Worlds Colliding: Agents of Oblivion and Realms of Cthulhu

If you’re just tuning in, I’ve been juggling between my work on Agents of Oblivion and Echo of Dead Leaves, the massive plot point book for Realms of Cthulhu. My mind is jazzed about the differences in the texture between the two. They both are quite different, EoDL is a focused, period piece centered in Charleston, South Carolina. The investigators should be a bit scared–they aren’t as well equipped as our globetrotting, well-equipped, well-trained, Oblivion agents!

However, people have started to ask lately if you can combine Agents of Oblivion with Realms of Cthulhu to play Savage Delta Green. People drew comparisons between our setting and Delta Green as soon as it was announced. To be honest, I was only passingly familiar with Delta Green. My buddy had the DG materials and he didn’t want us to read any of it until he ran it, but that never came to pass. I never read it in the hopes of one day playing in the setting. Still, people kept making the comparisons between this and other settings, such as Dark Matter. I didn’t read any of this material when I was conceptualizing the setting. I went back to older materials and inspirations, just as I’m sure the designers of those games did, and put my own, unique spin on them. I have subsequently read them and dig them both. I didn’t care so much for the Alternity system, but I was wowed by the potentiality found within, and it was rather groundbreaking at the time. Keep in mind, I didn’t read it until 200x. Delta Green, I found very cool. I dig its focus and it’s an outstanding, focused spin on dealing with the Mythos. It has a very scientific bent to it which I really appreciate.

Agents of Oblivion is, I’m glad to report,  NOT Delta Green. That’s a good thing. There is space for both. Just as Realms of Cthulhu is not Trail of Cthulhu, but they occupy the same general space in a lot of way, just like chocolate ice cream does. You can get a lot of different flavors of chocolate and dark mocha almond is a lot different than dutch chocolate, even though they are both chocolate. Savvy? I’m honored to have our properties mentioned in the same breath as the work of some folks whose work I really admire and whom I dig as amazingly creative human beings. All that being said, AoO has its own focus, own direction, own default setting, but we know you may want to take it in all sorts of directions, and I came up with a lot of directions you can take it, and the Blurry Ones all worked together to make sure it was comprehensive and flexible without being overwhelming, so if you want to get your Delta Green on with our stuff, go for it. If you want to play straight up Bourne Supremacy style, we’ve got you covered as well.

Until next time, I bid you, dear reader, adieu!