DELTA GREEN: AVOIDING COMMON OPERATION PROBLEMS

First, a word of warning: Delta Green is different to different people. Some describe it as a Tom Clancy techno-thriller, others as a government-orientated Keanu-Constantine-like action adventure. Since it’s your game, it’s both of these, and more. Every opinion is correct, and it was built as a kit to make your own version of Delta Green that appeals to you. So anything you want to play and call Delta Green is fine by us.

However, Delta Green was created with one vision in mind, and that core vision — no matter what you like to run — is what attracted people to the idea in the first place. So, when I look at fan creations, several things that directly oppose the founding vision of Delta Green stand-out, again and again. These common problems are easily avoided, and may be difficult for some Handlers to spot (at least at first). These speed-bumps are often the things that prevent homemade operations from really working. Look for them, and try to give them a pass in your games and see what happens. I bet they’ll help your operations sing.

Too-Much-Information-Syndrome.

This is the most common mistake. The hard and fast rule of writing a fun Delta Green operation is this: if there’s no way the player’s Agents could learn that piece of information in the operation, it shouldn’t be mentioned in the operation.

A lot of the time, the Agents don’t really care who dispatched whom to do what for which agency. Or of the particular nuances in the backstory of an NPC unless that information is accessible to them in some manner. Everything you put in the operation should be — at most — one step removed from Agents. Otherwise, cut it. This also makes things easier to run too — less text to skim through when you’re looking for something.

But What If Mankind Could Control The Great Old Ones?

Another fan favorite. The entire point of Cosmic Horror is that not only can mankind never control the Great Old Ones, mankind can’t even conceive of them properly. They are wholly beyond human understanding and control. They are beyond everything, and everything we think we know about them, besides being wrong, isn’t even close to being right. We lack the tools to grasp even the most basic principles of true existence, much less the infinite powers of the Great Old Ones.

Without this, without this core experience (or something approximating it) the game ceases to be horror and becomes something more like a procedural sci-if show. This, in and of itself might be fun, but I maintain that the fear, horror, and struggle in the face of impossible odds at the core Delta Green idea is the reason this game is still here, 24 years later.

Verisimilitude Is Not Just A River In Egypt

A lot of people focus on details. And often those details are guns. Or tanks. Or wars. Or insignia. Verisimilitude is awesome, and can be a lot of fun...until it’s not. No one likes to smash into the verisimilitude-wall at speed when they’re trying to role-play and have a good time.

If your operation is neck-deep in procedure, pre-knowledge, and specifications; realize that it comes with a huge amount of Handler responsibility attached to it. Want the Agents to play missile launch technicians in an ICBM silo? That sounds like great fun, but it’s up to you as Handler to make them feel like they know what they’re doing — after all, they wouldn’t be in that silo without knowing that, right? All good games in the “real” world require a balance between the world as we know it, and player interest. Use verisimilitude when it’s fun, discard it when it’s not. It’s yours to break out, or ignore, as needed. Otherwise it can kill the fun…dead.

If One Monster Is Fun, Just Wait Until They Meet Three Different Kinds! (In The First Encounter)

This is a personal pet peeve. “In my operation, this one Deep Ones teams up with Serpent Folk to kill the Mi-Go.” This may sound fun on paper, but a lot of the power and fear created by these creatures at the table is due to their mysteriousness. When they become mundane...when there’s a cosmic-clown-car spitting them out one after an- other, they lose their teeth, and become boring.

Delta Green is about people interacting with the unnatural, and it should focus on people. Unnatural entities should be few and far between and when they do show up, the last thing the Agent should be wanting to do is have a head count.

I hope these tips help you craft the kind of operations that sing at the table. After all, the real goal of Delta Green: the game is to have people laughing smiling, and recalling that awesome time years ago when some horrific thing ate their Agent…