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<blockquote data-quote="Grendel_Khan" data-source="post: 8798042" data-attributes="member: 7028554">The Arc Dream crew talk pretty openly about their politics, but also about the fact that it's basically a game about the war on terror, and not in a good way. It's not a situation where you need to read the tea leaves and wonder what they're up to. They chat about it in livestreams. Hell, their newest recruit wrote what might be the most blatantly anti-capitalist, anti-establishment game in the history of the hobby (Red Markets). And even if you go strictly by what's in the books, the detailed history of Delta Green is as a litany of horrors and screw-ups and corruption on the part of the org. The adventures and GM guidance talk constantly about agents going rogue, DG cells being ordered to wipe out other cells, and the toll all of it takes on the PCs, because of all the terrible stuff they have to tell themselves is necessary, like the deep state monsters they are. It's a horror game, and some of the best horror has no good guys, just various shades of bad, including people who are certain they're murdering other people for the right reason. There's no need for the GM or players to drink the Kool-Aid or justify any of the protagonists' beliefs, any more than playing a game like Blades in the Dark means seeing the PC crew as the least villainous gang in a world of greater villains. These are morally complex, challenging games. It's ok to just lean into what the characters want and believe, and how the setting inevitably grinds them into dust, and leave the heroics to other games.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Grendel_Khan, post: 8798042, member: 7028554"] The Arc Dream crew talk pretty openly about their politics, but also about the fact that it's basically a game about the war on terror, and not in a good way. It's not a situation where you need to read the tea leaves and wonder what they're up to. They chat about it in livestreams. Hell, their newest recruit wrote what might be the most blatantly anti-capitalist, anti-establishment game in the history of the hobby (Red Markets). And even if you go strictly by what's in the books, the detailed history of Delta Green is as a litany of horrors and screw-ups and corruption on the part of the org. The adventures and GM guidance talk constantly about agents going rogue, DG cells being ordered to wipe out other cells, and the toll all of it takes on the PCs, because of all the terrible stuff they have to tell themselves is necessary, like the deep state monsters they are. It's a horror game, and some of the best horror has no good guys, just various shades of bad, including people who are certain they're murdering other people for the right reason. There's no need for the GM or players to drink the Kool-Aid or justify any of the protagonists' beliefs, any more than playing a game like Blades in the Dark means seeing the PC crew as the least villainous gang in a world of greater villains. These are morally complex, challenging games. It's ok to just lean into what the characters want and believe, and how the setting inevitably grinds them into dust, and leave the heroics to other games. [/QUOTE]

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