THE EXPERIENCE

Structure, Knowledge, and Tone in Delta Green.

Often, when I set about writing an article like this, I am forced to think, "oh, I guess I'm just trying to slow down and illustrate each point of what I do when I run a game like this." A lot of this is just...built in, for me at least, and I guess that's one of the benefits of having been one of the creators of such a marvellous property.

So, while I will endeavour to take it slow, please feel free to point out any gaps I may have unconsciously left behind. Sometimes the most important things are the most obvious things, and so, are the things I am most oblivious to. If I failed to catalog them, the fault is mine, not yours. Please excuse me. It is likely I am blind to them...

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Delta Green is a game about horror and horror can be about many different things. Most often, horror is about isolation, or, more importantly, the isolation of self from the ordered existence of community, friends and family. But in a game where a few players sit around a table, trade stories and roll dice, isolation might be hard to come by without some serious mental gymnastics. How do you hit those notes in Delta Green without losing the core thread of "this is a player-directed role-playing game"?

In general, as a Handler, you don't want to focus too much on one player ("let's go in the other room and I'll tell you what your Agent sees!"), you don't want to split the narrative unless it's important ("while John goes to the aerospace lab, the rest of the Agents go into the mine...") and you don't want to have one group doing the interesting stuff, while some of the players are left investigating a red herring. Let's take a look at some high-level conceits below:

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Knowledge and In-Game Knowledge

The implicit agreement at the beginning of any Delta Green game is this: your Agent knows and understands things and you, the player knows and understand things, and this does not mean that the agent and player have the same knowledge. That is, the player has access to all sorts of information about Lovecraftian lore, monsters and threats that their Agent does not (and likely, vice versa).

This core conceit is a red-line that must not be crossed by the player. Without it, the entire game devolves into a "oh, I know what this monster is!" and it can never recover. There is no horror to be found there. Players need to enter the experience clearly keeping these two pools of knowledge separate. If they accidentally stray over this line (as happens from time to time), it is the Handler's job to drag them back over and point it out, "Agent Taylor would have no idea what a 'Necronomicon' even was!" This red-line rule is vital because the uncertainty is where the horror in Delta Green lives. The moment that is removed, it is no longer a horror game, and becomes instead something more like a police procedural.

But once your players cleave to this rule as their core conceit, it does a lot of things. One, it establishes the Handler as the final arbiter of in-game knowledge (which is necessary), two it frees up the Handler to be more open and sharing with what else is going on in the game beyond the Agent's direct observations (with the implicit understanding that though the players may be informed something, their Agents would still have no idea of such things...) And third, it allows a POV shift for the Handler into something more like third-person omniscient.

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Third Person Omniscience for the Handler

This flexible point of view is all-seeing and all-knowing. Instead of glomming onto individual points of view, it can be any of them, or none, or all at once. Getting players to obey the in-game knowledge rule is vital so that the Handler may use third person omniscience freely...otherwise, the players might be discovering (and exploiting) all sorts of in-game knowledge their Agents should never know.

For example, many Handlers might say:

You enter the small town and drive past a bullet-ridden sign that says Mustang, Arizona, Population 1,249. You drive down the main strip of the town towards the hotel, what are your agents up to?

I try to say things like:

The town has squatted in the desert since at least 1930, hanging on like a long-term cancer patient on drip feed from the state. The people that live there are blank-faced and dust-blind and they consider the Agent's almost-clean black SUV as alien, all turning to watch it drive past. This place is dead, and has been for decades. No one has buried it, yet. "What the fuck are you looking at?" is the first thing a mother in flip-flops holding a sleeping baby says to your team as you loiter outside of the SUV and consider the grimy two-level motel.

I run my games in this POV, and so, my games are often compared to "feeling like" a horror novel (which is pretty much my goal). This POV can move around and "live" in anything, and I can share anything with the players (as long as they stick to their implicit red-line of in-game knowledge). This has a huge benefit: moments that don't involve all Agents moment-to-moment can still entertain their players. Those players get to watch and experience the dramatic ups and downs of the others without being cut off.

When I speak to the table, all present know I'm just describing elements to set a scene or a feeling. When I say "you are all at X" and set a scene, the players understand that is the scene. When I open with, "Agent Taylor, you notice..." that Agent's player knows I'm playing a little narrative tennis match with them (I hit it to them, they hit it back, etc...) This game always has the implicit understanding: the Handler controls the direction, pace and subject of narration at the table.

It has a secondary benefit. Players often drift into a shorthand for their Agents to fit the style. Instead of laboriously trying to role-play out something the player has limited knowledge of (like, say, court precedents, police procedures, etc.) the player might say: "Agent Colbeck lays on the legalese thick, flashing his badge and gun and implying things might get very legally difficult for all in the bar if they don't spit up the info." This works even better for things their Agent might be great at that the player is awful at (a charismatic Agent vs. their player who is very quiet).

The rule I tend to stick to in this POV is this: Agents are under the control of their players (excepting some very specific circumstances). I try not to tell the Agents what they feel, think, or understand, and instead give them the specific information and let them arrive at their own conclusions (sometimes, however, when I feel like they've missed something vital that their Agents should not have, I will crack them over the head with a fact). The major exclusion to this rule is mind-control, magic, possession, madness etc. When this occurs, I tend to "crawl into" the player Agent narrative much more to describe their Agent's feelings and thoughts, so that it feels strange and menacing.

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Splitting the Narrative and Keeping the Table Engaged

The third person omniscient POV and players keeping their out-of-game knowledge from their in-game knowledge are vital components to being able to freely split the Agent narratives. Without this high-level freedom, the ability to split Agent narratives is reliant on actually separating or isolating players ("come with me into the other room and I'll tell you what happens,"). In a strong game, such contrivances aren't needed. The players trust the Handler and are eager to experience as much of the game as possible — even those specific moments that their Agents are not present for.

Once this trust is in-hand, splitting the Agents up into two narratives becomes an exciting possibility. Those Agents not present can watch and laugh and worry along with those who are present. But sometimes this is not enough. When the narrative has jumped to something exciting and cool with one group of Agents, it is the Handler's job to make certain the others are not left out in the cold entirely. No matter how interesting the A story is, the Handler needs to at least counterpoint the B story from time to time.

Few Handlers can split much finer than two stories at a time, and if you do, try to bring them back together soon...because disinterest at the table becomes a very real and ever-increasing threat.

Third person omniscient also allows the Handler to land some cool A/B interrelations that the Agents might not know, but which the players can still enjoy. For example:

A Story: Two Agents examine the remnants of an old mining shack out in the middle of an empty range. They consider the old photos from the 1920s that still hang on the sun-washed, dusty walls. In one, a man with coke-bottle thick glasses and clearly fake teeth stands in front of a open saloon door.

B Story: Two Agents dig through perp records in-town. The Handler might say, "You place aside two dozen booking docs for everything from solicitation to drug possession. Nothing is unusual in them. On the top of the pile is an unfortunate named RYAN, J. RICHARD, arrested last Sunday, wearing the thickest pair of glasses you've ever seen."

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Tone

Looking for tonal points in game is a vital skill for Delta Green Handlers. Every operation is about something. Isolation. Family. Degeneration. The loss of order. It is the Handler's job to examine the operation or campaign and keep one or two of these tonal phrases centered in their mind at all times. These are hot-buttons for you to hit again and again when you can, to hammer home those elements.

For example, The Last Equation is an operation about infectious knowledge. Infection, madness, spreading, multiplication, secrets, ruin. Every time in the narrative when the Handler might use one of these words (or a synonym) to describe to the players the game world, they should. Even better, when the Agents are on the right track, if the Handler uses these terms more, and then uses them less when the Agents are off track.

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This is just the tiniest snapshot of what I do as a Handler to make the game as engaging as possible, and doesn't even stray into things like rules, adjudicating combat, or any other mechanical aspects.

Please let me know below if any of this was of interest or use to you in your games, or other questions about the game you might have that I can answer. As I said in the introduction, turning my eyes inward to "see" just what I do when I run Delta Green is a challenging (and fun) task.

Let me know if you'd like to see any more or it!