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Delta Green: Handler's Guide |
$29.99 |
Average Rating:4.9 / 5 |
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An amazing game, this book can provide the Handler (GM) with a complete setting with tons of backstory for their games. Included are creatures, spells and other rules to flesh out your game. If you want to create a backstory of your own for your campaign you'll have a lot of information to pick and choose, or inspire you to create your own conspiracies and threats to humanity.
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Even if not mandatory to play, this guide is a must have if you want to know more about the Delta Green agency and the horror it fights (or tries to fight) since decades. You'll find a lot of lore to expand the universe of a campaign
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I love the way this book layers in the additional choices for a Handler to add, including a weirdly robust not magic system that requires an appropriate amount of sacrifice. Also, the history of DG is super interesting, and I love any excuse for more source material on mythos creatures.
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In general, a very high quality Handler/GM guide to complement the Agents' Handbook. Documentation for most parts is well organized and easy to read. Especially I liked the insight how to twist classic and more modern Mythos creatures into something players won't expect. Illustrations, like in Agents' Handbook, are quite top-notch and set the mood.
My minor reservation is that the history timeline gets bogged down close to modern times (and main bulk of published scenarios it AFAIK refers), becoming dense and difficult to interpret unless you are familiar with the aforementioned scenarios. However, it is not bad, one can still skim it to get ideas and inspirations.
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Am a big fan of horror settings and a HUGE fan of the late D20 modern and its attempt to modernize the RPG setting. Absolutly loved this game, modern setting plus horror lore OMFG. Also worth mention is the FREE updates to the book every time its corrected or edited. Highly recomended
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even if you're not a fan of RPGs (although i don't know why you would be here if you wern't) and are just a fan of the mythos, this is an amazing book to have, so much lore and detail.
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So, you've stepped up and offered to run the Delta Green RPG for your group. Here's a massive sourcebook to help you make the world of the game come to horrifying life for the characters... It includes a history of the alternate Earth in which the game is set, loads about the Mythos, rules for new threats, a good understanding of Delta Green as an organisation, and much more; and ideas for adventures are scattered freely throughout as well as there being a complete scenario ready for you to run.
The Introduction begins by recommending that you go and read the Delta Green RPG Agent's Handbook first. Then it reminds you that first and foremost, Delta Green is a horror game dealing with people finding out just how insignificant human beings are in the universal scheme of things, with the end of humanity itself - and probably going clean off their heads if they aren't killed in the process. It's about conspiracies to keep the horror hidden - some concocted by the horrors themselves to keep us human beings in the dark, some dreamed up by well-meaning folk who want to protect humanity from knowledge that can quite literally drive them insane. It's about humanity's constant struggle to understand things beyond all knowing, to defeat threats that are far too strong and will ultimately destroy them... it's about the struggle, not about the end. We then find out that Delta Green's been running since 1942, born out of the need to deal with Nazi experiments in the occult during World War 2, but by the present day there are TWO Delta Greens, one an unsanctioned conspiracy and one a very deep and dark government operation: both, of course, think they are the real thing - and the one the player-characters work for probably think it's the only one. This section then talks about what Delta Green agents do - and what the Handler does in running the game. Never mind the horrors that they face, Delta Green itself should remain a mystery, with the party only ever being told what they need to know, if that.
Next, The Past delves deep into the (alternate) history of the world and of Delta Green itself, going back to the 1920s - tying in neatly with Lovecraft's writings about a township called Innsmouth in Massachusetts. The amount of background is tremendous and fascinating - but the vast majority is for your eyes only. Your players won't find it out, not even during the course of the game... unless perhaps you choose to run a campaign set during this history rather than in the present day. This history is massive and detailed, often several entries per month for each year from 1928 until May 2017... not to mention sidebars and notes on all manner of stuff.
Then comes The Unnatural, where hidden knowledge unguessed at by even the most experienced Delta Green agent is revealed. Part of this is due to the deleterious effect such knowledge has on the human mind: Delta Green compartmentalises the information that it does keep, and much is destroyed. There's no library of rituals and spells to consult, for example. Here, though, we read of tomes of occult lore, unnatural - perhaps alien - creatures, and more mindbending stuff. Fundamentally, much can never be understood. It's just too weird for the human mind to cope with. There are plenty of unnatural threats here to throw at the party, ideas for plots spawn as you read through their background notes and histories. There's a collection of sample tomes, most of which should be read with caution if they are read at all, and deep discussion of rituals and 'hypergeometry' for those wishing to risk bending reality as well as their own minds. And if the array of unnatural entities paraded for your use is not enough, there are detailed instructions for designing your own.
The next chapter is entitled The Schism. Here is the secret history of Delta Green, and an explanation of why there are two groups who both call themselves Delta Green. The advice as to what to say to your players is simple. Tell them nothing. Of course, you may decide that it's nothing like what is described here. It's your game, after all. There are details of how agents are recruited - this has either already happened to the party or you may decide to play it out with each of them in turn. There are also notes on how typical (if there is such a thing) Delta Green missions run, equipment available, and much more including several senior Delta Green members who might turn up at some point during your game. Both groups claiming to be Delta Green are covered in parallel. Take your pick. This section ends with notes on what Delta Green (either sort) actually knows about matters unnatural. Let's just say it is a very short section.
Now we come to The Opera. Derived from the Delta Green slang for an operation - 'A Night at the Opera' - it explains what goes into an operation: how to design it, how to run it... and even how to expand it into a whole campaign. Plenty of advice here as you put your plans and plots into motion. Learn how to construct the events and clues that will populate them... and to embue the whole with an air of horror, engendering fear and the awful knowledge that they're not in control into the party.
Finally, there's an adventure to help you put everything into practice. Operation FULMINATE: The Sentinels of Twilight tells a tale of disappearances from national parks, and why not everything that's lost ought to be found. Yet it has been...
Equipping you with a wealth of information and ideas to run a Delta Green RPG game, this is an invaluable resource to read and study again and again. Your game will be immeasurably better for it.
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Well-researched by a team of industry veterans, the Handler's Guide is the other half of the Delta Green RPG (the Agent's Handbook is the first), and man, is it complete. Between the amount of background on the world, mechanics for nearly every Lovecraftian ightmare you can concieve, and additional information that adds to the realism of the premier conspiracy-horror game, the Handler's Guide is a must have for any aspiring DG Handler.
The detailed research and dutiful conversion of no less than 33 monsters, 15 Great Old Ones-- as well as rules to create your own nightmares, along with the sheer amount of information on the world of Delta Green, means any Handler equipped with this book will have years of potential content at their fingertips. So challenge your agents to discover the truth, at the low cost of their sanity, their lives, and perhaps their souls.
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Absolutely amazing. Backed on backerkit, well worth every cent.
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Truly gorgeous book. The layout is engaging and stimulating, with story seeds in almost every paragraph. The artwork is high quality, as is the writing, and the setting is deeply disturbing, as a modern Lovecraftian horror game should be. I can't wait to run this for my players.
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I purchased and downloaded the Handler's Guide last night. I've only skimmed it so far, but this, this is fantastic. Between it and the Agent's Handbook, well, Delta Green is slick, smart, and scary, with a design elegance and masterful rendering of the BRP mechanics that is refined, restrained, intelligent, and inspired. Hats off to Team Delta Green and Arc Dream Publishing. I'll be buying the hardback too when it releases in some months. Thank you Team Delta Green for this dark gem of a game!
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Most RPG books are a bit of a chore to read, but this book reads like a riveting horror novel. I get started on a section and I can't put it down. It's also jam packed with useful information and story hooks. Literally every page will give you story ideas. The Agent's Handbook and now the Handler's Guide are the best written RPG rulebooks I have ever read. I own a lot of Lovecraft RPG's, and in my opinion the Delta Green RPG is the best Lovecraft RPG you can buy. The rules are super streamlined, the setting is perfect, and horror oozes from every page. Every adventure I have run with these rules has worked flawlessly at the table.
Also, a note about the layout. I wish every RPG was put together with this sort of atmosphere. This book is a treat to look at. Great art, great layout, pure atmosphere.
I really can't give the game enough praise, it's just that good.
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Very few times in your lifetime do you ever come across a group of talent that has committed so much to a property that brought something special to an already great product line. Originally a source book for Call of Cthulhu, Delta Green had the honor of being the Origin award winner of best game in 1997 and ten years later, I have very little doubt the team at Arc Dream will do it again with the Handler's Guide. This GM-oriented source book provides backstory, rituals, secret history, and much sought after continuity up to our present day in 2017 for what our secret government conspiracy has been up to since it's disbandment in the late 1960s and back to it's reactivation in the 2000s. There is a permeation of writing throughout the book that has you feel as if you are reading a declassified document that is written with such confidence in itself that it's hard not to get sucked in.
Simply put, this is an incredible book. The materials proffered to the Handler are significant. Details on important figures throughout the agency's storied history, rituals that agents may come across in the field being used against them (or, in a dire case, by them), history that allows you to plan your scenario or campaign, and tons more. If you had ever been a fan of the Delta Green property, you would do yourself a disservice by not having this in your collection for the materials within. Even if you are not a fan of the setting (though, how could you not be?), this is a well-written and well-presented book that has a place on anybody's shelf if you have any interested in running a conspiracy based game at all.
The art? There's absolutely everything to say about the art by Dennis Detwiller. Each piece providing thought prompt of what unnatural and unearthly phenomenon wracks the depicted. It's gorgeous, thoughtful, and can be terrifying to some. The best way to describe it is that it fits with the game and the setting.
In conclusion, great book, worth the price, and certainly worth the 1d10 SAN loss.
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I'll write a full review over the next couple of days. For now it must suffice to say that this is the sine qua non of modern horror roleplaying. Delta Green is a labour of love on behalf of its authors over the decades and ths release, combined with the Agents Handbook is the ultimate expression of that care and craft. its the most elegantly refined implementation of the classic d100 system that has powered Call of Cthulhu and many others for nigh on 40 years. But this is its own thing, a perfectly tailored beast designed for simulating and breaking, piece by piece those brave, desperate fools who confront the Unnatural and try to get a win, any win as humanity careens towards apocalypse. Its about the fight. Its about the mst terror inducing, fucking creepy thing I've ever run. There are things in this game that really unnerve me and i want to share them with my friends. I can think of little higher praise. i implore you to get this game.
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