THE TEN COMMANDMENTS OF DELTA GREEN

THOU SHALT EMBRACE ATMOSPHERE

The world of Delta Green is our own...except... The Agents are among those few that have even the vaguest inkling of what is really going on. That secret horror should permeate everywhere in the game. This atmosphere: cosmic horror and government conspiracy, should be the backdrop for everything that comes after.

THOU SHALT FOSTER TENSION AND PARANOIA

This arrives by throwing observations, questions and even answers (but never THE answer) at the player's Agents and letting them soak in. "You think you saw that car at your kid's soccer practice," "you don't recall doing it, but all of your emails are marked 'read'," "the 16th century book has your name scribbled in the margin..." There should be an endless stream of possible leads, red herrings, or dead ends. And a good Handler knows when to let one lie, or to play one out. But the best Handlers leave a trail behind to be tapped at any time.

THOU SHALT MAKE IT PERSONAL

Delta Green is about humanity. It is not Dr. No, and it is not the Bourne Identity. It is about failure and what it means to be human. To properly portray this is to paint a picture of the player's Agent's lives. Their loved ones. Their hopes and dreams. Their job and their day to day career.

And then, to paint the picture of how they utterly fail to fulfill their dreams for each.

THOU SHALT RESPECT PLAYER AGENCY AND THE DICE

The world of Delta Green is bleak and unforgiving, but the Handler must always respect player agency. Allow their decisions, for better or worse, to shape the story. The best games often emerge from unexpected player choices. Be clear about risks and repercussions, and roll the dice out in the open, but let the player's make their own fate.

THOU SHALT NOT SHY FROM CONSEQUENCES

When the hammer comes down. Let it drop. You will want to soften the blow, but that is not Delta Green. The blinding joys of the game come from the depths of darkness of the losses that have gone before. Without the risk, without the doom, the victories become hollow and empty. Beware protecting your player's Agents — it kills Delta Green games.

THOU SHALT EMPLOY RESEARCH

The best of Delta Green is real. We've read and dug and collected millions of tidbits of intelligence, war, and government projects and have spun them up with the unnatural to make a (hopefully) seamless weave of horror. Open Wikipedia to the Minuteman Missile page. Pop open a book on combat aircraft. Watch a documentary on Project HIGHJUMP. Each is filled to the brim with hooks and angles for Delta Green. Use the real world as a basis to build on.

THOU SHALT NOT OVERUSE THE UNNATURAL

Still, Delta Green is about the secret world of the unnatural. This world eats itself and never, really breaks wide. It is self-limiting and self-controlling. As such, Delta Green succeeds as a believable narrative because the unnatural doesn't overreach. It isn't everywhere, or even a lot of places. It is limited and focused and short-lived. Keep the unnatural encounters in your game like that... they are a crescendo reached — at most — once a session, or sometimes, not in a session at all.

THOU SHALT MIX UNIVERSAL DESPAIR WITH PERSONAL HOPE

The world will end. The End Times will come. Delta Green will lose. These are fundamental truths. They will not change. But that doesn't mean the Delta Green Agent doesn't organize his daughter's sweet sixteen, or care for his ailing mother in the hospital. The hopelessness is precisely the counterpoint to life. A good Handler knows when to hit the player with despair or hope and mixes and matches them as the game goes on.

THOU SHALT PIT THE GROUP AGAINST ONE ANOTHER

Who can Delta Green Agents trust? Well, each other, right? Right?

Given enough time, enough operations and enough secrets, wedges will grow between the Agents. In other games this might be a problem, but in Delta Green it's a gold mine. Get them questioning one another with simple observations, "Carl suddenly leaves to take a phone call, looking upset." Then...let the players do the rest.

THOU SHALT KEEP THEM GUESSING

In Delta Green, no answer is clear, or final; especially when dealing with the unnatural. Cthulhu? Oh sure. He's a Polynesian folk god-figure. An alien priest from Xoth. A being worshipped by New England fishermen. An subaquatic ultraterrestrial. Maybe, he's all these things. Or none of them. The one truth is this: not only can the Agents never figure out the nature of the unnatural, IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE HUMAN MIND TO DO SO.