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Delta Green RPG
Delta Green: Control Group
The Deadly Light of Revelation
Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green opposes the forces of darkness with honor but without glory. Delta Green agents fight to save humanity from unnatural horrors—often at a shattering personal cost.
The team behind the eight-time ENnie Award-winning Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game presents a collection of original adventures to introduce players to Delta Green. These operations will lead future agents to new heights of cosmic terror.
"BLACKSAT" follows a team of NASA astronauts and a pair of strange civilians into space in 2010. A simple satellite repair leads them to truths of mathematics and physics beyond all human wonder and fear.
"Night Visions" tracks U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2011. A diplomatic patrol takes them to Gath Valley, a corner of the country that everyone tries to ignore—a place of deep shadows and ancient hungers.
"Sick Again" sees a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rushing to rural Arizona in 2012. Investigating a strange viral outbreak may expose them to threats beyond time itself.
"Wormwood Arena" brings together survivors of the prior adventures—if there are any—as Agents of Delta Green. A harmless-seeming Kansas cult’s new pamphlet sports a sigil of unnatural portent. The Agents must investigate the cult, perhaps even infiltrate it, and stop a catastrophic incursion before it begins.
Delta Green: Control Group is written by Greg Stolze and Shane Ivey, and illustrated by Dennis Detwiller. Control Group is playable with Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, an award-winning update to one of the most acclaimed RPG series of all time: the Agent’s Handbook, the Handler's Guide, and the free quickstart rulebook, Need to Know.
Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green opposes the forces of darkness with honor but without glory. Delta Green agents fight to save humanity from unnatural horrors—often at a shattering personal cost.
The team behind the eight-time ENnie Award-winning Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game presents a collection of original adventures to introduce players to Delta Green. These operations will lead future agents to new heights of cosmic terror.
"BLACKSAT" follows a team of NASA astronauts and a pair of strange civilians into space in 2010. A simple satellite repair leads them to truths of mathematics and physics beyond all human wonder and fear.
"Night Visions" tracks U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in 2011. A diplomatic patrol takes them to Gath Valley, a corner of the country that everyone tries to ignore—a place of deep shadows and ancient hungers.
"Sick Again" sees a team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rushing to rural Arizona in 2012. Investigating a strange viral outbreak may expose them to threats beyond time itself.
"Wormwood Arena" brings together survivors of the prior adventures—if there are any—as Agents of Delta Green. A harmless-seeming Kansas cult’s new pamphlet sports a sigil of unnatural portent. The Agents must investigate the cult, perhaps even infiltrate it, and stop a catastrophic incursion before it begins.
Delta Green: Control Group is written by Greg Stolze and Shane Ivey, and illustrated by Dennis Detwiller. Control Group is playable with Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, an award-winning update to one of the most acclaimed RPG series of all time: the Agent’s Handbook, the Handler's Guide, and the free quickstart rulebook, Need to Know.
180 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2019
5 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
About the author
Greg Stolze
146 books59 followersGreg Stolze (born 1970) is an American novelist and writer, whose work has mainly focused on properties derived from role-playing games.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
Stolze has contributed to numerous role-playing game books for White Wolf Game Studio and Atlas Games, including Demon: the Fallen. Some of Stolze's recent work has been self-published using the "ransom method", whereby the game is only released when enough potential buyers have contributed enough money to reach a threshold set by the author.
Together with John Tynes he created and wrote the role-playing game Unknown Armies, published by Atlas Games. He has also co-written the free game NEMESIS, which uses the One-Roll Engine presented in Godlike and the so called Madness Meter derived from Unknown Armies.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 24, 2024
De momento he leído y jugado a BLACKSAT. Sin ser de las mejores aventuras de Delta Green es, como todas las de este juego, buena. Su peor defecto es que en determinados momentos los PJ carecen de motivación para seguir adelante y se pueden atascar intentando resolver una situación imposible. Además, uno o dos personajes, sobre el papel los más importantes, tienen relativamente poco peso. Lo mejor es la ambientación espacial de la misma; aunque debo reconocer que esta temática es una de mis debilidades y mi pasión por la misma me ha permitido rellenar detalles más allá de los que la propia aventura aporta. Lo mejor el momento del lanzamiento que, si se le pone un poco de cariño, puede resultar muy satisfactorio para los jugadores.
April 29, 2020
I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one reading “Control Group” during the pandemic. No, I am not a soulless bastard, just someone who does not want to be judged by fellow bus because there is a person with heavy PPE in the cover.
This is the “final” addition to what I would call core DG books: Need to Know—the Keeper’s screen—Agent’s Book, and Handler’s book. I loved the first two, but the latter left me a bit meh, partially because I did not like the intro adventure. “Control Group” comes to fix that, giving us four introductory scenarios: three for newbies (non-agents), one for DG agents of either party.
If I was worried the setting might have not been well updated, this book comes to dispel my fears. Not that the stories included here could have not happened more or less as they did in the previous version, but they feel fresh. They cover things we all are scared of: space, war, disease, Kansas. Sorry, I had to. Let me try this again. They all cover things we are all scared of: space, war, disease; and puts the players in control of unusual pregen character: astronauts, soldiers, CDC personal. If you have played DG enough, you might have seen the latter two, but it is a clear departure from the FBI/CIA trope I tend to have in mind.
To roughly quote DeGrasse Tyson, BLACKSAT is a “historical” scenario that takes place in a space shuttle. Part “Gravity”, part “Alien”, it is for me the weakest of the. Not bad at all, but I think it relies a lot of NPC to move the story, and it can feel a bit too “Deus ex Machina.”
NIGHT VISIONS is “Apocalypse Now” in Afghanistan. No, not really, but as the movie—and Conrad’s book—gives due credit to the Lovecraftian idea that if there is anything out there, it is most likely to be found in those “dark corners of the earth.”
SICK AGAIN is for me the best of the introductory scenarios. It might be because this is the one from the cover—yup, the pandemic one. No, it does not work as a cautionary tell of what could happen/is happening right now. The disease is truly supernatural, and it makes this a very weird scenario. All three are, but this one has an honest to Cthulhu WTF moment. On top of that, the containment points are a great way of measuring the level of failure success the PCs achieve. I do not know of many CoC scenarios where the consequences of failing could be so obvious, and be clearly presented for future scenarios.
Nevertheless, WORMWOOD ARENA is the star of the book. It might remind you slightly of the mini-campaign included in the first DG, but only slightly. A pamphlet leads the DG/FBI agents to a cult in Kansas. But what a pamphlet! If there is anything in this book that reeks of the Internet Age, is that piece of paper. The other aspect I found very modern, or at the very least at odds with the previous conception of the game is that SPOILER ALERT The cult is not fake! It helps people! Well, more or less. For someone who grow up in the midst of the “Sect scare”, is comforting to see we have moved past that point.
Unfortunately, I have two mild criticisms to the book. One is that DG seems to be moving away from CoC to stablish its own mythology. While for the most part I like that idea—it keeps things new, mysterious, and yes, creepy-- would have been happy to see one scenario with a “classic” monster. Just so they don’t feel abandoned. I suppose I will have to wait for another book.
The second one is very specific to this volume. As I have said before, there are three introductory scenarios, one follow-up scenario, and no information on how to link the two of them. Maybe I am lazy and I do not want to check previous books. Maybe I am a foreigner unaware of the obvious interagency mobility. However, I miss a hint on how my astronaut becomes FBI agent. Sure they can, but a few ideas on how to move from one situation to the other—and what happens in between scenarios—would have made this book truly perfect.
This is the “final” addition to what I would call core DG books: Need to Know—the Keeper’s screen—Agent’s Book, and Handler’s book. I loved the first two, but the latter left me a bit meh, partially because I did not like the intro adventure. “Control Group” comes to fix that, giving us four introductory scenarios: three for newbies (non-agents), one for DG agents of either party.
If I was worried the setting might have not been well updated, this book comes to dispel my fears. Not that the stories included here could have not happened more or less as they did in the previous version, but they feel fresh. They cover things we all are scared of: space, war, disease, Kansas. Sorry, I had to. Let me try this again. They all cover things we are all scared of: space, war, disease; and puts the players in control of unusual pregen character: astronauts, soldiers, CDC personal. If you have played DG enough, you might have seen the latter two, but it is a clear departure from the FBI/CIA trope I tend to have in mind.
To roughly quote DeGrasse Tyson, BLACKSAT is a “historical” scenario that takes place in a space shuttle. Part “Gravity”, part “Alien”, it is for me the weakest of the. Not bad at all, but I think it relies a lot of NPC to move the story, and it can feel a bit too “Deus ex Machina.”
NIGHT VISIONS is “Apocalypse Now” in Afghanistan. No, not really, but as the movie—and Conrad’s book—gives due credit to the Lovecraftian idea that if there is anything out there, it is most likely to be found in those “dark corners of the earth.”
SICK AGAIN is for me the best of the introductory scenarios. It might be because this is the one from the cover—yup, the pandemic one. No, it does not work as a cautionary tell of what could happen/is happening right now. The disease is truly supernatural, and it makes this a very weird scenario. All three are, but this one has an honest to Cthulhu WTF moment. On top of that, the containment points are a great way of measuring the level of failure success the PCs achieve. I do not know of many CoC scenarios where the consequences of failing could be so obvious, and be clearly presented for future scenarios.
Nevertheless, WORMWOOD ARENA is the star of the book. It might remind you slightly of the mini-campaign included in the first DG, but only slightly. A pamphlet leads the DG/FBI agents to a cult in Kansas. But what a pamphlet! If there is anything in this book that reeks of the Internet Age, is that piece of paper. The other aspect I found very modern, or at the very least at odds with the previous conception of the game is that SPOILER ALERT The cult is not fake! It helps people! Well, more or less. For someone who grow up in the midst of the “Sect scare”, is comforting to see we have moved past that point.
Unfortunately, I have two mild criticisms to the book. One is that DG seems to be moving away from CoC to stablish its own mythology. While for the most part I like that idea—it keeps things new, mysterious, and yes, creepy-- would have been happy to see one scenario with a “classic” monster. Just so they don’t feel abandoned. I suppose I will have to wait for another book.
The second one is very specific to this volume. As I have said before, there are three introductory scenarios, one follow-up scenario, and no information on how to link the two of them. Maybe I am lazy and I do not want to check previous books. Maybe I am a foreigner unaware of the obvious interagency mobility. However, I miss a hint on how my astronaut becomes FBI agent. Sure they can, but a few ideas on how to move from one situation to the other—and what happens in between scenarios—would have made this book truly perfect.
April 12, 2020
At the end of 2015, I backed the Delta Green Kickstarter at a level far beyond that which I'd normally do; I committed to take all the books and stretch goals. I've not regretted it; even though the product has been slow in coming out, it has been superbly made. It's also been reasonably canny, as it's meant I've avoided the Brexit impact on the pound, and locked in the costs. Every time a book arrives, it feels like a bonus.
Needless to say, Delta Green: Control Group is gorgeously laid out and illustrated. It is a collection of four scenarios, suggested as ways to introduce players to Delta Green. In reality, it's three introductory adventures and then a larger one which could lead to a mini-campaign. In the first three, the characters will not be part of Delta Green. The final adventure could even be their first mission as such. The scenarios are not interlinked in any way. The three introductory adventures feel like they are convention one-shots, and are likely to have a high lethality rate if not approached correctly. That is completely in line with the way that backgrounds are built for the game, but usually, you refer back to them rather than play them through.
The adventures are not your typical mythos scenario.
The first, Blacksat, follows a team of astronauts and civilians as they ride the Space Shuttle in 2010 to fix a broken military satellite. Needless to say, the technology harkens back to the kind of thing that was in MAJESTIC's sights and will prove extremely dangerous in the unforgiving environment of space. This has a huge lethality potential and could easily result in a TPK.
The second, Night Visions, is set in 2011; the players are US soldiers and officials trying to negotiate an alliance against the Taliban with a minority living in a remote mountain valley in Afghanistan. This is a survivable scenario, but the player's natural instincts may well make it hard to do so.
The final introductory adventure, Sick Again, was quite hard to read, faced as we are with the coronavirus pandemic. It's 2012 and the characters work for the CDC and are rushed to a remote town in rural Arizona where they fight to understand, control and prevent a dangerous and strange viral outbreak. This scenario has layers; there's a mechanic to drive the medical investigation out from which will fall a more traditional Delta Green encounter. I feel that the GM will need to be on the ball to run this well. The scenario is adjacent to areas that have been covered in earlier works such as Future/Perfect, but it does not overlap. I think the cover of the book is based on this scenario.
The fourth scenario, Wormwood Arena, is set after the other three, perhaps between 2013 and 2019. It's suggested that you could use the surviving characters from the first three scenarios as the core of the team here as they are brought into their first 'proper' Delta Green operation. As mentioned earlier, this is an investigation into a harmless-seeming Kansas self-help cult, so very traditional in approach. It is larger in scope than the previous games, probably needing at least two sessions to work through. The first part of the scenario is focussed on the undercover investigation. The second part could get very messy, with potential contact with a powerful being that could threaten humanity if it awakes. The scenario ends with suggestions for follow up; it even outlines ideas for how you could follow this up with a mini-campaign if the characters fail.
Full colour hardcover, 180 pages long, beautifully illustrated, with clear and easy to read layout. You can taste the ashes that Delta Green's battles create as you read it.
Recommended.
Needless to say, Delta Green: Control Group is gorgeously laid out and illustrated. It is a collection of four scenarios, suggested as ways to introduce players to Delta Green. In reality, it's three introductory adventures and then a larger one which could lead to a mini-campaign. In the first three, the characters will not be part of Delta Green. The final adventure could even be their first mission as such. The scenarios are not interlinked in any way. The three introductory adventures feel like they are convention one-shots, and are likely to have a high lethality rate if not approached correctly. That is completely in line with the way that backgrounds are built for the game, but usually, you refer back to them rather than play them through.
The adventures are not your typical mythos scenario.
The first, Blacksat, follows a team of astronauts and civilians as they ride the Space Shuttle in 2010 to fix a broken military satellite. Needless to say, the technology harkens back to the kind of thing that was in MAJESTIC's sights and will prove extremely dangerous in the unforgiving environment of space. This has a huge lethality potential and could easily result in a TPK.
The second, Night Visions, is set in 2011; the players are US soldiers and officials trying to negotiate an alliance against the Taliban with a minority living in a remote mountain valley in Afghanistan. This is a survivable scenario, but the player's natural instincts may well make it hard to do so.
The final introductory adventure, Sick Again, was quite hard to read, faced as we are with the coronavirus pandemic. It's 2012 and the characters work for the CDC and are rushed to a remote town in rural Arizona where they fight to understand, control and prevent a dangerous and strange viral outbreak. This scenario has layers; there's a mechanic to drive the medical investigation out from which will fall a more traditional Delta Green encounter. I feel that the GM will need to be on the ball to run this well. The scenario is adjacent to areas that have been covered in earlier works such as Future/Perfect, but it does not overlap. I think the cover of the book is based on this scenario.
The fourth scenario, Wormwood Arena, is set after the other three, perhaps between 2013 and 2019. It's suggested that you could use the surviving characters from the first three scenarios as the core of the team here as they are brought into their first 'proper' Delta Green operation. As mentioned earlier, this is an investigation into a harmless-seeming Kansas self-help cult, so very traditional in approach. It is larger in scope than the previous games, probably needing at least two sessions to work through. The first part of the scenario is focussed on the undercover investigation. The second part could get very messy, with potential contact with a powerful being that could threaten humanity if it awakes. The scenario ends with suggestions for follow up; it even outlines ideas for how you could follow this up with a mini-campaign if the characters fail.
Full colour hardcover, 180 pages long, beautifully illustrated, with clear and easy to read layout. You can taste the ashes that Delta Green's battles create as you read it.
Recommended.
December 27, 2019
Control Group is a fantastic and unnerving collection of operations designed to start characters down the Delta Green path.
The basic idea would be that you run the adventures, and if the characters survive, they would be inducted into DG operations in the future, although the future in this case would be the last scenario, which is longer and more complex than the previous ones.
This is Delta Green at its best and sharpest, and all 4 scenarios are brilliantly written and designed, as well as creepy as hell. They are also fascinating.
From earth orbit on BLACKSAT, to Afghanistan in Night Visions, to an unnatural outbreak in Sick Again, and ending with a slow burn undercover op with a potentially explosive climax in Wormwood Arena, the DG team nails it again. Amazing stuff.
Can't wait to run some games through these.
The basic idea would be that you run the adventures, and if the characters survive, they would be inducted into DG operations in the future, although the future in this case would be the last scenario, which is longer and more complex than the previous ones.
This is Delta Green at its best and sharpest, and all 4 scenarios are brilliantly written and designed, as well as creepy as hell. They are also fascinating.
From earth orbit on BLACKSAT, to Afghanistan in Night Visions, to an unnatural outbreak in Sick Again, and ending with a slow burn undercover op with a potentially explosive climax in Wormwood Arena, the DG team nails it again. Amazing stuff.
Can't wait to run some games through these.
Read
October 24, 2022I've already covered a bunch of Delta Green materials that I had in pdf form, roughly divided into
(a) Delta Green when it was a campaign framework for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game in the 90s: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
(b) Delta Green when it was a standalone game https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
Of course, that means I've got more books to accumulate and read, and one of the latest books I got (on sale and with credit from some older books I traded in) was this collection of four adventures, including three sort of intro adventures where the characters are not aware of Delta Green.
* A bunch of astronauts have to take some weird mathematicians to space to fix an unnatural satellite -- and brush up against some alien presence;
* A bunch of soldiers in Afghanistan go to make a deal with a small tribe who turns out to be horrible cannibals in thrall to an awful monster;
* A bunch of CDC fast responders are sent to deal with a disease which turns out to have an unnatural source.
Those three all register on the bleak scale, probably getting bleaker as things go on: the astronauts may have to sacrifice someone to finish their mission; the soldiers in Afghanistan could technically complete their mission without a problem, I think, it's just a terrible no-win situation to be in; and the disease adventure includes notes like "if you make this critical success, you theorize that the disease follows this rational pattern. That's incorrect and nothing you do helps."
The fourth adventure is another bleak one, but involves people inside Delta Green -- that is, any survivors from adventure 1-3. That's a neat sort of build-up in what's otherwise a straight-forward anthology: things get bleaker in adventures 1-3, and in adventure 4, you can revisit your now tragically ruined characters to take them on another bleak adventure.
I like it all, and the writing of the adventures is uniformly good (i.e., they try to give the GM guidance for a whole host of dumb ideas the PCs might engage in). I'm not over-the-moon on the Delta Green layout and art style, but I'm not sure why. I mean, the layout is fine -- it's very spacious, a real change of pace from some of the crammed-full-of-text zines I've looked at. But I kind of wondered if these adventures really needed all that space.
(Actually, now that I think about it, I don't have anything bad to say about the art: it is almost uniformly functional, that is, rather than give a standard D&D image of some adventurers fighting a monster, they include a pretty normal portrait of some NPC the players might meet. But there are some lightly creepy pictures also, and some of the adventure info is set off in a way to look like -- but not actually be -- a handout, which is a nice way to vary up sidebars, I guess, and very keeping in the DG aesthetic of bureaucracy.)
(a) Delta Green when it was a campaign framework for the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game in the 90s: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
(b) Delta Green when it was a standalone game https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
Of course, that means I've got more books to accumulate and read, and one of the latest books I got (on sale and with credit from some older books I traded in) was this collection of four adventures, including three sort of intro adventures where the characters are not aware of Delta Green.
* A bunch of astronauts have to take some weird mathematicians to space to fix an unnatural satellite -- and brush up against some alien presence;
* A bunch of soldiers in Afghanistan go to make a deal with a small tribe who turns out to be horrible cannibals in thrall to an awful monster;
* A bunch of CDC fast responders are sent to deal with a disease which turns out to have an unnatural source.
Those three all register on the bleak scale, probably getting bleaker as things go on: the astronauts may have to sacrifice someone to finish their mission; the soldiers in Afghanistan could technically complete their mission without a problem, I think, it's just a terrible no-win situation to be in; and the disease adventure includes notes like "if you make this critical success, you theorize that the disease follows this rational pattern. That's incorrect and nothing you do helps."
The fourth adventure is another bleak one, but involves people inside Delta Green -- that is, any survivors from adventure 1-3. That's a neat sort of build-up in what's otherwise a straight-forward anthology: things get bleaker in adventures 1-3, and in adventure 4, you can revisit your now tragically ruined characters to take them on another bleak adventure.
I like it all, and the writing of the adventures is uniformly good (i.e., they try to give the GM guidance for a whole host of dumb ideas the PCs might engage in). I'm not over-the-moon on the Delta Green layout and art style, but I'm not sure why. I mean, the layout is fine -- it's very spacious, a real change of pace from some of the crammed-full-of-text zines I've looked at. But I kind of wondered if these adventures really needed all that space.
(Actually, now that I think about it, I don't have anything bad to say about the art: it is almost uniformly functional, that is, rather than give a standard D&D image of some adventurers fighting a monster, they include a pretty normal portrait of some NPC the players might meet. But there are some lightly creepy pictures also, and some of the adventure info is set off in a way to look like -- but not actually be -- a handout, which is a nice way to vary up sidebars, I guess, and very keeping in the DG aesthetic of bureaucracy.)
January 3, 2023
High-quality scenario collection. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
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