‘Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game’ Early Announcements

At GenCon 2011, Arc Dream Publishing announced development of Delta Green as a standalone RPG. Here’s the relevant excerpt from our post-GenCon post:

We’re working on Delta Green as a standalone roleplaying game.

It will be its own game, not a supplement to Call of Cthulhu, but it will incorporate parts of BRP and CoC that have been released in the Open Gaming License as well as new system elements. We have two core goals: To create a game tailored specifically to Delta Green and its vision of the Cthulhu Mythos, and to make sure that all the past Delta Green material is fully compatible with the new system.

Tailoring the game specifically to Delta Green means adapting just about every aspect of the system to the things that make Delta Green tick. The Sanity rules will be based on the Call of Cthulhu-derived Sanity rules found in the OGL, but will be customized to reflect a somewhat more sophisticated understanding of trauma and post-traumatic stress that’s emerged in recent years. Combat rules will be clarified and will allow for somewhat more realistic tactical options. Interrogation, persuasion, surveillance, pursuit, hacking, research and tradecraft will take center stage.

Character creation will include advantages to reflect characters’ unique backgrounds and the nature of their past exposure to supernatural horrors. Skills will be consolidated into a small number of core skills with a wider, optional range of specialties. Every character will have defined motivations that will either enhance or undermine psychological resilience, depending on how badly those motivations have suffered under the stress of the character’s involvement in Delta Green.

Making all this backwards-compatible won’t be hard. Every one of the primary designers has 20 to 30 years of experience designing for BRP and specifically for Call of Cthulhu. You will be able to use a stat block from any Delta Green book (or any other Call of Cthulhu supplement) in the Delta Green RPG without headache-inducing conversions.

Delta Green: The Roleplaying Game will be written by me, Dennis Detwiller, Adam Scott Glancy, Kenneth Hite and Greg Stolze, with contributions from John Scott Tynes and several other writers who excel at horror and conspiracy. It’ll be published by Arc Dream Publishing under license from the Delta Green Partnership.

We don’t yet have a release date. I’ll announce it far and wide when we do.

On a personal note, HOLY CRAP WE’RE FINALLY MAKING THE DELTA GREEN GAME!

Listen to the full audio of the GenCon announcement and discussion on the Unspeakable! podcast.