What do you think?
Rate this book
Delta Green RPG
Delta Green: Black Sites
Hidden Horrors
"It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests." —H.P. Lovecraft, "At the Mountains of Madness."
Delta Green: Black Sites collects seven Delta Green operations that were previously published only in PDF or in standalone paperback modules. They lock bystanders and Agents alike in unlit rooms with the cosmic terrors of the unnatural. Unwanted survivals rise from death or slumber into the nightmarish life of humanity.
PX POKER NIGHT: At an isolated Air Force base, discontented service members listen to the night sky and hear secrets not meant for human ears. Updated for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and featuring new illustrations by Dennis Detwiller. Written by Dennis Detwiller and Adam Scott Glancy.
KALI GHATI: A Delta Green operative goes missing from a combat base in the Afghanistan war. A handful of agents in-country must learn what discovery lured him across the wire. Then they must bring him home. Written by Shane Ivey.
THE LAST EQUATION: A gifted university student guns down a family of total strangers, leaving behind a string of numbers that fills Delta Green’s researchers with dread. Can your Agents stop the next horrific slaughter? Written by Dennis Detwiller.
LOVER IN THE ICE: A bitter midwestern winter shuts down a city…and awakens a threat that is all too ready to spread. Featuring new illustrations by Dennis Detwiller. Written by Caleb Stokes.
SWEETNESS: Vandalism on a family home makes the police fear a hate crime. Delta Green recognizes the symbol for something worse. What connections have these ordinary people made to bring such danger to their door? Written by Dennis Detwiller.
HOURGLASS: A woman vanishes, screaming, in front of dozens of witnesses in a small Oregon town. Your Agents must find what killed her, stop the threat, and make sure no one else ever learns the truth. Written by Shane Ivey.
EX OBLIVIONE: Vicious murders stain the Arizona desert. Crazed words scrawled at a crime scene hint at Y’ha-nthlei and the sea. A handful of Agents have a chance to claim vengeance for ancient wrongs—or suffer it. Written by Dennis Detwiller.
An index helps Handlers build broader connections between horrors in their campaigns.
Delta Green: Black Sites is full-color hardback, 208 pages. Its scenarios are playable with the Agent's Handbook and the Handler's Guide, or with the quickstart rules in Delta Green: Need to Know.
"It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth's dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be let alone; lest sleeping abnormalities wake to resurgent life, and blasphemously surviving nightmares squirm and splash out of their black lairs to newer and wider conquests." —H.P. Lovecraft, "At the Mountains of Madness."
Delta Green: Black Sites collects seven Delta Green operations that were previously published only in PDF or in standalone paperback modules. They lock bystanders and Agents alike in unlit rooms with the cosmic terrors of the unnatural. Unwanted survivals rise from death or slumber into the nightmarish life of humanity.
PX POKER NIGHT: At an isolated Air Force base, discontented service members listen to the night sky and hear secrets not meant for human ears. Updated for Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game and featuring new illustrations by Dennis Detwiller. Written by Dennis Detwiller and Adam Scott Glancy.
KALI GHATI: A Delta Green operative goes missing from a combat base in the Afghanistan war. A handful of agents in-country must learn what discovery lured him across the wire. Then they must bring him home. Written by Shane Ivey.
THE LAST EQUATION: A gifted university student guns down a family of total strangers, leaving behind a string of numbers that fills Delta Green’s researchers with dread. Can your Agents stop the next horrific slaughter? Written by Dennis Detwiller.
LOVER IN THE ICE: A bitter midwestern winter shuts down a city…and awakens a threat that is all too ready to spread. Featuring new illustrations by Dennis Detwiller. Written by Caleb Stokes.
SWEETNESS: Vandalism on a family home makes the police fear a hate crime. Delta Green recognizes the symbol for something worse. What connections have these ordinary people made to bring such danger to their door? Written by Dennis Detwiller.
HOURGLASS: A woman vanishes, screaming, in front of dozens of witnesses in a small Oregon town. Your Agents must find what killed her, stop the threat, and make sure no one else ever learns the truth. Written by Shane Ivey.
EX OBLIVIONE: Vicious murders stain the Arizona desert. Crazed words scrawled at a crime scene hint at Y’ha-nthlei and the sea. A handful of Agents have a chance to claim vengeance for ancient wrongs—or suffer it. Written by Dennis Detwiller.
An index helps Handlers build broader connections between horrors in their campaigns.
Delta Green: Black Sites is full-color hardback, 208 pages. Its scenarios are playable with the Agent's Handbook and the Handler's Guide, or with the quickstart rules in Delta Green: Need to Know.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published March 1, 2021
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Read
December 5, 2022A collection of Delta Green adventures, also published separately, some of which include pregenerated characters. This review contains huge spoilers for each. And I want to go over each in some depth before summing up my thoughts, so:
PX Poker Night: in a military base for fuck-ups, the only fun night is the poker night, which is about to be ruined by black ops testing a weapon that brings down a flying saucer, and also has the side effect of making people go crazy. Once the PCs survive that, then they have to deal with the black ops team that might come to clean up the place -- which is actually a little anti-climactic, as they aren't here to kill the PCs. A pretty great intro to the Lovecraftian-black ops mix of the Delta Green world, and I really like the countdown of how long the PCs have until everyone is crazy, as well as the different ways that crazy manifests.
Kali Ghati: The PCs are tasked with finding an AWOL Delta Green agent in Afghanistan, which of course means dealing with ambushes and firefights even before they get to the creepy village with the murderous people and the sleeping god-thing. I'll be honest, I'm writing this note a few days after reading this adventure, and it's blending a little bit in my mind with the other Afghanistan creepy village adventure from Control Group.
The Last Equation: A math student murders a bunch of people after solving an equation, which he shared online with a bunch of other math/cryptoanalyst types; now the PCs have to prevent the FBI’s math person from learning about the numbers and track down the other potential murderers poisoned by this memetic timebomb. A great little adventure with no actual villains, just the monstrous indifference of the universe.
Love in the Ice (by Caleb Stokes, author of Red Markets): Jesus, this adventure: an ice storm breaches a Delta Green warehouse where a monster was kept. This monster infects people, getting them to associate sex and violence, which means that the PCs go into a city still suffering from an ice storm to discover some dead bodies with new parasites, while some other humans look for other people to seduce and kill. This is a real gruesome adventure.
Sweetness: By contrast, a real bummer of an adventure: a former Delta Green ally lost her mind and then everything she cared about (job, family), and is now using a captured shadow monster to befriend her estranged daughter. And when I say "bummer," I just mean it's real sad: yes, there is a villain to stop, sort of, but she's basically someone who lost it all trying to do the same thing your characters are doing. This also showcases for me how great a small adventure outline can be: there's one clue to start the PCs off, and then a few other scenarios they might investigate, but the whole thing is wrapped up in 12 pages.
Hourglass: A woman disappears in plain sight, so Delta Green is called in to investigate the disappearance, which leads to a cult, which was one of the old New England witch cults, where they're possessing people's bodies. I don't know exactly why I didn't connect with this one, maybe because the long backstory and unrelatable horror/villains. Like Last Equation gets at something we don't often see in horror or other adventures (the villain-less problem), Lover in the Ice is just nasty in a way -- yes, the people are being driven by some alien force, but the particular form of that madness feels very human -- and Sweetness feels very, maybe too, human in its depiction of desperation. Here, you have to stop a cult and also cover it up, which is fine, but doesn't excel. (Also maybe I don't need the mix of ancient warlock cult that resettled here and also evil Native clan that worshipped bat monster.)
Ex Oblivione: An adventure that ties in with the old classics: after the Navy's raid of Innsmouth (from Lovecraft's story "Shadows over Innsmouth," the half-human people were interned in the desert, where they were driven mad and died. Except one escaped mentally and now is a spirit that controls almost this whole small military town. The PCs are drawn to it and then half the town tries to kill the other half. Creepy up until the raid, which turns it into a sort of survival horror with, as far as I can tell, no stakes beyond surviving. That is, the possessed people are putting on a ritual, but I don't see that it does anything. Maybe I missed it, and frankly I do love the Crazies sort of situation, with the whole town becoming murderous.
The Child: not really an adventure, but just a situation: you find a child that is mostly dead but still moving and talking because of a creepy device in its chest. There's no way to bring the child back and leaving it around isn't exactly a good idea, so this kind of forces you to kill it. That's... on one hand, nicely in keeping with the "no good way" thematics of Delta Green, but feels a little forced to me.
OK, so after reading these adventures, a few things stick out as particularly interesting to me: In D&D, the paradigmatic adventure is "a monster is bothering us, go into this hole and kill it." Or even just "go into this hole and see how long you survive." There's variations, of course -- actually at this point we might have more variations than the paradigm (well, and yet we still hear a lot about "megadungeons" and old school playing). In Cthulhu and Delta Green, I feel like the paradigm is "something weird is happening, go check it out." Which is a much looser sort of paradigm and allows a lot of variety. (Lover in the Ice won't feel at all like Sweetness.) I really enjoy that about reading these adventures.
And a few ideas to steal: a problem that isn't caused by a monster/villain, but is just a situation (The Last Equation), the very personal stakes of a lost hero (Sweetness), and murder town where, again, it isn't really their fault.
PX Poker Night: in a military base for fuck-ups, the only fun night is the poker night, which is about to be ruined by black ops testing a weapon that brings down a flying saucer, and also has the side effect of making people go crazy. Once the PCs survive that, then they have to deal with the black ops team that might come to clean up the place -- which is actually a little anti-climactic, as they aren't here to kill the PCs. A pretty great intro to the Lovecraftian-black ops mix of the Delta Green world, and I really like the countdown of how long the PCs have until everyone is crazy, as well as the different ways that crazy manifests.
Kali Ghati: The PCs are tasked with finding an AWOL Delta Green agent in Afghanistan, which of course means dealing with ambushes and firefights even before they get to the creepy village with the murderous people and the sleeping god-thing. I'll be honest, I'm writing this note a few days after reading this adventure, and it's blending a little bit in my mind with the other Afghanistan creepy village adventure from Control Group.
The Last Equation: A math student murders a bunch of people after solving an equation, which he shared online with a bunch of other math/cryptoanalyst types; now the PCs have to prevent the FBI’s math person from learning about the numbers and track down the other potential murderers poisoned by this memetic timebomb. A great little adventure with no actual villains, just the monstrous indifference of the universe.
Love in the Ice (by Caleb Stokes, author of Red Markets): Jesus, this adventure: an ice storm breaches a Delta Green warehouse where a monster was kept. This monster infects people, getting them to associate sex and violence, which means that the PCs go into a city still suffering from an ice storm to discover some dead bodies with new parasites, while some other humans look for other people to seduce and kill. This is a real gruesome adventure.
Sweetness: By contrast, a real bummer of an adventure: a former Delta Green ally lost her mind and then everything she cared about (job, family), and is now using a captured shadow monster to befriend her estranged daughter. And when I say "bummer," I just mean it's real sad: yes, there is a villain to stop, sort of, but she's basically someone who lost it all trying to do the same thing your characters are doing. This also showcases for me how great a small adventure outline can be: there's one clue to start the PCs off, and then a few other scenarios they might investigate, but the whole thing is wrapped up in 12 pages.
Hourglass: A woman disappears in plain sight, so Delta Green is called in to investigate the disappearance, which leads to a cult, which was one of the old New England witch cults, where they're possessing people's bodies. I don't know exactly why I didn't connect with this one, maybe because the long backstory and unrelatable horror/villains. Like Last Equation gets at something we don't often see in horror or other adventures (the villain-less problem), Lover in the Ice is just nasty in a way -- yes, the people are being driven by some alien force, but the particular form of that madness feels very human -- and Sweetness feels very, maybe too, human in its depiction of desperation. Here, you have to stop a cult and also cover it up, which is fine, but doesn't excel. (Also maybe I don't need the mix of ancient warlock cult that resettled here and also evil Native clan that worshipped bat monster.)
Ex Oblivione: An adventure that ties in with the old classics: after the Navy's raid of Innsmouth (from Lovecraft's story "Shadows over Innsmouth," the half-human people were interned in the desert, where they were driven mad and died. Except one escaped mentally and now is a spirit that controls almost this whole small military town. The PCs are drawn to it and then half the town tries to kill the other half. Creepy up until the raid, which turns it into a sort of survival horror with, as far as I can tell, no stakes beyond surviving. That is, the possessed people are putting on a ritual, but I don't see that it does anything. Maybe I missed it, and frankly I do love the Crazies sort of situation, with the whole town becoming murderous.
The Child: not really an adventure, but just a situation: you find a child that is mostly dead but still moving and talking because of a creepy device in its chest. There's no way to bring the child back and leaving it around isn't exactly a good idea, so this kind of forces you to kill it. That's... on one hand, nicely in keeping with the "no good way" thematics of Delta Green, but feels a little forced to me.
OK, so after reading these adventures, a few things stick out as particularly interesting to me: In D&D, the paradigmatic adventure is "a monster is bothering us, go into this hole and kill it." Or even just "go into this hole and see how long you survive." There's variations, of course -- actually at this point we might have more variations than the paradigm (well, and yet we still hear a lot about "megadungeons" and old school playing). In Cthulhu and Delta Green, I feel like the paradigm is "something weird is happening, go check it out." Which is a much looser sort of paradigm and allows a lot of variety. (Lover in the Ice won't feel at all like Sweetness.) I really enjoy that about reading these adventures.
And a few ideas to steal: a problem that isn't caused by a monster/villain, but is just a situation (The Last Equation), the very personal stakes of a lost hero (Sweetness), and murder town where, again, it isn't really their fault.
April 22, 2021
A fantastic collection of scenarios for Delta Green, some which have been published separately elsewhere over the years, now gathered together. If I could give it more stars, I would. Fascinating cosmic horror in a modern setting that run great at the table, with excelent writing and art. Which is to say, perfect level of quality as always.
June 30, 2025
This is the third book from the set of Delta Green books I got via Humble Bundle that I've read.
This is a book containing seven modules that would cover one to two sessions depending on how things went. The first sees the players dealing with a sinister alien presence while trapped at an airbase, the second puts them in Afghanistan to track a Delta Green asset that recently went missing while investigating supernatural events in the area, the third one has the players try to curtail a lethal supernatural mathematical formula, the fourth will have them chasing a creature in a bitter Midwest winter, the fifth shows the players trying to help a family that's under attack by a supernatural entity, the sixth has the players investigating a cult that's known for its members disappearing, and the seventh has them investigating a now-defunct Delta Green facility in the Arizona desert.
All of these modules have great concepts and are well designed, but I still don't like how hopeless some of them are for the players. I just don't understand the point of playing a game you know you'll lose, especially when it has such high in-universe stakes. This is also up there with some of the worst from CoC's library in terms of typos, though admittedly this is the first I've seen from the Delta Green series that's really had that issue. Finally, it feels like the writers leave perhaps a little too much to the GM, but I feel like that'll be a selling point rather than a deterrent to certain types of GMs.
This is a book containing seven modules that would cover one to two sessions depending on how things went. The first sees the players dealing with a sinister alien presence while trapped at an airbase, the second puts them in Afghanistan to track a Delta Green asset that recently went missing while investigating supernatural events in the area, the third one has the players try to curtail a lethal supernatural mathematical formula, the fourth will have them chasing a creature in a bitter Midwest winter, the fifth shows the players trying to help a family that's under attack by a supernatural entity, the sixth has the players investigating a cult that's known for its members disappearing, and the seventh has them investigating a now-defunct Delta Green facility in the Arizona desert.
All of these modules have great concepts and are well designed, but I still don't like how hopeless some of them are for the players. I just don't understand the point of playing a game you know you'll lose, especially when it has such high in-universe stakes. This is also up there with some of the worst from CoC's library in terms of typos, though admittedly this is the first I've seen from the Delta Green series that's really had that issue. Finally, it feels like the writers leave perhaps a little too much to the GM, but I feel like that'll be a selling point rather than a deterrent to certain types of GMs.
April 3, 2026
Read, not played.
There are some good, some really good and no bad missions in this book. 2 or 3 of the missions might even be great. 1 or 2 of the missions I could not really see how to play on first read, but I think I might be able to figure them out on a re-read and a make-shit-up-on-the-spot running of it. There are a lot of really good ideas in this book.
And a few really nasty once. Not a game for children... Not at all... You might not like some of the events in this book, even if you played CoC or simillar horror games. Not sure what my players will think in the future. But I will run some of these adventures for sure.
4.5 stars. One of the better adventure collections I have read.
There are some good, some really good and no bad missions in this book. 2 or 3 of the missions might even be great. 1 or 2 of the missions I could not really see how to play on first read, but I think I might be able to figure them out on a re-read and a make-shit-up-on-the-spot running of it. There are a lot of really good ideas in this book.
And a few really nasty once. Not a game for children... Not at all... You might not like some of the events in this book, even if you played CoC or simillar horror games. Not sure what my players will think in the future. But I will run some of these adventures for sure.
4.5 stars. One of the better adventure collections I have read.
January 3, 2023
Hit-and-miss scenario collection. Full review: https://refereeingandreflection.wordp...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews