Further Short Reviews of Delta Green Actual Plays

Following up from the previous installment.

 

Redacted Reports (Amended)

Apparently the end of Season 6 was one of the scripted bits, which is very disappointing: I think it was a really lame way to end a certain character's arc, and knowing it was entirely avoidable is a major let down.

I was correct in predicting a move to King in Yellow content, but Season 7 is not Impossible Landscapes, and after listening to the two prelude episodes and the first two episodes of the season I don't think this podcast can handle the way Delta Green uses Carcosa. There's been a background trend, from Season 5 onward, of getting increasingly precious about the quirky NPCs and increasingly slow to actually get to the action, directly correlated with moving further away from the prewritten Delta Green adventures, and I don't feel like that's going to mesh well with the raw helpless nihilism that Carcosa necessitates. The characters are entirely too casual and jokey-jokey about it, and that sucks all the tension out of the affair.

Also, I swear I have listened to everything, but one of the agents keeps mentioning speaking to some doctor or another about the King and I am positive that has never happened on mic.
 

Sorry Honey, I Have to Take This (Amended)

AI art for thumbnails, fine, it's gross and surreal and feels like it fits for Delta Green. AI NPC voices I draw the line at, get those devil computers outta here.

Get in the Trunk

I dropped out very early in episode 0, when the hosts were beside themselves with laughter at the fact that a character got their degree from Johns Hopkins University. Not anything about Johns Hopkins in particular, just the existence of the college itself and the fact that an FBI agent studied there. That such a mundane fact was treated as hilarious was a very strong omen that I would not vibe with this podcast.

Recommended for: Those who find the existence of Johns Hopkins University the funniest thing on earth.

Black Project Gaming

• Very by the book
• Perhaps too by the book, because they run Reverberations by the book 
• Please do not run Reverberations by the book 
• Minimal editing, very table honest; not always a good thing 
• Episodes are long, pacing is slow, audio quality is low; semi-regular dead air. 
• Players have set up intra-party conflict beforehand, which I don't find that interesting personally, but is not a downside on the whole. 
• I did come back to this after a while away and might keep going.
  
• Recommended for: "Bastard's Hours are here and I have run out of everything else."
  

Stories and Lies

• Good, but not for me
• Episodes very long, pacing very slow. 
• Otherwise well put together. Good editing, good players, good Handler. 
• Not much else to say. 
• It's just too slow for me. 
• At least they didn't run Reverberations. 
• Recommended for: People who are fine with slow burns.
  

Mayday Plays "Doomed to Repeat"

• The one that leans into that special DG type of fucked; the players kill civilian witnesses by the end of the second episode.
• Pacing is extremely good, no dawdling. We are on the move and operating. 
• Does a good job at venting the tension with either something horrible or a bit of black humor. 
• Handler and players are very keyed in, work well together. 
• Frame narrative of "Program is attempting to do a major clean-up / compilation project" which I like, because the Program's canon dedication to having no actionable intelligence ever annoys me. 
• I hope Agent Merrit has a good chiropractor because he's going to throw out his back with how hard he is carrying this team (this isn't a knock against the other players or their characters, just that Merrit has thus far been 110% correct about everything) 
• Another one with intra-cell conflict, which I am more okay with because the players are very good at the role-playing. 
• Goes hard with the consequences to fuckups returning to bite the players in the blubber, which I appreciate. 
• They ran Reverberations. God damn it. Killed all my enthusiasm stone dead. At least they were clearly modifying it, though I didn't get around to seeing where it was going.
  
• Recommended for: People who aren't sick of Reverberations because they aren't maniacs like me who binge these shows simultaneously.

 

TLDR

I think Reverberations is a bad adventure, and not just for the racism. In the three times it has come up it is a plodding, wheel-spinning drag where the ideal solution is for the players to do nothing at all.