I love Delta Green. I love the lore. I think personally the majority of pre-made campaigns, splat books, and other supplemental material are some of the best ever seen for Lovecraft adjacent games.

A year or so ago I ran a very successful campaign of Impossible Landscapes for a PUG made up of complete strangers from online. But we met IRL, face to face for all our sessions. At the end we all agreed that Impossible Landscapes was one of the best horror campaigns for any RPG. And we were all ravenous to consume more Delta Green content. So of course we start hearing about God's Teeth before it released. About how great it is, how horrific and unsettling it was. Eventually the game came out. I got the PDF which included myriad warning about how icky and gross and triggering this campaign might be. Which only heightened my interest.

Within the first few pages I was presented with the most myopic, hand wringing, pearl clutching, outright cowardly content for a horror campaign I think I've ever seen. Of course people are going to bring up Candela Obscura but I don't think that's nearly as downright insulting as this campaign. Throughout, the author seems to have made the assumption for us all that we're all as emotionally stunted and irresponsible as the author himself. So much so that any horrific aspects of this campaign at all are censored heavily to the point where the horrific things are not described at all and the author lectures us to not even wonder what those horrific aspects are. Lest we unintentionally trigger a member of the group. I'll give an example.

At the very start of the campaign, only one of the party members is a true Delta Green agent. Having just lost their whole team. They are contacted by a mysterious member of another Delta Green cell. A woman who is clearly cagey and hiding things. She tells them to recruit the other players who are all Friendlies attending a fake seminar. And then plot and carry out the murder of the adult staff of an orphanage. The player is not made aware that this woman, Agent Clove has just witnessed and ran away from the murder of her fellow operatives by a sinister cult. But they should be made aware that Agent Clove is acting shady as fuck.  If that player has any questions as to why they've been given these orders, the GM is encouraged to make the NPC evasive. And not answer the question. Okay fine, but any player worth their salt will ask

"What am I even doing here? What's my motivation beyond a spooky mystery that's mysterious for the sake of being mysterious"

Instead, the player is meant to look at two folders. A manilla folder and a  red folder. The Manilla folder has info on the other players, and various tid bits of the orphanage including it's members. But doesn't quite say WHY these guys all need to die.  For all the answers they need Clove tells the player to look at that red folder for "motivation" as the book says. So what's in the folder? Allow the book to tell you.

Quote

Describing the Folder
Never—NEVER—describe the specific contents of the cartoon cat folder.
Doing so risks real harm. Actual child abuse is as close to sanity-blasting
unnatural knowledge as we get in the real world. Keep everyone safe at the
table with the provided indirect descriptions. That way, players stay in control of
their Agents' actions while acknowledging the fact that they cannot control what
their Agents feel when confronted by such nightmares.
Furthermore, keeping the exact contents at a remove ser ves a vital purpose
for the campaign: the folder is a Pandora's box of motivation. The operation
looks wrong from the start because it is wrong. The Agent and the Friendlies
have good reason to be uncomfortable with the situation. The cartoon cat folder
is why they're going to shut up and plow ahead anyway.

So I have a plot relevant folder that provides some contextual horror. But I'm not allowed to describe it at all. Maybe in the vaguest sense. I still don't know what exactly is in the folder. I think based on some very vague, very myopic hints elsewhere in the book that it's supposed to be full of ritual sacrifice, mutilation, and rape of children. Which I can absolutely understand is something people might be bothered by. But as a GM I'd have done my due diligence of reading the book cover to cover. Understanding the content inside and then informing my players of potentially mentally triggering things, so THEY could make an informed decision on whether that content bothered them enough so they could opt out of the campaign. So I should be able to describe even in the most abstract of terms what exactly is in this folder, and how it's relevant to the plot. But if I were dumb enough to run this RAW here's how any exchange between the GM and this player regarding this folder will go.

Quote
GM: Clove gives you this red folder. She tells you that if you have any real questions. You should look at it's contents. It'll give you all the motivation you need.
Player: Okay, that's spooky. I take the folder and open it up. What's inside?
GM: Dunno.
Player: What?
GM: Dunno. The campaign doesn't say. It says you should just make something up that's personal to you and motivates you.
Player: What the fuck? I don't even know what could be in the folder to make up anyway because Clove hasn't told me anything.
GM: Yeah Clove is being really evasive. She's actually already left so you can't question her anymore.
Player:Can you at least tell me what's in the folder?
GM: Dunno, the book told me off for even wondering what was in there.
Player: Jesus fucking christ.
GM: Here, roll on this table that vaguely tells you what emotion you feel whilst looking at the folder that I'm not allowed to describe the contents of.

Now to be absolutely fair to the book, it does at least say this if your players want to take a closer look

Quote

Close Viewing: The Pictures
Closer study costs 1/1D4 SAN from helplessness. That
is the Agent's last SAN loss from the folder.
Foolish Agents may want to inspect the photographs
in the cartoon cat folder for more details. Keep in
mind the rules for handling the folder and the general
guideline that the contents should never be described
explicitly.
An Agent with Art (Photography) at 20% or higher
or Computer Science or SIGINT at 40% or above
realizes that the photographs can't be fake. Technology
capable of simulating the poor lighting conditions
of the photographs does not exist. The quality is
consistent in every Polaroid. The scene depicted is the
same from multiple angles.
The photos carefully avoid the faces of adult
participants. Some seem young, some elderly. Some fit,
some decrepit or obese. Some men, some women. A
few tattoos are visible, as is a penchant for the adults
to be castrated. The tattoos clearly come from the
Russian prison tradition, though they skew closer to
Eastern Orthodox symbols. Castration, on the other
hand, isn't common in even the hardest gulags. Men
and women alike show those terrible scars. An Agent
who succeeds on a Forensics or Medicine test studying
anatomical features suspects no more than half a
dozen in all.
Agents with History 80% or higher or Occult
60% or higher, or who succeed at either test at −20%,
can correlate the symbols and the tendency toward
genital mutilation to legends of a group known as the
Skoptsi, a Russian Orthodox splinter sect that began
in the 18th century and was reduced under constant
persecution to a few rumored communities by the
1990s. The Skoptsi are well documented as preaching
the holiness of castration and sexual mutilation.
Interested players can find information on them
online. Vague and sourceless rumors accused some
Skoptsi communities of darker pursuits, gaining life
and power from devils. Agents with History or Occult
skills higher than base but who fail the test still realize
something is there to be investigated further.

Okay so I'm still being told to not describe the contents. But I can at least say these are pictures. And they have people in them. And if they pass another roll I can say they're cultists.

THIS IS NOT HOW YOU RUN A HORROR CAMPAIGN YOU ABSOLUTELY SPINELESS LITTLE BUGMAN!

I could go on. There are actually several instances where the campaign seems to be building to some horrific scene or exposition. But you are yet again told not to describe it. Not to wonder about it. And just side step around it.  So my question as a GM to the author then becomes this.

"If you're so certain that this game is triggering to the point you as the author are self censoring all the horror bits in a HORROR campaign, thus retarding all horror aspects. Why are you even making this pointless campaign that can't do what it's actually meant to do? SCARE THE FUCKING PLAYERS! Why are you making a campaign when you can't even depict the horror at all for fear of being cancelled? Why bother even making this? It's pointless."

It just pisses me off that this book bakes in several assumptions about mine and potentially your GMing style. Assumes everyone is as much of an arrested development manchild as the author clearly is. Assuming that you're just going to unintentionally trigger someone and thus because of that, you don't get to even look at the horror elements. It completely ignores any autonomy or personal responsibility as an ADULT that someone choosing to play a horror campaign might have. Let me be absolutely clear, as a GM I wouldn't run this for anyone who was truly traumatized by sexual assault and child molestation. Having a warning about that on the DTRPG page and inside the book is absolutely fine. But that's the beginning and end of the author's responsibility for a group's mental state. I'm the GM. I have final say on who is in the group for a session. And the players themselves can make an informed decision on whether a horror campaign centering around very dark and adult themes. I can trust myself to be respectful and mature enough about a person's mental state to advise them that a particular campaign may not be for them. But we all have to live in this world where SJWs assume everyone is as irresponsible, immature and unsympathetic as them. And frankly that pisses me off to no end when it's directly ruined what could've been a good campaign.

I swear this is a mental game of "I'm not touching you."  It's like he's deranged and gets off on getting as close as he can to the subject mater without getting flagged as a pervert. 

Quote from: BadApple on January 21, 2024, 09:09:25 AM
I swear this is a mental game of "I'm not touching you."  It's like he's deranged and gets off on getting as close as he can to the subject mater without getting flagged as a pervert.

I suspect a lot of this comes from the game SJW's have designed to catch people out so they can cancel them. Whereby simply describing or depicting something, even in the most neutral and matter of fact way is somehow an endorsment of that thing in the "everything is political" sense.

SJWs in general are very defensive and sensitive about child molestation in a way that is extremely telling. They love to project their sins onto others that they can then punish instead of themselves. And then assume everyone is like them. A rational human being who doesn't fiddle with kids doesn't need to be constantly told that kiddy fiddling is wrong because they inherently know it to be true. And know that depicting that in an RPG is being done to show how horrific and vile the antagonists are. That should all go without saying but this is the shitty world we live in.

Sad to see the state of affairs.


This reminds me of the Candela Oscura PDF that waggles the finger at the Players about not "gamefying" insanity and mental illness because its offensive and terrible and kills puppies every time you do it. And, on the same breath, lists a lot of ways to gamefy physical illness and disability. So, gamefying physical disability is fine, but gamefying mental disability is something only horrible people would do and you should feel bad for wanting to do it.

...all of this in a supposedly "horror" game.

You can't make this BS up.

I backed this one as well, and I don't get why there's such squeamishness when it comes to Delta Green ops being disturbing as hell. It's always been part of the attraction. DG has frequently been super gross, going all the way back to it's first appearance in The Unspeakable Oath in '92 or so. That protomatter in the very first Groversville scenario. Man, I was hooked.

That said, to be fair, when Caleb first ran this for the RPPR gang, I recall that he made the Hello Kitty folder a more supernatural seeming macguffin that just instantly made any investigator who gazed into it immediately compliant with the agenda.

Here's a link. Give at least the first episode a listen when time permits, and see if you come away with a similar opinion of what he was doing with the Hello Kitty folder:

https://actualplay.roleplayingpublicradio.com/gods-teeth-a-delta-green-campaign/

Timestamp is 17:10 to 19:45 for the first PC to view the folder's contents.

Edited for formatting and to add timestamps

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 21, 2024, 08:20:01 AMThere are actually several instances where the campaign seems to be building to some horrific scene or exposition. But you are yet again told not to describe it. Not to wonder about it. And just side step around it.

To be fair, as a fan of horror and a sometime writer of horror stories, I can confirm there is a good case for the "less is more" school of exposition. In Danse Macabre Stephen King describes the "ten-foot-tall bug" effect, which is that when the horror to which you've been building -- a ten-foot-tall bug standing at the door in a thunderstorm when you throw the door open, say -- is finally revealed, the audience screams, but in the scream is always a note of relief. "A ten-foot-tall bug is pretty bad," they're thinking, "but I can handle that. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall." So in the next movie the writer throws open the door to reveal a hundred-foot-tall bug standing there, and the audience screams, but again they're thinking, "That's bad, but it could've been worse -- it could've been a thousand feet tall." And so on.

The great advantage of not being specific is that the audience can usually imagine for themselves something much worse in the gaps. Had I been writing that section I would have told the GM to read something like this in the event they did open the Kitty folder:

Quote"You've all seen more than you want to of the ugliness of reality. Eldritch beings whose very footsteps distort the space and time through which they move. The wreckage of human beings who seized hold of cosmic forces they had the arrogance to think they could control ... or the despair not to care if they couldn't. Good men and women who died in agony for no reason other than not moving quick enough, or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time ... or who'll be living the rest of their life in a straitjacket, eating through a straw, because they kept their eyes open just a few seconds too long.

"This is more than that. This is worse. Because this is nothing more than people doing what people are capable of doing.

"The photographs are carefully arranged to conceal the faces of the adults in shadow. In its own way that's almost the worst of it: the care, the genuine artistry, with which these pictures have been taken. The light shows only what they've done. And the only faces visible are those of the victims they've done it to. The children.

"Further study for clues will require a SAN roll."

Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

"What's in the folder?"
"Pictures of people murdering children."
"Okay, let's go get them."

TAH-DAH.

Quote from: Valatar on January 22, 2024, 02:22:13 AM
"What's in the folder?"
"Pictures of people murdering children."
"Okay, let's go get them."

TAH-DAH.

Greetings!

Exactly, Valatar.

I guess the company that does the book are too stupid to speak or write effectively.

Just sad.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

Can't help but feel you're deflecting my criticism. I'm not asking for details. I've no idea what made you think that. It's not that I want to see child abuse. I'm asking the ability to describe a horrific scene at all. If I feel it's too graphic I can decide as GM to tone it down myself. Preferably without a tedious lecture. If a player doesn't like ANY depiction of child abuse no matter how vague they can choose not to participate. Hell if the author had a problem with it he could've chosen to just not write this waste of paper. And I don't know why he didn't. I don't see an issue with a simple description

"This folder contains images of adult men and women. They are wearing strange robes and several pictures depict them engaging in the vile and horrific abuse of children. Roll 1d10 SAN from the horrific."

As I said before. If I play as written I can't describe the fundamental exposition. "This is bad because it makes you feel bad." I just have to TELL the player what they're feeling and then move on hoping that's enough and the player isn't confused. Instead of them deciding and roleplaying what they feel for themselves after being told what's in the folder. Because robbing the player of agency is the only way to move the campaign forward. By not just communicating one thing the players will have no reason to engage with the campaign at all. A horror campaign where the horror is scooped out and replaced with lectures multiple times throughout the book. What good is a horror campaign that censors it's own horror? Imagine a DnD campaign that censored any depiction of combat and violence in a dungeon crawl. What good would that be? Y

This all seems rather academic to me.  They can lecture and wag their fingers all they want but they can't actually enforce any of this.  They can say "never ever" all they want to but they have no way of making that stick.  They can't really do anything if the GM just says, "No" and blows them off.

Why the fuck is the author writing a scenario for a horror game if he's unwilling to put horror in the games?

Now don't get me wrong, I don't want or need him to go into gritty perverse detail but 'imagine it yourself' is just shit.

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
Man, when it comes to Child Abuse, call me crazy, but I don't think anyone should be describing that in any kind of detail at their table.

Even Werewolf 1st edition, back at Whitewolf's most edgy, had a wyrm cult of child abusers called "The Seventh Generation" and was like, "Don't get into the details of what they do."

I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

I'm a survivor of a lot of cults in real life. It's hard to describe the sheer sense of helplessness and isolation being subjected to that does to a person.

Regardless of my own sense of perversity, I've never thought before now about even the remote possibility to translating that into adventure material of all things. The horrors in my head stay in my head. And I don't feel comfortable sharing them with others. There is no catharsis for me that serves as good enough excuse to subject others to my own personal demons.

This is why I have not bowed to the temptation and written horror adventures featuring Christianity as the mad cult with aspirations of world domination. I prefer my horror adventures to be firmly steeped in the mythical. There are plenty of ancient legends to mine and put a new twist on. So I'll never run out of material to mine.

I haven't read God's Teeth. But from the description here, I can tell it is just not for me.

Quote from: Grognard GM on January 22, 2024, 06:32:02 AM

Quote from: Orphan81 on January 22, 2024, 01:18:00 AM
I think if fucking Whitewolf back in 1992 with "Rage Across New York" was saying, "Don't do detailed child abuse scenes" I'm going to give Delta Green in 2024 a pass in saying, "Don't detail what's in the red folder about the Orphanage victims." It's not rocket science to say, "You look in the folder, it revolts you, causes you sanity loss, and fills you with determination that the folks running this Orphange NEED TO FUCKING DIE."

If a subject is too taboo to discuss, don't make a fucking rpg campaign about it.

I take all this with a big grain of salt because I haven't read the module, and seeing selected quotes isn't the same thing as reading it in context. That doesn't mean I disagree with the OP -- I might agree more strongly with the OP, but just that my opinion isn't firm until I've read it myself.

I think I agree with both Orphan81 and Grognard GM to a degree. I agree with Orphan81 in that the original post used terms like "spineless" and "manchild" to criticize the advice of not describing the child rape being described, when I think it is totally and completely reasonable approach. I might disagree with the tone of how it's advocated, but if I was running a horror scenario that included child rape, I'd strongly consider not describing it.

On the other hand, I also agree that if the scenario authors feel that "real harm" is risked by describing child rape, then it doesn't make sense to include it as a central subject in the adventure. Basically, in the quotes, the authors don't come across as "spineless" or "manchild" -- they come across as inconsistent.

---

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 21, 2024, 10:18:07 PM
To be fair, as a fan of horror and a sometime writer of horror stories, I can confirm there is a good case for the "less is more" school of exposition. In Danse Macabre Stephen King describes the "ten-foot-tall bug" effect, which is that when the horror to which you've been building -- a ten-foot-tall bug standing at the door in a thunderstorm when you throw the door open, say -- is finally revealed, the audience screams, but in the scream is always a note of relief. "A ten-foot-tall bug is pretty bad," they're thinking, "but I can handle that. I was afraid it might be a hundred feet tall." So in the next movie the writer throws open the door to reveal a hundred-foot-tall bug standing there, and the audience screams, but again they're thinking, "That's bad, but it could've been worse -- it could've been a thousand feet tall." And so on.

The great advantage of not being specific is that the audience can usually imagine for themselves something much worse in the gaps.

I agree with this, but it also suggests that keeping things vague doesn't protect the players from the ostensible "real harm" that the first quote cites. The players can and will be imagine horrible stuff without the description, which would be just as harmful, I would think. If a player has a problem with child sexual abuse, say, I just wouldn't use this material at all rather than using it without vague description.


TLDR: Nothing wrong with the "keep it vague" approach, but the description of why to use it sounds wrong.