Call of Cthulhu: Divine Fire at PAX 2011

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Scott Glancy of Pagan Publishing ran an epic Delta Green game at PAX 2011, based on material from our very own Tom Church’s Divine Fire scenario. In this case, the secrets of occult nuclear technology first developed by the Nazis were eventually acquired by the Libyans. Now a group of specialists must retrieve the scientists behind it and stop the program while the Libyan civil war rages on! Of course, things don’t go according to plan. Find out exactly what goes wrong and how the team reacts, especially when they meet a familiar face…

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20 Comments

  1. Excellent! Been waiting for this one for a good long while. I have to make a special effort to attend PAX 2012.

  2. Mr Glancy, you’re awesome; I love the APs of the games you’ve run and I love the work by Pagan Publishing. Unfortunately I don’t have a spare $300 right now, so I’ll have to settle with pledging just $30.

    Keep up the great work! And keep producing the Unspeakable Podcast, so I can hear your dulcet tone more often.

  3. Scott Glancy, the man with a voice like 30-year-old scotch :3

    this particular iteration of the adventure reminds me of the time I was in a game GMed by Rob Bell (when he used to edit Champions) where we all were playing grunts fighting Saddam Hussein in Desert Storm and we discovered the real “WMDs” were Cthulhu…Bell is quite dramatic and his games are almost LARPs…really, really fun

  4. is that Sean-o-Tron Sean? sounds like him! I love it when you bastards from the Nerdbound Warhammer games show up elseplace. those were my first APs, and Tad and Sean it was who made me realize internet nerds didn’t necessarily have to grate on my soul. a fact since confirmed a million times over by RPPR, course. =3

    I can never decide how I feel about Glancy. which I guess means I like him. this was definitely way Tom-ier than U-Boote Heraus and that trenches one, and I think I like his meandering and dreamlike style more than the action movie stuff. then again, I loved Night Mission. who can say! it’s awesome to see his Kickstarter take off like that, anyway. Kickstarter is maybe the only thing ever to have given me faith in the human race.

  5. It’s like when Johnny Cash sang “Hurt.”

    I think that the prisoner approach works better than the army one for starting the scenario. Though I do like that Divine Fire can be translated into any setting.

  6. Oh man, this is a cool one. It’s interesting to see how the core material can be adapted into something completely new. I particularly loved the idea of the “reactor” serving as a beacon to the creatures that were already in the desert. I’m definitely going to try reverse-engineering this scenario and exposing my players to the horrors of Libya’s Divine Fire!

  7. @crawlkill That’s not Sean-O-Tron Sean, but he does game with us over at the Drunk and Ugly (drunkandugly.com) if you need more of his awesomeness.

    Fantastic AP. Glancy knocks it out of the park once again. It was really cool to hear all of the original Divine Fire details popping up in really fantastic ways. The ghoul behind the door…man. Just excellent.

  8. Having listened to the whole thing now, I must say, I do enjoy Scott’s Grunwald more then Tom’s. Of course, Tom did the character 100% creepy, where Scott mixed the terrifying with the humor.

  9. It’s too bad Tom didn’t get a shout-out.

  10. It is a good versoin of divine fire. One thing id like to say to Mr. glancy (if he reads this). If this get’s published there needs to be a clause telling the GM to kill of the captain at the first pausible opertunity. In this case i would have had the nut case in the cafeteria kill him. It would have shocked the players, added horror and given them more freedom to act as they see fit. Al in one go. As it was the captain steared the moral compass of the group to much.

  11. @Fridrik

    This is only because the Captain was an NPC. He’s written to be one of the PCs, it’s just none of the players wanted to pick him, much like they didn’t pick the Snipers (who did die horribly).

  12. Yes i realise, but jus like the snipers or even more so, he needs to go ASAP. Situations are less horrible if you have leadership. My opinion is that he needs to be an NPC from the start and then die as soon as the situation goes FUBAR. It’s just my opinion as a playtest critic.

  13. Another awesome offering up by the walking mythos nighmare that is Glancy. I actually like the Tom’s prisoner version the least. And counter to popular opinion, I sort of like it when the npc officer is alive. It adds the potentional problem of the officer going off his rocking and deciding to mutiny or not. Anyway, love the AP sir. Great job. I was sitting through the entire thing going..”Come on, come on, bring on the ghoul!”

  14. That game was amaaaaazing. The reactor stuff was a little silly, but the running battle through the compound was fantastic. No one makes Call of Cthulhu gunfights as entertaining as Scott Glancy.

  15. “There goes a hero…”

    Best line ever as the Herr Grunwald walks off into the “sunset” of the ghoul-realm.

    Loved the AP, but at 6 hours it was a pretty hefty one.

    Honestly, I think that Mr. Glancy should have forced his players into quick decisions, seeing the overtly military backgrounds of the player characters. Also, one stipulation of the scenario should be tht a player has to be the CO I.e. the captain and another player should be a second officer in charge. I think that would serve to heighten the air of paranoia and fear. The breakdown of military discipline would be an interesting mechanic as e horror of the situation takes its toll on the players.

    The insanity mechanic, as presented in the CoC rule book didn’t seem to be tracked at all by the players. I think more players would have failed their rolls if they had been keeping careful track of their SAN.

    All in all, a great scenario. Especially the creepy ghoul in the basement. Tom should feel like the proud Papa of a fine scenario!

  16. I loved the original Divine Fire, and I enjoyed this adaptation just as much. There may have been a little too much ‘leading’ by the NPC captain, but nothing that detracted from the game. Also, the encounter with the thing in the reactor was kind of glossed over, but that would have been a great time for some creeptastic buildup and description- after all, it’s what we came to see, aye? Overall, a fantastic game and quite long which was a plus for those of us who listen over long drives.

  17. Are there notes or scenario documents we can download/review for this session? I’d like to take parts of it for use in one of my games.
    Thanks for any input! Enjoyed the podcast

  18. Love the game!

    Sooo want to run it myself. Thinking of doing it with Trail of Cthulhu instead. Anyone think this is doable?

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