The Inside Scoop on Gaming

This review contains Delta Green spoilers. You have been warned.

In his new (and first, I believe) novel Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement, John Tynes grabs the Delta Green conspiracy like a rabid dog and gives it a few vicious, neck-snapping shakes. (For those unfamiliar, Delta Green is a 90's-conspiracy-setting campaign background for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG, created by the evil geniuses at Pagan Publishing. Go beg, borrow, or steal a friend's copy of the original Delta Green sourcebook (alas, it's currently out of print), read it, then come right back here--that's an order.) For summer reading, this hardcover is perhaps a bit small (5 3/4" x 8 3/4"), slim (229 pp.), and hard to come by (a limited-edition print run of only 250 copies is available exclusively via mail order from Pagan Publishing; I'm unsure whether a mass-market edition will follow) for its $20 price tag--but that's if you compare it to more standard offerings from the publishing giants and chain booksellers.

But Rules isn't your typical summertime fare (especially not when compared to the schlock that passes for RPG-inspired fiction), and Pagan Publishing, a boutique (or perhaps "garage" or "basement" or even "living-room" would be a better word choice) outfit known for its sporadic publication schedule and its "we shall produce no magazine/gaming supplement/work of fiction/whatever before its time" philosophy, isn't your typical bookpeddler. With the scales thus balanced, I'd say that the question "is this book worth twenty bucks (plus the mail-order hassle)?" must be left up to the individual. If you're a fan of the Mythos fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, or if you enjoy action-packed spy novels, then the answer is "probably"; if you're already a DG devotee, then the answer is "hoo baby!"

The book itself is rather small (as noted above) and unassuming-looking; there's no dustjacket and its clothbound cover is a stark matte black, broken only by the gold-stamped title/author/publisher info and Delta Green logo on the front cover. There are no illustrations, save for a black-and-white photograph (taken by the author) watermarking the front flyleaf and the title, contents, and dedication pages. (The photo doesn't really have any bearing at all on the story; doubtless it just appealed to the author's idiosyncratic visual tastes--visit his website at www.john.tynes.com to get a clearer idea of what I mean).

The book is sturdy (case binding and heavy, acid-free paper) and staid (stick it on that bookshelf where you keep all those old college textbooks you can't seem to get rid of, and nobody will ever give it a second glance); in short, you couldn't ask for better production values (this goes for the typesetting as well, which uses a clean, easy-on-the-eyes custom typeface, with decent margins and nice bold chapter headers). But this "little black book" aesthetic isn't incongruous, like a guy wearing a pocket protector and Buddy Holly glasses driving a Ferrari; rather, it's fitting--it's stealth technology, slipping a payload of fin-de-siecle angst and Mythos horror right past your radar and dropping it smack into your cerebrum.

Yes, make no mistake--this is Mythos fiction 90's style, HPL meets John Woo. There's plenty of blood, guts, and horror to go around, a veritable (and in some scenes, literal) feeding frenzy of the macabre and gruesome. Tynes has previously demonstrated himself a competent wordsmith, even beyond the copious and diverse gaming materials bearing his name in the author credits. His short story "The Dark Above" in the fiction anthology Delta Green: Alien Intelligence (see my earlier review) serves as ample proof of his ability to spin a gripping yarn while providing characters with real depth, who are more than just the stereotypes the conspiracy genre fosters.

Indeed, readers familiar with that earlier piece will be delighted to see those characters brought back, along with a whole stable of others made famous (or infamous, as the case may be) in the original DG sourcebook (and its sequel), all woven into a solid, tightly-paced plot. I say Tynes' writing is competent--as opposed to, say, obtuse (at one extreme) or stellar (at the other). While his prose is generally very good and technically solid (only once did I catch him in a flat-out grammatical flub, confusing the homonyms "proceed" and "precede"), it's not without its flaws. His writing is somewhat uneven--at times it's worthy of the Master, HPL himself, evoking scenes of horror whose power is based upon what is suggested rather than what is revealed; occasionally such homage is surely unintentional, as he briefly falls prey to HPL's own weakness for turgid, even purple, prose. At times he becomes so intent upon displaying his own mastery of espionage tradecraft jargon, dwelling on the nitty-gritty of clandestine observation tools and techniques and rattling off enough information on firearms and ammunition to make the NRA stand up and salute, that readers who aren't bona-fide alphabet soup connoisseurs or diehard gunfondlers might be left floundering. And the plot, while solid, reaches a climax that's perhaps just a little too overt a tip of the hat to Dr. No, even with its unique Mythos-fueled twists. He succumbs to the temptation to render a bad guy sympathetic, and to kill one of the good guys out of hand (there's a bait-and-switch plot twist there that I won't go into). I suppose the lessons here are that even the enemy (well, some of them, anyway) aren't so far gone as to have lost all traces of their humanity (there are certainly more than enough inhuman enemies to go around, certainly), and that sometimes good people die for all the wrong reasons; but these are lessons that Keepers who've been paying attention should've taught their players already--many times over.

Thus far, I've pretty much stuck with talking about this book in book-reviewer's terms; the time has come to speak to its utility as adjunct gaming material. In a nutshell: DG Keepers, latch onto this one as fast as you can, and do everything within your power (up to and including termination with extreme prejudice) to keep it away from your players. In the wrong hands, the knowledge contained in this tome could easily derail a Keeper's most nefarious schemes. There's something here to appeal to every gamer's basest instincts: the munchkins will be clamoring to have ghouls as PCs; the rules lawyers will square off against the gunfondlers arguing over how best to represent the MP-5 submachine gun in game terms; and those sneaky rat-bastards who deliberately ignore "spoiler" warnings (e.g. the one at the top of this review) at every opportunity will load up on enough OOC knowledge about the conspiracy to choke a mule--or a ghoul.

For Keepers, though, this book is golden. You say you're not quite clear on how things stand between DG and the Fate? Read Rules and be enlightened. Fuzzy on just how much inter-cell communication there is within DG? Here's your yardstick. Want to know what Alphonse's home life is like? Have a gander. And most significantly, if you're curious about the terms and conditions of DG's and MJ-12's internecine sibling rivalry, well, that's exactly what the book's title references. If you've run your players through the scenario from the original sourcebook entitled "Convergence," then this novel will be a sweet stroll down memory lane. And if you're stuck for NPC's, plot hooks, or new ways to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate, then look no further for a new source of plunder. Be warned, though; if you're in earnest about borrowing from this book, you'll do well to get your hands on the second DG sourcebook, Delta Green: Countdown (available now; see reviews elsewhere on this site), and maybe even DG Eyes Only vol. 2: The Fate, in order to get the most mileage out of Rules. But any DG Keeper worth her salt has these sitting on her shelf already, I'm sure.

Tynes isn't in danger of winning a Pulitzer for this one, but he does stand head and shoulders over much of his competition in the game-related-fiction market. Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement is a fast, gripping read, easily as worthy of taking to the beach as anything from Stephen King or Tom Clancy (okay, so horror/conspiracy gamers sunbathing on a beach is an image that's a little hard to summon up; but work with me, people!). Call up the folks at Armitage House/Pagan Publishing today and order a copy; if you're lucky, maybe the author himself will answer the phone. Tell him I sent ya.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement
Author: John Tynes Category: Novel Company/Publisher: Armitage House/Pagan Publishing Line: Delta Green Cost: $19.95 Page count: 229 ISBN: 1-887787-16-5 SKU: #5008 Capsule Review by Chris Womack on 08/27/99. Genre tags: Modern_day Horror Espionage Conspiracy	This review contains Delta Green spoilers. You have been warned. In his new (and first, I believe) novel Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement, John Tynes grabs the Delta Green conspiracy like a rabid dog and gives it a few vicious, neck-snapping shakes. (For those unfamiliar, Delta Green is a 90's-conspiracy-setting campaign background for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu RPG, created by the evil geniuses at Pagan Publishing. Go beg, borrow, or steal a friend's copy of the original Delta Green sourcebook (alas, it's currently out of print), read it, then come right back here--that's an order.) For summer reading, this hardcover is perhaps a bit small (5 3/4" x 8 3/4"), slim (229 pp.), and hard to come by (a limited-edition print run of only 250 copies is available exclusively via mail order from Pagan Publishing; I'm unsure whether a mass-market edition will follow) for its $20 price tag--but that's if you compare it to more standard offerings from the publishing giants and chain booksellers. But Rules isn't your typical summertime fare (especially not when compared to the schlock that passes for RPG-inspired fiction), and Pagan Publishing, a boutique (or perhaps "garage" or "basement" or even "living-room" would be a better word choice) outfit known for its sporadic publication schedule and its "we shall produce no magazine/gaming supplement/work of fiction/whatever before its time" philosophy, isn't your typical bookpeddler. With the scales thus balanced, I'd say that the question "is this book worth twenty bucks (plus the mail-order hassle)?" must be left up to the individual. If you're a fan of the Mythos fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, or if you enjoy action-packed spy novels, then the answer is "probably"; if you're already a DG devotee, then the answer is "hoo baby!" The book itself is rather small (as noted above) and unassuming-looking; there's no dustjacket and its clothbound cover is a stark matte black, broken only by the gold-stamped title/author/publisher info and Delta Green logo on the front cover. There are no illustrations, save for a black-and-white photograph (taken by the author) watermarking the front flyleaf and the title, contents, and dedication pages. (The photo doesn't really have any bearing at all on the story; doubtless it just appealed to the author's idiosyncratic visual tastes--visit his website at www.john.tynes.com to get a clearer idea of what I mean). The book is sturdy (case binding and heavy, acid-free paper) and staid (stick it on that bookshelf where you keep all those old college textbooks you can't seem to get rid of, and nobody will ever give it a second glance); in short, you couldn't ask for better production values (this goes for the typesetting as well, which uses a clean, easy-on-the-eyes custom typeface, with decent margins and nice bold chapter headers). But this "little black book" aesthetic isn't incongruous, like a guy wearing a pocket protector and Buddy Holly glasses driving a Ferrari; rather, it's fitting--it's stealth technology, slipping a payload of fin-de-siecle angst and Mythos horror right past your radar and dropping it smack into your cerebrum. Yes, make no mistake--this is Mythos fiction 90's style, HPL meets John Woo. There's plenty of blood, guts, and horror to go around, a veritable (and in some scenes, literal) feeding frenzy of the macabre and gruesome. Tynes has previously demonstrated himself a competent wordsmith, even beyond the copious and diverse gaming materials bearing his name in the author credits. His short story "The Dark Above" in the fiction anthology Delta Green: Alien Intelligence (see my earlier review) serves as ample proof of his ability to spin a gripping yarn while providing characters with real depth, who are more than just the stereotypes the conspiracy genre fosters. Indeed, readers familiar with that earlier piece will be delighted to see those characters brought back, along with a whole stable of others made famous (or infamous, as the case may be) in the original DG sourcebook (and its sequel), all woven into a solid, tightly-paced plot. I say Tynes' writing is competent--as opposed to, say, obtuse (at one extreme) or stellar (at the other). While his prose is generally very good and technically solid (only once did I catch him in a flat-out grammatical flub, confusing the homonyms "proceed" and "precede"), it's not without its flaws. His writing is somewhat uneven--at times it's worthy of the Master, HPL himself, evoking scenes of horror whose power is based upon what is suggested rather than what is revealed; occasionally such homage is surely unintentional, as he briefly falls prey to HPL's own weakness for turgid, even purple, prose. At times he becomes so intent upon displaying his own mastery of espionage tradecraft jargon, dwelling on the nitty-gritty of clandestine observation tools and techniques and rattling off enough information on firearms and ammunition to make the NRA stand up and salute, that readers who aren't bona-fide alphabet soup connoisseurs or diehard gunfondlers might be left floundering. And the plot, while solid, reaches a climax that's perhaps just a little too overt a tip of the hat to Dr. No, even with its unique Mythos-fueled twists. He succumbs to the temptation to render a bad guy sympathetic, and to kill one of the good guys out of hand (there's a bait-and-switch plot twist there that I won't go into). I suppose the lessons here are that even the enemy (well, some of them, anyway) aren't so far gone as to have lost all traces of their humanity (there are certainly more than enough inhuman enemies to go around, certainly), and that sometimes good people die for all the wrong reasons; but these are lessons that Keepers who've been paying attention should've taught their players already--many times over. Thus far, I've pretty much stuck with talking about this book in book-reviewer's terms; the time has come to speak to its utility as adjunct gaming material. In a nutshell: DG Keepers, latch onto this one as fast as you can, and do everything within your power (up to and including termination with extreme prejudice) to keep it away from your players. In the wrong hands, the knowledge contained in this tome could easily derail a Keeper's most nefarious schemes. There's something here to appeal to every gamer's basest instincts: the munchkins will be clamoring to have ghouls as PCs; the rules lawyers will square off against the gunfondlers arguing over how best to represent the MP-5 submachine gun in game terms; and those sneaky rat-bastards who deliberately ignore "spoiler" warnings (e.g. the one at the top of this review) at every opportunity will load up on enough OOC knowledge about the conspiracy to choke a mule--or a ghoul. For Keepers, though, this book is golden. You say you're not quite clear on how things stand between DG and the Fate? Read Rules and be enlightened. Fuzzy on just how much inter-cell communication there is within DG? Here's your yardstick. Want to know what Alphonse's home life is like? Have a gander. And most significantly, if you're curious about the terms and conditions of DG's and MJ-12's internecine sibling rivalry, well, that's exactly what the book's title references. If you've run your players through the scenario from the original sourcebook entitled "Convergence," then this novel will be a sweet stroll down memory lane. And if you're stuck for NPC's, plot hooks, or new ways to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate, then look no further for a new source of plunder. Be warned, though; if you're in earnest about borrowing from this book, you'll do well to get your hands on the second DG sourcebook, Delta Green: Countdown (available now; see reviews elsewhere on this site), and maybe even DG Eyes Only vol. 2: The Fate, in order to get the most mileage out of Rules. But any DG Keeper worth her salt has these sitting on her shelf already, I'm sure. Tynes isn't in danger of winning a Pulitzer for this one, but he does stand head and shoulders over much of his competition in the game-related-fiction market. Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement is a fast, gripping read, easily as worthy of taking to the beach as anything from Stephen King or Tom Clancy (okay, so horror/conspiracy gamers sunbathing on a beach is an image that's a little hard to summon up; but work with me, people!). Call up the folks at Armitage House/Pagan Publishing today and order a copy; if you're lucky, maybe the author himself will answer the phone. Tell him I sent ya. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 4 (Meaty)