Most of the Cthulhu mythos material out there is set during or before the early decades of the 20th century. In the past few years, we’ve seen some sources bring this mythos into the modern day. My favourite of these updates is The Laundry Files series by Charles Stross, but another interesting one is the Delta Green setting for Call of Cthulhu. I describe it as a setting because that’s how it started out, as a series of supplements for Sandy Peterson’s Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game. As of 2016, Delta Green is now a fully standalone game with its own core books.
This latest bundle from the fine chaps at Bundle of Holding immerses you into this standalone game, giving you everything you need – except for dice and, like, friends – to play in a modern Lovecraftian setting.
The first tier of the bundle will set you back $7.95 and will net you the following:
- Agent’s Handbook
- The Complex
- Agent Dossiers
The Agent’s handbook, as the core rulebook for players, is the most important part of the bundle. This book includes:
- Rules for creating agents of all types.
- Rules for tense, fluid investigations. Players who use their agents’ skills in clever ways have the best chance to succeed — and survive.
- Nerve-wracking rules for combat, where random disasters can undo the most careful planning.
- Mind-melting Sanity rules that see agents gradually deteriorate — and sometimes snap.
- Rules for “home” scenes where players see what their agents are fighting for.
- Quick, intuitive rules to determine equipment and assets.
- Dossiers on the federal agencies most likely to be featured in play.
The Complex gives a bunch of dossiers on different federal agencies for your players to work with or against. It gives a huge amount of information to really flesh out the lay of the land in this modern setting.
The final item in this tier is the Agent Dossier. It’s not uncommon for these bundles to have pre-made character packs. What’s cool about this set is the sheer size. There are 41 characters in here. That’s huge!
The second tier of the bundle is priced on a threshold. At the time of writing, that threshold is sitting at $39.47. Buying this tier gets you everything from the previous tier, plus a further 7 items. That’ll be where the ‘Mega’ in the title comes from, eh? The contents of this tier are:
- Handler’s Guide
- The Conspiracy
- The Labyrinth
- Iconoclasts
- Impossible Landscapes
- Archint
- Handler’s Screen
There are a couple of highlights here. Obviously, the Handler’s Guide will be a big one for GMs, being the core book for anyone looking to run their own games. It includes material on:
- The Past: Details on the world and history of Delta Green
- The Unnatural: The Cthulhu Mythos, from monsters to hypergeometry to the Great Old Ones, including rules for creating new threats
- The Schism: The Delta Green organization itself — or rather, two different Delta Green groups, not always working to the same ends
- The Opera: Guidelines for creating scenarios, running campaigns, and customizing the setting
- Appendices: A ready-to-play scenario, “The Sentinels of Twilight,” a Handler-facing glossary, index, recommended media, sample NPCs to use in any game, rules variants, and more
The Conspiracy is a 1990s-themed sourcebook. It’s based on the original sourcebook that kickstarted Delta Green as a franchise. It’s a little sad to me that the 1990s, the decade of my childhood, is now fodder for historical sourcebooks.
Set over four decades, the Impossible Landscapes campaign supplement seems pretty big in scope, and the book itself is a respectable 368 pages. There’s a ton of new material in here as well, including NPCs, Artifacts, and whatnot. Not being that familiar with Delta Green, I reckon that if I were to pick the game up, then something like this would be ideal, giving me a solid campaign to follow.
The Labyrinth covers topics from Silicon Valley startups to industrialist Super-PACs, from Oregon anarchist collectives to alt-right activists, from the depths of Reddit to this morning’s livestreams. I really like where this is taking the mythos, bringing it bang up to date, and insinuating threats into our day-to-day existence.
The bundle as a whole is pretty good. The first tier is very well-priced for the core rules and should be picked up any any and all potential Delta Green players. Solid. The second tier, as is often the case, is mostly aimed at GMs. It’s also a big jump in price, but there’s a lot of good content there. These aren’t little piddly supplements; these are big, well-produced books.
You can click here to visit the bundle page over at Bundle of Holding.
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