The SCP RPG: A Critique of 5k+ Words

 Buckle up, folks, it's time for a ride.

Prologue: Bona fides and bias

I was a reader of and contributor to the SCP Wiki for several years, and it remains close to my heart even though I don't keep up with it anymore. If it's past the 3000 contest, I haven't got a clue, but for the time before that...

 

(Precisely what contributions I made I am electing to keep anonymous for now. All that's relevant here is that I spent a great deal of time on the site Back In The Day, I wrote quite a bit (some of which was popular and some of which was actually good), nothing I wrote is featured in this RPG, and for the time being I would like to keep old online identities discrete.)

It Begins

The SCP RPG by Jason Keech is, at best, a catastrophic misunderstanding of what makes a fun tabletop game, what makes the SCP Wiki engaging, and how to adapt the latter into the former. Less charitably it is obvious grift, taking advantage of a popular Creative Commons license to make a quick buck of of people who either haven't heard of Delta Green or for whatever reason don't think it suffices for the job.

It might be the worst game I have read thus far. Not for moral reasons (I have read far worse), maybe for mechanical reasons (I don't think I have read worse) but assuredly because it is a butchery of something near and dear.

A Note Regarding Anticanonicity

The wiki has long operated under the maxim "there is no canon." This is not entirely true - there are dozens of recognized canons (5+ linked works with 3+ authors), hundreds more if we count single-author storylines, and a longstanding tradition of headcanon over all. But there is no overarching, singular canon. The contents of an article or a tale go exactly as far as the end of the page - beyond that, interpretation and re-interpretation is wide open. Characters can be drastically different between authors. Connections between articles often only go one-way.

A ttrpg adaptation can go one of two ways: a specific interpretation, or a generalist toolbox. This one tries to do both, and it fails at both. You'll see what I mean as we go along.

Onwards, the book.

Once the tables of contents and the backers are out of the way, there is the famous message from the Administrator. This has been a standard piece of Foundation lore for ages, the statement of intent for the in-universe organization, and I have never liked it. It's terribly self-serious and not particularly well-written, but it's short and it gets a point across, so it's popular.

(A recurring theme: there is a VERY big difference between the Scipverse as it is conceived of by the writers and the Scipverse as it is conceived of by the outside fandom. So it has always been.)

(Note: you will see me use the word "scip" constantly in this review. It just means "a spooky thing that the Foundation wants to lock up"

Chapters are organized according to "security level"

I'll let you in on a secret: security levels, sites, blackboxed procedures, that's all trade dress. It rarely ever means anything. All it does in nearly every circumstance is give the text the illusion of the conspiracy.

Chapter 1: Basic Rules

Variable-size dice pools, take sum of two highest and compare to difficulty rating. Exploding dice are applied if you roll maximum, by adding a die one size higher to the pool (so rolling 8 on a d8 gets you a free d10). but if you roll any 1s, those are all subtracted from your final sum. Once you have that, you add your proficiencies, which are measured in decimal points, to that sum.

So, for example, if I have a pool of 4d10 for an attribute, and roll 1-2-6-10, I get a bonus 2d12 for the exploding 10 (let's say a 1 and an 8), 8+10 for my highest two dice, minus two for the ones, plus 0.7 for a proficiency, final roll of 16.7)

Decimal points. You read that right. I have never witnessed this before in any ttrpg and I do not want to ever see it again. Unfortunately, my desires do not apply here.

Chapters 2 & 3: Character Creation

1. Assign 20d8 across your eight attributes (Strength Health Perception Dexterity Fate Charisma Intelligence Willpower)
2. Assign 4d10 to those attributes, but you can only add a d10 if you have 2d8 in that attribute.
3. Buy your proficiencies. Level 1 costs 1 point, Level 2 costs 3, Level 3 costs 6.
1. You get 17 points for Knowledge Proficiencies, plus 5 for each d10 in INT and PER.
2. You get 14 points for Skill Proficiencies, plus 5 for each d10 in STR and DEX
3. You get 10 points for Ability proficiencies, plus 5 for each d10 in CHA and WIL
4. For each proficiency you purchase, roll a d10: that's the decimal point value.
4. Calculate your substats - they will be determined by the die types and the number thereof in your attributes. Substats are HP, Exertion Points, Cognitive Resistance, Reverence Points, Melee Multiplier, Projectile Modifier, Reaction Defense, Move Speed, Intelligence Modifiers.
5. Choose appearance, body type, and reasoning. These have bonuses and maluses to certain proficiencies and substats.
1. Yes it is exactly as bad as you think it is.
2. If my character is Beautiful, they get +2 negotiation/persuasion, +1 Fashion/Etiquette, +1 leadership, -2 Resist Distress, -1 intimidate/Taunt, -1 Disguise / Blend In.
3. At the very least they don't limit body types to appearances, you can be Beautiful and Heavyset if you want. The latter gets you +15 HP and +2 Reaction Defense
6. Then you fill in the details that name no mechanics, name and whatnot. Backstory goes here.
7. Ref gives you what they need to start the mission; intel, equipment, starting personnel class and clearance level.

Step 8 is not mentioned, so I will add it in - return to step 1 because your character died, because this game and this setting is a meatgrinder and you are playing as the nameless jackboots in the unmarked vans (incorrect, the vans will be marked with a front company with some silly S-C-P initialism. I actually fucking love this and suggest you do it in home games, just have a van for Sanderson and Cole Plumbing show up.) and you died immediately on contact with the weird thing.

Yeah, remember the weird things? The whole point of this exercise?

It'll be a while.

Why would you make a game about being the operators operating operationally in operational operations when those are the people whose entire narrative purpose within the scipverse is to die horribly via Worf Effect. MTF dudes exist to die horribly. That's why they're the unnamed jackboots.

Chapter 4: Pointless point systems

Herein is explained how you spend experience points on more attribute dice, increase proficiencies through training, and the THREE other types of points (Merit, Reverence and Exertion).

Merit and Reverence are basically the exact same thing (rewards for RP), just worded differently. You spend them on some bonuses too.

No weird stuff has yet occurred.

Chapter 5: Combat

This chapter begins on page 42, and ends on page 68. I did not read it. While skimming it I saw that it had horrible would tables like, but not as good as, Emmy Allen's in Esoteric Enterprises.

There is a subsection between chapters 5 and 6 about personnel types and security clearances. It is about as fetishistic about useless details as one would expect. I thought we were here for monsters.

Chapter 6: Weapons and Items

There's a price list for mundane items split up into discount/premium. Why there is a price list for a game about playing an organization who has Plot levels of budget, I do not know.

There are long lists of item loadouts for different specializations. They are boring and you are guaranteed to forget what you have on hand. The shortest one is 25 items. The longest one has 65.

Then there's a example of play chapter, shoved in between item loadouts and the weapon lists.

The weapon lists are split into security clearance levels and...

Sighhhhhhhhhhhhhh

It is at this part that the book starts to collapse upon itself. Security Level 1 weapons does not then lead into security level 2 weapons, but instead a description of the bonuses you get if you purchase 3d12 in a stat, and then that leads into a very poorly formatted section on morale, which leads into staff titles and examples of Foundation sites and a literal example site directory and hierarchy and then mobile task forces and field symbols pulled from someone who made them years ago, that are entirely too good for this game.

And then we're in chapter 9. I had to go back and make sure that chapters 7 and 8 actually exist. They do, but by god do they seem to vanish in the whiplash.

An aside: it is, honestly, super-disheartening to see this sort of thing, because it's like...is that it? So many people, myself included, have poured so much time and effort into that site and the takeaway some folks have is that the useless details are important.

Chapter 9: Anomalies

We are on page 114, page 114 of 292, and we have finally reached the actual point of the setting.

In a move that I will give one (1) golf clap for, this section provides an overview of field procedures - discovery of an anomaly, how to identify its properties in the field, what to do in a contact situation, capture and transport. It continues on to containment back at the site but if you are playing field agents your job stops at drop off.

This section is the first part of this game that is conceptually appropriate for the act of playing a game in the Scipverse. If you are field agents, you are going to be out in the field. Making a literal SOP document is a fun diegetic way of giving players a plan of action, and refs ways to play around with that. If cleaned up (a lot), this could actually be the centerpoint of a functioning game.

Then we get to the anomaly classification system.

This I cannot fault the writer of the RPG for, this is taken from the site.

Now, in ye olde dayes, you had three classes. Only three there were, and the number of classes was three. They were unintuitively named, but easily summarized.

• Safe - Stick it in a box and you're fine, it won't get out.
• Euclid - You need to regularly check in on the box and do regular maintenance.
• Keter - It requires continuous and costly effort to keep it in the box.

(There are also Neutralized, Explained, and Joke. These are self-explanatory.)

Around the time I stopped reading, there were a few nonstandards that were being introduced.

• Thaumiel - Used as a box for another scip.
• Apollyon - Ha ha ha, you thought the box would help you?

It seems that in the years since there has been an introduction of an expanded containment class which I am not against in principle (since, you know, the old three only tell you how difficult it is to keep in a box, not how dangerous it is.) This new system has containment class (6 classes + 7 esoterics), disruption class (5 classes) and risk class (5 classes) now this could get a bit clunky and unwieldy, but it's not unmanageable.

Except for the fact that they took the nonindicative class names of the olden days trio and made them worse.

A disruption class of "will effect a few people" is VLAM. What the fuck is a VLAM. If I am scrambling through a filing cabinet trying to find what this thing does what does VLAM benefit me? Nothing! It is useless! Unfit for purpose! Awful and clunky to read and I am very glad that it appears to have not caught on to a majority, but it's still caught on more than I'd like.

Thank gods above and below for anticanon. Toss this right out the window. What are you doing, wiki, why are you doing this.

Old man yells at cloud.

We Are still in Chapter 9: Anomalies

Here we have the Security Level 2 items section. Did you know that you need to be security level 2 to have a helmet? Now you do.

Also, it's time for RPG GUN FETISHISM! My...third? Fourth? least favorite kind of RPG fetishism!

Not only can you quibble over the minute stat differences between a Glock 19 and an M1911, you can compare them to a katana! Which...I mean if you are replicating a certain era of the site that is perfectly above board and I won't harsh your mellow, but I feel like it is appropriate to bring up.

We'll be returning to this. For whatever reason, likely a bad one, the equipment list is split up into multiple parts and distributed across multiple chapters.

Special Section: Groups of Interest

I have been very hard on this book so far. That is a prologue to this section, which is where on initial read my opinion went from "this is poorly made" to "this is grift" and my ability to charitably critique it evaporated. I'm still going to, mind you, just grumpily.

See, the Foundation is not the only power that be in the Scipverse. The scope, importance, and number of these other groups of interest varies by interpretation (all hail anticanon), but regardless of that they serve two important narrative roles - they are (mostly) human antagonists that can stand against the Foundation (if not on equal footing, at least on grounds that the Foundation can't absorb or destroy them), and they provide alternate viewpoints about the anomalous world and how to interact with it.

Alternate viewpoints, that players might like to engage with. As a TTRPG uniquely allows the audience to do.

This book copy-pasted the article from the wiki. An article, I might add, that is only updated when new GOIs become established, and so older entries don't actually reflect how things are used in the wild. There's no sorting either, so groups that are limited to one or two minor canons will end up getting equal billing as some of the OGs. Alexylva University, a GOI whose entire shtick is "college in another universe keeps losing its mail in ours", gets half a page, while Dr. Wondertainment, who has a couple sizable storylines and quite a few more related articles, gets two sentences that explain basically nothing.

Now, in certain circumstances and lenses I could see the logic behind the overwhelming focus on the Foundation. Specific vs generalist interpretations of the setting. But for a tabletop game (the most variable, wide-reaching and adaptable genre to adapt into) and for a setting that is literally built around "the only viable interpretation is the one you make with these toys in the sandbox" I think it's a major oversight. Still, I suppose that the narrow focus to Foundation-only could work.

The more substantial issue here is that because this is copypasted from a janky reference page that is missing a whole lot of information, this section is useless from a game perspective. It contains no guidance on how they might be used, as PC options or antagonists or anything. not even "here is a bullet list of scips related to this GOI you can read on your own". So someone who doesn't already know these groups and have a developed headcanon about them to draw upon is up shit creek and paddling with their hands, because this books is absolutely no help in that regard.

Chapter 10: Reality

A chapter about some esoteric bits of lore that are a welcome break from the unceasingly generic content that has come before. Things like how the stability of reality is measured in units called Humes and you use a Kant Counter to measure them, and sometimes if shit really hits the fan you can get a Reality Anchor to forcibly revert things to normal.

I remember this being contentious when it was introduced, as it was considered to easy to abuse and too much of a get out of jail free card. Years prior there had been 148 (TelekilI) that was used similarly, and nerfed in a rewrite to have horrible side effects. In moderation, I like Humes, they're a fun bit of flavor.

This chapter also includes a little bit about reality benders, memetic hazards, another gear list (security level 3 this time, so now Adam has authorized the use of the grappling hook and an AK-47)

There's a run-through of amnestic classes, which could have been a half page table but is spread out over multiple pages because of course it is copy-pasted.

What really gets me about the security clearance stuff for weapons is that the higher someone's clearance is, the less likely they are going to ever be in direct contact with a scip in the field. Sure your lab tech with level 3 clearance can, by the game's rules, use an M16, but in what circumstance would they every use one according to the rules? They're a researcher back at base overseeing experimentation. If they have to use a gun, it's an emergency and they will use whatever gun they can find.

Subsection: Another fucking org chart

There is another fucking org chart here. It's better than the first one so, you know what, I am not against the idea in principle. In principle. Not here.

There is also the clearance level 4 equipment here, which is straight-up weird science goofy nonsense and a complete tonal break from the entire scipverse. There's an entry here for "phaser", which could exist in the setting...as a scip, and thus locked up. I mean I can imagine some experimental plasma or laser weaponry, that's not beyond my ability to believe, but again - I am long past the charitable read.

There is also a master weapon list. At least, all the weapon lists in one place. Like they should have been from the start, for convenient fetishization.

It's not weird that there's so much focus on weapons in this game, plenty of bad RPGs have overly granular weapon systems. But it's strange that it's for this setting. "Bigger guns will not help you" (unless it's the Sun Launcher, of course. Into the fiery orb with ye!) is very much part of the setting. It is filled with problems that cannot be solved with bullets. Most of the problems, in fact, cannot be solved with bullets. What good is a gun when the threat you are trying to contain is a jar of toenail clippings that fuck with causality?

Violence is more the Global Occult Coalition's department anyway.

Chapter 11: Director Guidance

Sections on how to award XP, all those other points they give out, and some general advice which...isn't all that bad. It's actually pretty okay. There's a section addressing the multicanon, there's a section on using Session 0 to establish boundaries of what people don't want to see, that's good. Necessary for this setting. Well done.

There's even a random scenario generator, which I also like, because it's basically "roll a random scip, roll for what you are doing with it, roll for complications." Combine that with that other section I liked however many chapters ago and you have a nugget of okayness.

Chapter 12: SCP Creation

How to stat up a scip...using the same obtuse and horrific system used to generate characters. I was going to make a demo example but that is giving this game much more than it deserves.

Chapter 13: SCP DATA

AT LONG LAST, WE ARE FINALLY HERE

Like Moses leading his people out of Egypt we have finally fucking reached the land of weird shit that we signed up for. It's bestiary time, baby! These entries (usually) have a statline (ech), a description (not copy-pasted, thank you!) and a short paragraph on how to use in game.

This is page 198 out of 292. We have finally reached the thing we are here for.

Let's see how things stack up.

1. SCP-001 (When Day Breaks) - There are multiple 001s (authors use them as capstone projects, basically), and this one is...certainly a choice. It's a good article, but it is also an article where the sun murders everyone and there are horrible fleshbeasts wandering the wastes as the people temporarily safe in bunkers wonder what the fuck to do. Opening a bestiary with "here is a campaign setting" is certainly a move. It's more actionable than some other 001s so it's not a terrible choice. Better than Gate Guardian, for sure.
2. SCP-002 (The Living Room) - A classic, always fond of this one. Use in-game would be limited, I think.
3. SCP-049 (The Plague Doctor) - I can't stand this article and I do not understand why it is popular, other than the fact that children like it because some Youtube screamed at it once. It's actually an okay pick for in-game, though. Creepy dude with a bunch of zombie servants.
4. SCP-073 (Cain) - Very odd choice, because he's a friendly NPC and immune to harm (all reflected back, naturally). Still has HP, though. 850 HP on this guy. A handgun will do 3d6.
5. SCP-076 (Abel) - Here's where things are starting to get iffy. Abel is one of the flagship scips. Not featuring him would be really weird, honestly. But Abel is an instakill. You will be gibbed. His entire purpose is to stick bladed weapons other people. His sword does 12d10 damage. In-setting the way people deal with him is A) do not ever let him out of his sarcophagus B) detonate bomb collar so that he has to waste time respawning C) use a tank. If you have individual, boots-on-ground level characters dealing with Abel-as-written, they are dead. Roll new character.
6. SCP-096 (Shy Guy) - THREE THOUSAND HP. The highest single damage weapon is a heavy artillery piece, which does 6d12 x 5 damage, so even rolling perfect, impossible max damage on a fucking missile launch, you have done less than a 10th of his health because he has 100 points of damage reduction! Also he has multiple attacks per turn that do 10d12 damage. Averageing that out, he can do 60 damage per attack. It would good to mention here that your base HP is 10. The maximum can get over 100 I think if you dump everything in health and that still won't save you from turn 2. All this bullshit makes sense for Shy Guy, don't get me wrong, because the entire deal is "if you see its face or a depiction of its face it will hunt you down and kill you, no matter where you are", but at that point it's an unfun environmental hazard, an instakill gotcha trap. Holy shit. What is this game.
7. SCP-106 (The Old Man) - Another very famous instakill monster. Sensing a theme here.
8. SCP-303 (The Doorman) - Finally, a choice that doesn't even have a statline. Creepy thing behind a door. Not much to 'im, but could be a fun little encounter or a containment puzzle. I like 'im.
9. SCP-354 (The Red Pool) - love this one, excellent choice for a game. Big old creepy as blood red pond that spits out monsters and is growing. We tried a submersible and weird shit happened. Yes, please and thank you.
10. SCP-444-JP (Dreamscape) - A article from the Japanese sister-site, that's nifty. A cognitohazard type deal, traps people in dreams and so on. Issue here being that, again, it's like a single-effect trap. Once it's sprung, okay, now what? That works for the article but not for a game. It's a cursed item.
11. SCP-662 (The Butler's Handbell) - Mr. Deeds! if you have the bell, he'll do whatever you need within his power. Remarkably good assassin. Write-up points out how it'd be a big threat in the hands of an antagonist, and they are very correct.
12. SCP-682 (The Hard-to-Destroy Reptile) - We all knew it was coming, let's get it out of the way. Big, angry, will kill you near-instantly, hard to destroy. NEXT!
13. SCP-939 (With Many Voices) - It's an alzabo. Took me over a decade to realize that it's an alzabo but it quite literally an alzabo, except it hunts in packs and the juveniles look like humans. Will likely make swift work of you but you can play around with the voice mimicry to fun ends.
14. SCP-1128 (The Aquatic Horror) - Another infohazard. Eventually kills you, makes you really hydrophobic until that point. A curse.
15. SCP-1470 (Mal0) - An app that makes a monster show up and lurk around you. Harmless, though. Guess you could do something creepy with it...if you were civilians who downloaded the app.
16. SCP-1472 (Multiuniversal Strip Club) - There are velociraptors in maid costumes doing burlesque. Why they are statted, I do not know, because they're fucking velociraptors are you gonna harass them? But it would be a fun location to hang out in and see the other weird corners of the scipverse.
17. SCP-1678 (Unlondon) - Dark underground mirror or London filled with creepy inhabitants and whatnot. Would be good for an escape, honestly. Wouldn't want to get trapped down there.
18. SCP-1762 (Here Be Dragons) - i love the article, but it's not really even interactive enough to justify its position in the bestiary.
19. SCP-2006 (Too Spooky) - A comedy scip. Shapeshifting energy being wants to scare people, is terrible at it, best way to keep it in one place is to have people pretend that they are scared. This one could be fun for a session.
20. SCP-2057-JP (Rehatchlings) - Another Japan-branch article. Reincarnating baby chicks. I guess it's okay? i mean the description buried the lede that there is an enormous one of these inside the moon so they are probably way more interesting as an article.
21. SCP-2265 (Dinner With Andrew) - A timeloop scenario. Fair enough.
22. SCP-2273 (Major Alexie Belitrov) - Alternate universe Russian supersoldier with bug-power armor. Great concept, the book specifically says to use him in non-combat circumstances. Good advice, honestly.
23. SCP-2999 (The Black Cat and the White Rabbit) - All I know is that this one is very complex and I never sat down to read the entire thing. I am quite sure that the writeup in this bestiary is not sufficient.
24. SCP-3000 (Anatashesha) - We have reached the end of my first-hand knowledge. Here on out, it is unknown territory. This is a 900 kilometer long eel with mind-altering chemicals that don't get enough specification despite being the most useful part of this. At least it doesn't have stats.
25. SCP-3008 (The Infinite [REDACTED]) -The redacted is Ikea, it's an infinite Ikea. I mean it could be fun trying to find the exit, but it's not like you're given the means to make that encounter easy to run or fun to play.
    
26. SCP-3300 (The Rain) - A town that, once a year, has an anomalous storm and the complete replacement of its population with new people. Could be cool, though I don't know, in game at least, what you would even investigate.
27. SCP-3739 (Mind Milk) - If I had a nickel for every scip that involved spontaneous generation of udders and subsequent lactation, I would have two nickels. Which isn't a lot but it's weird that it's happened twice. Could probably get an extra nickel if we count 597. Like was this a rewrite of that one in the 600s?
28. SCP-3999 (I Am At The Center of All That Happens To Me) - Entirely too complex for a pithy summary for a game book.

And that's it. 28 chosen, several of which are a level of inappropriate that beggars belief. We could have had more, if the GOIs were treated as worthwhile at all. but they aren't, so we are stuck with one of the best sources of weird shit to exist reduced down to this.

It would have been great to just cut the system entirely and just have a book of scips and ways to use them in a game that already existed.

Chapter 14: NPC Data

Statblocks for a lot of generic professions that have no bearing on the Scipverse. No GOIs or their members to be seen, not even a whiff of a Broken God tech-cultist..

I have heard that this creator made a "Creepypasta RPG" using basically the same mechanical system. I think this was ported over from that.

Chapter 15: Site-093

A sample Foundation facility to use. Helpful! Has NPCs, but not the kind you can plug and play yourself, they're your bosses. Less helpful.

Chapter 16: The Black Glass Labyrinth

A sample adventure. I did not read it, because as you no doubt can tell from the tone this has taken over the last half dozen chapters, I am tired.

So yeah. We're done.

The Wrap Up

Game bad. Play Delta Green instead. Its issues are microscopic in comparison. Or better yet, Liminal Horror. Or Esoteric Enterprises. Or Mothership. Anything at all.

The Actual Wrap Up

I was talking with a friend just last night (from time of writing, not posting) about the olden days, and how it's kinda depressing looking back and thinking "oh wow something I wrote years ago still crops up in the wild now and then, but next to no one who reads it, proportionally speaking, knows or cares that I wrote it. Most of them don't actually read it, and those that do often miss the point entirely, and the entire consumption of the text is purely the superficial layer. No one outside the core nugget of reader-writers cares about the context, the style, or any sort of narrative analysis of things."

You see this a lot with the Youtube channels about the site: they'll do an overview of the scip, but they are dead-set against engaging with it as a text with a context and a creator (oh you are LUCKY if they actually cite the author outside of the CC-required attribution buried in the video description) and anything beyond what is directly presented. And tales have ALWAYS been neglected compared to the mainlist; onsite, offsite, on the periphery.

Sure, sometimes a spooky monster is just a spooky monster, but it's nice to talk about something and talk about why it is spooky and how it got there.

This entire RPG is based in that attitude. Just the superficials. Gun porn and org charts and instakill monsters are what's important. And you know, that's fair. I don't like it, but everyone can have their headcanon and whether or not I or anyone else likes it is irrelevant.

 

But if you're going to do that, make it personal. Stamp your name on it and say 'there are many like it, but this is mine.' That is in the spirit of the site. That is, I am certain, what's kept it alive and active for all these years - the intended experience is DIY. It is poorly served by an interpretation that lacks the desire to be very personal and refuses to give people the tools to make something of their own.

 

The wiki is broad and deep and very flawed and a surviving bastion of web 2.0 and its calling card is an invitation to explore. To go down the rabbit hole. That's always been a strength the - that initial rush of clicking on random links and finding something new behind every door, of piecing together this puzzle in your head until it fits comfortably like a glove, and even when the ennui sets in and the years go by and you are so jaded that nothing impresses or scares you any more, there are still moments where you go "yes! there it is again!" and you're once again chasing rabbits.

To translate that to tabletop, you need both freedom and the tools to use it properly. Mechanics won't help you. There needs to be one more door, one more lonely hallway, one more tattered manila folder. There needs to be the space to put the pieces together and build something of your own.

Not a fucking gun list.

LET'S LOOK AT: Delta Green Handler's Guide

What's All This Then

The part of DG that actually has the DG in it. It contains a timeline of the setting, dossiers of major NPCs, rituals and tomes, monsters, and some guidance on scenario creation (which is quite good for the small amount of space it takes up)

Are We the Baddies? (Spoilers: Yes)

Delta Green is a game about how doing horrible things can and will break a person.

Which is, refreshing. There's no benefit to being part of a conspiracy with no accountability or consequence. DG is not cool, it's not the good guys - it's an underfunded meat grinder led by a bunch of paranoid boomers and it has already been compromised and you are complicit and you are in too deep. You'll burn out your relationships, your health, and your humanity and if you are lucky you go right back to work as if nothing happened. Your reward is the status quo for a little bit longer and horrible trauma.

[Aside] Now, I am fond of the final twist of the knife being not "oh it's all pointless the mythos will kill us all", but rather "it's all pointless because Delta Green is wrong about it all". This is not a sentiment found anywhere in the Handler's Guide, just my old dead horse dropping by[/aside]

Edit et Addendum: This all said, the Handler's Guide makes a similar mistake that Vampire 5e got in trouble for a while back - not delineating that the racist bits are in-character and using omniscient third instead. The tcho-tcho are a real bad example of this, and you find it in all these little places elsewhere. Disappointing. 

The Conspiracy Paradox

"The more people who know about the supernatural, the more unbelievable it is that a conspiracy could keep it secret. The more prevalent the supernatural, the more people will know about it."

If you're running Delta Green as a one shot or flying high the flag of lore-be-damned (or both, both is good), it might as well be perfect at avoiding this issue.

But this is a Handler's Guide review, and that means lore. Delta Green has a whole lot of lore. I have complicated feelings about all this lore.

I will return to this eventually.

The book says that less than 3000 people in the continental US know about the paranormal and I am gonna call some bullshit on that. I will come back to this later.

The Good Lore

I am a total mark for modern paranormal investigation. Cold War conspiracy bullshit is my jam. 

There's a type of sidebar in the book called "Disinformation". It's a nice big bright yellow box that contains a few paragraphs about some facet of the setting - Carcosa, Yuggoth, Project RAINBOW, lots of fun things. These entries, being short, loose, and often containing contradictory information within them, are the best part of the entire book. I want an entire book of this stuff. It's inspirational, open-ended, and I want to use it.

(There's a lot of other bits that I want to use but they are not nearly as easily found. Example: one DG infosec operation is getting CIA stooges to post nonsense conspiracy stuff online to muddy the waters when real things emerge. This is really cool. it is not in a big bright yellow box so I might have missed it for ages more.)

The Bad Lore

Delta Green is a game in love with the parts of its setting that aren't good for games. It would be good material for short fiction (Which exists: I have not read any of it but I presume it is at least not the worst game-based fiction out there), but this is an interactive medium and the needs of an interactive medium are different.

This is absolutely a game book meant to be read (Time to reread that Joseph Manola post) and I won't say that I don't enjoy reading it. I actually do.

I'd just ignore 90% of it if I was trying to run it.

There are two major points where the book really gets in its own way: the timeline that takes up much of the front half of the book, and the NPCs that take up much of the back.

The timeline is good enough in theory - a bunch of seeds by era that can be mined for inspiration. But most of those seeds are from pre-existing modules and stories, or are specific to individual characters, or are actual things that actually happened. The final effect is that the past presented is not a misty realm of half-remembered potential, from which haunting things slouch forth to be shaped by the sun; it is the dry recitation of dates and events like cement poured into a mold and left to dry.

From a book perspective, good reading. From a game perspective, boring shit I don't want.

I will now recount everything that is actually important in the timeline.

• 1928 - The Innsmouth raid. Delta Green security clearance is established
• 1947 - A UFO crashes in Roswell. MAJESTIC-12 is founded to study it and get that sweet sweet alien tech. The Greys are actually mi-go puppets deliberately feeding information to the US government for their own experimental purposes.
• 1969 - A catastrophic fuckup in Cambodia leads to DG being dissolved. The Cowboy years begin,. The US government puts all its backing behind MJ-12.
• 2001 - Re-organization in the wake of 9/11 sees a crumbling MJ-12 dissolved and surviving DG remnants brought back into the fold. The Program is formed. A few Outlaws still remain in the cold.

With these four bits of info, you have all the understanding of Delta Green's history that you need. Fill in the blanks with whatever you want. All else is gravy. You could expand it to ten entries and be just fine - writing it out I suppose that might have been the intention of this timeline, though I don't feel like it was done properly

Given the nature of the game player characters won't know half of this stuff, and given the nature of players they will go ahead and read all of it anyway.

The NPC write-ups in the back are the worse offender. They're a bunch of literal old fogeys players will never interact with because of operational security (seriously, the rest of the book makes such a big deal about how nobody knows anything why is this section here?) Purest case of in-love-with-the-fiction right here and I don't like it one bit. Should have had more monsters.

A Weird Issue With Tone

Part of the horror of Delta Green is that the organization (and humans in general) don't and cannot know what they're messing with. But the book is written filled with details that no human could possibly know in this impossibly huge broad-stroke omniscient third voice.

Example: The lloigor are an energy field (but also individuals but also not) that came from the Andromeda galaxy and are locked in a temporal cold war with the yithians and are seeking to construct the empire of Tsan-Chan in the future and normally are just evil rocks but can sometimes take the form of things that are not entirely unlike dinosaurs and they need a separate sub-table for all of their powers.

If you're a DG agent in the field, are you going to know about any of this? Are you going to care? Hell no. There's a bigass evil-looking rock that gives people cancer and can induce suicidal urges what the shit you aren't paid for this. This is the important part. The lore can get stuffed you are in the here and now and horror is of what we don't know. Big level stuff like this should either not be here or be buried. All of that extra information is referee only and if it's referee only there is no reason that it shouldn't be a blank check because the player characters will never, ever, EVER learn it. But the players will read the book and they will know and in knowing fear vanishes and the entire point of this exercise is moot.

This being a tabletop rpg changing setting fluff is trivial enough to make me feel that complaining about this topic seems petulant. But you know what? "The ref can fix this on their own" is the default. It is the bare minimum. It is the lowest common denominator in this business and I do not appreciate it.

[Aside] I honestly believe that this issue could have been fixed with some proper SCP Foundation faux-clinical detachment. Sad to see the inspiration didn't flow back around.[/Aside]

Final Thoughts

I have complex feelings about this book. One the one hand, I knew what I was getting into. On the other - if I knew what I was getting into, which I did, why did I still buy it? Third hand - Esoteric Enterprises isn't out yet. Hand four: when that book comes out will it make this book obsolete? Fifth hand: well, no, but also yes. Sixth hand: I am filled with a longing that I cannot define, driven by a spirit I cannot name, for a place forever lost to me flowing ceaselessly into the past.

Finaller Thoughts

Okay so the Nazis got totaled, the Russians have gone quiet, the British are compromised by alien parasites, and you're telling me that the Chinese haven't filled that power vacuum? If they haven't. , how come we haven't had a secrecy-destroying disaster happen yet?

I have so many questions! This is what happens when you get too specific with the lore in this sort of setting! Nerds like me will start poking holes because I have questions.

Finallest Thoughts

When in doubt, make your own. This philosophy is the reason behind all of my unfinished work.

Original, Simple, Ready to Hack

The bloated ourobouros that is The Discourse (TM) has slouched towards Bethlehem once again, nibbling at its tail. This has inspired me to do the smart intensely stupid thing of distancing myself from it interacting with it. I have thrown my hat in the ring, to be gobbled up by the mindless many-mouthed colossus.

PART 1: Dandy's Eightfold Path

OSR games are...

• Original -The game content setting and rules are novel and/or shares lineage with variants of the OD&D ruleset. It is not required that both of these be active simultaneously.
• Simple - The core rules are easy to explain and learn. They can be understood easily by new players, children, drunkards, and the occasional very clever dog.
• Ready to Hack  - The game is modular, so it is trivial to change rules, add mechanics, make substitutions, and otherwise incredibly easy to make your own material.

The act of play is...

• Organic - The story and world are emergent, coming into being during the act of play. Random tables, player input, whim + foppery, and chains of consequences all play into this.
• Skill-Based - A player's skill at navigating problems with novel solutions is worth more than the character's mechanical skills. Unorthodoxy is rewarded.
• Reactive - The world of the game is not static, nor does it conform to a set of genre expectations. It exists outside of the players and reacts to their actions. Consequences are enforced.

And finally, the most important...

• Make Cool Shit - You know that cool shit you want to exist but doesn't? Make it. Make it yours. Make it the coolest shit you can make. Life is too short to wait to let other people make  shit you think is cool.
• Fuck the Man - The Man is not your real dad and therefore cannot tell you what to do. Your own real dad can only offer polite suggestions on what you should do, if he is a cool dude. Submit to no authority. Silence brands. Publicly humiliate Nazis. Murder the gods and topple their thrones.

PART 2: SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

The Discourse (TM) tends to go something like this: A person outside the OSR noosphere has a brush with some of the unpleasant elements of the scene, makes some broad statements on twitter, everyone gets all up in a huff and spends the next few days wondering if we should even use the term anymore and how to deal with the shitheads who are tramping around and what even is this OSR stuff anyway when we get down to it and a few people distance themselves from the label and then we all forget about it and we go back to normal for the next two months.

I hate this cycle so, so much. I hate it because it's stupid and I hate it because arguments over the precise nature and definition of what is and isn't OSR are precisely as stupid as similar arguments about science fiction. All broad categories contain multitudes of variation within them, so the idea of talking about the OSR or science fiction as if either is a singular thing is a very silly bit of reductionism.

So I propose this: there are schools of the OSR as there are schools of wizardy or schools of philosophy or schools of sci-fi. There can be no "true OSR", because purity is a lie unbefitting an entropic universe.

All of these are malleable, shifting, overlapping, intermingling, and otherwise inconstant. A single person can and will be a member of multiple schools at a time and can shift between them according to both time and specific projects. There are certainly schools I have left out. They are all subjective, except for the Regressive Wanker School.

• Retroclone School - Focused upon games that revise and repackage OD&D, B/X, etc, without major additions or modifications. Old School Essentials, Labyrinth Lord, OSRIC, Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
• Regressive Wanker School - Those who spend far more of their time complaining about SJWs and/or storygames and being unpleasant to be around than creating cool shit. Love playing victim and proclaiming over-inflated self-importance. Pundit, Venger, Zak.
• Goblin School -The very particular flavor of weird originating with Arnold K. Includes anyone who plays around with the GLOG and I lump most bloggers with their own bespoke weird-takes-on-vanilla-fantasy settings here.
• DREAM School - Hybrid school experimenting with storygame elements. Lightweight, personal, Itch.io and Twitter based. More of an inclusive social contract than a specific set of dev guidelines, but many DREAM games share the similar traits listed.
• Dog Knight School - Grotty, cynical, gross, decadent, obscene. Eat trash do crimes. Fuck the Man. If Fiona Geist likes it, it's probably Dog Knight.
• Light and Cozy School - Light and comfy games with a lot of influences from fairytales, cartoons, and JRPGs. BREAK! is the poster child. Counterbalance to Dog Knight.
• New School Old School - OSR attitudes towards play but sprouting off into complete new rulesets and genres. Mothership, Maze Rats & Knave, Esoteric Enterprises, TROIKA!.
• Hardcore Artcore School - People who get really artsy and out there. Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess.
• Orbital School - People who don't identify with OSR as a label but the games they make and their styles of play fit right in.
• Fiver School - Folks who do mostly 5e (or close to it) stuff, but they still have the energy to them. Jack Shear and Kiel Chenier.
• The Generally Cool School - Individuals who are off doing their own thing and killing it.
• FLAILSNAIL School - The "who cares do whatever" school of gonzo, as spearheaded by Jeff Rients. Anything goes, everything is cross-compatible.
• The Big Time School - Games that have broken out into the big leagues (or what we have of them). DCC and Shadow of the Demon Lord.
• Alignments are for Suckers School - For those who neither have nor want a school. Rock on, people.

I'd say I am a Goblin-NSOS friendly to the ideas of DREAM and dipping a bit into Dog Knight when the mood strikes me.

(Have you got others? I probably missed a lot. Drop 'em in the comments)

PART 3:  What Follows

Where do we go from here? Wherever we want to. I'll be damned if I hand over the reins to the Regressive Wanker School, and I'll likewise be damned if I sit still and let good folks doing a great job out there get painted with a broad, dismissive brush.

And I'll be damned triply if I let The Discourse (TM) show it's ugly mug on this blog in the future. 

I solved the problem we can all go home.

PART 4: EDITS WERE MADE

David Schirduan of Technical Grimoire made a tweet saying that OSR should actually stand for Open Source Roleplaying and this is the correct answer toss all my garbage right out the window.

Open Source Roleplaying. Free to all. This is the secret of the eightfold path.

BONUS: DISC HORSE

Oh god what the fuck. Why is it circular. What did you do to this horse. It is like a plate on its rim, with horse legs around the edge. Too many legs. Why does it have so many legs. No I will not look into its horrible horse eyes, the horse eyes that beg for death no I will not listen to the pitiful whinnies that plead for mercy. What has happened to this horse.

God has abandoned us.

Appearance: As a creature vaguely-resembling but no longer in practice a horse.
Attacks: Trampling hooves. Medium damage 1-4 strikes
Armor: Only speed grants it defense from the blades it deserves
# Appearing: 1. There is only ever 1.

All Will Shudder and Collapse With Trembling: Witnessing the DISC HORSE is an immediate will check to avoid panicking (fight/flight/freeze response)

Abomination in the Eyes of God and Science: Simply being in the presence of the DISC HORSE will give all magic a 33% chance of failure with a terrible blowback (roll for mutation!) This applies also to magical devices, electronic devices, and anything involving gunpowder or internal combustion.

Even the Angels Are Afraid: A DISC HORSE will immediately throw any angels, demons, elementals, chaos-spawn, or lawful adjudicators into a panic. Beings of singular essence cannot handle this horrific bullshit.

Love Will Not Save Us: If someone should deliver a blow that drives the DISC HORSE below 1/2 HP, it will make a beeline towards whatever that person holds dear and attempt to destroy it utterly. It is very fast. Despair means that it does not tire.

FUCKING BUER: If the DISC HORSE is captured and Buer is summoned in the same location, they shall form the damnable artifact THE BICYCLE OF WOE. If this does not kick off the apocalypse, it means that God truly is dead and the heavens are empty.

Obligatory Star Wars SpoilerPost

This will begin with a different story.

In worldly matters my father held two things in utmost reverence: baseball, and Star Wars. He introduced me to the series, encouraged my love of it, and was ever there to listen to the ramblings-on of an over-imaginative and obsessive child.

He died early this year. (Cancer's a bastard, friends.)  No real need to say that it puts everything else into a different perspective, but I'll say it anyway.
In watching The Last Jedi, I was able to put into words a fundamental disconnect between the Star Wars I know and the one that sits on the screen before us. If you were to ask me to distill Star Wars, I would tell you "well, it's the perfect space adventure setting" (I cut my tweenage teeth on the Essential Guides series, and still have most of them, so I know far, far too much background information), or I would tell you "It's about the relationship between a young man and his father."

That's they key there, the thing that made the whole myth click with me, because Star Wars was such a fundamental part of my relationship with my own dad. Luke has to come to terms with both his father's humanity and mortality by the end - and that's now something I have personal experience with.

And Star Wars without that connection feels hollow. A stranger. I felt it with the Prequels, I feel it now with Disney, and I have reached a point of peace with it. Mostly. It won't come back. I could be chasing the next fanboy high but I know it's never going to happen again, at least not in the way it did back then.

Spoilers below the break.

The HAUL Reviews: Coriolis

I’m taking a momentary break from the OSR offerings to review Coriolis. For those unfamiliar, it is a  sci-fi RPG developed by the Swedish group Modiphus Entertainment, who were behind Mutant Year Zero. I managed to pick up my copy on Free RPG Day; my local shop went and had the hardcover core book sitting right there on the table next to VAM! I actually asked the guy at the counter if it had been misplaced. It wasn’t.

I should have gone for the Dungeon Crawl Classics hardcover instead.

Coriolis is not a good game. There are individual pieces of it that are good, but the game as a whole is put together atop feet of clay. I couldn’t see myself ever using it, outside of maybe taking a few examples of its positives and utilizing that in another game.

The primary positive I will give Coriolis is the following: It’s a game about flying around space having adventures with a crew of colorful characters, and so the ship and crew as a whole are the first things in setting up a game. Before anyone gets to character generation, the group decides what kind of crew they are going to be (merchants, explorers, pilgrims, mercenaries, etc), settles on the group’s patron and nemesis, and chooses a group talent. 

Then comes the spaceship, and thankfully Modiphus did the spaceship part pretty okay.

The game provides a small selection of pre-made ships, but the fun is in the construction. Basic ship types are expanded with modules and additional features of the builders’ choosing, with things like mechanical quirks and shipyard of origin coming into account. This all determines how much debt the party owes on the ship when the game starts (50% of total cost)

While I do like the idea of debt as the driving, over-arching motivator and long-range goal, this is about where the good ideas stop. The rest of the book has essentially no support for the act of actually making money – no tables of bulk-good prices, no tables for discoveries or artifacts and reward costs.

(This is as good a time as any to say that the book does an awful job of providing DM tools. There are tables, but they aren't incredibly helpful.)

The central die mechanic of the game is simple and I’ve got no issues with it. Attribute + Skill Rating = # of dice you have to roll. Success is on 6, more than one 6 is a great success. Characters are easy to build, though customization options are on the lower end.

I do give a sideways glance at the system of DM intrusions (“Darkness Points”) that the game gives the DM as determined by actions of the players, but it’s not a deal breaker. It’s just a bit silly to me that the thing with the horrible gangrenous mouth can only infect you if you used a specific talent or flew through space without using the stasis tanks.

The real deal breaker, though, is the setting. My stance on setting in RPGs is simple – if you are going to bother publishing a setting along with your rules, make sure your setting is worth using. It’s got to have something that catches my eye and imagination so that I want to use it, instead of just using the general ruleset for a world of my own devising.

The setting of Coriolis is practically a case study in how to waste space: it provides nothing that a decent DM could not do better with elbow grease and the Stars without Number planet generation tables. The creators of the game have described it as “Arabian Nights in space” (as one can see on the blurb on the back cover), and I have significant difficulty finding any legitimacy in that statement.

1001 Nights is built upon the frame story of a woman using her wits and storytelling skill to avoid getting murdered by her husband. This format could be used (and absolutely should have been used) for this core rule book (the mechanics section would be a bit difficult, but I’m sure someone could do it), but the setting chapters have absolutely no excuse. Illustrating a setting through hearsay, tall tales, spacer superstitions, news from foreign ports, folklore, and lies that might have something beneath them, all told by a single narrator? I adore the idea. It doesn’t happen here.

What does happen is twofold: we are introduced to a great number of ideas that don’t get fleshed out enough to even be evocative, and it is revealed that “Arabian Nights in space” translates to “there are some Arabic names, and a page about clothing, and one of the enemies is called a djinn.”

Coriolis is Middle Eastern flavored about as much as Firefly was Chinese flavored: not in the slightest substance beyond the superficial. It does not evoke, it pays lip service.

<Aside> Somewhere in the ocean of unused ideas there exists a wuxia-western space opera that sits right at the juncture of Avatar: The Last Airbender and Cowboy Bebop and my heart aches for its absence from our cruel, merciless world. </Aside>

It’s boring, terribly boring.  And most of it is just that, save what I would mark as outright creative cowardice: the primary religion of the Horizon.

Now, I find religion in space to be a terribly interesting thing to wrestle with, especially when dealing with the technological and cultural developments that will put pressure on faith systems to adapt or die out. Here we have an ostensibly Mideast–inspired setting that not only conveniently lacks Mideast religion(s), but replaces it with something far less interesting.

We are treated to the Church of the Icons, a religion with a strong central hierarchy that worships a nine-aspect god and has female leadership. It’s the Church of the East + Faith of the Seven, except with nine of them, and also in space.

There’s no form of Islam to be found, or even anything that seems to be its descendant. Jews are right out. Christianity only gets its knock-off brand. Zoroastrians are nowhere to be seen. Yazidi? What's a Yazidi?

Any sort of meaningful conflict, discussion, or exploration of real-world religion and culture through a fantastic lens is thrown right out the window and they don’t even have the decency to replace it with the fun kind of space gods.

It’s boring, it’s lazy, and it is pushed every chance it can be. If there is a focus in Coriolis, it is the Icons.

But even then the game can’t seem to focus on an element of its setting long enough to actually do it justice. On top of the Icons, we have the following to deal with:

• The ancient, vanished Portal Builders who leave vague, undefined ruins – nothing would be lost if the interstellar portals were naturally occurring.
• The Emissaries rising up from the depths of their gas giant to do vague, undefined things. (They get four paragraphs in the entire book, which mostly re-state each other and provide no gameable material)
• Four other intelligent alien races (who get a paragraph each, buried in the bestiary chapter, despite being character options)
• Artificial human clades (they are listed as character options, but there are only three of them, and they are barely mentioned again after that  first sidebar)
• Factions with generic names (The Legion, the Foundation, the Syndicate, etc)
• At least two wars and a major culture clash between colony waves (sounds way better than it is)
• Interstellar space is apparently both magical and actively malevolent and monsters live there, and apparently the Icons protect against it.

I make these seem significantly more interesting than they are. If the game could focus even a slight bit on any of these, start using more evocative language, perhaps start tying things together into a cohesive whole, and present the information in a gameable way, there would at least be steps toward being a good setting.  We could have gotten that feeling of infinite fantastic adventures in fantastic worlds, never knowing what tale will be told the next night.

But we didn’t. The game even flat out says that the mystical parts could just be kept as spacer stories – it is that unimportant to the game as a whole. Coriolis is sci-fi that is neither hard nor soft enough to maintain interest. It is gummy oatmeal.

With such a weak setting, there’s really nothing to recommend this game for. Just having a passable system doesn't cut it with the price of entry.