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Delta Green has a long and venerable (almost mythical) history. It is a Call of Cthulhu supplement of unsurpassed influence and reputation. It is also a book which has been as hard to get hold of as hen’s teeth. Prices of US$400+ on eBay for the core sourcebook have not been unheard of. A new reprint has opened the game up for a new generation of gamers and aims to broaden the appeal by including d20 stats alongside the classic Call of Cthulhu data. This review takes a look at the new edition and asks what it has to offer for modern gamers.
A disclaimer before we start. I have played Call of Cthulhu for many years, but I have never previously played Delta Green. I did once see a copy of the original version when visiting a gamer friend in Melbourne (although he wouldn’t let me handle it). I obtained an early copy of this new edition by entering my name in a competition run by one of the authors, A. Scott Glancy. Mr Glancy wrote my name on a “Hello, my name is …” nametag, stuck the nametag to a dummy along with a bunch of others and then shot at the dummy with an AK-47. Because my nametag was one of those that ended up full of bullet holes, I was allowed to purchase a preview copy that arrived prior to the main shipment. The format of the competition probably gives you a little insight into the originality and unique character of Delta Green.
In writing this review I am going to assume that the reader has some knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos. But if you don’t have that knowledge, then don’t worry too much about it – in fact you are probably better off that way. One of the keys to the appeal of the Mythos is the fact that you generally only find out about it in snippets and whispers. All you really need to know is that the Mythos is full of shadowy threats with strange names and even stranger ambitions.
I am also going to assume that the reader is only going to play or use Delta Green as a GM. I will try to avoid giving out too many spoilers, but be warned, reading this review may seriously hamper you enjoyment as a player.
Background
I mentioned earlier that Delta Green has an almost mythical history. Some of this is down to a convergence in popular culture that occurred shortly after its release. Delta Green appeared in its original form in 1992 and drew on UFO and conspiracy folklore. In 1993 that same folklore was drawn together by others to create The X-files. The X-files was soon followed by other series, such as Buffy, Angel and Men in Black, which all drew water from the same well.
In essence Delta Green is a modern update on Call of Cthulhu. It assumes that the PCs are members of US enforcement agencies (from Park Rangers to the CIA and anything else in between) who have been, or are about to be, inducted into a secret agency set up to fight paranormal threats to humanity. The same characters may then be drawn into a series of complex conspiracies involving UFOs, aliens and corruption at the highest level of government.
To play you need this sourcebook and either a Call of Cthulhu core rulebook or the d20 edition of the same.
Updating the Mythos
In the introduction to the Delta Green sourcebook the authors state that one of their rationales for designing the setting was to cope with what they see as problems with the way Call of Cthulhu is traditionally played. The fiction of Lovecraft almost always focuses on lone, ordinary individuals facing a Mythos threat. As the game was designed there is little incentive for a group of investigators to band together and, in particular, games can face problems when it is time to introduce a new character. There are also repetitive roadblocks which can appear in play. Playing ordinary individuals means that PCs often face the same messy entanglements and shaky justifications when investigating paranormal events (“Why sure, Tribal Fisherman Investigator, the Sergeant lets you see the crime scene photos”). And if the investigators are supposed to be real people with real jobs and real commitments, how come they can keep disappearing off to South America or Egypt for months at a time?
As someone who has played a lot of Cthulhu, I can certainly attest that these problems are both real and something which can turn your game into a cartoon. By placing PCs within federal law enforcement agencies and involving them in Delta Green this sourcebook does away with continuity problems nicely.
Another aim of Delta Green is to update the Cthulhu Mythos for the modern era. The Call of Cthulhu core rulebook does allow for modern games, but in essence the only information you receive to do this are a price list for modern equipment and damage tables for modern weapons. It doesn’t tell you how Deep Ones, who prey on isolated seaside communities, might operate when modern communications mean nowhere is really isolated anymore. And what might modern Tcho-tchos look like? Do the scary little cannibals still throw spears, or have they got cell-phones and AK-47s? Delta Green gives you this information and more.
While the Mythos is given an overhaul, it remains entirely recognisable and is just as much of a threat as it ever was. In places the update is brilliantly convincing. It makes perfect sense that in 1965 the CIA might try to recruit a tribe of Tcho-tchos in Indochina in the belief that anyone who killed communists must be good guys. And it makes even more sense that arming the little bastards turned out to be a very bad idea.
Big spoiler alert The group to undergo the most radical overhaul are the Mi-Go. Delta Green provides layer after layer of conspiracy, but it is the fungi from Yuggoth who are at the heart of most of them. Central to the setting is the idea that the Mi-Go created fake aliens (“the Greys”), built a fake spaceship and crashed it at Roswell in 1947. They subsequently used the front of these friendly seeming fake visitors from space to make an accord with the US government. Ever since, in exchange for certain concessions and the ability to operate inside the US without interference, the Mi-Go have been giving the US government and government operatives information and technology which have made both the country and those individuals richer and more powerful. Unfortunately of course, the price for that wealth and power is more than any of the humans involved realise.
Delta Green
Mankind’s best hope against the Mi-Go threat is likely to be Delta Green. Set-up in 1942 in light of the Innsmouth raid of 1928 (when the US government became aware of paranormal threats for the first time) and the Nazi use of occult power, Delta Green was a government agency with one over-riding purpose – to protect US citizens from paranormal threats. Unfortunately Delta Green was disbanded in 1970 following a disastrous operation in Cambodia. Between 1970 and 1994 former Delta Green operatives continued to operate against paranormal threats on an ad-hoc basis. And then, in 1994, the agency was restructured by surviving ex-members into a classic cell-structure conspiracy operating within existing government organisations. It operates outside of the law and without official approval, but it has structure, organisation and access to government resources. Delta Green knows very little about the Greys, and nothing about the Mi-Go. But it does know that something stinks about Roswell and that there is corruption at high levels of government.
Other organisations
PCs who are members of Delta Green don’t just face the threat posed by the Mi-Go. They also face Majestic-12, a government agency with considerable power and influence. Majestic-12 is the agency which developed the accord with the Greys, and which has most been corrupted by it. The PCs may also encounter; the Karotechia, the remnants of a secret Nazi organisation which has built up a global network of neo-Nazi and hate groups to pursue its own agenda; Saucerwatch, a UFO study group which has stumbled upon some aspects of the truth; and the Fate, a shadowy criminal network with links to Nyarlathotep.
One thing I particularly liked about the book is that it does not assume the Mythos is behind everything and that even when it is, not everything is black and white. The PCs are likely to find themselves up against people who are not particularly evil, but who just have a different perspective. Majestic-12 isn’t just a corrupt government agency, it includes people who genuinely believe that they are doing the best thing by their country and that Delta Green’s trigger-happy meddling presents a far greater threat to mankind. Likewise, groups such as Saucerwatch and the Fate could just as easily be allies as they could be enemies.
Delta Green also allows you to take what you like and leave the rest out. There is so much in the sourcebook that it would be impossible to include everything in one campaign. And to try and include more than a couple of elements at once is madness. The authors suggest putting the major conspiracy aside for a while and starting with a peripheral strand such as the Karotechia. I would suggest that hints about, and minor interaction, with Majestic-12 might follow. Then suspicions might begin to arise that not everything at Majestic-12 is as it should be. Investigation of Majestic-12 might lead the PCs to the Greys. And investigation of the Greys might lead to interaction with Saucerwatch. And so on, and so on and so on. The world of Delta Green is probably best revealed as layers of an onion. Peeling back one layer reveals another and brings you one small step closer to the truth.
So what’s in the book?
Delta Green is split into six chapters and ten appendices.
The chapters provide background information on the setting and on each of the major players within the setting. Chapter one outlines “The big picture” while Delta Green, Majestic-12, the Karotechia, Saucerwatch and the Fate each receive a chapter of their own. There is comprehensive historical information on each organisation along with outlines of how they are structured, what they know and how they operate. Key individuals within each organisation also get their own write-ups.
The appendices contain two adventures (one designed to introduce players to Delta Green) and a separate mini-campaign, useful information on security classifications and modern Mythos manuscripts and, more importantly, a guide to creating characters and comprehensive information on federal agencies, new skills, new spells and modern firearms.
As someone living outside the US I found the appendix on federal agencies particularly useful. Not only does it include comprehensive information on agencies as diverse as the FBI and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), it also includes sample characters and information on how to create agents that work for that organisation. FinCEN might not sound all that exciting, but when you hear that FinCEN intelligence analysts can access financial records it suddenly becomes a lot more interesting (“hmmm, it seems the cult received a large payment from a CIA front organisation last year, now I wonder what that was for”).
The structure of the book is superb. Putting all the setting material at the front places the focus firmly on feel and atmosphere rather than mechanics. Reading the chapters is something akin to reading a good mystery novel. With each new organisation comes another level of complexity and conspiracy. By the time I reached the appendices I had been so excited by the ideas contained in the chapters that I had already begun to formulate ways to incorporate them into a game. Imagine my surprise when I found that Detwiller, Glancy and Tynes had beaten me to the punch and had come up with even better alternatives.
Delta Green in 2007
The core Delta Green sourcebook was published in 1997. This new reprint has only a few, mainly cosmetic, differences to that edition. So what does it have to offer in world where the intelligence community has been transformed by terrorist attacks and bombings? Well, a hell of a lot actually. For one thing Delta Green was well ahead of its time. “The big picture” chapter concludes by stating that “… it would be easy to imagine the next decade being one of political intolerance and extremism.” By being based on that assumption, Delta Green finds itself perhaps even more relevant now than it was at the time of its release. Likewise, interest in government conspiracies and corrupt officials can hardly be said to have waned.
One thing about Delta Green which really surprised me was the flexibility it allows. Everything I had heard about the setting made me assume it was designed for a current day (or 1990s) campaign only. But the sourcebook is clearly designed to allow for adventures at any time since 1947. If a post-2001 UFO conspiracy game doesn’t inspire you, what about a game set in 1952 when Delta Green raided a secret Nazi submarine base in Antarctica? Or a game based around a Delta Green campaign against cultists in the Belgian Congo in 1964?
In light of all the the X-files comparisons I had expected Delta Green to appear a little clichéd. But the shadow of the TV series really doesn’t hang over it as much as I thought it would. While the government and UFO conspiracies are there, Delta Green really does have a different feel. This is possibly because of the approach at an individual level. Mulder and Scully may have been involved in a search for answers, but your average Delta Green operative is almost certainly going to be more gung-ho than that. While some of its agents are passionate crusaders for truth in the mould of Mulder, the majority are split into two camps – those who value the truth mainly because they might be able to use it to justify Delta Green’s official reinstatement, and those who don’t care for answers at all and simply take a scorched earth policy to the paranormal. The latter group seems to be in the majority and their approach seems summed up best in the description of a Delta Green “friendly” NPC:
… A group of agents came to Wu for information about some of his findings. The agents weren’t concerned with admissibility or human rights, they just wanted to know if the information was correct. Once they were convinced that it was, they went out to the NWI facility and blew it up. Then they asked if Wu knew about anything else that could use some blowing up.
Presentation
The new edition Delta Green sourcebook is a very solid hardback containing 340 or so pages. A couple of my recent RPG purchases have been very flimsy hardbacks, but this thing feels like it will outlast me. The interior is on a heavy and slightly glossy (but non-reflective) stock and is grey and white. There is no colour, but the book is full of wonderfully evocative artwork.
I don’t have an earlier edition to compare it to, but I believe the only new additions to the book are d20 stats which slot in alongside the original BRP Call of Cthulhu stat blocks and a couple of minor explanatory notes.
The publishing of this reprint was apparently beset by printing and lay-out issues. Apart from one small glitch (a sentence and a half are repeated in one paragraph) I haven’t spotted any evidence of these problems at all.
Summary
Delta Green has a reputation as a classic. It is something I had desired for so long that my desire had begun to sour. In truth I had expected to be under-whelmed when it finally arrived at my door, but instead it knocked my socks off. Delta Green transforms Call of Cthulhu into something larger. It adds conspiracy to the horror mix and contrives a setting which is believable, convincing, consistent and terrifying. In terms of content it can rate nothing less than a five.
The lay-out, writing, art and production are all to the highest standard – but recent games have raised the bar so high with their slick and glossy colour interiors that I can only give it a four for presentation.
If you are a fan of classic Call of Cthulhu or the d20 edition of Call of Cthulhu then this is a resource which will transform your game. Despite the passage of time since it was written, it remains a must-buy.
The truth is out there. And it is a work of genius.
