Mayday Plays - The Dead Drop | "The Good Life" | July 2024

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

This July it's time to enjoy The Good Life, the brand new scenario by John Scott Tynes. Join Vince and Sergio as they discuss all the gory details and how to make the most of it for your table. PLUS Sergio's got 5 tips for "stand-out handouts" that will wow players without breaking the bank. The Patreon version of this episode contains over 20 minutes of bonus discussions. Join our Patreon for extended cuts; https://patreon.com/maydayrp Buy The Good Life: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/484733/delta-green-the-good-life The handout supplements: 1. Handwriting generator - https://10015.io/tools/text-to-handwriting-converter 2. Handouts generators - https://handouts.cthulhuarchitect.com/generator (Cthulhu Architect) https://www.dholeshouse.org/ (Dholes House) 3. MyMaps.google.com - https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/2/viewer?mid=1Mm7_x5BIXB4mvHkenWPS7FEw80bnWNso&ll=-3.81666561775622e-14%2C0&z=2 4. https://thispersondoesnotexist.com 5. Arc Dream digital asset packs - https://www.delta-green.com/2022/09/download-digital-asset-packs/ 6. Join the Arc Dream Arts & Crafts discord: https://discord.gg/yDPez3H9Xp -- 👕 MERCH: http://ko-fi.com/maydayrp & https://mayday-merch.printify.me/products 💵 Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/maydayrp 📰 Join our newsletter: eepurl.com/iIVUjo 🎙 Listen to us: 🟣 Apple Podcasts : https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mayd…ys/id1537347277 🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5vdTgXoqpSpMssSP9Vka3Z?si=97a6a19d71cf4be0 🟠 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/mayday-roleplay 🌟 Other Socials 🌟 🐦 Twitter: http://twitter.com/maydayroleplay 📸 Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/maydayrp/ 🔴 Website: http://maydayroleplay.com/ 🎵 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@maydayroleplay 👾 Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/maydayroleplay 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/maydayrp Thanks for your support!

Hey everyone, thanks for joining us. I'm Sergio, the handler for Mayday's Dune to Repeat campaign, and returning to his rightful place as co-host of the show, the new homeowner of a palatial estate in Druid Hills, Georgia, it's Black Project Gaming's Vince. Welcome back, friend. Hey, thanks a lot, man. Good to be back. If you enjoy the show, as always, make sure to like and subscribe, leave a review for us on Spotify or Apple podcasts, or leave a comment

below. We're part of May Day Roleplay. We play tabletop RPGs like Delta Green, Vampire the Masquerade, Daggerheart, and a whole lot more. We've got something for everyone, all of it available in podcast or video format, completely free. So check it out. So you want to make some insanity-inducing handouts for your players, but you haven't got a artistic bone in your body? Don't sweat it, you've come to the right place, because you have found the Dead Drop.

Vince, I hope your move went smoothly last month. You're well rested and unpacked, and ready to return to our regularly scheduled obsessing about Delta Green. Now you better fricking believe it, man. In this episode, we're gonna review the latest scenario release, The Good Life, by John Scott Tynes, as well as Sergio's,

five tips to creating memorable handouts while avoiding the pitfalls of the hobby. Well, cue the Sinatra events because today we are whisking our audience away to the bougie Atlanta suburb of Druid Hills. That's right, we are talking about John Scott Tynes' brand new scenario, The Good Life. And folks, let me tell you, this one is a doozy. Now, as usual with scenario discussions, we're going to get into spoilers. So if you are a potential player of this scenario, you need to make like Jordan Peele and get out. But if you're a handler looking to run the good life, pull up a seat and enjoy the prosciutto.

Vince, how would you summarize the good life? Wow, where to even begin with this one. So for those who may not know, The Good Life is one of the several scenarios that Arc Dream has planned that will play into and play off of their sourcebook, The Labyrinth. This one specifically centers around the Center for the Missing Child and former detective Joe Dewan. We take place here in the wealthy Atlanta suburb of Druid Hills, which of course, being Delta Green, hides some pretty

terrible secrets. For decades, its children have been vanishing from public view, withdrawn from school, never reported missing, but never seen again. The entire point of this scenario is discovering the horrible secret at the heart of Druid Hills and its racist commune and finally discovering that there's ghouls behind all of it. Yeah, it's a very interesting scenario for many reasons that we'll get into. I do like that it is a tie into the labyrinth because for so long it's just been this standalone thing. It's great that we now have some scenarios to connect with it. I've been waiting for these.

I've loved the various scenario seeds that have been planted all throughout the labyrinth. It's such a great resource. But having actual scenarios that handlers can now go to and run that tie directly into this is going to be great. Me personally, I'm waiting for something regarding Renko and GRUSV8. But you know what? I will absolutely take this. I wasn't sure what to expect when I first got it, but let me tell you, I am all in with this scenario.

This is a good one. Now, the scenario starts in an interesting way. We're usually used to a case officer briefing the agents, but in this case, it seems like the scenario is suggesting that Joe Dewant should be the one that kind of introduces the agents to the situation and lays it out for them. It's a little unusual, right?

One of the interesting things about this scenario is that it really does center around Joe Dewant in that there are various stages of Joe Dewant's, for lack of a better term, downward spiral that really feature heavily in this scenario in The Good Life. And depending on what stage you have to want to start in will determine how he approaches and contacts the players. So for example, if he's at what's called stage one, he knows nothing about the unnatural and has never heard of Delta Green. He simply believes that your players, the agents, are members of an FBI task force assembled to investigate his concerns about either kidnapping or child trafficking. Now however, you move on to stage two, he does know about the Unnatural and the existence of Delta Green to whatever extent the

players may have told him. And you can play with it from there. He's essentially a super useful friendly, but then you go to stage three. And in this case, Joe Dewan has descended almost completely into paranoia where he's consistently looking for these connections, some that exist and some don't, between Drew Dills and the Atlanta Police Department.

Before we get too much into the grisly details though, I do wanna talk about an interesting challenging element to this scenario, which is portraying racism. But let's talk a little bit about how to handle that and what this scenario offers to help you in that regard. For sure. First and foremost, if you're going to run this scenario and you are going to heavily feature or include those racist details regarding the Druid Hill families, you're going to want

to have a conversation with your players. You're going to want to be candid up front and you're going to want to probably do a safety checklist just to make sure that you're accommodating whatever preferences and issues your players have regarding this very complicated, horrific real world detail. What's good about the source book though is that it does provide some key insight into how to effectively portray it and also gives you the option to just ignore it altogether. You can be as upfront and in-your-face with it as you feel comfortable given your player base or you can just keep it very obscure,

very under the table, amounting to a little more than Snyder marks or the occasional side-eye glance. You know, going into the ghouls and the unnatural, there is always, you know, a bigger, a big bad behind all of this, a bigger unnatural element. And I usually like when I find a scenario, the first thing I do is try to track down, well what is that the heart of all of this in this

scenario it's Nyogtha which I do remember reading from the Handler's Guide but it has never really gotten a lot of attention in scenarios etc so it's interesting to see them involved in this. Yeah I'll be the first one to admit my my knowledge of Lovecraftian entities and all the various great old ones that have been you know produced by Lovecraft and Lovecraft adjacent authors. My knowledge there is kind of limited but when it comes to Nyogfa this is it's a great to me lesser known entity or deity that really does features heavily in this scenario and in a great way. It's very cool to see how the ghouls worship this thing and how, you know, we talk about the inner, inner core of the earth

and how this thing, you know, is eating at it. Is eating at it, right? And then it essentially leaves behind cooling sulfur, aka brimstone, and how even that little detail features into the rituals of the venable family and the druid hills cult and how it all just plays very nicely together. I really like that. And thematically as well, you know, this idea of something eating at the heart of our world, eating at the heart of our country, eating at the heart of Atlanta, you know what I mean? This festering thing, it thematically ties in really well together. It really does. I couldn't have done it better myself.

I mean, it's awesome. It's so great. So we know that the enemy in this scenario is the Druid Hill Ghoul Cult. In typical Delta Green fashion, you could just run in and start shooting all these things, but it's a lot more complicated. Let's talk about the Druid Hill Cult and why it's so hard to exterminate them. Yeah, so this cult has

been in existence for over a century at this point. I mean, since the Civil War. Yeah, since the 1850s, due mainly to the fact that it was founded by this guy Richard Venable, who still leads the cult today in his ghoul form. It is dedicated to the worship of Nyogtha, but of course due to the family's ties with the Old South and the Ku Klux Klan, it is deeply, deeply bound to the goal of white supremacy. Now, immortality is the ultimate goal of this cult, and it accomplishes that through two ways. The first is by essentially creating thralls through this brimstone heart ritual, right, where a sorcerer can convert their heart into cold sulfur and their flesh is consumed and replaced with the material of Nyogtha itself. And then of course,

there is how the family perpetuates its agenda and its knowledge down through the generations over centuries, and that's the ritual of entwining. They make ghouls, make ghouls of themselves, but then they convince their children to become ghouls with the illusion or the assumption that they will then take over. But really what they're doing is injecting their

brain matter into their children so that they can take over the body of these children. And that's how this gets the attention of Joe Dewan. This entwining ritual involves the second born of the family, which is why Joe Dewan has noticed a trend that from this specific neighborhood, the second born is typically the one that always disappears without a trace, but is never reported missing. The ritual of entwining itself involves the male cult leaders. They are essentially pickled and brined in this jar. And it's their brain that gets brined, not the rest of the body, right?

And then eventually it is injected through the nasal cavity into the subject. And as that brain material spreads through their brain, it permanently seizes control of their body. And that is how they are able to achieve this immortality. It's not hypergeometric, but it is alchemic. So recently the mother and father of the Venable family were in an accident and died. What was left were their children, and one of them, Henry, has gone missing. But there is the eldest daughter, Abby.

And Abby is very interesting because she is very much a kind of NPC with their own agenda. Exactly. Abby, just as much as Joe Dewan, is very much a driving force of this scenario. She does have her own agenda and it involves manipulating and using the agents to her own end. And it may get to the point where even if the agents do pick up on the layers upon layers upon layers of lies as she feeds them, they may end up doing her bidding anyway just due to the existence of this unnatural threat in and under Druid Hills. But essentially Abby wants to seize control of the cult and through whatever means necessary,

whether that means sabotaging the entwining ritual for her younger brother Henry or just having the agents go in and once again, murder hobo everybody, regardless, the outcome is the same. The idea is essentially to exonerate herself from any responsibility or perception of responsibility and then have these cult leaders taken out so she can seize control. Yeah, she wants Richard and William Venable gone and I think the agents are the perfect tool for that

if you can play this right The challenge is is making her seem sympathetic and always Goating the the agents in the right way to get them to do what they want And this is an instance where I mean she's 19. She's barely an adult. She's a kid for all intents and purposes, right? so if your agents are inclined to underestimate her due to her age and seeming innocence in all of this, play that up, let her exploit, manipulate the hell out of that. I feel like players tend to be on high alert with every NPC they interact with, especially somebody that they know lives in Druid Hills. I mean, anybody in that community is going to be a potential enemy. So when agents see her,

she should maybe not be in a position to do much. She's not bossing people around. Maybe William Venable, who is really Jeremiah Ashcott, is the guy who appears to be kind of running the show, maybe bossing her around a little bit. You need to put this NPC in a position where she doesn't appear threatening. Yeah, and considering how manipulative and how, I guess, strategic she seems in the text and in the scenario, it would make sense that she, you know, like, would lie in wait and allow this perception to kind of perpetuate itself by taking a backseat long enough to allow the agents to come to this conclusion that she's as much of a victim as anybody else here. So let's talk about what I think is an interesting

element which is the thralls of the ghouls. You know it's set up where folks who become thralls think it's a great thing. They get to live forever effectively but that's not really true and maybe what's worse than that is they lose all sense of self control, autonomy, they just become zombies effectively that are well I guess a little bit smarter than the average zombie. Yeah with these thralls it is a role that is typically reserved for those quote-unquote lesser cult members who are valued for their groveling

obedience to the senior cult members. They are rewarded for their quote-unquote loyal service by receiving the brimstone heart and enacting this ritual. They become immortal servants and they serve as menial help to the Druid Hills families in perpetuity. For the Venable specifically, their butler is actually a thrall. And then Samuel Venable is probably the most notable. He became a thrall at the age of 82, and he was already obviously elderly and infirm. He is slow, uncertain in his movements.

He's lost his will to live, but he has no choice but to carry on his duties. It is definitely immortality with a big fat asterisk right next to it. The ghouls are pretty much the same kind of ghoul that you would expect from the handler's guide and from other scenarios. They use the ritual, I forget what it's called, to look human and they can, you know, when they eat people take on their memories etc. They are not really susceptible to people take on their memories, etc. They are not really susceptible to conventional damage.

Lethality rolls don't kill them outright. They apply damage as in with a failed lethality roll. But lethality still... They can't really suffocate? They can't really suffocate. Yep. Chemical weapons might help. Explosives, of course, fire, ramming them with a vehicle. They are they are tough and formidable enemies. And as this scenario will eventually demonstrate, there is a metric shit ton of them underneath Druid Hills. So, yeah, about like 200 or so. Right. About at least. Yeah. So you've got yeah, you've got a very tough enemy

and you've got them in staggering numbers. So this is not this is not stacked in the agent's favor. No what does make them unique is that they have a real passion for charcuterie. They do indeed they appreciate the finer things in life like charcuterie that's right. Except it's charcuterie made out of human flesh. Listen details right I mean. I mean of course something like that, John Scott Tynes knows that the first thing a handler is going to try to do is offer it up to the players, trying to get them to eat that charcuterie when they meet with members of the family, whatnot. If I was a handler running this, I would have the charcuterie always available, always being

offered to them. I might even bring real charcuterie always available, always being offered to them. I might even bring real charcuterie to the game and before we start offer it up for people to enjoy. I love that, that's a great freaking idea. Yep, they, you know, it goes into detail specifically in the section related to the Druid Hills Cemetery and Funeral Home where there is a widespread and specifically highlights the prosciutto style preparations of limbs or joints that are particularly favored and are openly displayed. Yeah, that's grody.

Now there are normal families in Druid Hills, at least, you know, they're not ghouls or they're not completely aware of what's going on, obviously for cover, you know, as kind of a buffer between the ghouls and the rest of humanity. Right. The best way I could probably describe them is useful idiots. These are people who are brought in by, specifically by the call and by these ruling families, for whatever it is they can bring to the table, politically, financially, socially. These are families who serve some purpose and help, like you said, provide that mask and cover for what's really going on in Druid Hills, but also is a point of leverage if they need someone to cover something up or they need some other assistance from these families of influence in Atlanta. So let's get into like running the actual operation and what you know agents are going to expect.

So obviously we have Joe Dewan being our introduction and probably being involved in one way or another. He's certainly going to be asking, hey, what's the latest? What's going on with your investigation? But what does that investigation look like? So, yeah, what's great is John Scott Tynes in this scenario kind of breaks down the various investigative leads that the players would be able to pursue and goes into pretty decent detail with all of them. So, you know, for example, one of the first things he mentions is that the agents can research the Venables and Druid Hills. They can research the car accident that killed Austin and Melvina

Venable and resulted in Abby beginning this plot to save her brother Henry and seize control of the cult. You've got interviewing Abby herself. You've got the Grey Malkin boarding school in Michigan that Abby alleges that Henry is visiting. How would our players go about investigating that and confirming that Henry is in fact there. You've got surveilling Stonehenge, which is the venable manor house. You've got their law firm, Solomon and Toro, of course the Center for the Missing Child, with through which you've got a great contact with Joe Dewan. Getting a warrant, which, you know, sure, go for it.

And then simply just asking for help, whether the agents are in the program or the outlaws. These are all great avenues, great investigative avenues I would want my players to take. So to see them specifically identified here, to give handlers that insight and to help them kind of, maybe, you know, poke and prod their agents in those directions, if they're kind of floundering is great. The problem is is

that they can poke and prod all they like but there's no obvious way of taking down this group at least not in the traditional Delta Green way of busting down a door with a shotgun and just blowing everything away. They have a much harder task ahead of them. That's exactly right. And Tynes is upfront about this at the very beginning of this section. He flat out says this operation is intended

as a fear victory at best. The agents are gonna realize they can't eradicate this entire coal and they themselves have to decide what outcome they consider acceptable. Is it gonna be saving Abby and Henry? Is it going to be saving Abby and Henry? Is it going to be trying to destroy this entire cult in this neighborhood and dying in the process? Is it cutting a deal with the ghouls? Is it cutting a deal with the ghouls and taking

Abby out for maintaining the status quo and keeping things balanced? For me, this is a great scenario in seeing what directions your agents will take it and what they decide they're willing to do in order to achieve some semblance of success. Yeah, this is very much a handler presenting a problem and it's literally up to the agents to figure it out. There are no clear answers in the scenario about how to solve this. Going back real quick though, I do think there is another possible option that Tynes

curiously does not mention, maybe because it's rather obvious if you think about it for a little bit, but the real problem at the end of the day of all of this that's going on is Joe Dewant. Not because he's a bad person for trying to solve this problem, but because it's an unsolvable problem and Joe is going to never stop trying to bring attention to it. So if you have a bunch of agents that realize this is an unwinnable situation, they don't want to die, Joe is constantly pestering about this, Joe might have to go. That's exactly right. Yeah, Joe unfortunately is one of those individuals who the further they go down

this this particular path and wanting to seek and achieve justice for Atlanta's children, it's a self-destructive spiral and there's no clean way for him out. Especially as you read through the scenario and you're going through those different stages, it's very clear that there's really no way Joe's getting out of this completely unscathed. And you know, Stone Mountain is a wild place. I think I have actually on like a field trip or once as a kid been to it, but looking at it, reading about it, it is a ridiculous place in terms of its connection with the Civil War, its history. I really liked Tynes' description of it because it's dripping with sarcasm

and contempt for the place. Oh, my absolute favorite is probably the last line in the description. At the top, where the gondola unloads and where the modern KKK was born are restrooms, a snack bar, and a concession stand serving pelletized ice cream like snacks. If the South rises again, it'll be with diabetes. My fucking favorite. This is how you include difficult elements like racism, bigotry. You make fun of it, you mock it, you point out how ridiculous it is, and I think it takes some of the teeth out

of it. There are organizations that the players can deal with. I think one of the most effective, or the ones that you're probably going to come across the most are the Decalde County Police. These guys are completely in the pocket. I believe one of them, the actual Sheriff, Sandra Devers, is an actual either ghoul or cult member. I don't remember. Yeah, so she's a captain in the DCPD and she's also an actual like cult member. So yeah, she's definitely in their pocket and helping kind of further their agenda within the police department. And I could see that being a good kind of secondary antagonist. You know, the players are thinking they're going to get a little bit of help from the local precinct and they get stonewalled and they, if anything, are trying to obfuscate the investigation.

Yeah, the agents go to the local police to try to get some assistance. And of course, Captain Dever's want to be nothing but helpful is there to point them in all the wrong directions. I love it. Yeah. He goes into detail about the different kind of interactions you can have with Abby, meeting Henry, meeting Jeremiah Ashcott. And then I like that there's an op-int moment that says, it's a hootenanny, which is what they scream when they want to let everyone know, when they want to let all the other rules know that it's time to drop your disguise and to kill these people. And I just think that's a great way to start combat by screaming, It's a Hootenanny! Yeah, that's...

Again, it's that kind of taking the piss out of these old southern families, right? Like who the hell calls anything a Hootenanny anymore? old southern families, right? Like who the hell calls anything a hootenanny anymore? And they're shouting that and then all of a sudden you've got everybody grabbing wine bottles and knives and anything they can use as a weapon to try to kill your agents. Which is terrifying for sure seeing a bunch of snobby elites suddenly trying to kill you. Yeah. There is a mortuary showdown and he goes into detail about what happens This is because Abigail is trying to get you to go to the mortuary and start a fight there She's got her own agenda. You can you know, the agents can kind of play their own thing, but

John breaks down kind of what happens at the mortuary and maybe how your agents might interact with it But it does seem like the the big showdown is at Stone Mountain when they are trying to convert Henry to a ghoul, to his final stage, because I think he looks like a ghoul, but he's not yet permanently at that final stage of being one. The whole scenario culminates with this initiation for Henry at the top of Stone Mountain Park, And this is where either players will have decided to align themselves with Abby and have swapped out this entwining fluid, you know, one that is made up of the brain of Henry's father and another that is simply just fatty tissue that has no effect on him whatsoever. And that is a very, you know, covert, clandestine way of achieving Abby's,

you know, objective is by swapping these two out. Then there's also, you know, what happens if an agent is taken prisoner. It's there's a number of different ways this can go and not all of them good. Yeah, the agent can be a fine vessel as well. They can get themselves injected. That's right. Yeah, they can have the brain puree injected into their nasal cavity and then all of a sudden they're taken over by Austin Venable. Yeah, that would be a unique, terrible way to go. Talking about the scenario overall, it very much is one of those things where there's the potential for your players to become frustrated at how impenetrable this cult is and I could see a lot of scenarios ending with

guns blazing in the in the ghoul warrens or at the top of stone mountain everybody gets arrested or killed or whatever and and it just kind of ends unceremoniously but I can imagine a situation where you warn the players ahead of time this scenario is almost like a situation where you warn the players ahead of time. This scenario is almost like a campaign, if you think about it in the right way, where it might not be a couple of days or weeks. It might be years. It might be generations of Delta Green agents putting a lockdown on this place and working the system,

working the government, working the law of Atlanta to root these guys out the hard way. I could see a very interesting campaign where, you know, it's less about exposing and destroying the ghouls in a violent way and more about just making it untenable for them to live here anymore and they have to disperse, but it would be a much longer game. Yeah, it really would. And something else I kind of like about it, though, is that this is definitely a scenario that causes players, even ones that are experienced playing Delta Green, to ask the question,

is this worth it? You know, because at the end of the day, what impact is Druid Hills having outside of that community? Outside of Atlanta, outside of Druid Hills? They are really insular. They're keeping to themselves. They are maybe marginally interacting with Atlanta society and politics, you know, but if anything it's just to further their own internal agenda. I mean, are they terrible people? Yes. Are they unnatural monstrosities? Absolutely. But is this a clear and present threat to modern day society? And, you know, you got to ask yourself, is it worth it? Another idea that I had was as a handler,

you could assist the players or the agents in breaking down the power structure by looking at the different families, the 13 families, and maybe giving one or two of those families a little bit of an extra amount of greed, where maybe they're involved in local crime syndicates or doing something outside of Druid Hills that is a little taboo for the cult or you know maybe the cult would not want them to do it but they're doing it anyway because

you know I'm an immortal ghoul I can do whatever I want. That then sets up a situation where you know like when they got Al Capone or these gangsters you know they get them on things outside of what they want to really get them on. They get them on extortion or racketeering or tax evasion. Tax evasion, baby. Yep. Uncle Sam's got to get their money. Yeah, I think that's a situation where you can give the players a little bit of a win and start the process of taking down the cult as a whole. So I would recommend that for handlers if they want a little bit of a win. I like that a lot.

I think that's a great avenue to go in that direction. Any other concerns or things that we want to talk about with this scenario that handlers should think about? Definitely give it a couple solid read throughs. Make sure you map out the various relationships and connections, cause there are a lot of them in this campaign, in this scenario. And of course, once again, be conscious of your players and their sensitivities. Be considerate of those and take that into consideration when determining how you're

going to portray the Druid Hill families and how blatant you're going to be with their racism and don't be afraid to shy away from it. Listen, at the end of the day, the racism is not the point or the core concept of this scenario. It's window dressing. You know, take it or leave it. Shut up and take my money because I am convinced that the good life is for me. So I hope other handlers give it a read as well. Yeah, and if you do, let us know how your experience was running it. Let us know how it turned out and what you'd recommend personally to run it effectively.

I would love to throw this at my players someday. Yeah, absolutely. I could see really role-play heavy groups like Mayday making a meal out of this scenario. Oh man, I love to see what they do with that. Let's get to discussing handouts because I love to see what they do with that. Let's get to discussing handouts because I love receiving them as a player, but as a handler, I don't usually create them for my Delta Green games.

I do share the handouts that are made available either with the scenario or the campaign, but I've never been sure where to start with fabricating props or handouts. It's definitely one of my weaknesses. Sergio, you thought it would be a good idea to discuss ways you could convince handlers like me to take a little extra time and create standout handouts that will wow your players and not waste your time. Yeah, this segment actually stems from a conversation I had with some patrons on our Discord. One of them had a Saturday free and they were working on a character backstory for an agent and they were producing a work badge. The character I guess works at Dow Chemicals and they were working on a character backstory for an agent and they were producing a work badge.

The character I guess works at Dow Chemicals and they were making it as a fun distraction. And I realized that there are limitless options when making Delta Green handouts. We live in a modern world and modern resources are a lot easier to fabricate and recreate than some kind of magic item from Dungeons & Dragons, for instance. That's very true. And remember, Delta Green is a game that works perfectly well in Theater of the Mind, and 99% of the game will be played this way. Handouts for Delta Green certainly add to the experience, but they're not required. Handlers should only undertake handouts if they have the time and the inclination. And also gauge your players interest in handouts. Some folks might not care for them or they might

even find it obnoxious and distracting to receive them. Yeah we'll get into why sometimes handouts can be too much for players but I think it's a good session zero question to ask. Are you guys cool? Are you interested in handouts? I do think having the skill rating in art does help when it comes to handouts, but you don't really need to be an artist to do most of what we're going to talk about today. So, Serge, what would be your first tip for handlers? I think tip number one is a more of a philosophical approach to handouts, which is you should prioritize your time over the quality of

the handout. I know that there are lots of perfectionist handlers out there, I'm one of them, but the time and effort it requires should be proportional to how much enjoyment your table is going to get at. Try to keep the handouts digital I think is a great suggestion. It not only saves on resources but also expands your options. For instance, in the scenario Lover in the Ice, there's a moment where the agents can find a strange sculpture of the creature that's terrorizing the town. You can share a digital rendition of that sculpture a hell of a lot quicker than physically making one. I know it's a little bit of a ridiculous example but

you get what I'm saying. Yeah. I think you should start player expectations low for handouts. Understand that players are going to be excited for just about anything other than their character sheet being handed them. If you invest too much effort into these handouts, you could create a false sense of expectations. And not just for the players, but for yourself as well. If you hold yourself up to this high standard, you're going to constantly be breaking your back trying to keep that up. I think that if you can ride the line between theater of the mind and the occasional handout, you can really encourage more active players, because they will know that if they look in the right places and ask the right questions, you might reward them with a cool handout. And that's why I think they're effective

when used correctly. Just don't overuse them. So, where to begin? First, you should read the scenario and you should ask what information am I trying to convey with a particular handout. Sometimes it's easy because the scenario has the handout ready for you. But handouts should always have clues and or answers to them. Too many handouts might confuse and get the agents to draw conclusions that you don't want them to. For example, I thought it would be really nifty to have a photo of every resident who lived at Spooner Avenue for music from a darkened room. And it's a cool idea and concept, but once you hand your agents over a dozen different

photos of the different residents, I could tell in their eyes that they really thought it was interesting, but they started to become confused as to the relevancy of these photos. Does it hold some kind of importance? They're looking at the details trying to figure things out, and I realized as Handler that it probably would have been unnecessary in the long run to give them this. Handouts should serve to facilitate the progress of their investigation, not slow it down. You raise a really great point. You kind of hit the nail on the head with that one word relevance.

How is this relevant? Is it a distraction or is it actually going to serve to keep things moving forward? And I will say most Delta Green scenarios have great potential handouts between the pages, but they aren't always separated from the rest of the book. Do you know of any way to get them out and extract them more efficiently? Yeah, so tip number two is a good suggestion if you have a photo editor like Photoshop. I know that there are similar editors that are powerful like Photoshop. And usually when you import a PDF into a photo editor,

they give you the option of separating the images in the PDF from the pages. If you select images, you can usually bring them into the editor without the entire page, which makes it easier to adjust it however you want and then print it out or save it as a document that you'll then show to the players on the screen. I do this frequently for Doom to Repeat and I do it for the Dead Drop. All those images that appear beside us are usually the things I've printed out or I've found through

the PDFs. And even if you do have a photo editor, you should always Google the scenario plus handouts first. You know, music from a darkened room, handouts. And you'd be surprised how much stuff already exists on the web, aimed to create a handout only when you cannot find it online. You should be trolling the discords, the subreddits, the message boards. You can usually find what you're looking for, plus.

Yeah, the Delta Green subreddit, I mean, the creativity of some of the people in there, some of these handouts and scenario aids they come up with are absolutely phenomenal. It's really a great untapped resource if you haven't looked there. But with that being said, let's talk about the different options that are out there to make different types of handouts. Maybe the folks listening haven't thought of everything. Yeah, and there are a lot. I mean, if it exists in the real world, you can probably fabricate it in one way or another. One of the most obvious that you can start with are things like letters, personal notes, journals, notebooks.

These are very common and easy to replicate. Sometimes just writing something by hand on a piece of paper is enough and you're done, you've got your handout. But if you want it to be in a specific kind of handwriting or from a specific period, you might need to go to a generator. I've listed below in our description a handwriting generator that you can type in something and it will try to convert it into handwriting that looks pretty good. There's also third party documents like police reports, government forms, autopsy reports, newspapers, books. In these instances, I would refrain from creating an entire book or newspaper, just a portion

that is relevant to the investigation. For example, in my scenario that I wrote called, Looks Could Kill, there is a clue that lies within the pages of a fictional TTRPG. And rather than design a whole game, I just shared the most important part of the source material for the players. In that same game I also created a school flyer, like a handout, that was announcing show-and-tell. And it's meant to be a clue to get the agents to that school. And you can find generators online for free for all those things. There's Cthulhuarchitect.com and Dole's house.org.

I remember Looks Could Kill. That was a great time. That was a good scenario. And I will say regarding police reports and government forms, if you look up Freedom of Information Act requests online FOIA, you're gonna be able to find all sorts of examples for those, like the FBI 302 forms, stuff like that.

So definitely use all the resources at your disposal to try to find examples to replicate. Well, that's a great suggestion. There are also architectural blueprints, diagrams, and Google Maps. So we're talking about maps here. These are powerful tools, but you have to avoid using them specifically during combat. Now, this is a little bit of an antithesis to I think what maybe some folks might be used to if you come from D&D and more grid-based combat where you think, oh there's combat, let me bust

out the map or the terrain. These maps help clarify the geography of a space, maybe even revealing something unnatural about the place, but the danger is maps draw players' focus down onto the map, they start thinking grid-based. You want your players thinking tactically, but Theater of the Mind for Delta Green, I think actually works the best because it allows that little bit of wiggle room

that you need. For example, in our original scenario that both Vince and I developed called Operation Tell, there is a map of the boat that the agents board, but the map isn't meant to be a one-to-one translation of the space. The distances and the time to get between places is left up to the handler. The map is broken more up into zones that the players can enter and exit and experience encounters in those zones. I really love mymaps.google.com. It's a variation of Google Maps

where you can build a region. Maybe you could choose a city or a state. I mean, you could choose the whole world if you wanted to. And then you can populate that map with landmarks that are real or fictional, but relevant to the investigation. I did it for reverberations. I did it for just about every scenario.

I like to find the map, zero in on it, and kind of pick out a couple of interesting spots. And then what happens is if your players start using it, they might actually point out things that are on the map themselves. Like they might say, hey, let's rendezvous at this donut shop that exists in town. And what I like to usually do is acknowledge its existence and just kind of roll with it. I think another handout that is very helpful because we are so visually based and usually we'd like to know what somebody looks like is images of people, people of interest that are involved in the scenario. Usually putting a name to a face helps the player avoid confusion and know who it is they're talking about.

Especially in kind of a long-term campaign or something. Now, you can steal images of real people and manipulate them with filters. I often find putting an oil painting filter over most images makes it look very similar to Dennis Detwiller's work. But there are websites, one that you introduced me to, Vince which is called thispersondoesnotexist.com. And if I'm not mistaken, it's basically a program that kind of just mashes people's faces together and creates a new person. Exactly. Yeah, that's my understanding of it. Mid Journey is also an option to get images. I think that if you're somebody who would rather not use AI, this person does not exist is

the better alternative. There are also, what I think is maybe one of the most indicative of Delta Green handouts, the investigation or conspiracy board. In this instance, you literally just pull out a court board and hand it to the agents and let them tack their clues to it. Maybe even throw them some red string for added effect. For a digital version of this, Eric Priester from Nature of My Game recommended to us using Miro.com, which is a digital version. This is probably the most effective and indicative prop when playing a Delta Green game and I love using them.

Another very fun handout is audio recordings, things like cassette tapes, phone recordings, or personal devices. You know, as you play into more the modern era, people aren't keeping journals, but maybe they're using a recording device to put down their thoughts. Wow, man, this is great stuff. And I will say a lot of folks do have the photo editing skills and experience to make incredible handouts, but usually, you know, the cost can probably get in the way. Are there any low cost alternatives to Photoshop? Yeah, I think first of all, we need to state that Adobe has ridiculous price gouging when it comes to their products. I honestly think Adobe should be

avoided at all costs these days, especially with the latest news that they now just have permission to do what they want with your art. But tip number three is there are alternatives. One of them, which I think is super powerful and super easy to use and kind of new is Canva. It's a website that is free. There are monthly fees for the greater editing capabilities,

but you can do so much with Canva. We use it to create promotional materials, but they have templates for newspapers, for business cards, for all kinds of stuff, and you can manipulate them however you want, export it in multiple versions. There's also other things. There are digital asset packs by Arc Dream for Delta Green. Now most of these digital asset packs you do have to pay for, but they occasionally have deals and some of them are for free.

They've recently released a esoteric kind of demonic symbols handout that I think is really cool. They come with brushes, fonts, images on transparency so they can be easily overlaid over something. I really recommend looking into those and we've included the link for that stuff. Any other good tips? So tip number four is probably the most controversial because it is use AI responsibly. Now I think it's important to point out that AI is in a very unregulated, uncontrolled phase at this point. And I'm hoping that some laws and some rules come into effect when it comes to using AI so that artists and folks that are affected by AI aren't losing their jobs and losing

possible pay. But if you're Joe Blow, you've got 20 minutes before your game starts and you just need to create something quick. Maybe it's a newspaper or maybe it's a photo of an MPC. I don't think you're really harming anybody. And I think it's probably fine to use AI in these instances. For instance, Mid Journey is an incredible tool to generate images You do need to have discord and you need to eventually pay for mid journey But you just type in forward slash imagine into the the text box Type in what you're looking for and it's pretty good about generating it. I usually recommend the simple things like faces

Objects places if you're trying to get a banner or something that has words on it, you're not going to have a good time because Mid Journey is not yet at that point. There is the website bing.com forward slash create that is a free version but a lot less effective than Mid Journey. Chat GPT is incredible at generating bodies of text. If you just need a bunch of text to jam into something, and it doesn't matter what it says, use ChatGPT. But if you do need to refine it a little bit, and maybe you need to create a news article that talks about the events of what happened in your last episode or last session, you can punch that information to ChatGPT, and it does a pretty good

job. It's incredibly powerful. So Vince, I've been rambling non-stop. Have you thought of any good tips you could offer to the players and handle it? Yeah, for a fifth one, I would say if you really do want to create handouts because you think your table would enjoy them but you just don't have the money to spend, just straight up consider asking the table if they would be willing to help you pay for a monthly program like Canva or a one-time purchase. We do it here at Mayday because we have funds thanks to our generous patrons, but I've asked friends of my home games to chip in for Roll20 subscriptions, sourcebooks, etc.

At the end of the day, no game is worth risking your financial stability over. So remember this entire discussion is based on the assumption that you and your players have the time and the money to invest. Yeah. I just like giving away these tips. There's a free tip for those who are dedicated to really top tier handouts. Let's say you love the idea of producing vintage looking paper, whether it be FBI documents or old records or whatnot, documents from the 20s, etc. There's a quick easy way to age paper. The type of paper doesn't matter so much but what you really need is to use a laser jet

printer to print whatever it is you want on the paper to avoid the ink from running. Then you take some coffee or tea and pour a dark batch into a cooking tray. You lay the paper in it, let it soak for four to five minutes, then you take it out, then you sprinkle a little bit of soy sauce randomly on it for that extra bit of aging and staining. You set your oven to 170 degrees, put the paper inside on aluminum foil so it doesn't catch fire, wait for 10 minutes, and voila, your documents are aged. It always looks really cool and the players love it. So if you have fun ideas or suggestions on how to create

handouts or props for Delta Green, Call of Cthulhu, or other games, post them in the comments below. We'd love to hear them. Yeah, Serge, thanks for those tips, man. For everyone, that's it for this month's Dead Drop. Be sure to send in any questions or topics you want to hear us discuss on the next episode. There was a great response to our Investigations 101 guide. So I plan on working on a cover-up guide next. Working title is The Cover-Up, a guide to blank the truth in Delta Green. So yeah, if you have any suggestions on anything you'd like to see covered or talked about in that guide, leave a comment, hit me up on Twitter or Discord, and me know because it's gonna be in the works pretty soon. Yeah for sure, you better believe we're gonna cover it here on the Dead Drop.

So don't forget to check out our Patreon at patreon.com forward slash maydayrp where you can get extended versions of this and every Dead Drop episode with a lot more great advice. Not to mention that now on our Patreon we are regularly running games for our patrons. Patrons are running games, so it's a great little community that you can join in and get a little bit more TTRPG love in your life. Well with that, until next time, stay safe everybody. See ya everyone! you