Delta Green: Dark Theatres

Rating:
Summary: Best CoC Supplement, possibly best RPG book period
Review: I'm writing this review because the rumors that a new edition with stats for d20 play are getting harder and harder to ignore. Even though the book is old and sometimes hard to find, anyone who seeks it will probably not be disappointed.

Delta Green revitalizes the Call of Cthulhu milieu in two ways. First, it plants the setting squarely within our time, developed from a backstory that starts in 1929 and gets downright spooky in 1947. Eldritch horrors still stalk humanity from beyond - only now the entities that menaced the 20's are content to scheme behind the scenes. Unfortunately for the Earth, some humans are content to betray us all for the ephemeral promises dangled before them. These men are not the frothing cultists and brute savages of Lovecraft: they are scientists, priests, and four-star generals. Plus there are new foes and surprises to keep jaded players guessing.

Second, there is finally a good reason for unusual characters to find themselves allied against the dark. Will a cop balk at sharing forensic evidence with a detective, a journalist, and a Marine? Not anymore. All the PCs are members of or friendly to Delta Green, an illegal conspiracy operating within the federal government. Of course, it's not the ONLY illegal conspiracy operating within the federal government. While Delta Green has adopted the sensible tack of trying to blow away every Mythos problem they encounter, its opponents are convinced that some mysteries can be studied, contained, or even harnessed for their own use.

That's just an overview. There is so much to Delta Green that any gaming group interested in conspiracy-style RPGs could find something useful. There are sections on U.S. government agencies, modern firearms, and mind-blowing adventures that are not for the faint of heart.

With Delta Green, CoC players can feel more confident with a nice gun in their hands, and the assurance that a backup team of ex-SEALs in on the way. Their characters will still die or go insane, but at least they should enjoy the ride.

Rating:
Summary: Best supplement I've seen in years.
Review: If you can find it, buy it. I can't believe they haven't re-printed it. A work of genius.

Rating:
Summary: Best Call of Cthulhu supplement ever
Review: To call DELTA GREEN a supplement for Call of Cthulhu is to do it a great injustice. Even if you don't play the game, but are a Lovecraft aficionado, you owe it to yourself to pick this up and see what Tynes and company have done. This is not your father's Cthulhu Mythos. This is something much, much nastier.

Gone are the days where monsters lurked in dark places, and could be banished with the right spells. The stars are right - right here, right now, and the Mythos has kept pace with modernity, corrupting openly, though humanity is still too blind to see. Delta Green has been fighting them ever since Innsmouth and 1927, a hidden conspiracy within the government dedicated to seeking out and destroying that which threatens humanity.

Only trouble is, even the government has disavowed Delta Green, in favour of collusion with the enemy. But the menace is so great that Delta Green continues, an illegal conspiracy hidden in the bowels of that which wants too destroy it. Delta Green isn't Mulder or Scully, seeking the truth that nobody else knows. Delta Green *knows* the truth, and is making sure nobody else suffers from knowing that either.

DELTA GREEN takes everything we know about modern day conspiracy theory - Roswell, Area 51, Majestic-12, UFOs, and merges it seamlessly with the battle against the forces of the Cthulhu Mythos. The secret history it reveals is frighteningly plausible, and like Lovecraft's fiction, nags at you and makes you doubt its fictional qualities.

As a way of bringing a moribund CoC campaign from the gothic horror of the 1920s to the survivalist horror of the 1990s, it is second to none. Think you could have dealt with those creepy crawlies if you only had an AK-47 instead of a revolver? Think again. The psychological cost of fighting terrors from beyond is not forgotten either, with Delta Green agents wandering shell-shocked from encounter to encounter.

And as I said, as a means of stimulating your imagination to bring Lovecraft up to date, it is also superb. Anyone who thinks Lovecraft's themes are hackneyed and old only needs to read this to see how horrifyingly relevant they still are.

Buy this book, and its companion DELTA GREEN: COUNTDOWN, which describes the UK and Russian counterparts to Delta Green. The truth is here. And it's hungry.