Modern Cthulhu: Pagan Publishing's Delta Green RPG
Written: Jul 29 '05 (Updated Jul 29 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Excellent setting for modern era Cthulhu campaigns.
Cons: It's not a rule book. You still need Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu rulebook
The Bottom Line: I'd have bought it even at twice it's price
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| maza's Full Review: Dennis Detwiller, John Tynes, Adam Scott Glancy - ... |
Let's start with the obvious - this roleplaying book is big -. 304 pages, no blank flyleafs. Blair Reynolds' cover isn't as "extreme" as I had feared, but it's creepy and a bit confusing - good work. It took me a while to get used to the cover-font, but it does succeed with the overall graphic design. The rear cover's text is a bit jarring, with the combined colour and size changes, but that also brings up some of the more "entertaining" texts I've seen, about conspiracies and "evil in out midst". It's not easily confused with anything else I've seen of late.
Opening the book, the graphic design "feel" continues, from the "crumpled and stained" background of the Fairfield Letter, to the margin-designs and illustrations (most complete with useful captions!). It has a coherent "feel" to it, in my opinion, as opposed to the "anthology" effect I've seen in other books (no names/systems/publishers named). Other than a couple niggling gun- nut gripes love it. (I want a colour wall-poster of page 49.) On to the text and contents. "Well written". It's a little depressing when I compare _my_ writing to this quality word-wrangling, but I can afford to be depressed. Useful stuff, too - things I'd not thought of too much, such as "what's the Mythos doing today". Document classifications and markings. A good glossary (as with the markings/classified appendice, better than I'd seen before).
I'd originally feared that DG would be either too focused on the Mi-Go/Grey infestations, too similar to other "conspiracy/UFO" games/books on the market, or *sigh* both. This *isn't the case. Yeah, there's a big Fun Guy From Yuggoth section, and an even larger one detailing MJ-12 - although they deserve that, as a major organization in this universe. I was afraid the Karotechia would be pulp/action Nazi Wizards (WEIRD WAR PRESENTS!). Hell no. A nicely done section of logical bad guys, and the illustrations add to the creepiness. (Look closely at the swastikas in the NPC illustration to see what I mean.) I don't know why I worry this much...The Fate is again more than I expected, but I'd not formed my own thoughts on their aspects, as I had with my own interests of UFOs and World War II. The occult isn't as big an interest to me, but from the Fate I can see I'll need more data to play with. And while SaucerWatch didn't catch as much of my attention, that's just me. I can certainly use them, and there's even some nifty ideas I can loot for my own use later.
The game-mechanics section, from creating DG Investigators, to new skills and the listing of the government agencies, to the guns and details info, is solid. It'll probably see a lot of photocopying, just to keep the players' grubby digits out of my nice book. Capping it all off, of course, is a DG character sheet. This also is part of the overall graphic design, and looks pretty.
Appendices A and B are the bibliography and the surprisingly interesting glossary. Appendix C details security classifications within the U.S. government, explaining how to create realistic "secret documents" (of which several examples are supplied) as well as explaining just how security works. Appendix D are those examples, the modern day tomes of the Mythos. Appendix E consists of Adventures. I skimmed more than read this chapter, but it was quite well-done on the whole, with open, flowing adventures that do not require a rigid schedule. Very nice for introduction into the game or a continuing campaign. Appendix F looks at 34 important federal agencies, providing short histories as well as operational proceedures. Appendices G, H, and I are for the players, primarily, dealing with character creation, skills, and new equipment.
Overall, Delta Green is a superb game, its only flaw being the fact that it is inherently a supplement, not a full-fledged game itself. You need a reasonable understanding of the Mythos to fully appreciate the game as it is, but even without that the lessons on conspiracies and how to run them makes the book immensely useful. This is one of those books that can be used for virtually any game, and the comparatively tiny amount of rules makes such porting even easier. There comes a time when you much have something to complain about, and here it is... not much. The only other problem I had were the infrequent asides about how to use one character or another. "Keeper Advice" is scattered throughout the book, instead of being centralized. The breaks and comments on how to use a character or what a group was intended for were sometimes annoying and quite disruptive of the overall flow of the book. Also there are some niggling little things in DG - "dark side" instead of "far side" of the moon is one repeated a number of times. (The "feel" of dark side fits better with DG's atmosphere, though.) A few details that either don't work right, or simply mismatch. One possible typo, but I don't tend to notice 'em. (Pagan Publishing does seem to know how to use a spellchecker, however.) Some "factual" items that don't agree with my knowledge, but on those I could be wrong. (Gasp!) And the aforementioned "gun-nut illustration gripes". All in all, I usually have more to whine about in my writing.
Can I recommend this? If you're planning to run modern-era Call of Cthulhu (Cthulhu Now), it's really useful. If you're running "other" modern games of a conspiratorial/occult bent, it's a good resource. If you're only a player, kick in with your fellow victims and buy it for your Keeper, or buy it and start Keeping. It's not particularly useful for "classic" 1920's CoC, much less 1890's Gaslight-era, but that's a bit obvious.
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Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
maza
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Member: Nick Maza
Location: Greece
Reviews written: 40
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
I live in Greece. I hate the summers.
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