Delta Green: The War on Cosmic Terror

[Jace911]

For those of you who aren't aware, the original Delta Green was a roleplaying supplement published for Call of Cthulhu in the 1990s. It sought to take the Lovecraft Mythos and transport the ideas, themes, and other elements from its native time in the 20s and 30s to the 90s, an era of black helicopters and conspiracy theorists. Players take the role of federal agents investigating, combating, and suppressing the unnatural forces creeping into the edges of the world, with the added twist that they are actually members of an illegal conspiracy that seeks to misuse government authority and funds in their ongoing fight to delay the end of the world one day at a time. You could basically describe it as "X-Files meets Call of Cthulhu" and communicate 90% of the appeal in that short statement.

Thematically the original Delta Green loved to explore the corruption and excesses and blunders of a government most people associated with Vietnam, WaterGate, Waco and Ruby Ridge. The actual "authorized" secret black ops program, Majestic-12, were alien collaborators who sold out the United States to the enigmatic "greys" in exchange for technology and power. In the UK the British military was under the sway of the Shan, trans-dimensional insects that burrowed into people's brains and controlled their actions like the Yeerks from Animorphs. This isn't to say that the government was the only threat Delta Green faced in the 90s; there were plenty of cults and criminal organizations that associated with or were puppets of the Mythos. The Skoptsi, a cult of Shub-Niggurath masquerading as a Russian Orthodox church and adoption service; the Fate, a secret society of sorcerers in New York rumored to be led by one of Nyarlothotep's many forms; the Karotechia, the ever-enduring Nazi occult division dedicated to unlocking the secrets of immortality through any means; the Cult of the Worm, a ring of opiate smugglers who implant themselves with alien worms that halt aging at the cost of excruciating pain; and on and on.

The atmosphere that the original Delta Green established was very much that of 90s America: the Soviet Union had fallen, there was no Great Enemy looming over the horizon, and people were free to shift their attention from the threat of nuclear annihilation to the gang violence in the inner city, the corruption of American politics, the secret workings of the US government, the supposed moral decay of society. With no outside threat to distract us, we were free to contemplate our own failings. This of course all changed in September of 2001 when the Twin Towers fell. Suddenly we had an outside threat to rally against, another Great Enemy to replace the Soviets: terrorism. Fast forward to fifteen years later and our society is very different. Surveillance, the curtailing of rights in the name of security, interventionism, and another foreign slog have changed how we view the world from the halcyon days of the 90s. The stability and long-term safety of the United States is no longer taken for granted by most people (Regardless of the actual threat terrorists represent). We're once again looking outward with fear rather than inward with disgust, and it is in this new environment that the new standalone edition of Delta Green has been released.

In the new Delta Green, agents are no longer members of an illegal conspiracy within the US government (Unless your players wish to be): now they are members of the United States Department of Defense Special Access Program classified Delta Green. In January of 2001 Delta Green took advantage of political infighting within Majestic-12 to launch a decapitation coup against their chief enemy. When the dust had settled the twelve most dangerous men in the world were either dead or in hiding, and suddenly Delta Green was left holding the reigns of both the conspiracy and the most classified black ops program in the United States government. Some chose to stay "out in the cold" with the Group, unwilling to trust an organization that had dedicated itself to selling out humanity, while others gladly accepted sanction and clearance in the Program. The two sides don't always see eye to eye--the Group considers the Program to be one bad day away from becoming another Majestic-12, while the Program considers the Group to be nothing but a loose assortment of reckless 'cowboys'--but both generally agree that they have better things to do than worrying about each other. The War on Terror has changed the face of the international community, and while the Mythos remains apathetic towards the squabbles of man those who serve or exploit the Mythos have changed as well.

On the individual scale, in the new Delta Green there's much more emphasis on the relationships of each agent and the corrosive effect their work has on their personal lives. Each agent has a number of "bonds" with friends, family, coworkers, etc which can be eroded as they are exposed to the Mythos again and again and come back cracked, broken, or wrong. This new focus is intended as a reflection on the War on Terror: the agents might succeed at their mission, but when they come home and find themselves emotionally distant from their loved ones as a consequence of what they've seen, they will often find themselves asking if it was all really worth it.

The Agent's Handbook is available in pdf at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow, and the Case Officer's Handbook should be out in June-July. There is also a quickstart guide, pregen characters, and a scenario available in a Pay What You Want bundle called Need to Know if you want to gauge your interest with the game before buying. The publishers also have a huge list of content they're planning on rolling out over the next year thanks to their insanely successful Kickstarter ($360,000 pledged with a goal of $60,000) including scenarios, sourcebooks, and entire campaigns.

If you're interested in some Actual Play recordings you should definitely listen to Role-Playing Public Radio's ongoing episodic campaign using the new rules: God's Teeth. It draws some serious inspiration from True Detective and is a great demonstration of a Delta Green "Program" campaign, though the first episode has a content warning for child abuse as a theme.

I've run two scenarios with the beta rules from the Kickstarter which were a huge blast (Two agents dead and a whole lot of psychological trauma) and now that the handbook is out I have an entire folder of ops for the team to enjoy:



So has anyone else had any experiences with either the old or new Delta Green, or any ideas about combining the classic elements of Lovecraft with the modern era they'd like to share?

 

[Eukie]

One particular thing about Delta Green being written in the 90's was that much of the setting was informed by a bunch of experienced WWII vets hanging around; Agent ALPHONSE was Dr Joseph Camp, an OSS intelligence officer, the Karotechia were two immortal Nazis and one merely very old Nazi, an investigation of PISCES would involve talking to the old R, yet another WWII vet, and GRU SV-8 had infiltrated a Stalingrad veteran into the US through the illegals program. When Delta Green was released, these people would be pushing 70 and 80.

Today, the very youngest of them would be pushing 90, and most would be close to 100 or more and almost certainly dead. That changes a lot of things, because every counter-occult agency in the DG RPG were primarily borne out of the occult arms race of WWII, and suddenly all the people who remember that period are now dead or rotting in old folks homes. (Though it's not impossible to feature them; I did some research for a DG campaign in Norway and discovered a WWII vet who was still running a radio store!) The idea of very old Nazis hiding out in Brazil was believable in 1998 - today it's frankly ridiculous.

In addition to Delta Green and Majestic 12, the sourcebook Countdown included Delta Green's Russian and UK counterparts; GRU SV-8, an organization dedicated to keeping the Russia safe from ghouls, running on a shoestring budget not adjusted for inflation since 1972, and PISCES, an incredibly black intelligence department that has its tentacles wrapped around MI5 and the British aerospace industry who just happen to be infiltrated to the highest level by the Insects from Shaggai.

Targets of Opportunity elevated the fan-organization M-EPIC to canon; M-EPIC is the "law enforcement version of Residential Schools" and is tasked with counter-occult activities and collecting dangerous occult artifacts in Canada. Some vaguely canon notes have also been written about a mythos-unaware French counterpart to Majestic 12, a Europol department for dealing with Satanic child abuse, and the Vatican's occult Inquisition.

The people behind Delta Green have written extensively on updating DG and MJ12 for the War on Terror (in fact, Majestic 12 was shut down in a furious anger by Bush Jr for its repeated failures to a) prevent 9/11 an b) capture Bin Laden.), Adam Scott Glancy further wrote about how the War on Terror has changed GRU SV-8. The Kickstarter for the latest DGRPG also managed to fund an update for PISCES, which is wonderful.

Anyway, let me speak specifically on the subject of the Karotechia. The Karotechia are a group of Nazi occultists who're hiding away in South America. The three leaders of the Karotechia are Dr Gunter Frank, Reinhard Galt, and Olaf Bitterich. Out of these, only Bitterich is a fanatical Nazi these days; Frank just wants to enjoy his retirement, and Galt is pretty mercenary about just hanging out in Frank's mansion's pool. Nonetheless, Bitterich has great occult power that he has used to scare Frank and Galt into helping him in his mission to help Hitler's ghost (just someone posing as Hitler's ghost) restore the Third Reich. However, while Bitterich is far more powerful than Frank and Galt, he is also mortal, while Frank and Galt are immortal. This leaves them in an uneasy balance, since Bitterich is desperate to learn the secret to immortality - and neither Frank nor Galt will tell him.

Now, amusingly, since Bitterich would be something like 110 by the current date, he is almost certainly dead and the Karotechia would be reduced to Galt hanging out in Frank's pool again... unless someone or something had offered Bitterich immortality before he croaked. Then, suddenly, the Karotechia would be stronger than ever with Bitterich the clear leader, a manifest destiny, an army of zombies and resurrected Nazis, and a web of white supremacist organizations and anti-Israel groups in their palm. And suddenly, the Karotechia would be a big new player in the War on Cosmic Terror, with who or what-ever gave Bitterich immortality pulling the strings...

 

[Jace911]

One particular thing about Delta Green being written in the 90's was that much of the setting was informed by a bunch of experienced WWII vets hanging around; Agent ALPHONSE was Dr Joseph Camp, an OSS intelligence officer, the Karotechia were two immortal Nazis and one merely very old Nazi, an investigation of PISCES would involve talking to the old R, yet another WWII vet, and GRU SV-8 had infiltrated a Stalingrad veteran into the US through the illegals program. When Delta Green was released, these people would be pushing 70 and 80.

Today, the very youngest of them would be pushing 90, and most would be close to 100 or more and almost certainly dead. That changes a lot of things, because every counter-occult agency in the DG RPG were primarily borne out of the occult arms race of WWII, and suddenly all the people who remember that period are now dead or rotting in old folks homes. (Though it's not impossible to feature them; I did some research for a DG campaign in Norway and discovered a WWII vet who was still running a radio store!)

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I'm very fond of the old trope where agents in the modern day encounter something their predecessors faced far in the past, and have to either consult with them or their notes to learn how to stop it. The bridging of past and present and the stark differences between the two is a powerful idea when you're talking about the War on Terror; how we lived before, and how we live now.

In the first game I ran, the agents (who were all recently Friendlies) had just been brought into the Program to replace an old team that was rendered ineffective by their previous mission. The first assignment given to them by their handler was to dig through the belongings of a retired Delta Green agent who had just died of a heart attack at 70 to make sure he hadn't been keeping any classified files or contraband--he served in the "cowboy years" and they were known for keeping extremely dangerous shit locked up in storage units or garden sheds. During the course of their investigation they found the man's personal Green Box in the basement of his private cabin, and because something had broken out before they arrived they had to inventory the remaining disturbing contents to figure out what the thing was. It was a fun opportunity for me to type up and redact some fictional US military reports for the agents to find, try to read between the lines, and imagine what this 70 year old accountant could have possibly encountered working for the CIA in South America. I broadly stole the idea from Caleb Stokes' scenario "Lover in the Ice".

The idea of very old Nazis hiding out in Brazil was believable in 1998 - today it's frankly ridiculous.

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Honestly the Karotechia have always struck me as the least of the possible threats Delta Green agents could be asked to face, and I think that's by necessity. When you have a setting built around cosmic horror, "Nazi occult scientists in Brazil" can't really hold a candle to something like the King in Yellow. There's also the fact that as far as antagonists go Nazis have been done to death (Pun intended), and are almost entirely irrelevant in the modern era the new Delta Green explores outside of fringe white supremacist groups (Which I could see being a good entry-level threat for new agents, somewhere at the bottom of the pyramid).

If there was a pulp equivalent to Delta Green as there is with Trail of Cthulhu, I think they would fit much better in that.

 

[Skippy]

I think my favourite individual piece of Delta Green trivia is the reason why Deep Ones no longer respond to Contact spells.

The Office of Naval Intelligence's "P Division" kept casting it and then jumping out and machine-gunning the Deep Ones when they showed up.

 

[Tomsawyer18]

I think my favourite individual piece of Delta Green trivia is the reason why Deep Ones no longer respond to Contact spells.

The Office of Naval Intelligence's "P Division" kept casting it and then jumping out and machine-gunning the Deep Ones when they showed up.

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That is the most player character thing I've ever heard

 

[Jace911]

I think my favourite individual piece of Delta Green trivia is the reason why Deep Ones no longer respond to Contact spells.

The Office of Naval Intelligence's "P Division" kept casting it and then jumping out and machine-gunning the Deep Ones when they showed up.

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I'm 90% convinced that bit of lore was Adam Scott Glancy's idea.

That is the most player character thing I've ever heard

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You mean aside from strapping Yithian-enhanced dynamite to a cow as part of a plan to kill a pair of carnivorous dinosaurs?

 

[Tomsawyer18]

You mean aside from strapping Yithian-enhanced dynamite to a cow as part of a plan to kill a pair of carnivorous dinosaurs?

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No that's the most player character thing I've ever done

 

[Jace911]

So Friday night I got to GM a playtest of "Blacksite", a Delta Green scenario I hope to enter into the annual shotgun scenario contest in the fall, and I think it went pretty well!

For the basic premise of the game, the players are told to choose from one of four pregens: a Marine, a CIA officer, an FBI agent, and a trauma surgeon. Each one has a secret backstory that the players are only given after they've made their choice and are strongly encouraged to keep to themselves for reasons of dramatic tension.

Spoiler: Marine

On the ground in Fallujah, panicked and pulled the trigger when their squad was mobbed by angry protesters. quietly thrown under a bus by their higher ups until the Program found them and acquired their services as a private contractor.

Spoiler: CIA Officer

Specializes in "extraordinary renditions" and "enhanced interrogation", at least enough to know from experience that the latter almost never works. Accidentally grabbed the wrong guy once and spent weeks torturing him before they realized the mistake. Acquired by the Program for their CIA clearance.

Spoiler: FBI Agent

Took the wrong case in Los Angeles and ended up seeing Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, developed a mixture of paranoia and megalomania that led them to keep surveillance on their own family. Recently discovered their spouse is cheating on them, hasn't decided what to do with this knowledge yet. Also a member of the Program.

Spoiler: Trauma Surgeon

Volunteered with MSF in Somalia until they were kidnapped by pirates and forced to perform unethical and bizarre surgeries on willing subjects. Rescued by Navy SEALS and returned to MSF, but one day they found the pirate leader on their operating table and let him bleed to death instead of saving him. MSF kicked them out, and the Program picked them up.

The game is set in Afghanistan circa 2005 and focuses on the interrogation of a suspected Taliban leader by a team of Delta Green agents posing as CIA agents posing as US PMC contractors. It starts en media res with their escape from a Taliban nighttime rendezvous in the mountains, their target bleeding in the backseat from a leg wound, and sends them to the now-infamous CIA secret prison codenamed "Cobalt" and "Salt Pit". The staff at the prison are told to expect their arrival, give them whatever assistance they need, and most importantly stay out of their way. Their instructions from the Program are to find out whether the target has Taliban connections, and whether those connections lead to something else they're interested in. As the interrogation progresses strange events begin to occur around the prison, subtle at first and then more blatant and bizarre.

The "reveal" of the scenario is that the target is actually a cultist of Hastur (Specifically John C. Tynes' interpretation of Hastur as the universal embodiment of entropy and decay, not the Great Old One). I thought that the idea of Hastur presented in Delta Green: Countdown meshed very well with the War on Terror and what many would consider to be the decay of Americans' personal rights and our morals, especially when it comes to enemy combatants. As the King in Yellow's influence permeates the prison the agents are confronted with not only the grotesqueness of their surroundings and what thy represent, but also their own past moral failings.

By the end of the scenario one agent was dead, having tried to escape the prison by jumping off the roof, and the other two were pulled into Carcosa. One went kicking and screaming, while the other's last words were "Have you seen the Yellow Sign?" It was a fun time for all.

 

[Revlid]

Out of curiosity, how well would Delta Green be able to run a game set in Charles Stross' The Laundry Files?

 

[Eukie]

Out of curiosity, how well would Delta Green be able to run a game set in Charles Stross' The Laundry Files?

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Probably not as well as the official Laundry Files RPG? While both are games set in interpretations of Lovecraft's Mythos, they're fairly different in tone. DGRPG is original flavour Call of Cthulhu with a helping of desperate paranoia and extra emphasis on personal deterioration. It's also not completely out yet, meaning it lacks rules for everything actually involving the Mythos except SAN loss. The Laundry RPG and novels place a much greater emphasis on the insanity of modern bureaucracy and have a comical, nearly gonzo tone. The RPG also has actual rules for managing British government bureaucracies and computational demonology, which the DGRPG currently lacks. (The DGRPG is more about embezzling money and cheating on your tax returns to pay for unsanctioned counter-occult operations than it is about justifying your expenses to the bureaucracy of a counter-occult organization.) All in all I'd say that using DGRPG for The Laundry Files would be basically like using Call of Cthulhu for the same; it'll work, but in a workmanlike manner, not with flair.

 

[Jace911]

^ What she said. Tonally Delta Green's two pop culture guiding stars for me are the X-files (For the original 90s release) and the first season of True Detective, which very closely mirrored the game's core ideas about nihilism, personal erosion, and people being corrupted by dark powers.

It's important to note that probably 90% of the time in Delta Green you aren't fighting the Mythos directly--you're dealing with the fallout of people trying to exploit the Mythos for their own gains. Cultists, Majestic, PISCES, the Karotechia; they are the moths to the Mythos' flame, and if unchecked they will spread the fire to others before it consumes them.

 

[Eukie]

On that note: While the modern era as described in Delta Green was heavily influenced by 90's conspiracy-fiction and it therefore has a distinct 90's feel to a lot of its elements (the focus on government conspiracies, New Religious Movements, aliens, and people in black trenchcoats hanging out in clubs being the big ones), I think the biggest change it actually made was to the presentation of the Mythos. The general presentation of the Mythos in pop culture, Call of Cthulhu, and many of Lovecraft's own stories are as having events be caused by the alien, paranormal beings, by worshippers of alien gods (I believe Lovecraft may have been taking the piss at The Great Disappointment and the Mennonite predictions that the world would end in 1889 and then 1891), and by lone sorcerers. While Delta Green is full of the first and the second (The Fate, and PISCES and the Skoptsi in Countdown, for example) it also places heavy emphasis on the fact that the biggest threats to the world as we know it are the people who try to use the paranormal for their own gains. Delta Green and PISCES were both created to deal with Karotechia, a group of Nazi occultists who used the paranormal as part of German war efforts and tried to unleash doomsday on the world as an act of revenge. PISCES were also tasked with Smerch, Stalin's attempt to use occult knowledge to achieve immortality, and the Black Ocean Society of Imperial Japan. In the 80's and 90's MAJESTIC 12 used knowledge gained from the GreysMi-go to fight the Cold War and the Second Gulf War. Section Disparu don't know about the Mythos, but would like to or needs to use it to establish a French world order. Countdown notes that the people who turn to worship of eldritch entities are the truly desperate, who'll try anything out of need - which is why the Mythos pops up in the weirdest places; persecuted religious minorities in Imperial Russia, desperate IRA cells in the Troubles, the Congo Crisis, Vietnam...

I took this to heart when I tried to write a Delta Green-like organization for Norway. Originally it was born of the tight-knit cooperation between British Intelligence and the Norwegian resistance (I kid you not half of the real-world Norwegian WWII resistance was created by a guy who was a British agent in Dutch/German Indonesia in WWI), but shut down in 1982 (I like to think its last mission was an ill-fated attempt to investigate some strange radar readings in the Antarctic that ended with the entire mission dead and a nearby US Antarctic expedition as collateral). Then it was resurrected in 1994. Why 1994? Because Norway had been sending agents to the Balkans since 1990 and the breakup of Yugoslavia was a WWII in miniature, full of anger and truly desperate people. A perfect breeding-ground for the Mythos. Likewise, while the Taliban, Al Queda, and ISIS would not be controlled by the Mythos (this would be a very stupid plot develement). But in Delta Green I think there would certainly be cells driven to desperation by US and NATO willing to adopt some heresies to save themselves - and many of those desperate groups may have first learned of the paranormal as part of the Bosnian mujahideen or as members of the Bosnian Al-Queda, or the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

If you want an uncomfortably topical Delta Green game, here's one: you're a US Special Forces team with Delta Green clearance sent into Syria to stop desperate FSA occultists from doing something truly stupid. You may run into a GRU SV-8 team sent to do the exact same thing.

 

[Jace911]

Likewise, while the Taliban, Al Queda, and ISIS would not be controlled by the Mythos (this would be a very stupid plot develement).

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I think the decision to not retcon the driving motivations behind radical Islam was both a tasteful one (Or rather the avoidance of a tasteless one) and fits rather well with the new tone of Delta Green. It's a reminder that we don't need unnatural forces and alien gods to corrupt us into destroying each other and serves as a bleak backdrop to the struggles of organizations lime Delta Green who are fighting the good fight nobody will ever know about. That was part of my inspiration in writing "Blacksite": to pose players with the question of "what's the point in fighting these unspeakable horrors and eroding your soul when your sacrifices will not only go unrecognized, but when these are the people you're fighting for?"

If you want an uncomfortably topical Delta Green game, here's one: you're a US Special Forces team with Delta Green clearance sent into Syria to stop desperate FSA occultists from doing something truly stupid. You may run into a GRU SV-8 team sent to do the exact same thing.

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Oooh, I like this. For bonus points you could combine it with this shotgun scenario; you're not the US Special Forces team, you're the Delta Green operations team watching the Special Forces team via drone, helmet cams, etc and guiding them to the target. You have to decide how much to tell them and how much to keep to yourselves, even when you see the amorphous blob stalking them on the thermals.

 

[Jace911]

also

 

[MJ12 Commando]

I think the decision to not retcon the driving motivations behind radical Islam was both a tasteful one (Or rather the avoidance of a tasteless one) and fits rather well with the new tone of Delta Green.

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I'm not sure it's the "new" tone-I think it's still the old tone of Delta Green. Even back then, the mythos wasn't a motivation in and of itself for most people, it was something they tried to use to get certain ends, many of which were perfectly mundane. Majestic-12 was a combination of American nationalists and guys in it for wealth, power, and immortality. The Karotechia were Nazis, but Nazism wasn't exactly a mythos ideology. Etc etc.

 

[Eukie]

I think the decision to not retcon the driving motivations behind radical Islam was both a tasteful one (Or rather the avoidance of a tasteless one) and fits rather well with the new tone of Delta Green. It's a reminder that we don't need unnatural forces and alien gods to corrupt us into destroying each other and serves as a bleak backdrop to the struggles of organizations lime Delta Green who are fighting the good fight nobody will ever know about. That was part of my inspiration in writing "Blacksite": to pose players with the question of "what's the point in fighting these unspeakable horrors and eroding your soul when your sacrifices will not only go unrecognized, but when these are the people you're fighting for?"

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"Last night General Hummel, using brutal but non-lethal force, under the guise of a security exercise walked off with fifteen Fire Vampire summoning-bombs. He lost one of his own men in the process."

[...]

"I'll come straight to the point. Eighty-three BLUE TEAM Delta Force operators have died under my various commands, forty-seven in eastern Bosnia and southern Romania. [...] Remember the raid on the worshippers of the Eater of Souls that the Bush administration was pissing their pants about? It was my men on the ground that made that attack possible. Twenty of them were left to claw their own eyes out outside Baghdad after the invasion ended. No benefits were paid to their families. No medals conferred. These men died for their country and they weren't even given a god-damned military burial. The situation is unacceptable. You will transfer 100 million dollars from the March Technologies account to an account I designate. From these funds, reparations of one million dollars will be paid to each of the operators' families. The rest of the funds I will disperse, at my discretion. Do I make myself clear?"

"Except for March Technologies. What is that?"

"It's a dummy corporation where Majestic 12 keeps proceeds from the sale of extraterrestrial biotechnology."

"Jesus Frank, this is classified information!"

"You alert the media, I summon Fthaggua. You refuse payment, I summon Fthaggua. You've got forty hours, 'till noon, day after tomorrow, to arrange transfer of the money. I am aware of your countermeasures; you know and I know it doesn't stand a chance. This is Hummel from Alcatraz, out."

 

[Jace911]

I'm not sure it's the "new" tone-I think it's still the old tone of Delta Green. Even back then, the mythos wasn't a motivation in and of itself for most people, it was something they tried to use to get certain ends, many of which were perfectly mundane. Majestic-12 was a combination of American nationalists and guys in it for wealth, power, and immortality. The Karotechia were Nazis, but Nazism wasn't exactly a mythos ideology. Etc etc.

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What I mean is, back in the 90s things like Majestic and PISCES and even the Karotechia were the Great Enemy for Delta Green, and the rest of the world was blissfully ignorant there was a war happening at all. Going back to what I wrote in the OP, there was no existential threat like the Soviet Union hanging over everyone's heads. For Delta Green, groups like Majestic were it, you know? They were the top of the pyramid as far as actionable threats, and if/when they somehow managed to triumph against them (As they eventually did in Through A Glass, Darkly) they could take a breath, take stock, and prepare for whatever threats came in the next era.

In the new Delta Green, agents are not only fighting against the very real threat of the Mythos but also the knowledge that there is a more public war being fought outside their control--the War on Terror--which will shape the 21st century and decide whether there was any point to their struggles at all. When you triumph against the Mythos at great personal cost, only to come home and see people voting for Donald Trump, to me that adds a lovely bitter taste to the whole thing.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

What I mean is, back in the 90s things like Majestic and PISCES and even the Karotechia were the Great Enemy for Delta Green, and the rest of the world was blissfully ignorant there was a war happening at all. Going back to what I wrote in the OP, there was no existential threat like the Soviet Union hanging over everyone's heads. For Delta Green, groups like Majestic were it, you know? They were the top of the pyramid as far as actionable threats, and if/when they somehow managed to triumph against them (As they eventually did in Through A Glass, Darkly) they could take a breath, take stock, and prepare for whatever threats came in the next era.

In the new Delta Green, agents are not only fighting against the very real threat of the Mythos but also the knowledge that there is a more public war being fought outside their control--the War on Terror--which will shape the 21st century and decide whether there was any point to their struggles at all. When you triumph against the Mythos at great personal cost, only to come home and see people voting for Donald Trump, to me that adds a lovely bitter taste to the whole thing.

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I sort of get what you mean but I don't think that the radical Islamist motivations being, well, based off of the same things that were in the 90s-the vast majority of the world isn't motivated by occult unknowable knowledge but rather by totally mundane things, even the ones aware of and using the mythos. I think it's the same attitudes the authors had about not having the supernatural take over everything, which is amazing for a 90s game (I know everyone here knows what 90s games with hidden supernatural stuff were often like) and the attitude was just continued to this day.

Also, I figure radical Islam also doesn't like mythos cultists much. Now that'd be a mission. Having to cooperate with the Taliban against a mythos threat, and how much are you willing to harm your country's mundane interests-and your character's ability to advance-to ensure that the threat is eliminated? I mean, Shaheed was an interesting character in Alpha Protocol for that very reason. An enemy of the country you probably still kind of want to help, but an invaluable ally to you.

 

[Eukie]

Also, I figure radical Islam also doesn't like mythos cultists much. Now that'd be a mission. Having to cooperate with the Taliban against a mythos threat, and how much are you willing to harm your country's mundane interests-and your character's ability to advance-to ensure that the threat is eliminated? I mean, Shaheed was an interesting character in Alpha Protocol for that very reason. An enemy of the country you probably still kind of want to help, but an invaluable ally to you.

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The problem is that the usual question is posed the other way around; the US in Delta Green has shown itself surprisingly willing to cooperate with people it should not be colluding with in the service of national interest. The most prominent example of this is how the CIA funded the Tcho-Tcho tribe during the Vietnam War (the result was that the Tcho-Tcho first started killing all the nearby tribes, then got involved in helping the CIA run the East-Asian drug trade), so there's a fair chance you wouldn't be helping the Taliban against cultists - you'd be helping cultists against the Taliban.

Though helping the Taliban against cultists is actually the far more interesting one. There's a former Al-Queda leader who first came to the west's attention as a leader of a cell of Bosnian mujahideen, who now styles himself as 'Tawil al Umr' and professes immortality and occult powers. Al-Queda considers his actions and followers to be blasphemous and have tried to kill him several times. He's recently come to Pentagon's attention in relation to a possible connection to an Afghan ex-Taliban tribe that in desperation after the US invasion have turned to worship of the 'Eater of Souls'. You're a CIA SAD/SOG team sent into Taliban territory to assassinate Tawil al Umr, but once the scope of al Umr's resources and the scope of the Eater of Souls cult are revealed to you, you realize that the only group that could help you take him down are the Taliban...

 

[Jace911]

I sort of get what you mean but I don't think that the radical Islamist motivations being, well, based off of the same things that were in the 90s-the vast majority of the world isn't motivated by occult unknowable knowledge but rather by totally mundane things, even the ones aware of and using the mythos. I think it's the same attitudes the authors had about not having the supernatural take over everything, which is amazing for a 90s game (I know everyone here knows what 90s games with hidden supernatural stuff were often like) and the attitude was just continued to this day.

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I think you missed a word somewhere in that first sentence because I don't get your meaning.

The problem is that the usual question is posed the other way around; the US in Delta Green has shown itself surprisingly willing to cooperate with people it should not be colluding with in the service of national interest. The most prominent example of this is how the CIA funded the Tcho-Tcho tribe during the Vietnam War (the result was that the Tcho-Tcho first started killing all the nearby tribes, then got involved in helping the CIA run the East-Asian drug trade), so there's a fair chance you wouldn't be helping the Taliban against cultists - you'd be helping cultists against the Taliban.

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On the subject of the Tcho-Tchos, I'm rather torn: on the one hand I really love the idea of Mythos cultists who worship the Outer Gods and Great Old Ones the way many American Christians worship God (Halfheartedly and in a way that confirms their worldview) in order to further their own capitalistic ambitions. I think they fit perfectly in the broader idea that man's greatest enemy is the Mythos but the greatest enemy they can fight is a man who dabbles with the Mythos.

On the other hand there are some really fucking uncomfortable undertones with how they're treated as a people in the work itself. Worship of the Mythos and cannibalism is literally in their blood, to the point where the most logical action for Delta Green to take regarding the Tcho-Tchos is to literally genocide them if given the chance, because if even one child survives all it takes is a single meal of long pig to turn them into an eager cultist like some sort of Manchurian cannibal.

Also, I figure radical Islam also doesn't like mythos cultists much. Now that'd be a mission. Having to cooperate with the Taliban against a mythos threat, and how much are you willing to harm your country's mundane interests-and your character's ability to advance-to ensure that the threat is eliminated? I mean, Shaheed was an interesting character in Alpha Protocol for that very reason. An enemy of the country you probably still kind of want to help, but an invaluable ally to you.

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Though helping the Taliban against cultists is actually the far more interesting one. There's a former Al-Queda leader who first came to the west's attention as a leader of a cell of Bosnian mujahideen, who now styles himself as 'Tawil al Umr' and professes immortality and occult powers. Al-Queda considers his actions and followers to be blasphemous and have tried to kill him several times. He's recently come to Pentagon's attention in relation to a possible connection to an Afghan ex-Taliban tribe that in desperation after the US invasion have turned to worship of the 'Eater of Souls'. You're a CIA SAD/SOG team sent into Taliban territory to assassinate Tawil al Umr, but once the scope of al Umr's resources and the scope of the Eater of Souls cult are revealed to you, you realize that the only group that could help you take him down are the Taliban...

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*cough cough*

Spoiler

Technically the Taliban fighters ambush the PCs and try to scare them away from the village, but only because they see the PCs as potential vectors for spreading the madness--there's potential for them to be the Medjai to the PCs' Rick O'Connell.

Adam Scott Glancy is also working on a scenario called Iconoclasts in which you play western recruits of ISIS sent to seize cultural artifacts from an old man who lives alone in an estate. RPPR did an Actual Play of the beta version and, unsurprisingly, sprinted towards death as rapidly as they could.

 

[Eukie]

On the other hand there are some really fucking uncomfortable undertones with how they're treated as a people in the work itself. Worship of the Mythos and cannibalism is literally in their blood, to the point where the most logical action for Delta Green to take regarding the Tcho-Tchos is to literally genocide them if given the chance, because if even one child survives all it takes is a single meal of long pig to turn them into an eager cultist like some sort of Manchurian cannibal.

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While theoretically interesting that's an angle I've mostly overlooked by accident. The way I wanted to use the Tcho-Tcho at one point was to have a child of Tcho-Tcho immigrants who fled Vietnam as South Vietnam was losing and immigrated to Norway. They're extrajudicially murdered by Norway's counterpart to Delta Green for their connection to the occult, but leave behind a child that gets adopted to a family that isn't Tcho-Tcho. Then, 30 or so years later, said child is trying to learn more about their birth parents and the mysterious circumstances surrounding their death, which threatens to blow open NorDG's long and ugly history of extrajudicial killings. The now-adult child isn't themselves in any way a mythos threat, but they would be a threat to Norway's counter-mythos agency's reputation and secrecy. (Glancy notes that all organizations with an occult nature should explore a theme. The one I decided on for Norway's DG counterpart was "Coming to term with the dirty secrets of the past".)

But yeah, the Tcho-Tcho are extremely racist in conception and hard to use without touching on the fact that Lovecraft literally wrote about human races more prone to evil than the white man. A similar issue exists with the Skoptsi from Countdown, because while it's a very good write-up, the Skoptsy are actually real and if the Skoptsy existed today in enough numbers to be effectively discriminated against, Countdown would list up there with World of Darkness: Gypsies in terms of lack of tact...

With regards to American Christians and worship in the pursuit of capitalism, Charles Stross uses that as a plot-point in The Apocalypse Codex with Black Pharaoh-worshipping Christian evangelists who preach a "modified form of the prosperity gospel" and have some pretty freaky ideas around the quiverful movement. It doesn't quite have the thematic depth of a Delta Green writeup, but they could be adapted as a kind of syncretic Christian New Religious Movement with some effort. (Personally I also find Gnarly-worship a bit dull as a motivation for evil cultism since it's so blatantly about corruption and destruction. I prefer misguided worship with a more regular goal like good fishing or better harvests. The advantage of the Cthulhu Mythos, though, is that you can roll your head on the keyboard and have a deity for your cultists to worship with reverence...)

 

[EarthScorpion]

The problem is that the usual question is posed the other way around; the US in Delta Green has shown itself surprisingly willing to cooperate with people it should not be colluding with in the service of national interest. The most prominent example of this is how the CIA funded the Tcho-Tcho tribe during the Vietnam War (the result was that the Tcho-Tcho first started killing all the nearby tribes, then got involved in helping the CIA run the East-Asian drug trade), so there's a fair chance you wouldn't be helping the Taliban against cultists - you'd be helping cultists against the Taliban.

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Honestly, it's probably more likely that the CIA are backing the Islamic State and the NSA are allied with the serpent-men who are annoyed at how the IS are destroying some of their former sacred temples and meanwhile the FBI are busy trying to track down a shantak-worshiping cult formed among drone operators who've seen mystic patterns from the area, made to be seen by flying monsters.

 

[Jace911]

While theoretically interesting that's an angle I've mostly overlooked by accident. The way I wanted to use the Tcho-Tcho at one point was to have a child of Tcho-Tcho immigrants who fled Vietnam as South Vietnam was losing and immigrated to Norway. They're extrajudicially murdered by Norway's counterpart to Delta Green for their connection to the occult, but leave behind a child that gets adopted to a family that isn't Tcho-Tcho. Then, 30 or so years later, said child is trying to learn more about their birth parents and the mysterious circumstances surrounding their death, which threatens to blow open NorDG's long and ugly history of extrajudicial killings. The now-adult child isn't themselves in any way a mythos threat, but they would be a threat to Norway's counter-mythos agency's reputation and secrecy. (Glancy notes that all organizations with an occult nature should explore a theme. The one I decided on for Norway's DG counterpart was "Coming to term with the dirty secrets of the past".)

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The idea behind the Tcho-Tchos and their inherent connection to the Mythos strikes me as something that would be absolutely fascinating if applied on an individual or family scale, as seen in The Shadow Over Innsmouth or the absolutely wonderful Trail of Cthulhu scenario Dance in the Blood. Playing a Delta Green Agent or Friendly with unknown Deep One ancestry, for example, would be an absolute blast over the length of a campaign.

It's only when you broaden it onto an ethnic scale that it becomes ugly.

With regards to American Christians and worship in the pursuit of capitalism, Charles Stross uses that as a plot-point in The Apocalypse Codex with Black Pharaoh-worshipping Christian evangelists who preach a "modified form of the prosperity gospel" and have some pretty freaky ideas around the quiverful movement. It doesn't quite have the thematic depth of a Delta Green writeup, but they could be adapted as a kind of syncretic Christian New Religious Movement with some effort. (Personally I also find Gnarly-worship a bit dull as a motivation for evil cultism since it's so blatantly about corruption and destruction. I prefer misguided worship with a more regular goal like good fishing or better harvests. The advantage of the Cthulhu Mythos, though, is that you can roll your head on the keyboard and have a deity for your cultists to worship with reverence...)

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As a boring vanilla Baptist, there's something about American Christian fringe movements that just absolutely tickles my curiosity when it comes to finding inspiration for Delta Green. More recently I've been doing a lot of research into the resurgence of the patriot/militia movement in the past eight years, and something I keep coming back to is the rise of the Tea Party: after Obama was elected the American right turned to extremist elements in order to refuel and revitalize itself, only to realize with horror two terms later that their creation now hates them and is no longer under their control.

Conversely one could have a patriot milita play the role of annoying/ignorant allies who are already fighting against some Mythos threat or cult by the time the agents take charge of an investigation--many of them are founded with the belief that the End Times are coming and that they need to organize into an army under God, and what better proof than the appearance of horrifying monsters that should not be and people who worship things that can only be described as satanic? And what reaction could the militia have other than to grab their guns and do God's work? It's not like they can trust the government, after all.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

I think you missed a word somewhere in that first sentence because I don't get your meaning.

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Okay, to rephrase:

I think that it's not a "new" tone for DG to be about how humans try to use things they shouldn't use for their own ends, but rather has been a consistent theme of the series, and if they had said that Islamic radicals were secretly helping RandomKeyboardPoundingHere it would not only be tasteless but go against the entire series themes. The War on Terror changes how the game works as well as how you're likely to see government black ops (you're more likely to see them as overworked, underpaid, and in over their heads than high-tech conspiracy forces with supersoldiers boosted by technology that Should Not Be), but isn't responsible for that.

I do think that the new tone for DG is actually responsible for how the organization is now an official government department though. In the Cthulhu mythos you play the underdog, and like, MAJIC-12 was a lot of things but it wasn't really the underdog. I mean, the official site endorsed as pseudo-canon the idea that they'd have bulletproof bioenhanced death wolves and supersoldiers shoved full of Mi-Go derived tech who would probably be part of a quirky and traumatized Metal Gear Solid miniboss squad lineup. (The Project RECOIL writeup on the main site is still a thing of fantastic fun).

Although DG: Enemy Within would also be a totally valid campaign concept now that I think of it. He who plays with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword etc etc.

 

[Jace911]

Okay, to rephrase:

I think that it's not a "new" tone for DG to be about how humans try to use things they shouldn't use for their own ends, but rather has been a consistent theme of the series, and if they had said that Islamic radicals were secretly helping RandomKeyboardPoundingHere it would not only be tasteless but go against the entire series themes. The War on Terror changes how the game works as well as how you're likely to see government black ops (you're more likely to see them as overworked, underpaid, and in over their heads than high-tech conspiracy forces with supersoldiers boosted by technology that Should Not Be), but isn't responsible for that.

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I apologize, I'm not making myself clear:

I know that people abusing the Mythos for their own ends has been a theme of Delta Green from the start, and I'm not saying that's really changed in the new version. What I'm saying is that one of the new themes of the new version--to me--seems to be the juxtaposition between the secret war Delta Green is waging against the Mythos and the War on Terror being waged in the open (Comparatively) and how they inform each other. The Mythos isn't behind radical Islam, but radical Islam and the fight against it has led to things like Guantanamo Bay, the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary renditions, ISIS, all kinds of shit I think everybody can agree is Not Very Good.

I think part of the existential horror of the new Delta Green doesn't come from knowing that you can't defeat the Mythos--it comes from the growing feeling that even if you can somehow defeat the Mythos it won't matter, because while you were busy unloading an AA-12 into a Shoggoth in someone's basement Christians are being beheaded in Syria and Americans are lining up in droves to vote Trump for President and Putin's gearing Russia up for a second Cold War and the whole world seems to be going to shit anyways.

I do think that the new tone for DG is actually responsible for how the organization is now an official government department though. In the Cthulhu mythos you play the underdog, and like, MAJIC-12 was a lot of things but it wasn't really the underdog. I mean, the official site endorsed as pseudo-canon the idea that they'd have bulletproof bioenhanced death wolves and supersoldiers shoved full of Mi-Go derived tech who would probably be part of a quirky and traumatized Metal Gear Solid miniboss squad lineup. (The Project RECOIL writeup on the main site is still a thing of fantastic fun).

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I'm actually really looking forward to the upcoming book on Majestic in the 21st century because I'm really interested in figuring out where all the bits and pieces fell after Delta Green was finished hacking them apart. They had so many absolutely cray projects that I would love to have pop up in one form or another in the modern day, either as rogue experiments or projects given new life under a now-privatized Majestic organization (Anti-corporate sentiments are practically a meme nowadays the way BIG SHADOW GOVERNMENT was in the 90s so it's a pretty obvious direction for them to take it).

Although DG: Enemy Within would also be a totally valid campaign concept now that I think of it. He who plays with the devil's toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword etc etc.

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One of the things I love about the idea of playing/running a game with Program agents is that occasionally you'll be reminded that their modus operandi is not "burn the apartment down" and is instead eerily similar to Majestic's "capture and study for possible application".

Like the agents are about to go full black ops on a Mythos sorcerer when they receive a call from on high: don't kill them, rendition them for interrogation. Don't burn that book that contains viral memetic constructs, seal it in a secure container and load it into an armored truck for transport to [redacted]. Crazy mathematician kills a family of five and spray-paints numbers all over the walls before blowing his brains out? Take detailed photos, don't think about the numbers, send them to an encrypted server, then strip and burn the wallpaper.

Stuff like that would go a long way towards justifying the Group's paranoia over the "official" Delta Green.