Joint Task Force- special operations

[welsh]

Hey Folks-

So I have been thinking about running a game that involves federal agents but not necessarily delta green. The group would be comprised of agents from a number of varied government agencies who are being coordinated by an Assistant Attorney General out of the Southern District of New York (basically Manhattan). The Joint Task Force teams are usually comprised of representatives of different agencies so as to pool the varied talents and resources of those agencies together, but they work directly for an Assistant Attorney General. If you know X-Files lore, think of the AAG as something of a Skinner type character. The Task Forces are usually given a number of different investigations that can concern any of a host of different issue areas (intelligence/counter-intelligence, organize crime, RICO, taxation, immigration) but one group is the Special Investigation's Unit, which deals with varied "odd" occurrences as necessary. Usually these Special Investigation cases are mundane, but sometimes they are a bit odd. Ideally agents would be attached to the Joint Task Force for an extended period of time.

This game isn't really Delta Green because it's all official and there is no reason to think there exists a Delta Green in this particular universe, so we are not caught up in the Delta Green Canon. But there might be Mythos-esque cross-overs here, and I've been thinking of one particular adventure that is definitely based on Delta Green (but I am not revealing it now). In fact, there may be some Mythos canon involved and I might borrow some elements. Overall this is a more investigative procedural crime game with occasional, perhaps rare, horror/sci-fi elements.

Among the elements of the game-
Was the death of a Turkish Tycoon murder and why are his family members disappearing?
Is there really something living under the subways?
Is the mysterious death of an international art historical connected to a recently discovered Rothko painting?
Who is stealing rare books out of Colombia University?
Is there a murderer moving through the tunnels of New York City?
What is causing homeless people to fall into a deep coma?
Are suicides in Greenland related to global climate change?
Why did the Iranians send Quds team to NY?
Did a plane flying in from Canada crash in the Long Island South, or was it brought down?
Was the disappearance of a priest in Colombia related to his work with the CIA, because he stumbled on a radical faction of FARC guerrillas or because of something more primitive?
Why are people disappearing near the harbor?
Why did a group of children go missing during a meteor shower?
Are gangsters dealing in black magic?
Are the police involved in a series of arsons?
Where did the missing DEA agent go?
Is there hidden treasure in that old Indian holy site besides copper?

As you can guess, this is really a campaign game or a series of stories, that are somewhat connected. While I expect players to come and go, serious players can expect these games to take awhile.

Interested?

[Philulhu]

I’d be interested.

[Mr. Handy]

I'm interested too.

[Snapper]

Count me in!

[welsh]

Dear Players-

Ok. Glad to see some interest in the game. I have hosted a few games that kind of went a long time and sometimes players stick and other times the game kind of craps out. But as many of us are still at home due to the virus, this might be a good time to get one going.

I am still hoping for a bit of a bigger group at this point but perhaps we can recruit a few more players as the game continues. A couple of things about the players. I'd like them to come from a variety of different agencies, but among them, I would like a few skills. I'd like at least one player to have a medical science or pharmaceutical background- some one who understands human anatomy and health. I also like at least one character with some experience flying, ideally a helicopter, as that might come in handy at some point in the future. All characters will have had some prior military or law enforcement background (essentially allowing you some enhanced skills left over from that training). Characters are in their late 20s to mid-30s. I would prefer that characters leave out personal history prior to college. All characters are not from NY originally but have recently been assigned there.

For the sale of candor, I am originally from NY but haven't lived there since the 1990s, so I will need to update myself with some current events and the NY we'll have in the game isn't quite the same as real life, although the major landmarks, demographics will be what you probably know for TV.

I am thinking about starting with a case either involving a camping trip that has gone missing or the case of the missing DEA agent.

Do you folks want to start creating your agents? I think applying basic Delta Green Rules to begin?



.

[Mr. Handy]

I was thinking of playing an NSA codebreaker with computer and technical skills, but I'm not sure whether or not that would work for this game. Delta Green rules are fine with me. Do you mean the new Delta Green rules (which I have)?

[Philulhu]

I don’t have access to the DG rules but hopefully that won’t matter. Is there a DG character generator anywhere I can use? I had a brief look online and found a few sheets but nothing automated.

[Snapper]

I'm leaning towards a Special Agent with the EPA, that's a suitably obscure area of law enforcement.

I have the DG Agents Handbook from Arc Dream Publishing, the most recent iteration of DG (I think...). Is that the version of the rules you are referring to?

[welsh]

Hey Folks-
Glad to see so much interest in the game.

At the moment, I am leaning on allowing each of you 2 characters to get started, one that would be more of a "choice" character- where you might want to do something creative- a cryptologist or EPA investigator if you like while the other agent a more traditional agent- FBI, DEA, CIA, Homeland Security. Part of the story might as well be that the characters are being involved in the joint task force group in part so that agents are receiving some cross-training with members of other agencies, to help acquire skills and pool talents, but also well as perhaps prepare all the agents for some kind of, yet unclear, professional development. In fact, why you are being recruited for a Joint Task Force is a bit unclear, as is often the case when working in a large bureaucracy. You are told you've been given an assignment but are often not told why and kind of have to figure it out for yourselves. As the story progresses, you may find out that there are things you have in common with your peers, some of which will be revealed as the game progresses.

So, to be clear, this is anticipated to be a VERY LONG and somewhat convoluted game. You may wish to think of this as something of a Call of Cthulhu/Delta Green/X-files cross over in which, you are playing agencies, there are some hidden mysterious things at work, some involves odd conspiracies both within and outside of government, but that the episodes may end without much clear resolution, but that the series is probably moving towards some clearer definitive end point. What you are experiencing in a particular "episode" may not necessarily related to another "episode" or if you like, one inconclusive investigation may not be connected to another investigation, but there are a number of story arcs that are unfolding if perhaps in different directions.

As for rules
We might as well go with the Delta Green Quick start rules. Perhaps the Need to Know rules?[ https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/17 ... ed-to-Know . I've tried to attach them here, but it seems to suggest that the file quote has been passed? Perhaps when we get the game going I can upload them. Does anyone need them?

As for your character creation- Normal Quick start rules- Need to know- has characters start with 72 points along three different configurations. That said, I would like to have agents that have a deeper backstory to the game than might be readily apparent. I would like to give you a choice. I will up the basic stats to 77, but I would ask only that your character backgrounds and bonds might receive a bit of modification consistent with the story line. Or we could go with the basic 72 point rules, but without the modifications, and you create the character you want. I'll allow you to create players either way but if you will allow out a bit of influence in your character's back story, I'm happy to offer up an extra 5 points to the character traits.

Dice roller- does anyone have decent recommendation? Sorry to say but I haven't been on in quite a few years (real life really did catch me hard with a new teaching job and only recently am I able to catch something of a breath). So it's been awhile since I've been updated with the innovations. I am fine with a honor code, but I think a good dice roller usually helps keep the game fresh.

At this point I'd like you to start going ahead with your player characters. So create 2. One that is your unusual choice if you like and another is a more traditional agent. Again, I'd love to have a character who has some experience in medicine and pharmacology and another who can fly, but if that can't be achieved, I'm happy to create NPCs can that can serve that function.

I'd like to be honest with you all on this so you know what you might expect. The ideas of the story lines have been to mulling around for awhile. My main concern starting the game is that it begins strongly as a police procedural with some weird elements, but I think the early part of the game will involve a number of rather inconclusive investigations that might not quite reach a clear end point before you are off investigating something also a bit odd but in a different way. Much as a murder investigator might be assigned multiple cases at the same, time, you're work with the JTF will take you into different investigations. The motivations and goals of the assigning Assistant Attorney General may be left unclear to you for now.
So the game will require a bit of patience.

I'd also like to also make a disclaimer- it's been years since I've done a game on this or any other board. So I am a bit rusty. I will try to post every day or every other day. There is at least one pre-created game (perhaps 2) that I do plan on borrowing from but with a number of odd twists. Most of this is really quite unusual. At present this really is something of an experiment.

Do you have questions?

Oh, the Delta Green board has some other sources that might be useful if you need them- http://www.delta-green.com/2017/03/free ... lta-green/ also there is a really useful little quick reference that might help https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xq5 ... ZWF4M/edit

[Philulhu]

Thanks for those. I’ll get some reading done.

Provisionally, I’m thinking my main PC will be an older forensic pathologist, with a Fed. Agent as my second.

When is the game set?

[Snapper]

Sounds absolutely brilliant. I'll start reading!

I'd be happy to go the EPA Special Agent and for the alternate, a DEA S/Agent. One or the other of them can have piloting. Maybe the EPA guy? Seems useful for his role.

Regarding dice, this forum has a nice dice roller, press the button marked "dice" and put in what you want, e.g. 1d100 . Mr Handy is the expert in all things forum though.

Definitely excited about this.

Snapper

[Mr. Handy]

Thank you. My second character will be Homeland Security. I hope to have some time tonight to create them, or otherwise it will have to wait until next weekend. I'm off from work today, so I have a little time, but this is my last day off until July, and I also need to work on getting Zombie Apocalypse ready for Chapter 2. I'll take the extra five points and have my backstory modified for both of my characters.

Invisible Castle died a long time ago, but the board now has its own built-in dice roller which will last as long as the board does. I've been using that, and it works well, though it does have limitations (such as maximum of 20 rolls per post and no combining different types of dice in the same roll). You can find instructions for it here.

[welsh]

Hey Gents-

Well lovely. So let's start with the character creation and, for sake of transparency, some thoughts going forward. As suggested above, the characters in this game will share certain common characteristics, so if you'll forgive me, I'd like to make a few suggestions about the agents involved. I do not anticipate the first episode to involve significant violence but merely to get us in the habit of working together, trying to set something of a pace of interaction, and perhaps start working on some of the kinks. If we can get started in a week or so, that would be great.

As for person backgrounds and bonds. I would allow characters to be married, friends from prior military or services, as well as bonds made with agents from other branches.

Thanks for the tips on the dice roller. Looking forward to trying that out.

Handy, no rush. Sorry to hear your time off is coming to an end and I know that the Zombie Apoc eats a lot of time. I hope the game will not be too demanding of your involvement as we proceed. Will you take the modifications for both characters? Some thoughts about your character backstories.

NSA Code Breaker- some thoughts- might be working both counter-intelligence operations in NY, primarily looking either at code breaking of delegations operating through the UN and perhaps at financial movements through New York. It is possible that much of this work relates to banking and money transfers through major banking operations as part of the US efforts to observe terrorist financing and the interactions between foreign governments and terrorist operations, while also keeping track of potential foreign intelligence operations. Some of the work of your code breaker has perhaps been working with FinCen as well as other agencies- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial ... nt_Network and https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL33020.html if you have time. NSA operations are often rather quiet, so the agent's attachment might be seen as a temporary deployment to assist in operations. Good chance your character got their intelligence service origins in the US military (you choose). perhaps has a degree BA/BS Homeland Security/Computer Science, with a masters in computer science? Background here means that your agent might have a number of contacts across different agencies. Perhaps mid to late 30s in age?

Homeland Security officer- Any thoughts on where on in what capacity? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... #Structure . The person could be an ICE agent but could be Secret Service as well. My guess would be that this is a person who served in the military at some point, got a degree on the GI Bill and then got a position in government, benefited from security clearances. Some foreign languages here might be useful for this character. If you are thinking treasuring, could be a case for financial crimes as well as money laundering, counterfeiting. If you haven't yet, you might want to check out the secret service webpage- https://www.secretservice.gov/ or ICE- https://www.ice.gov/

Snapper, I actually like the idea of your EPA person. It's a weird gig to be doing EPA work in NYC. but I think that's doable. Are you seeing some military background in this character perhaps? Maybe 10th Mountain Division, perhaps with one of its air units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10th_Mountain_Division , this was followed by some time out west working for the Park Service as a law enforcement ranger- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_ ... nt_Rangers and more recently to EPA after working towards a degree in chemistry and environmental science? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... ion_Agency

As for your DEA agent, one of the initial cases/episodes concerns a DEA agent who goes missing but who has been involved in a number of other on-going investigations. It might be possible your agent has been drawn in in order to facilitate DEA cooperation, but your agent would likely be coming from outside of NYC. It might also be possible that if your character might be connected to some other service that has been pulled into the investigation. This could be FBI, Marshal's Service, perhaps even State Department or CIA. That said, there will be a lot of narcotics figuring in this game, so DEA if a fine choice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_Enfo ... n#Firearms

Phil- I think both are excellent choices and both could be FBI persons as well, given the FBI's extensive lab support system.
For the Forensic expert- you may wish to consult here for some support- https://www.fbi.gov/services/laboratory ... -positions . Your Forensic Pathologists could also be a college professor, having recently left the government and working as a research at Colombia or NYU, and is being hired out as a consultant to the Assistant Attorney General's Office for now. For your FBI person, a lot of attention has gone to terrorism but organized crime might be something that we haven't touched on.

It's a great question about time. I had originally thought about the game time as the present day, but given Covid-19, it's an odd time. A near future would be also potentially interesting given we are likely to see the consequences of the pandemic for the next year or 2 and the consequences are a bit uncertain. That said, going back to 2018 kind of beats the purpose on this as well. We could do an alternative time line, but then we need to think about the alternatives. So it's a good question and honestly, something I hadn't really considered. Most of my thinking of this game had been done before COVID but now.... hmmmm....

One possible future- 2021, summer, about a year from now. COVID-19 has continued wrecking havoc around the world but by the beginning of 2021, treatments for COVID had been begun to show some effectiveness and a vaccine had been developed and released but results were uncertain, and more wide spread testing had finally been achieved. By that time roughly 60-80% of the world had been infected by the virus, with a mortality rate of some 10% leading to the loss of life of some 20 million lives lost in the US, and higher fatality counts elsewhere. The consequences were even more extreme internationally. Worse yet, the virus had continued to mutate and it was likely that this we could expect repeated outbreaks with vaccine resistant strains for the foreseeable future. The US elections had been hotly contested and while the Republican Party had lost control of the Congress, President Trump had been able to narrowly win the Electoral College and remained in office, although there had been numerous allegations of election fraud and election rigging in part because of the many persons who had voted absentee ballots through the mail. Protests against the election results had been repressed with violence, leaving behind a more polarized and divided society, significant animosity and distrust of the central state by all factions of US society, and the government paralyzed as Democratic controlled Congress again investigated the President's victory. Criminal investigations had become widespread and political violence continued to flare up, with hate crimes growing and political assassinations becoming increasing common place. Significant allegations of election manipulated had been charged to both Russia (Pro-Trump) and China (Pro-Biden). Internationally and domestically, economic activity having grinded to a halt was very slowly recovering. The developing world had been especially hard hit and the virus continue to rage across those society, slaying many in the Developing World's overcrowded cities. The year of virus had become increasing a year of violence, coup and civil war. Both Russia and China's authoritarian leaders were struggling to remain in office as repeated waves of virus had swept through their countries with significant political consequences. Across Latin America, weak state institutions had failed to respond to the either the virus or economic fallout, leading increased risk of state failure. Middle East tensions had exploded. Both Pakistan and India had increased their tensions over Kashmir but neither had decided to go nuclear yet. The Taliban had quickly filled the vacuum of power as the US withdrew from Pakistan, only to find Afghanistan once again divided by civil war.

What do you think? A post-Covid world teetering to the potential breakdown and collapse?

[Snapper]

Ooh yeah, I'm a sponge for extra stat points! I'll go the 77 point option for both.

[Philulhu]

What do you think? A post-Covid world teetering to the potential breakdown and collapse?

Sounds like it could work for me

[Mr. Handy]

That sounds good to me too. I'll also take the 77 points for both characters.

[Snapper]

Post Covid world good with me. I think the career path you described for my EPA S/A sounds perfect.

Do we want to create a specific board or keep posting draft characters here?

[welsh]

Dear Players-

Great to see such enthusiasm. Honestly, setting this in a post-Covid world creates lots of opportunities for Deep State conspiracies and other issues. This could become a very political game- do you mind? I don't want to hurt anyone's political sensitivities (and a warning- I used to be moderate Republican and am more recently progressive Democrat).

I am tempted to start a new board, but one of the issues is "where?" Is this a modern game playing Delta Green rules or is this a Delta Green game outside the Delta Green canon? It's a bit of a hybrid. I am tempted to put this in with the Delta Green games with the idea that players, at least under the new rules, may not even know what Delta Green actually is. In our world, at least for now, there is no such thing as Delta Green and if there were, it wouldn't be called Delta Green. This is not per se, a Mythos game.

Your thoughts?

So for now I think it's a good idea to flesh out our characters here.

Additionally, I also want to consider one significant modification. Normally these games are either a campaign focused on a broader story or narrative or a series of adventures. This game is envision as a series of episodes that sometimes connect and sometimes sometimes don't. In part the idea is to keep the players guessing. But one problem I had when I was on this board before is that games have a habit of "crapping" out because players leave or the keeper disappears. I'd like to avoid that. Handy's experience with Zombie Apoc, and I hope my experience ages ago with my game in Egypt, illustrate that games can continue if keepers don't. I plan on staying on for the duration, but one never knows in a time of Covid. So I'd like to keep open the idea that in the future we might have a change of keepers just as we might players.

But for now, let's continue thinking about our characters a bit.

Your thoughts are appreciated.

[Mr. Handy]

I don't mind having politics in the game. I used to be a progressive Democrat myself until I learned that the Democrat Party was crooked just like the Republican Party, and that both are controlled by what is now called the Deep State, so now I'm a conservative-leaning independent.

This game could fit in either Modern, as Zombie Apocalypse does, or in Delta Green because it uses the rules. I'm thinking it might be a better fit under Delta Green, with an explanation in the description that it isn't using the canon.

I'm planning to stick around too (I've been on this site for thirteen years continuously), but you never know what will happen. I probably won't be able to take over as Keeper here like I did for Zombie Apocalypse, as Zombie Apocalypse takes so much time.

[Snapper]

Unfussed by issues of politics in-game and, as an Australian, US politics is of mild interest/entertainment for me (and the rest of the world) anyway, no offence. For the real X Files experience, all politicians of both sides should be assumed to be wittingly or unwittingly serving the giant bee colonist invaders in any event...

First character plan: the EPA S/Agent's career path is much as described in a post above. Even spread of characteristics with slight emphasis on DEX and INT. Specialty: Computer Science. Extra points in Pilot Helicopter (x2), Dodge, Science - Chemistry, Science - Environmental, Accounting, Navigate and Survival.