Travern

Government worker/official. Delta Green needs to be deglamourised. (Seriously, even “the feds” is a bit too closely associated with law enforcement.) You don’t want to know what DG does to Men in Black.

“Federal agent” is commonly understood to refer to FBI special agents or, more loosely, any federal government LEO. An astronaut would not be described an agent of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration nor a Foreign Service Officer an agent of the State Department, however. The point is, Delta Green prefers to recruit from the government because of its origins but later expanded to enlist civilians. Again, spoilers…

After starting out with the default Federal Agent for PCs (FBI or one of the three-letter agencies of the IC), Arc Dream seems to be moving toward more variety with the new RPG. They’ve created a dossier of pre-gens for literally every profession in the Agent’s Handbook and The Complex. The Control Group scenario collection—highly recommended—covers NASA, CDC, State Dept. and US Army PCs, for instance. In my own experience, having “civilians” mixed up with federal agents and government employees adds extra tension to the mission, with nice opportunities for everything to go horribly wrong roleplaying. The advantages of playing a Feeb are, of course, power of arrest and access to fire arms. Although Arc Dream doesn’t run an equivalent to Chaosium’s Miskatonic Repository program, they’re pretty free about fan-made material. The 2019 Delta Green Shotgun Scenario Contest has just started, for instance, and the much of the rules system is published under the WOTC OGL (the DG canon is reserved IP). If you want to sell your own DG-based material on DriveThruRPG, you’ll have to contact Arc Dream to arrange that. Yes, they’re well-designed, well-produced, high-quality hardcovers (and the art direction with full-color work by DG veteran Dennis Detwiller gives a cohesive feel to the publication line). After you’ve played the game more, you can decided if you want to invest $100 in them or wait until the next Bundle of Holding digital sale for the PDFs. If what you want is a modern-day Lovecraftian investigative horror, 7th edition Call of Cthulhu handles that better than any previous version of the game. Delta Green does contemporary cosmic horror quite well, but its main selling point is its setting/lore, which the new RPG takes full advantage of.

Spoilers.

A minor quibble—DG PCs are not all Federal Agents, and the Agents Handbook includes rules to cover any number of professions, including civilians. One of my favorite supplements, The Complex, has backgrounds for government contractors like “Beltway bandits” Booz Allen and RAND. They are, however, all recruited into the “Delta Green” program, a conspiracy that is not necessarily what it seems. In that respect, the DG RPG is a much more restrictive setting than CoC. It’s built up three decades’ worth of lore, with everything from RPG supplements and scenarios to novels and short stories. The fan-run Fairfield Wiki can help you dive in.

In terms of game mechanics, the Delta Green RPG is based on Mongoose’s d100 Legend system, which is similar to Call of Cthulhu 6th edition (and all the differences to 7th edition that entails). While it handles sanity and weapons lethality slightly differently, its killer feature is Bonds, which represent an Agent’s relationships and which they can sacrifice to preserve their sanity or ward off madness. Bonds basically are a means to creating PCs with rich, meaningful backgrounds, which you then have to destroy in order to keep fighting the Mythos threat.

In Robert E. Howard’s tales, the Mythos entities encountered are considerably less powerful than those in stories by others in Lovecraft’s circle. For instance, superstition and incomprehension/misunderstanding rather than cosmic pessimism feature in his “Tale Black Stone” and “The Tower of the Elephant”. Generally, his bold and brawny heroes can dispatch them with honest steel (no worrying about failed sanity with them). One could brew up a BRP horror campaign around those stories instead of those by HPL, CAS, Bloch, Campbell, et al. In any case, it sounds as though CoC’s Lovecraftian cosmic horror may not be quite to your taste, especially considering your forum handle Have you checked out The Esoterrorists or Monster of the Week?

Much as I like Huth’s work, as I’ve said, this new cover is in the right art direction, so to speak, for a basic-level CoC scenario collection. It’s Indiana Jones-meets-Weird Tales, which is just fine, especially since “The Necropolis” is one of the three scenarios. This was the main aspect of Huth’s version I thought was a step in the right direction for drawing in new CoC players (and I didn’t want to derail the discussion with a history of African-American detective story heroes). I hope Chaosium will keep this in mind for the future, even as they incorporate customer feedback about other art design elements.

Incidentally, c.f. Capek’s War with the Newts (Válka s mloky) (1936) with HPL’s Deep Ones. Capek’s Newts are aquatic, intelligent giant salamander-like creatures living in the Malay archipelago. Like his robots, they’re enslaved by humanity but successfully rebel, ultimately displacing humans as the planet’s dominant species.

Later seasons of The Venture Bros., when super-science encounters more traditional superheroes and supervillains, could work, too.

From a game design standpoint, the Silver Age requires a different approach from Bronze and Iron Age superhero comics (which generally have more in common with Golden Age when it comes to powers). The cosmic-scale powers, with the weird anything-goes variants, separates the Silver Age from the other subgenres, except maybe “widescreen” comics. The classic Marvel Superheroes Heroes RPG (FASERIP) probably had the best approach to this (FATE could work with some effort, I suppose). In any case, that’s decidedly not in BRP’s wheelhouse.

BRP doesn’t skew that young in the first place, either in its comparatively crunchy game mechanics or the more mature stories its rules system lends itself to telling (maybe if Chaosium developed a BRP-Lite version first). In the second, the competition for the YA equivalent superhero RPGs is already dominated by Masks: The Next Generation. I’d like to see Chaosium innovate rather than play catch-up or chase demographic trends.

Warren Ellis’s r-rated superhero comics No Hero and Black Summer would work, too.

Pelgrane Press’s SRD for the Gumshoe was originally released for OGL and CC, though it looks like version 2.0 is available only under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Unported License.

While it’s great that DG is receiving this attention—Arc Dream can now quote a Forbes article in their ads and marketing—the article comes from a Forbes “contributor”, rather than a staff writer. (Here’s a fuller explanation of how the contributor program works from a member.). I’d be very interested to know how many clicks this directs to delta-green.com and drivethrurpg and how it improves Delta Green’s Google search.

Are we going to entertain the possibility that one of the PCs is the murderer or does that over-complicate the scenario?

Congratulations (from a satisfied KS backer of Q-Workshop’s beautifully Eldritch Cthulhu dice)!

Are you looking for real-world examples, like Enochian or the Language of Birds, or fictional ones, like Alko?

Fab indeed! And just imagine Asenath Waite boobytrapping her library by sealing a portion of shoggoth-matter in a “smuggler’s bible” version of The Necronomicon.

Another vote for the last illustration, which looks perfect! The ghouls-as-cenobites just doesn’t work. As @lordabdul points out, other types of charnel-house adornments make perfect sense, perhaps they may even take a few mementos during their graveyard feedings, like a pocket watch or wedding ring.

Congratulations! It's terrific news that MoN beat out not only entries in the Warhammer 40K and Fallout franchises, but also two Magic: The Gathering expansions—that's stiff competition in a fan award.

Loïc Muzy‘s work is terrific, and his artwork for Petersen’s Guide was superb. I’m eagerly looking forward to the new MM just on the basis of the Mi-Go illustrations, although I hope there’s a balance of his contributions and the eclectic design that was the hallmark of the 1st edition of the MM.

While it’s not an official Discord server, the Chaosium covers all their games including CoC and has an LFG option: https://discord.gg/QM78wn3. The dedicated CoC The Necronomicon is also a sizable one: https://discord.gg/8yeAugS.

The Nyarlathotep entry at the YSDC wiki is a good place to start. (Daniel Harms's Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia is also pretty good when it comes to including RPG material.)

Some of the investigation in SoYS's chapters can be complex, but it's still a linear campaign that's comparatively short (I'd love to see it updated, too). Unseen Masters advertises itself as "mini-campaigns", which sounded appropriate in this case. I just keep seeing well-meant inquiries about MoN (and HotOE, to a lesser extent) from new Keepers, often fresh off The Haunting or the Starter Set. I've also recommended Doors to Darkness and Nameless Horrors scenario collections for their next step, but I'd prefer to suggest a shorter campaign. (An alternative would be to send them to a sandbox location in the Secrets of… series—updating H. P. Lovecraft's Arkham for 7th edition would similarly be great.)