Delta Green

Delta Green

Delta Green sourcebook cover
Designer(s)	Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy, John Scott Tynes
Publisher(s)	Pagan Publishing Arc Dream Publishing Pelgrane Press (The Fall of DELTA GREEN)
Publication date	1997 (Sourcebook) 2016 (Arc Dream Publishing) (Standalone RPG) 2018 (The Fall of DELTA GREEN)
Genre(s)	Horror, Conspiracy fiction
System(s)	Call of Cthulhu, GUMSHOE

Delta Green is a setting for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game created by Adam Scott Glancy, Dennis Detwiller, and John Scott Tynes, a.k.a. the Delta Green Partnership, of the Seattle gaming house Pagan Publishing. In August 2011, Arc Dream Publishing and the Delta Green Partnership announced development of a standalone Delta Green role-playing game.^[1] Funding began in 2015 and in 2016 the Agent's Handbook was released followed by the Handler's Handbook in 2018. Arc Dream Publishing also made a partnership with Pelgrane Press to release a prequel named The Fall of DELTA GREEN using the Gumshoe System in 2018.^[2]

Premise

Delta Green is a contemporary setting, starting in the mid-1990s with intermittent updates thereafter. The game revolves around a fictitious secret organization, created by the U.S. Government following the covert raid on the town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts mentioned in H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The organization takes its name from its World War II era codename.

Delta Green agents work undercover through other U.S. government agencies, recruiting across a wide range including the FBI, ATF, CDC, and DEA. It appears to have "gone rogue" somewhere between the 1960s and the 1980s, following a disastrous operation in Cambodia and a "deal" struck by Reagan-era rivals in Majestic-12, ostensibly with "Greys".

The 2016 edition advances the history from 1997 (Original release of the sourcebook) to the current year. In 2001, the September 11 attacks greatly affects the Intelligence community, including Delta Green and MAJESTIC-12, Majestic was weakened and destroyed while Delta Green has been brought back into the government fold, given a budget and official standing, using the War on Terror as a cover to their operation. There's also a group of old guard agents that were opposed to the restructure of Delta Green, preferring to maintain the old structure, forming their own splinter group known as "The Outlaws", as opposed to the official "Program".

The group was introduced in the seventh issue of The Unspeakable Oath, a Call of Cthulhu fanzine created by Pagan Publishing, in early 1993. Four years later, the Delta Green supplement appeared and spawned a number of its own supplements and novels. The premise is similar to The X-Files (although the original incarnation of Delta Green preceded The X-Files by almost a year^[3]). Both draw on federal alphabet soup folklore, UFO conspiracy theories and other modern legends.

The Delta Green supplement lays the groundwork for organized investigations into paranormal crime and horror, setting up the initial plot and providing players with their motivations and the resources they need to carry out their tasks. It also provides a source of replacements for characters who go mad or are killed. Canonical materials revolve around threats from the Cthulhu Mythos, but the framework is very flexible. Delta Green agents typically know little about the Mythos.

Gameplay

The original 1997 edition of Delta Green was a sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu, as such, it used the Basic Role-Playing system that Call of Cthulhu had.

The 2016 standalone edition takes the percentile dice of Basic Role-Playing and Call of Cthulhu mechanics and introduce modifications adapted for the setting. Player Characters are called Agents and the Game Masters Handlers.

Sanity is still rolled everytime characters meet unnatural horrors, but now also in violent situations and where the Agents feel helplessness, Agents can "adapt" to violence and helplessness after three failed SAN checks, Unnatural cannot be adapted. Delta Green introduces the concept of Bonds, which are the friends and family or even objects and activities of the Agents, they serve as character-expanding tool for players and a sanity-regulation mechanic, as they can be used to half the SAN loss but at the point of their relationship with bonds, if the relationship points fall, the connection with the bond will be crossed out. With the bond mechanics, the Home scenes are also introduced, they are between-mission vignettes focused on the everyday lives of the Agents, they can be about building relationships with bonds, investigating the unnatural or going to the therapists, among others.

Since player characters are members of the U.S Government, there are new rules to acquire gear and equipment, they can be both requisitioned from the organization the Agent is part of. Requisitioning requires the skil Bureaucracy, the more expensive and advanced equipment the harder will be to make a roll, failure might even result in the Agent getting blacklisted, fired or even arrested. It also possible to use the Agent's personal wealth, specially for illegal objects, however it will risk the relationship with bonds.

Combat was also streamlined to be quicker, more tactical and deadly. The main mechanic combat mechanic introduced is Lethality, weapons that deal damage above 2d10 have a "lethality rating" from 10% to 90%, if the percentile roll is below the rating the targeted enemy dies instantly, otherwise the damage dealt is the sum of the result of the percentile dice.^[4]

History

The setting was first introduced in 1992 in the seventh issue of The Unspeakable Oath, Pagan Publishing's Call of Cthulhu's fanzine, in the scenario Convergence, which would be later republished in the first Delta Green sourcebook. The scenario introduced Delta Green as a loose organization within the US Government dedicated to secretly fight the creatures from the Cthulhu Mythos.^[5] Pagan Publishing would then expand the setting resulting in the publishing of the Delta Green sourcebook in 1997.

In 1998, Delta Green won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement of 1997. The setting also won two awards in 2000: Best Game-Related Novel of 1999 for Delta Green: The Rules of Engagement and Best Roleplaying Supplement of 1999 for Delta Green: Countdown.

On May 1, 2006, the Pagan Publishing homepage was updated with an announcement describing the reasons for the delay of the new release of Delta Green, and stating that the d20 edition of the game should be available in time for Gen Con Indy. While there were a few show copies available there were no copies available for sale to the public as most of them were "still being shipped from China".^[6] As of May 2007 the book, which is a reprint of the 1997 book with the addition of D20 stats, was finally reprinted and was available in stores.^[6]

A hardback compilation of the three Delta Green Eyes Only chapbooks, along with additional material, was released in November 2007. The book was published in cooperation with Arc Dream Publishing. The entire 1,000 copy print run was sold out by February 2008.^[7] The hardback edition of Delta Green: Eyes Only was a finalist for the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Supplement of 2007. A softback version of the compilation followed in September 2008 and is available to retail distribution.

Pagan Publishing and Arc Dream Publishing began work in mid-2008 on a new sourcebook, Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity, which was released as a limited-edition hardback in June 2010, to be followed by a softcover retail edition.^[8][9] As of August 2011 the entire 1,000-copy print run of the hardback limited edition was sold out. In August 2011, Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity won silver (2nd place) Ennie Awards for Best Writing and Best Adventure.^[10]

Arc Dream Publishing released an ebook edition of the novel Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy in January 2011.^[11]

As of October 29, 2015, a Kickstarter Campaign by Arc Dream Publishing funded a series of new Delta Green products, converting the setting into a standalone role-playing game.^[12] On February 26, 2016 a quick-start rulebook Delta Green: Need to Know was released for free download with the Agent's Handbook following soon after on April 27, 2016. The Handler's Guide was released October 31, 2017 in PDF and on March 8, 2018 a compilation of several other Delta Green adventures released by Arc Dream was released in only one book Delta Green: A Night at the Opera, containing the adventures Reverberations, Viscid, Music from a Darkened Room, Extremophilia, Star Chamber and Observer Effect.

In February 2018, Pelgrane Press released The Fall of DELTA GREEN, the Vietnam Era game financed on the 2015 Kickstarter as a GUMSHOE counterparent to Delta Green's Basic Role-Playing.^[13][12][2]

On July 9, 2018 returning co-creator John Scott Tynes started a Kickstarter Campaign to fund Delta Green: The Labyrinth, a new sourcebook containing "new threats, allies, and mysteries to deepen the terrors of your campaign."^[14]

In 2018 Delta Green won six ENnies awards. Gold in Best Rules, Best Production Values for Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game and Best E-Book for Delta Green: A Night at The Opera categories; while Silver in Product of the Year and Best Game for Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game and Best Adventure for Delta Green: A Night at The Opera.

Publications

See also

The following novels and short stories share similar backgrounds to Delta Green:

• The Atrocity Archives and its sequels by Charles Stross
• The Spiraling Worm by David Conyers and John Sunseri
• Declare by Tim Powers

References

External links

• Delta Green, official site.