Talkers
You are Talkers. You work to cover up paranormal activity for a Government/Institute/Foundation/whatever and occasionally deal with Fringe activity.
There are four types of Talkers (everyone should choose a different one if possible). Each Talker type has two abilities.
Tough-Talker - The Very Strong one. Good at arm-wrestling and in fights. Also knowledgeable on a variety of athletic and sports related trivia and hobbies.
- You may use a Point to perform a feat of strength or endurance that embodies exceptional human athleticism, such as kicking open a reinforced door, lifting a car, staying conscious after being shot, or hanging off a ledge by the tips of your fingers.
- You may use a Point to intimidate an individual- as long as they have some sense of rationality, they will comply with requests from you and your allies while you are in their presence and for an undetermined amount of time afterwards. This is not mind control, but rational beings will simply do all they can do avoid a potential physical confrontation with you.
Cop-Talker - The Authority one. Good at manipulating bureaucratic loopholes and getting along with all walks of government workers. Pulls rank/badge
- You may use a Point to successfully call off any government or police worker, essentially pulling rank or threatening to go to a superior officer
- You may use a Point to call in local military or police reinforcements, whether that be a SWAT team, coast guard rescue, etc. This can also be used to commandeer equipment of all types, including civilian or government vehicles and weapons.
Soft-Talker - The Empathetic one. Good at gaining the trust of normal folk, the grieving, the paranoid. Expert-grade psychologist.
- You may use a Point to successfully intuit the emotional state of an individual. This will also spot untrained attempts at deception as you pick up on microexpressions and inconsistent body language.
- You may use a Point to guide an individual to the general emotional state you desire. This usually involves calming down a distraught individual but can also be used to incite rage if you so desire. More specific emotional states can be induced in certain situations.
Tech-Talker - The Person-behind-the-screen. Expert hacker. Good at engaging with particular niche subcultures over nerd stuff. Knows random facts that no one else would.
- You may use a Point to successfully know or research a relevant fact to a situation at hand, even one involving esoterica or other fringe media.
- You may use a Point to perform a feat of illegal hacking (not without consequences). This involves DDoSing websites and domains, scrubbing information on government servers, but also may include grander feats like temporarily bringing down an electrical grid
If it's remotely plausible that a Talker has the ability to do something, they do it without issue.
Everyone gets 4 Points a session, or 2 Points per in game day. In addition to the mentioned specific abilities, points can also be spent for "Hunches"- essentially getting to confirm whether an object or fact is important to a particular investigation or other simple yes/no questions to the GM.
Everyone has a real name, a code-name, and a former government job.
When directly dealing with the horrific, traumatic, or impossible, Talkers gain Stress. If something would normally test sanity in another game, roll a d20 and add the result to the Stress of everyone present. Everyone gets to do one thing in a "round", and you keep rolling a d20 every round until the horrible or taumatic situation is "resolved" or somehow no longer shocking.
If a Talker ever reaches 100 Stress, they are "Out" (maybe they just retire or something, maybe they have a heart attack, maybe they get possessed by a brain ghost)
That's it. I don't usually go this deep into making my own rules so if anyone has any feedback or suggestions I'm certainly open to them.
I used the above ruleset to run the Delta Green introductory module Last Things Last and the players said they enjoyed it and had fun.
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