HOW TO SCARE YOUR PLAYERS IN DELTA GREEN

I get this question a lot. How do you scare your players? My players seem immune to scary stuff! A lot of Handlers are left feeling that their games fall flat because the big reveal of the monster or terrifying moment is most often met with “oh,” or, “see, it was X, I told ya!” This is a very disheartening feeling for a Handler, but the good news is, there’s an easy fix. With just a few little shifts in style, and thinking, you too can scare the shit out of your players.

Now, my methodology for doing so has developed over decades of running such games, so much so, it’s almost unconscious, so if you’ve just started, or are coming from another style of gaming (say high-adventure fantasy) don’t beat yourself up too much. The appeal of a game like Delta Green is uncertainty, fear, and the struggle to stay alive — something almost alien in many other games where the PCs have a ludicrous level of plot immunity. In fact, as their first order of business, new Handlers might monkey with the lethality and player-control level of the Delta Green rules.

Let me advise against this in the strongest possible way.

Removing the lethality or the feeling of danger that approaches when an Agent engages in violence or encounters the unnatural defangs the entire Delta Green experience, and, while doing that, it also kind of guts the point of the game. Players don’t give a fig about Agents they know are meta-game elements that float over the plot and dangers untouched, and, as such, will become disengaged and bored.

Fear and uncertainty are the key to a great Delta Green game. Fear and uncertainty come from the reality of the possiblity of losing your Agent — and nowhere else. Without it, or if the Agent is given a hundred tweakable options to alter the outcome of such dangers, fear just evaporates like smoke leaving behind a game that becomes a mere listing of events with no real weight.

Now, having given my methods some deep thought over time (I wrote a nice, high-level summary for Surreal Horror in Delta Green: Impossible Landscapes —available in PDF now, here), I can break my methods down into 5 clear rules.

1. READ THE TABLE
The most vital rule and skill for a Handler to posses is the ability to read the table. A good Handler is reactive. It doesn’t matter what the scenario says should happen, if you feel it sliding off the edge of interest at the table, it’s up to you to seize the controls and drag it back on course. Are your players asking a lot of questions or are they looking at their phones? Are your players talking amongst themselves comparing notes on the man with the strange, opalescent purple eyes, or are they talking about the Superbowl? You need to engage with each individual player, and time those touchstone points so no one is left out in the cold for too long.

It’s one-third psychoanlysis, one-third planning ahead, and one-third juggling. Keep an eye on each of your players while playing, note what kind of content interests them. Some players like investigation, others like pursuit or surprises, others still love digging into the unnatural (hopefully all of them like to be frightened!). Note each player’s preferences — what makes their eyes light up at the table — and keep it in your back pocket. If you see them becoming disengaged, pull out the old trick and let it roll (this will sometimes take some quick-thinking on your part).

Being a Handler means balancing, juggling, and often making-up-on-the-fly content to draw wandering player’s attentions back to the table and the absolute key to this is reading the table.

2. IT’S ALL ABOUT TIMING
A song composed of one-note a thousand times isn’t really a song at all, yet, a lot of Handlers default to banging the unnatural key a thousand times in an attempt to stave off disengagement. It’s clear why that might be the default jump, but this is a mistake. The unnatural must be a crescendo; something the game rises and builds to achieve. Otherwise it will feel cheap, empty and worst of all, mundane.

And it’s not only about the unnatural. Everything in the game has a pace and ideal timing. Too much investigation can put out the fire of interest. Too much down-time or bond scenes can dampen engagement. Too much violence can make everything feel fake and made of cardboard. Timing goes hand-in-hand with reading the table. Watch for cues that announce themselves. Are the players antsy? Have they stopped asking questions, researching, and comparing notes? It’s up to you as Handler to know what’s going to come next, and why that choice will feel right. Timing is everything.

3. MAKE THE MONSTER YOUR OWN
Never roll out a monster in its vanilla form. Every monster, every unnatural threat has to be absorbed by the Handler, and made their own. Don’t call the beastie by the name known to the players — it’s not a Deep One, it’s a “Child of the Black Water”, it’s not a Spectral Polyp, it’s a Matlapitz Aixachim Mimicque (a whistling havoc of death).

Work hard on describing the strangeness of the entity or unnatural situation. Write down two or three key points to hit, such as “the being reeks of chemicals like a pool,” or “you can feel a low-level murmuring of inhuman thoughts as it moves, visions of rending limbs and chewed flesh.” When it attacks or is attacked, if you can, never have it do or be subject to what’s expected.

Emptying a pistol into a Deep One at point blank range, for example (who somehow survives the HP damage) might end up with the Deep One jumping up a moment later and the Agent hearing the terrifying sound of the spent bullets dropping from its bruised, armored, chest. While an attack by a Deep One might lead to an infestation of semi-transparent, wriggling worms of unknown disposition burrowing into the flesh.

A monster in Delta Green is only a guidline that the Handler draws within, and re-labels to make it his or her own. It should never be used “as is.”

4. THE OLD DOUBLE-FAKE
Ok, so you’ve got your players engaged, and the game has built to a level where something — some horrific violence or unnatural event — might occur. It just feels ripe for it. Learn to take a moment and think, can I string the players along even more? Can I set them up to expect one thing (say, an unnatural event) and hit them instead with something mundane? You shouldn’t do this all the time, of course, but a well-timed double-fake can be fantastic.

A great example, Agents had pursued something they thought to be the Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. They had recorded a strange, pale figure stumbling past motion-activated cameras, they had heard its bizarre hooting shouts in the dark. Now, their hit-team had crept into the woods with submachine guns, night vision equipment, and air-support.

When they finally ran down the beast, they discovered an emaciated, sickly-looking Oragutan that had long ago escaped an illegal home-zoo.

Usually such a double-fake is, at most, a momentary pause before the real shit hits the fan. Don’t use this too often, but if you see an opportunity, it can add a lot of welcome uncertainty to the table.

5. REINFORCEMENT AND THEMES
Themes are the last thing you as a Handler trying to elicit fear at the table should be worrying about moment-to-moment, but often, opportunities arise in gameplay that can be incredibly obvious to you (and only you) as Handler. Are your Agents investigating a bizarre chemical that prolongs life? Is there a chance to play up a Bond meeting who is old or dying of illness? Are your Agents looking into a bizarre series of murders caused by radiation? Is there an opportunity to freak the players out by a taste of metal in their mouth or malfunctioning electronics?

Reinforcement of ongoing themes and ideas can add a ton to a Delta Green game, and a Handler learns to look for opportunities to double-down on them. Soon, such reinforcement becomes almost unconscious. For me, now, such opportunities — which, when I first started running such games years ago — seemed difficult ot pick out and dim, now shine like spotlights. They’re incredibly easy to see.

Keep looking and eventually, you’ll see them.


Taken together, these rules add up to a runway that will, eventually, lead your group of Agents to a point where the unnatural event appears at precisely the right time at the table, and the fear will naturally arise out of that situation. In fact, you'll likely be amazed how much of creating fear at the Delta Green table has to do with setting the proper conditions and how very little it has to do with the actual gameplay in the moment itself.

Happy hunting!