Delta Green - Looking for Advice

[SleepyShadow]

I'm going to be running a Delta Green campaign for a rather large group of experienced D&D players. They've already rolled up characters, and they've unintentionally split themselves into three different factions (The Feds, The Crooks, and The Squares). I ran the Feds through Last Things Last to familiarize them with the tone and setting, as well as to act as a sort of prologue for that group.

Spoiler: Last Things Last After Action Report

Show

The trio for this adventure was Magdalena (sniper and data analyst), Piper (daredevil pilot), and Katya (stealth specialist). They got the intel on Clyde Baughman, and they did a good job of sweeping his apartment complex for enemy agents before entering. They ransacked the apartment for clues, and found everything there was to be found. They even got some useful information out of the nosy neighbor Mrs. Janowitz. Magdalena even convinced her to call the hotel they were staying at if she saw anything suspicious. However, they forgot to grab the ring of keys from the apartment. Once they were done snooping around, the Feds hauled all of Baughman's paperwork down to Neely's Bar for lunch while they parsed through it. After four hours of research, they found out about his cabin in the woods.

My players can be quite thorough when it comes to investigations, so they double-checked all of their information with local sources. Magdalena got the autopsy report from the coroner, which confirmed Baughman had died of a massive heart attack brought on by years of smoking a carton of cigarettes a day. Katya checked the local newspaper archives and confirmed the location of Baughman's cabin, as well as finding out that the dirt roads in that area were frequently washed out during the rainy season. Piper used her charms to grift some information from the local barflies, and learned from an ex-soldier named James that Baughman never took anyone on his hunting trips out at the cabin.

It was late in the afternoon by the time the trio headed out to the cabin, and it was sunset by the time they arrived. Since they forgot to grab the keys, they had to break into the cabin. Fortunately, Katya is pretty good at picking locks, so nobody had to break any windows. While she was working on the lock, Piper circled the cabin and poked around in the shed, finding a lot of tools and four five-gallon cans of gasoline. Once the trio was inside the cabin, they rummaged around and found the broken plumbing. More importantly, they found Baughman's footlocker of unfinished business. They read the letter asking them to torch his septic tank, then ransacked the footlocker for the rest of the goodies. These were the things of note they found:

• Audio recordings of a church service which incorporated worship of Yig.
• An annotated dissertation about Sky Devils and the God Machine.
• A file regarding the Ventaja Corporation, an organization called Edom, and an empty envelope labeled "The Seward Formula".

Naturally, my players decided to open up the septic tank to see what it was Baughman wanted them to burn. Piper and Katya cracked it open, while Magdalena set up on the roof of the cabin to cover them with her rifle. Inside was Baughman's undead wife Marlene, who begged them to help her. Sensing trouble, Piper drew her pistol to shoot the monster, but Marlene busted out and started attacking them. Piper got her ass kicked, but the Feds were able to kill Marlene without fatalities (it would've been really awkward to kill a character during the prologue ). Once Marlene went down, they dumped the body back into the septic tank and torched it.

Ideally, I'd do something similar for the other two groups as well, but that remains to be seen. I have a plan to bring the three factions together, and hopefully my players will go along with it. All that said, I'm looking for advice on running Delta Green, especially for a large group of players. Most of them are unfamiliar with spy fiction or the Mythos in general. I want to be able to run a smooth game for them. Any advice is welcome. Thank you in advance

[kebusmaximus]

I'm really familiar with call of cthulhu, not delta green, but it's almost entirely transferable.

I suggest talking with your entire group about expectations before you play anymore. Do you want them to all work together eventually, and not get into a huge gunfight? Setting them up to actually play as a group isn't metagaming (well, it is, but it's the good kind). Also, to properly play horror, the players have to want to get scared, and help contribute to the atmosphere. They're probably not used to that from heroic d&d.

Finally, though I'm loathe to link to reddit, this thread is pretty good. Skip to part 3.

[thorr-kan]

Well, there's the Green Box Generator:
https://greenbox.robertshippey.net/

Could be pillaged for ideas.

I've found the following Delta Green wiki entertaining reading:
http://fairfieldproject.wikidot.com/

[SleepyShadow]

I'm really familiar with call of cthulhu, not delta green, but it's almost entirely transferable.

I suggest talking with your entire group about expectations before you play anymore. Do you want them to all work together eventually, and not get into a huge gunfight? Setting them up to actually play as a group isn't metagaming (well, it is, but it's the good kind). Also, to properly play horror, the players have to want to get scared, and help contribute to the atmosphere. They're probably not used to that from heroic d&d.

Finally, though I'm loathe to link to reddit, this thread is pretty good. Skip to part 3.

Getting them to work as a group won't be a problem. We've already got a plan to get the three groups together. Getting them into the horror is going to be a little tricky, though.

I'll check out the link. Thanks for that.