to avoid my chatting, and go directly to the adaptation, click here

In 2021, in the prime of my consumerism in terms of RPGs, I bought many games; some were immediately put to action, others calmly waited until I had any the right group to play. You can imagine then how happy I was to play this month I played the Yellow King RPG, by Robin D. Laws.

The game is focused on investigation, and themed around Reality Horror. It comes with 4 books, each with a different scenario, using the same rules, and it even incentivizes a campaign that sprawls though all these alternate realities. It's crazy!

The game's proposal won completely won me, and I decided then I'd only play a campaign if I could do this overarching story, which led to the long wait to play. Eventually, I had the obvious realization that it's much easier to convince a group to play the giant campaign if they tried something simple before. I decided then to do an introductory session as a one-shot, to display the themes of the game, and as such attempt to convince them to continue the story.

In parallel, in my adventures in Reddit and others, searching for more and more to read on and play, I ran into Delta Green. I must say it took too long, considering my first RPG was Call of Cthulu, its cousin. The intro adventure for this game is Last Things Last, and it is exceptional. It has everything I could want: a simple structure for investigation, but with space for expansion, interesting narrative hooks, and a moral dillema that concludes the scenario in a bizarre way.

Instead of creating my own one-shot for the Yellow King from scratch, I decided to adapt Last Things Last; here's my experience!

WARNING: FROM HERE THERE WILL BE SPOILER OF LAST THINGS LAST
IF YOU ARE MY PLAYER, STOP READING NOW!

Delta Green vs Gumshoe, Military vs Civillian

Two things called my attention in the process of adapting: the thematic and mechanical.

Delta Green has very similar rules to the ones like Call of Cthulu—(the BRP family), while the Yellow King presents the new QuickShock Gumshoe. Amongst other things, this means:

The card situation was relatively simple to solve; based on the scenes I had prepared, I put together some cards that I imagine could be used there and left them aside. I was also ready to CTRL+F in case my players surprised me and I had to find a new effect (spoiler: I had to do it). The Thing-That-Was-Once-Marlene I adapted to a Ghost (pg. 156 of Paris) since there was a similar vibe there, and it ended up being what was needed, in terms of balance.

To resolve the access to information, I expanded the clues, in such a way that there were more of those, and therefore more questions that could be asked. I'll expand more in the next section.

Then there was the themes. While the Conspiracy thematic of Delta Green can be similar to the Reality Horror of Yellow King, depending on the scenario, but (at least in the present, where I decided to have the session take place) the characters are very different from one to the other. In DG the players assume the identity of military, researches— competent professionals that choose to get in trouble to protect the greater good, while in YKRPG the investigators are normal folks.

Conceptually, Last Things Last ssumes that the characters are given a mission and, until it ends, they are all alone. That is, in part, responsible for their motivation of going from Clyde Baughman's apartment to his cabin, as well as the sense of responsibility for them to eliminate the Thing-That-Was-Marlene. The suspense of whether they are doing the right thing is, in parts, alleviated by knowing that Clyde was involved with the organization that they themselves are part of.

In my version, I thought it would be easier to throw all characters towards danger by making them all cousins, and Clyde's grandchildren. He dies 3 days before the story begins (like in the vanilla module), and now they are asked to collect potentially valuable things from their grandpa's apartment, as whatever's left will be sold in an estate sale. That, along with an exercise of picking who you'd protect in the group, kept everyone jumping towards danger when it appeared.

Adapting the Story (expanded)

Beyond all characters being cousins, I couldn't resist and made the game slightly more Canadian: instead of in the States, the game was in Quebec! This ambiance was to approximate the one-shot to Paris, the first official scenario for the YKRPG.

Instead of a Clyde who conspired with Delta Green, my Clyde was an artist who participated in a theatre troupe, which in some point in time portrayed (or at least circulated) the Play! While the original Clyde lost his wife and attempted to use Parageometry to bring her back, mine went mad when his wife died of cancer, and his madness attracted a Carcosan creature to the body of his deceased wife.

Useful tip: revelation lists and clues

If there is one single thing that helped me immensely in guiding this game was making a revelation and clues lists— another tip I got from The Alexandrian. They guided me, showing in an obvious way what must be discovered in each scene; if you're running a non-improvised investigative session, I recommend using something of the sort.

Click to expand! I've been using notion for RPG planning, and it has been great. Keep in mind, some of those will be in Portuguese.

QuickShock Gumshoe — Leo’s version

Towards the end of my planning, it became obvious that the scenario had changed a reasonable bit, so I decided to also simplify the game and make it even Quicker than normal, and to work with the proposed scenario. For that, I made 3 changes to the system:

1. A new list of investigative abilities, literally stolen from Bubblegumshoe.
2. This new list was integrated in new investigative kits, which also included the physical attributes— rather than picking 2 kits, the player only chose one.
3. Diminished the character sheet considerably, reducing to only abilities, drive, pushes, and who you seek to protect; in the end, it had the size of half a page!

I'd love to share with more details the sheet, the kits, and even my modified materials for the game! Unfortunately, I don't think the copyright allows me. One day, perhaps.

---

For now, that is all I have to share. The idea of running the one-shot before proposing the campaign worked, so I'll for sure have more to say about this wonderful game. Until next time!