VERISIMILITUDE IN DELTA GREEN

Today, let’s examine something that was almost completely invisible to me about Delta Green until I got the following message a few weeks back:

“I don’t know how you guys weave all the history in! Delta Green makes sense, and so many other horror/Lovecraft things just don’t…”

Now, I didn’t notice the comment as important at first (though the sentiment was appreciated!) and it was a little while before it clicked to me, but I think it’s saying something key. I had always imagined Delta Green as a thing separate from anything else; a place I went to go have fun, to write, to paint, to imagine, but it’s clear to me now that a major appeal of it is it’s instantly recognizable and believable. The real central premise of Delta Green — unconsciously — is that it is somehow secretly based in our world. This may seem obvious to you, but it’s always been so intrinsic to us that it’s practically invisible.

There is a certain historicity inherent in all of Delta Green. It is insufficient to us for elements of Delta Green to float outside of history, or to not have repercussions that are both carefully thought out and expressed. The torch of verisimilitude in Delta Green was lit by Adam Scott Glancy far back in the early 1990s. His obsessive knowledge and integration of actual history into the Delta Green timeline was vital and influenced everything created after it. When we create a new cult, or a character, or a technology, or an interaction with an alien race for Delta Green we are ridiculously careful about it. Ideas fly, sure, but quickly the more outré ideas are discarded, and a thin skein of that element’s history in the world of Delta Green is traced. From there, tendrils exploring the element are written off that main lead. Most often, when the seed is planted properly, it’s difficult to get the leads to stop growing.

Summarizing the unconscious rules we use to make Delta Green…well…Delta Green is difficult to say the least, but I’ve tried my best. When we add new things to the Delta Green universe, we tend to do the same things over and over again. Here are the rules I can clearly see.

TIME AND PLACE

The ideas we develop for Delta Green are never floaty, untethered things that hover outside of the timeline of history. They always have a time and place, and a theme. They must be linked as such, or they are ephemeral and flat; and fail to engage. It’s great if you have an idea for a spell or a monster or a hypergeometric device; but ask yourself first where and when it is? This will often inform the choices you make on the clues and ways to interact with it. And theme arises from all of these things mixed together. But start here.

HISTORY GOES ON

The secrets of the unnatural are secret because they tend to gobble those people that stumble on them, up, closing the loop before the horror can spread. This is a natural function of the forces that Delta Green fights; they are so destructive and poisonous to human reality, that anyone that crosses their path is disintegrated by them — some sooner, some later. It’s the “later” ones that Delta Green worries about the most.

Either way, even those unnatural forces that remain and spread for a time are eventually swept away without leaving an indelible mark. This is for many reasons, not the least of which is there are human groups trying to hide them. In addition, they tend to be pyrrhic — they consume people as they work in the world; until there is no one left to try to spread them. This leaves only history behind.

CONSPIRACIES ARE NATURAL AND PROFIT IS ALMOST ALWAYS THE MOTIVE

Humans conspire. It’s what we do. But that doesn’t mean a conspiracy — even one run by the United States government — ever holds water. In fact, since we only ever learn about failed conspiracies, it’s all but impossible to say if any have lasted the test of time. The hiding of information, threatening or otherwise, occurs daily in a billion different lives, and it is a comfortable stance for the human mind. Information wants to be free, but that does not mean people want it to be. Whenever considering something unnatural entering the flow of history, think: who might imagine they could profit off of this, and why? And why will that go wrong? Note: not “if” it will go wrong, but why. Because it always goes wrong.

CONTROL CANNOT BE MAINTAINED

Even the most carefully thought-out organizational controls fail, and fail often. No plan survives first contact with the enemy, and that’s when the enemy is human. What hope do human organizations have against unnatural entities, hypergeometry, elements from beyond space/time or worse? The answer is: next to none.

They may luck out from time-to-time, it may even appear as if they won. But they haven’t. What Delta Green might imagine as a holding action against the unnatural is actually random skirmishes with a force that butts up against reality, burning it away slowly. It might appear that Delta Green is “winning” the war on those anomalous lights in the Arizona desert that seem to gobble up people, but if they could really see what was going on, their conception of the situation would be vastly different. But that’s the entire point: they can’t really see.

Victory is never possible because you can never defeat what you can’t understand. And no human mind can understand the unnatural without becoming the unnatural; transforming into yet another monstrosity to destroy.

LAYERS

Nothing this important is a single thing. It is always many layers deep. Sometimes it is that way due to clever planning, other times, it’s the shade of a thousand little mistakes that cause it to fracture into disparate information, groups, or people. When you arrive at the end of your new Delta Green element — whatever type in may be — look around and ask what else might arise from this? What choices does it force humans to make? How would they go about profiting from it?

NOTHING IS DEFINITIVE

This is a point that drives many gamers mad. Nothing in Delta Green is definitive. Delta Green essentially knows next-to-nothing about any unnatural force, and those that they believe they understand, they are — at best — hopelessly ill-informed, and — at worst — completely misunderstanding the situation. This isn’t to say they believe they know nothing, in fact, many within both Delta Green organizations are certain they have it figured out. All of these people have one thing in common:

They don’t have it figured out.

The information on the books for Delta Green (and other conspiracies in the world of Delta Green) are lensed through the limited aperture of the human mind. There are colors, shapes, and images that just do not fit. In fact, most of the unnatural cannot fit. Human descriptions (be it narrative or science) are woefully prepared to get across an idea of the unnatural because…it is from beyond reality.