One Last Night at the Opera

I've been thinking about Delta Green as of late.  This was brought about by the limited re-release of the various long out-of-print and nigh-mythical Eyes Only chapbooks in a single hardcover volume. (1000 copies total, of which less than 100 remain as of this writing.)

For those who never encountered it, Delta Green was a sourcebook/setting put out by Pagan Publishing in the mid-1990s for Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game.  For a while it was essentially the sourcebook for modern-day gaming.

A somewhat simplistic summation of its general theme would be "The X-Files meets the Mythos".  Players were members of the titular secret organisation, whose job was attempting to hold off the encroaching Mythos entities and their lackies/followers/worshipers.  A total of 5 game books (and a number of fiction works) were released for the line: the core setting book, Delta Green: Countdown (which expanded the setting in a more international direction), and the three Eyes Only chapbooks, and then, for the most part, Pagan Publishing just sort of went quiet.  (Technically there was also a LARP book released, but it wasn't published by Pagan.)

With the recent re-release of the core book (which includes a reportedly less-than-stellar conversion of the setting to the d20 Call of Cthulhu rules) and now Eyes Only, it's been on my mind.

Namely, what's been on my mind is Delta Green's setting, and whether or not it (as the website still states) "brings the Cthulhu Mythos […] squarely into the modern day."    The setting itself, to expand on the brief summary above, was big on UFO- and government-conspiracies (including Majestic-12), militias, occult Nazis, and other similar tropes.  There was, one could say, a pre-millennial paranoia running through it.  A sort of modern fin de siècle feeling that the end, or at least a major change, might be quickly approaching a decadent society through manners both unseen and far too easily seen (i.e. government).  If you're looking at it and saying "yeah, that's very much the zeitgeist of the 1990s", then you understand what I'm trying to say the setting makes me think.

(On a side note, an argument could be made that many of While Wolf's old World of Darkness settings — most notable Vampire: The Masquerade and Werewolf: The Apocalypse — with their built in conspiracies, political maneuverings, and apocalyptic undercurrents, very much tapped into these same feelings.  I'm not going to go any further with this thought though, as I don't need to open up that can of worms as well.)

Now, the question is whether or not this mindset and general feeling still applies to the current post-millennial era.  (I'm trying my hardest not to say post-9/11 or post-September 11^th... Crap!)  It may just be me, but I don't get the feeling that, for the most part, the general popular spirit of the current age is one of shadowy conspiracies that are going to come from within and destroy us.

Granted, the Eyes Only hardcover contains a pair of new scenarios designed to be played in a post-millennium environment, but I haven't received my copy as of yet so I can't comment on them.  However, all that said, the core setting hasn't been updated.  Which is what I'm getting at: is it still a modern day setting, or has it become somewhat dated in its world-view?  (Hell, one of the best known promo(?) pieces for the setting was a reworked version of Trainspotting's "Choose Life" speech.)  Despite Detwiller's public protestations to the contrary, I've got to go with dated.  Really, as written it's no longer a setting book for modern Mythos roleplaying, it's a setting book for 1990s conspiracy-style Mythos roleplaying.

Which isn't to say that it's not a good book.  Just because something no longer reflects the mindset of the age, doesn't destroy its entertainment value.  (Witness Paranoia, whose Cold War Commies-around-every-corner on steroids setting was already feeling dated when it was released in the mid-1980s.)  And, though I greatly prefer the 1920s setting, Delta Green still remains one of, if not the best developed of the various Call of Cthulhu settings.  It's just that it's beginning to show its age.  As much as I love conspiracies, I'd say it's no longer the reflection of the current cultural fears of the majority and yes, though it is still good, it's now no longer feeling "modern".