Review of Delta Green: The Labyrinth

One of the few justifiable criticisms of Arc Dream's relaunched edition of Delta Green in 2018 was that it was light on adversaries, or specifically, on cults and organizations to be played as opponents. The various supplements to the original Delta Green had built up an extensive lore along the way of dark antagonists and conspiracies. The two volumes of the new Delta Green were rich in detail on almost everything except these, many of which just got a cursory nod in passing. Delta Green: The Labyrinth helps to redress that balance with four new Potential Allies and four new groups of Antagonists for Delta Green Agents to square off with or against - or to connive with, suborn or betray, because things are never that simple in this... um... labyrinth.

Delta Green: The Labyrinth also sees the welcome return of John Scott Tynes to RPG writing - at least as far as I can confirm from his recent writing credits, which mostly date from the early Noughties. John Tynes not only co-authored the original Delta Green, he was also responsible for some of its most imaginative and unsettling departures, notably "The Hastur Mythos" sections of Delta Green: Countdown. Tynes was absent from the recreation of Delta Green, and this is his opportunity to update the Nineties government-conspiracy zeitgeist of the original to the era of MAGA, fake news and the GFC. There's a lot of catching up to do. As the Foreword says, "If the past 20 years have taught us anything, it's that things we think are unmitigated benefits (like maybe a global network of interconnected computers) can turn out to have a dark side. Tynes gives us enemies to struggle against, but perhaps even worse, he gives us allies who can help us. For a time."

These are sandbox ideas rather than detailed scenarios, designed to be slotted into existing campaigns as extra ingredients and resources for the creative Handler, so some of them may play out better than others. The Lonely, for instance, Tynes's brilliantly repulsive take on incels, may work better on the page than it does in play. New Life Fertility, in contrast, has the potential to be the spine of a major campaign, right down to a Big Bad nemesis at the climax. All of the sections do include ideas on how to coordinate Tynes's creations with existing play, including many degrees of cooperation or confrontation - although, this being Delta Green, needless to say it's almost always going to end more or less badly.

Delta Green: The Labyrinth is good, but not perfect. For one thing, it sustains the excellent production values of the earlier rulebooks and supplements - but does that by reusing a lot of their artwork. I appreciate that they want a consistent look, but even so, that's glaring. And as the commentators on the superb podcast "The Green Box" have already pointed out, it's hard to see that many of the Allies are actually going to be very useful to the Agents as anything more than fresh lambs to sacrifice to their lost innocence. Still, Tynes's content is entirely original. He also manages to balance the unpleasantness of his adversaries at a just-about-tolerable level, while touching on plenty of very dark real-world evil. Tynes clearly hasn't lost his touch, and I hope he keeps on writing more for the new Delta Green, which has done such a good job of building on his legacy.