Getting Read In to Delta Green

Getting Read In

DEFINITION: A slang phrase used within the military and intelligence communities to describe accessing an individual to classified information, specifically Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) and Special Access Programs (SAPs).

The Humblest of Bundles

On March 20th, 2025, Arc Dream Publishing launched the Delta Green RPG, VTT, & Fiction Collection on Humble Bundle. Believe me when I say this bundle is absolutely massive; the bundle description states:

"Gather up your party for endless adventure with this bundle of tabletop role-playing and fiction books where horror meets conspiracy. This TTRPG explorer’s kit from the legendary Delta Green Partnership contains campaign resources and more for the dark and mysterious game Delta Green - from VTT adaptations to The King in Yellow: Annotated to the newest revelation, God's Hunt. Get everything you need to fend off the unnatural, undead, and misunderstood on an epic journey together. Plus, your purchase helps support Direct Relief!"

The collection contains everything from the Agent's Handbook and Handler's Guide to scenario collections like A Night at the Opera and Black Sites, from Impossible Landscapes and God's Teeth to new releases like God's Hunt and Dead Drops. Plus, supporters get access to VTT assets for both Roll20 and Foundry, including the recently released Agent's Handbook module. Oh, and you get all of this...58 items total, which is just about everything in the Delta Green library...for the insanely low price of $25. It is, as they say, a steal of a deal.

What's more is that 5% of sales go to Direct Relief to support their humanitarian mission in Ukraine. Even better, half of what Arc Dream makes through this sale will go directly to United24 to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine in their war against Russian aggression (@shaneivey.bsky.social on Bluesky). So, your money will support two incredible causes in a world that just won't stop burning.

Slava Ukraini! Heroiam slava!

Needless to say, with a deal this good, a lot of new folks are discovering Delta Green and are often unsure where to start. With this blog post, I hope to help newcomers get their feet under them and successfully begin their endless struggle against the Unnatural.

What is Delta Green?

So, what exactly is Delta Green? We'll begin by discussing the setting, how it came about, and the system that drives it.

The back matter of the Agent's Handbook, the game's primary rulebook, summarizes Delta Green as follows:

"Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green spent four decades opposing the forces of darkness with honor, but without glory. Stripped of sanction after a disastrous 1969 operation in Cambodia, Delta Green’s leaders made a secret pact: to continue their work without authority, without support, and without fear. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day - but often at a shattering personal cost.

In Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, you are one of those agents. You’re the one they call when unnatural horrors seep into the world. You fight to keep cosmic evil from claiming human lives and sanity. You conspire to cover it all up so no one else must see what you’ve seen - or learn the terrible truths you’ve discovered."

For those unfamiliar with the works of H.P. Lovecraft, upon which the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game (and thus Delta Green) was based, he published a novella in April 1936 titled The Shadow Over Innsmouth. In this tale, the narrator secretly investigates the town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts. He learns of the existence of an aquatic race of beings known as the Deep Ones, to whom the townspeople offer sacrifices and worship, and ultimately discovers his familial ties back to the town's founders. The story culminates in the aforementioned raid on Innsmouth, during which the townspeople are rounded up and sent off to concentration camps, while a submarine torpedoes the nearby Devils Reef. Of course, the U.S. government explains all of this away as Prohibition-related raids.

The Shadow Over Innsmouth really is the bedrock upon which Delta Green is formed, as the legacy of the Innsmouth raid and the discovery of the Deep Ones continue to resonate throughout the game's lore. 

So, without diving too deep into that lore (I wouldn't want to deprive you the pleasure of reading the Handler's Guide), the Innsmouth raid was for all intents and purposes the birth of Delta Green as an organization. Since then, it has existed in some form or another as a group of individuals investigating Unnatural events (referred to as "incursions") and suppressing knowledge of their existence by any means necessary. To Delta Green, the more that knowledge of the Unnatural proliferates, the closer mankind is brought to extinction. Its agents know they are fighting a losing battle, but ensuring their shared existence for one more day is ultimately worth the risk to their humanity and sanity.

As a sidenote, the name "Delta Green" itself is drawn from its WWII-era codename, when it was organized under the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and went toe-to-toe with the Third Reich (in the form of the Karotechia) to keep Unnatural knowledge out of Nazi hands. 

Delta Green began its existence in 1992 with "Convergence," a scenario written by John Scott Tynes for Pagan Publishing's The Unspeakable Oath. This led to the first Delta Green sourcebook for Call of Cthulhu's 5th edition in 1997, and three additional sourcebooks (Countdown, Eyes Only, and Targets of Opportunity) between 1999 and 2010. It was in this first edition of the game that Delta Green went up against organizations like the government-sanctioned MAJESTIC, the Greys, the Fate, and the surviving remnants of the Karotechia.

In 2015, Arc Dream Publishing launched a Kickstarter to produce a new edition of Delta Green that would operate under its own rules (referred to in some circles as the Misery Engine, although I haven't been able to find where this originated) and independent of the Call of Cthulhu system. In addition to the new rules, the Handler's Guide brought the lore into the post-2001 era all the way up to 2017...and with it a new host of complications. To say any more would inevitably get into spoiler territory, but needless to say Delta Green continues its struggle against the Unnatural, bureaucracy, politics, and an increasingly interconnected world where forbidden knowledge can spread more easily than ever.

Like Call of Cthulhu and other games using the Basic Roleplaying (BRP) system, Delta Green relies on the use of percentile dice. When a skill test is called for, the Agent (the term used to refer to player characters, or PCs) rolls 2D10 (with one die representing the tens digit and the other the ones digit) or 1D100 and compares the result to their skill rating. If the result is at or under their skill rating, they succeed. If it's over, they fail. It's pretty simple and intuitive, and by far my preference when compared to other systems.

Tonally, Delta Green is dire and dark. Delta Green wages a war consisting of one pyrrhic victory after another, knowing it will ultimately fail in its mission, but dedicated to holding the Unnatural at bay for one more day. The Agents often sustain considerable damage to their sanity and their personal relationships, which is reflected in the game's Bonds mechanic. 

It's this mechanic that differentiates Delta Green from so many other tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), and leads to some truly compelling roleplay moments. In a nutshell, in order to weather sustained sanity loss, an Agent can "project" their loss onto a Bond (someone they're close to). They do this by spending Willpower to roll 1D4, and reducing both their Willpower and a chosen Bond score by the resulting amount. The damage to the relationship with their Bond is played out during Home scenes, when the Agent returns home to engage in Personal Pursuits after an operation. The Bond mechanic truly excels in introducing a grave interpersonal cost to the Agent while they're in the field, and forcing them to deal with the fallout when they finally return home.

Where Do I Start?

If you don't know whether you want to commit fully to Delta Green yet, pick up the free Need to Know rules on DriveThruRPG. This gives you everything you need to run a game as a Handler, including an introductory scenario called "Last Things Last," and all the tools you need to dive in as an Agent. There's also official modules for both Roll20 and Foundry, which will make your life infinitely easier if you're playing online.

As a Handler, I also recommend you give your players copies of the free Briefing Documents, which can help with figuring out Agent motivations and determining the event that resulted in their recruitment into Delta Green.

If you've decided you need more, or you've gone all in with the current Humble Bundle, then start with the Agent's Handbook. This will give you all the rules, including those left out of Need to Know, as well as deep dives on various federal agencies the Agents could work for, advice on tradecraft, and more.

I also recommend The Complex for players who may want to branch out into other organizations besides those recommended and described in the Agent's Handbook.

Next, if you're a Handler, I can't recommend reading the Handler's Guide enough. Some will say it's unnecessary, and while that might be true, it'll give you a much deeper insight into the history of Delta Green and the associated lore. Additionally, you can find detailed information on various Unnatural threats, hypergeometry (the in-game term for Unnatural magic), advice on creating both operations and campaigns, and another scenario titled "Operation FULMINATE: The Sentinels of Twilight."

If you've taken the chair as your group's Handler, my recommendation would be to run "Last Things Last" from Need to Know as your first scenario. It's as good a starting scenario as you can get if you're brand new to the game, both as a Handler and an Agent. It'll give you a good taste for the mechanics and the tone of being faced with difficult...if not impossible...choices while in the field. You could then follow up with "Operation FULMINATE" from the Handler's Guide, or dive into the collected scenarios in A Night at the Opera. To me, these scenarios are perfect introductions into the world of Delta Green, and I believe they more accurately represent the types of operations Agents will be called on. The threats are disparate and unconnected, which drives home the theme that Delta Green is often just putting out fires as they pop up, and Agents will be forced to deal with them as best they can with whatever resources they have on hand.

I do not recommend running Impossible Landscapes or God's Teeth as your group's first campaign or operation. Start with A Night at the Opera, or any of the other scenario collections available. Establish a foundational understanding of Delta Green for both you and your Agents. Not only are these campaigns heavy lifts from a game mastering standpoint, but they often subvert themes and tropes in Delta Green that may be lost on those still new to the game. To get maximum enjoyment out of both campaigns, and to ensure you're ready to tackle them as a Handler, run a few different operations first (either independently or part of an ongoing campaign).

Where Can I Look for Inspiration or Advice?

Sergio and I produced an episode of The Dead Drop titled "A Rookie's Guide to a Night at the Opera", where we discuss most of the material above and offer some tips and advice for new Handlers and Agents. We also interview Caleb Stokes of God's Teeth fame in the second half. Check it out, as well as the rest of our episodes from The Dead Drop!

Sometimes, the best way to get a handle (no pun intended) on how Delta Green can be played, as well as determining what might or might not work for you and your table, is to listen to some Actual Play (AP) productions. Role Playing Public Radio (RPPR) has plenty of Delta Green APs, including the original run of God's Teeth. I can also heartily recommend Mayday Roleplay and Stories & Lies. Finally, I produced my own with Black Project Gaming, where we played through A Night at the Opera and Impossible Landscapes. We're also currently playing through God's Teeth, which is available through Mayday Roleplay's Patreon. If you want to get a taste before committing to yet another Patreon, the first four episodes have been released on YouTube.

I'm currently a member of two Delta Green Discord servers, which are great resources for inspiration and advice. The first is the official Arc Dream Delta Green server, and the second is the Night at the Opera community. Both are great places to run ideas past new and experienced Handlers and Agents alike, and to find in-depth discussions on everything from lore to mechanics. 

Finally, I can't recommend the Delta Green ghost.io page enough. Previously, creators like Shane Ivey, Dennis Detwiller, and Caleb Stokes had separate Patreons where they would release everything from playtest rules to drafts of upcoming scenarios and campaigns. They've since been consolidated completely via ghost.io, which makes finding and consuming their material far easier. For $6 a month, you'll get everything from creators' takes on how current events could impact Delta Green as an organization (like Adam Scott Glancy's "Directive from A-Cell 113: We're All Outlaws Now") to playtest-ready versions of new operations. Well worth the monthly cost, in my opinion.

Where Can I Find Games?

The Roll20 Looking for Group (LFG) forums and StartPlaying are great places to find opportunities to play Delta Green. Games are also occasionally announced on the DeltaGreenRPG subreddit. You can also find games on either of the recommended Delta Green Discord servers, but the Night at the Opera server arguably has a far more active community. There's almost always a game being advertised or actively being run, so don't hesitate to roll up an Agent and join in.

However, often the best way to play is to run a game yourself using any of the resources recommended above. Bring some new Agents into the fold, groom them as future Handlers, and pay it forward.

Anything Else?

That should do it! If you have any questions you'd like addressed, or just need some more advice, feel free to leave a comment. I'll either answer directly or use your inquiries for a future blog post. Hope you found this useful, and best of luck to you all in your initial journeys into the world of Delta Green!

You're gonna need it.

Be seeing you,

Vince