Delta Green: the Molotov Tapes

 "That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."

The blog is back! Or at least briefly getting up out of its tomb, with much bleary-eyed blinking at the stars and wondering why it overate on Deep Ones last geological era.

I wanted to write a short series of blogs about my group's current run of Delta Green scenarios, the modern-day version of Call of Cthulhu. I've been plundering official and fan-written materials, splicing stories together and having a blast with the pyromaniac nutters in my player group. These blogs will not be session reports, but write-ups of the scenarios that we played and how I modified the original setup to fit my table.

Episodes

The Q-Cell Tapes:

• Delta Green #1 — Operation Beauty of the White Ape / AZTEC FORWARD
• Delta Green #2 — Snake Oil
• Delta Green #3 — Promises / Minimalism
• Delta Green #4 — STOP REPO
• Delta Green #5 — Project Anthropocene / An Item of Mutual Interest  
  

Oneshots:

• Delta Green #A — Case Exfield Cakewalk / BESTOW

A HORROR GAME OF GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY

So what is Delta Green? Delta Green started as a scenario / expansion for the Call of Cthulhu rpg, set in the modern day. Like it says on the promotional flyer I made for my players:

If the intelligence community was a family, DELTA GREEN would be the weird auntie nobody talked about.

The one they kicked out for seeing too much and doing what needed doing.

Now you get to choose. Close your eyes after what you saw, or join the conspiracy? Welcome to DELTA GREEN.

Players take on the role of government officials — feds, cops, military or otherwise — who have come into contact with the Unnatural: things that man was not meant to know, but keeps fiddling with regardless. Recruited by a shadowy taskforce called the Program or the Group, characters try to wrangle official and clandestine resources to keep back the dark at a shattering personal cost.

Also: molotov cocktails.

I got into DG through the many excellent podcasts and actual plays out there —list below— and wanted to try out a looser game structure with my group after my previous story-driven Vampire:the Dark Ages campaign bombed. A DG oneshot or two as a palate cleanser seemed to be just the thing. We had a good Session Zero to discuss themes, decided to place the game in the mid-90s, and created the characters of Q Cell. 

RESOURCES

One cool thing about the DG community is the many fan-made scenarios and other materials. I might even prefer the short Shotgun Scenarios (an annual contest for <1500 words scenarios, just enough to get you going) over the longer operations. Shotguns can be completed in 1-3 sessions, you can easily add to them, modify or splice them together, and there are literally hundreds out there.

Of course I couldn't just pick and run a simple oneshot. After going through the many official and fan-published work, I had 49 possible scenarios ready to go!

I sorted this pile into themes and tiers and put them all on a Google Map with some abstracts and spy thriller codewords.

Before each new game, players pick the scenario they want me to run. New missions open after they complete intro stories, and I weave them together by sprinkling in links to past and future ops.

• Complete operation map — based on this excellent example maintained by the Night at the Opera N@TO community
• Questionnaire to bring the characters to life — we ran through these together so that people could riff off of each other. Based on this example found on the N@TO discord
• Need to Know - Delta Green's official quickstart guide, with the excellent starter scenario Last Things Last
• Project Fairfield - collection of lore and scenarios, including the Shotgun Scenarios I've been pulling from
• N@TO contests - collection of materials by the denizens of the Night at the Opera community