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Fight, Flight, or Freeze in Delta Green
🕑 Added 2021-08-15 18:35:14 +0000 UTC"In a moment of overwhelming stress—after losing 5 or more SAN in a single roll—your Agent loses self-control. We call it temporary insanity. For a short time you cannot control your Agent’s actions. Your Agent’s primitive brain switches to pure panic, with one of three possible responses: Flee, Struggle, or Submit. Work with the Handler to determine which stance your Agent takes. Each is more likely in some circumstances than others." —Delta Green: Agent's Handbook
We wrote that rule, like many in Delta Green, to give the Handler all the latitude they want in running their games. But Handlers have a lot on their minds, and it's easiest to just let the player decide what makes the most sense. And from what I've seen over the years, players usually choose struggle, occasionally choose flight, and hardly ever choose curling up in submission. The system very rarely shows you Agents in abject terror. Players like their characters, after all.
If I were to write that rule today, it might look something like this. Let me know how this matches your experience at the game table.
HELPLESSNESS: SUBMISSION
Driven to temporary insanity by helplessness, the Agent mentally shuts down as if catatonic or passes out altogether. The Agent forgets much of the trauma. Remembering a detail from the events leading up to the trauma or during it requires a Sanity test. If the test fumbles, the Agent loses 1 SAN and suffers the submission response again.
THE UNNATURAL: FLIGHT
Driven to temporary insanity by the unnatural, the Agent flees, running mindlessly from the threat at top speed in any direction. The urge to flee ends after a number of turns equal to the Agent's CON. The Agent is then exhausted.
VIOLENCE: STRUGGLE
Driven to temporary insanity by violence, the Agent struggles lashes out randomly at the nearest potential target, no matter how insurmountable or even how friendly it might be. The Agent keeps attacking until restrained or incapacitated, or until there is no living thing left to attack. The Agent is then exhausted.
OTHER REACTIONS
People can be unpredictable. A player who wants some other reaction can attempt a Luck roll. With a success or a critical success, the player can choose the response. With a fumble, the Agent suffers whichever reaction the Handler thinks is worst for the Agent in that moment.
Illustration: Subjective impression of a panic attack, by Yitzilitt.
Comments
Kristoph Yakeba
Don't know if I've said this, but i've gotten pretty good responses out of this and it's sort of become my default to have them talk through their agent's mental state and then I choose based on that and my gut.
Chris Huth
In practice, I think I'd prefer it if players picked a default response for their PC to any trauma, or pre-assigned them one-to-one, and then giving them an option of overriding one option with another with a successful POW roll.
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