG purchase, but neither am I happy with it.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Monsters and Other Childish Things: The Dreadful Secrets of Candlewick Manor
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Delta Green: The Labyrinth
by PHANG J. K. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/26/2022 20:22:22

My favourite resource book I never expected to enjoy.

Putting out various groups and showing examples through a narrative lens really helps puts things in perspective and show off how cool and horrifying it'd be running for our respective players as well.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: The Labyrinth
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Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game
by Kryminalny W. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 09/05/2022 15:21:10

What is there to say that wasn't said already? Cthulhu became a meme and cosmic horror lost a lot if it's energy when Great Old Ones were made into stuffed toys. Don't get me wrong, I still love my Call of Cthulhu. But Delta Green managed to revitalized cosmic terror and give it home in our modern times. It's a Ligotti to your Lovecraft game. Thank you Arc Dream!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game
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Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
by Yuwei S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/22/2022 11:46:00

I tend to not keeping players in a snowstorm villa or some sort so that they will always have access to normal world or a sanctuary that they can retreat to. This way, it won't be an adventure into a dungeon but be an investigation that can happen on a normal Wednesday daytime and they can head off home when it gets late.

Although this method keeps the investigation feeling flow, it also decrease the tense of horror when it happens because they can just "I'm going home".

Not for this book.

This book is true to the theme of "Horror in the truth" and unlike others, this truth is not bound to space, time or entities. It's not even inescapable because the idea of escape entails before and after the encounter. But there is no such thing here. (Curtain calls) It is and will always be me writing the comments here. Until I write it again.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
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Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
by Charles M. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/22/2022 10:57:25

This is a gargantuan beast, a wonder of design and flavor.

A pleasure to read and a pleasure to run.

But this is madness. Not as gritty reality of the rest but in perfect adequation with the King in Yellow.

I highly recommend it.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Delta Green: Iconoclasts
by Tim Z. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 08/03/2022 07:20:34

"Iconoclasts" is a Delta Green campaign set in Mosul, Iraq in 2016 during 3 months of brutal occupation by ISIL. I've run it and it took 6 sessions for my group to complete. I consider this Arc Dream's mini-version of "Masks of Nyarlathotep" with opportunity for lots of deadly combat and a race against the clock versus one of cosmic horror's great villians (and one of history's most evil fanatic cults-ISIL). It's one hell of a premise and the writers have created a frightening and unnerving sandbox. The 4 scenarios are well-written and researched with lots of random encounters and interesting NPCs. The artwork is top-notch creepy and even includes a couple of maps (a rarity for a DG scenario)!

There are also several new rules and tables that help determine the results of your agents' investigations and attempts at spycraft (these invaluable tables should be useful for future DG scenarios as well). It also includes a nice selection of several pre-gen characters, although you can easily use your own PCs if they adopt the skills and languages suggested by the writers. This would be a great intro to Delta Green and the beginning of a DG campaign (as long as it starts in 2016).

Unfortunately, there's some issues that keep it from being truly great and the Handler will need to do some work to fill in the blank spaces. The artifact (ancient amphora) central to the story needs more details how it interacts with the world (can it ever be destroyed?). There should be more unnatural enemies in Iraq to encounter so that your group stays on edge and doesn't get bored (I placed ghouls stalking the streets of Mosul at night). There also needs to be more maps/floorplans (random bombed-out buildings, Kirkuk airbase, agents trailer HQ, etc) and damage/stats tables for airstrikes and drone-strikes (assets your agents will inevitably call upon).

With some more time in the oven (or reworking by a diligent Handler), this could be an even more frightening, thought-provoking and atmospheric campaign (think "Apocalypse Now" meets "The Mummy" meets "Green Zone") that has players deal with the increasing barbarity and insanity of war as they journey deeper into Mosul and closer to the unnatural.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Iconoclasts
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Delta Green: Reverberations
by Tim Z. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 07/19/2022 08:05:48

The accusations of racism directed at this scenario and the antagonists known as the “Tcho-Tcho” are ridiculous and silly. In modern horror EVERYONE is on the menu. EVERY uncomfortable subject is always in the story background. The creators of Delta Green should be congratulated for going out of their way to adjust Lovecraftian horror and place them in modern context. The Tcho-Tcho are only Asian-American in appearance…not culture or language. Far away from a white-nationalist fantasy, the writers made them smarter and more resilient than humans of any color. It would only benefit to have Chinese or Vietnamese-Americans in your group to run this scenario. “Reverberations” is a good starting-point for a campaign against the Tcho-Tcho or if you have DEA agents as your DG characters. Otherwise there are better DG introductory scenarios out there. It’s a short criminal procedural investigation that takes a sharp turn into cosmic horror. It can be set in any city or town in the US. There are several interesting NPCs to interact with to keep the investigation moving. It's a good scenario but could have been great. There are no maps for the buildings, no pics of the main NPCs and the final baddie is an ill-fitting choice. So you will still need to do some work as a Handler to really make this scenario frightening and memorable. In the end YOU are running the RPG at your table and if you don’t like elements of the game…change them! If you’re going to look for political or social triggers (without reviewing the actual material) than adult TTPRG’s aren’t for you.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Reverberations
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Delta Green: Iconoclasts
by Schaeffer B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/24/2022 00:16:20

I worked USAF intelligence in Erbil back in 2015. Reading this source book made me make a sanity check IRL.

You've done it again Delta Green. 10/10.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Iconoclasts
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Delta Green: Agent's Handbook
by Andreas S. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/15/2022 12:30:30

One of the greatest systems of all time. Amaaaazing scenarios.

Although, it is kinda heavy if you are not a native english-speaker (or really good at english). There is a lot of verbigeration going on ontop of a lot of very official-sounding fancy words. The text (in both the rule books and scenarios) could have been trimmed down a lot in my personal opinion. I often see the writer use two or even three adjectives to describe something. And often the adjectives are just synonyms of each other. They over-explain/over-clarify sometimes and that just makes it confusing.

So the real horror from this game is trying to translate the 35 page scenarios into your own language. ~Sincerely, a Swede.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Agent's Handbook
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Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
by Jose A. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 06/02/2022 13:36:28

Just finished running this with my group and I must say it was AMAZING. Not only is the book crammed full of an amazing campaign that will befuddle and terrify players, but it is also laid out well that running this complex adventure isn't more ardous than any other linear story. Even if you're not sure if you're going to run this, I urge you to get this book, it's an excellent read through and can provide ideas for many other adventures.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
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Delta Green: Iconoclasts
by Gilles D. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/21/2022 05:06:14

This is a mini campaign in 5 linked scenarios. The length of the campaign should vary according to your group but 8 sessions should be the minimum.

The campaign takes place in the middle east in a region controlled by ISIL and you will need to deal a lot with these guys while at the same time containing force of even greater evil.

I must say that the campaign as two strong points going for it: a) It is very well researched and very thematic. There is always something going on in the background while your agents work on their mission. It makes the environment very dynamic and the campaign fully alive. b) It is very much sand-boxy and actually super easy to run once you understand the how it works. So your players should have a lot of lattitude to explore and interact with the setting

I do not think the campaign is too long and it is actually something that people can value because there are good chances that you will finish it.

The setting is extremely interesting and will give you a glimpse of Mosul under ISIL. Oddly enough, I did not find the paranormal story as interesting as actually infiltrating such a dangerous extremist organization (if your players choose so), but that's me.

I was planning to run Music from a darkened room (which is a very strong scenario) but after reading Iconoclasts, I immediatly opted to run it instead. The setting, culture, tensions and environment are extremely well described in the book and make it even more challenging for the agents to accomplish their mission.

I think that with Iconoclasts, Arc Dream has upped their game even more with an even richer form of narrative. A success in my opinion and I can't wait for them to surprise us or have more of this in their next modules.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Iconoclasts
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The Sea Demon's Gold (5e)
by Gabriel R. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/17/2022 19:28:57

This was the first module I ran for my 5e group. Great mix of sword and sorcery and Lovecraftian horror.

My only reservation is that the bit where the PCs get thrown overboard and caught in a current is way underwritten. (I ended up simplifying it but as written it basically says "make up a bunch of cool stuff here.")

Nonetheless a great module and would gladly run again with a new group.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
The Sea Demon's Gold (5e)
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Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
by A customer [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 05/07/2022 07:10:14

Possibly the best CoC/Delta Green campaign ever written. Worth every penny if you're into the Hastur/KiY mythos.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes
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