Welcome to Black Project Declassified!
Howdy folks, and welcome to Black Project Declassified! I'm Vince, and you may (or may not) know me as the Handler behind Black Project Gaming's A Night at the Opera, Impossible Landscapes, and God's Teeth campaigns. I've also had the distinct pleasure of helping Sergio of Mayday Roleplay craft Seasons 2, 3, and 4 of his amazing Delta Green campaign, Doomed to Repeat (you can also hear me pop up as Donald Poe, aka Agent CHARLIE). Sergio and I also launched a Delta Green discussion show called The Dead Drop, where we discussed various aspects of the game, reviewed scenarios, and even produced a complete guide to running Impossible Landscapes. Finally, I've had a chance to help the Stories & Lies crew out with their own production, guest starring as Deputy Director of the FBI Matthew Carpenter (aka Agent ADAM). If you couldn't tell, I absolutely adore horror in general and Delta Green specifically. I'm hoping to continue sharing that passion via both Black Project Gaming (BPG) and this blog.
So, since I don't often get opportunities to share much about myself in my actual play (AP) productions, I figure a more complete introduction is in order. I've been roleplaying on-and-off since I was 16, beginning with Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, the 6th edition of Call of Cthulhu, and White Wolf Publishing games like Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse. At 19, I enlisted in the United States Air Force, which significantly hampered by ability to find new gaming groups and continue rolling dice. I spent seven years with Security Forces (the Air Force's equivalent of military police) and the subsequent 13 years with a military criminal investigative organization as a Special Agent. I won't go too much into my professional background for both operations and personal security purposes, but I was privileged to get to see and do some cool shit. It's this experience that enables me to run realistic and authentic Delta Green games, and why I'll likely always be a "Forever Handler." I'm now retired from the military after 20 years of service, and working in the government contracting arena as a security subject matter expert.
In 2016, like a lot of folks, I stumbled upon Critical Role and got back into roleplaying through Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. Thanks to the proliferation of virtual tabletops (VTT) like Roll20, I was able to find a group online and get back to playing. Jack Hargreaves took the helm as our Dungeon Master (DM), with Brett, Cami, Doug, Silvertongue, Sonia and me joining as players. The campaign was called Umbra Collective, a grimdark fantasy horror game set in a world of Jack's own creation, and we spent the next two years exploring its darkest corners and being unsettled as hell by Jack's ability to throw all sorts of nastiness at us. Around 2018, I found the new edition of Delta Green by Arc Dream Publishing, and decided to run everyone through Caleb Stokes's infamous scenario, "Lover in the Ice." I was hooked, and so were my players.
In 2019, there weren't a whole lot of serious Delta Green APs with a focus on verisimilitude. The only "big name" production at the time was Role Playing Public Radio (RPPR), which introduced Ross Payton and Caleb Stokes to the world. I decided to try my hand at AP production, and launched BPG with a playthrough of the A Night at the Opera scenario collection. With Brett, Cami, Doug, Jack, and Sonia joining me as my Agents, we were lauded for our serious tone, our focus on and attention to detail, and realistic portrayals of investigative procedure. We then played through Dennis Detwiller's Impossible Landscapes campaign, and are now working our way through Caleb Stokes's God's Teeth. Thanks to my work with BPG and interacting with Arc Dream shotcallers like Shane Ivey and Dennis Detwiller, I got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to write a profile on the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, which you can find in their recently released Dead Drops scenario collection.
While I'll likely take a break from Delta Green after we wrap our God's Teeth campaign (more on that in a future post), Delta Green will always be a staple for me and my players, and I have every intention of running more games and campaigns set in that beautifully dark and sanity-crushing world.
So, what exactly is this blog, and why did I decide to start it up? As it will soon become clear, I have a lot of Opinions™ when it comes to running, playing, interpreting, etc. Delta Green as both a game and a setting. I spend a fair amount of time offering advice in corners of the Internet like the DeltaGreenRPG subreddit and the Night at the Opera and official Arc Dream Delta Green Discord servers. This blog will (ideally) give me the opportunity to share that advice, homebrewed creations, behind-the-scenes looks at my AP productions for BPG, and other random musings, whenever and however inspiration may strike. Hopefully, this blog will find a semblance of an audience, and at least a few readers will find something useful that will help them in their own forays into the world of Delta Green.
With all that being said, thanks so much for reading, and please don't hesitate to reach out to me via the comments or email. I'll answer any questions you may have, and some may become topics for future posts. Any and all feedback is not only welcome, but encouraged.
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