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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arcdream/delta-green-the-role-playing-game

[i]What Is Delta Green?

Deception is a right. Truth is a privilege. Innocence is a luxury. Born of the U.S. government’s 1928 raid on the degenerate coastal town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts, the covert agency known as Delta Green spent four decades opposing the forces of darkness with honor, but without glory. Stripped of sanction after a disastrous 1969 operation in Cambodia, Delta Green’s leaders made a secret pact: to continue their work without authority, without support, and without fear. Delta Green agents slip through the system, manipulating the federal bureaucracy while pushing the darkness back for another day — but often at a shattering personal cost.

Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game is a tabletop role-playing game of conspiracy, suspense, and Lovecraftian terror. Players' characters are agents of Delta Green: federal agents and special forces operators; academics who’ve seen too much and physicians who study the aftermath of horror; scientists and other specialists; and sometimes just bystanders who get caught up in events beyond anyone’s control.

Delta Green is a top-secret program that uses the cover of the War on Terror to investigate, confront, and cover up incursions of unnatural, otherworldly forces. Its exact structure and resources are known to very few. Its agents and their activities are kept secret even from each other. Their first priority is to quarantine unnatural horrors, because the unnatural is real and it kills.

Delta Green was directly inspired by the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft and other Cthulhu Mythos authors. Just as Lovecraft’s stories were about the intersection of cosmic terror and cutting-edge technology in the 1920s and 1930s, Delta Green is about that intersection today.

In every game of Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, agents investigate horrifying events, seek ways to thwart them, and try to save anyone else from being exposed. They face lethal threats and awful discoveries. To keep a low profile, they rarely have the resources they want. They often must make terrible choices for the greater good, as best they can perceive it. The longer an agent is active, the greater the toll those stresses take on the agent’s health, sanity, career, and family.[/i]

So, I got in at at the $50 pledge for the hardcover rulebook. I've never played CoC before, but I picked up Cthulhu Invictus on a whim, and decided to get in on this as well.

The stretch goal chart is... confusing, to say the least, but it seems like most of the stretch goals are paid add ons for the final product?

That's a bit meh, but at least the free stuff they're giving out is pretty cool, especially the King in Yellow play.

The Chaosium site has a free Call of Cthulhu Quickstart rules set and (I think) solo adventure. Enjoy!

ced1106 wrote:
The Chaosium site has a free Call of Cthulhu Quickstart rules set and (I think) solo adventure. Enjoy!

I'm actually considering picking up a copy of the 6th edition rules. I can find a bunch of places that sell the softcover for around $30. Is it worth buying?

This is definitely a wait-for-retail KS, so far as I can tell.

@infinite_array: CoC 6E is worth $30. Chaosium maintains CoC is shipping to Ks backers by end of year; I don't know when it will go to retail. I would suggest that if you are only willing/able to buy one that you wait for 7E.

So, 6th is worth the money, but I should chance waiting for 7th?

There have not been very many differences between the previous six editions. Seventh makes more changes than probably ever before but it's not as drastic as, for example, a change of D&D editions.

IMO, The Basic Roleplaying system, which CoC was originally designed with, isn't good for Call of Cthulhu. That is, if the players miss a critical clue because of a bad die roll, well, there goes the scenario (unless you design the scenario for multiple failures). I've had to fudge die results so many times to keep my players from killing themselves it's ridiculous. I would recommend an RPG system that uses "plot points" or other mechanics to let the players get the clues and not die. I've made one with the Cthulhu Die RPG, and Trail of Cthulhu uses the Gumshoe system. https://rpggeek.com/rpg/7249/cthulhu-dice-rpg

Thus, *any* edition of Call of Cthulhu, including the free QuickStart, is about the same. Chaosium has some of the best written Cthulhu adventures, and raised the bar high for other companies which write adventures for them. I would suggest you get the free QuickStart rule and buy these other adventures from DriveThruRPG, where they're cheaper (and you can just print out the scenario you're playing rather than lugging around another softcover in your backpack).

Trail of Cthulhu "fixes" a problem that only exists because of bad GMing and module writing. Moving the plot along should never hinge on a die roll. That said, I have everything in the Trail of Cthulhu product line because there are a lot of neat ideas to be mined from those books. But the rules themselves have some wonky aspects, like the whole deal where you get worse at using a skill throughout a session by actually using it.

I played DG many years ago - is everything old new again?