Delta Green: Iconoclasts, the review. A Middle Eastern campaign
Delta Green
Delta Green: Iconoclasts, written by author Adam Scott Glancy in collaboration with Shane Ivey and published by US publisher Arc Dream Publishing, is a full-bodied manual for the pen and paper role-playing game Delta Green. This product mainly contains a disturbing campaign, consisting of three mammoth adventures (plus an introductory scenario), which will lead the players' characters to confront the horror and madness prevailing in Iraqi Mosul under the control and yoke of the Caliphate. of ISIS.In addition to the actual campaign, Delta Green: Iconoclasts also contains an in-depth section on the Islamic State and how to use it in your adventures and an even more in-depth section that presents rules and guidelines comprehensive reports on espionage, crime and behind-the-scenes deals, which may be the foundation of an even broader international Delta Green campaign. Of course, all seasoned with new rituals, new tomes and the terrifying details of a threat fit to represent all the evils of humanity.
An ambitious Master could easily make use of the vast amount of material and information contained in this manual. to develop a broader campaign around the nemesis presented here and other unnatural threats in the Middle East.
Delta Green: Iconoclasts, the setting
Delta Green: Iconoclasts is an extensive operation by Delta Green set in 2016. In this campaign, the Program, one of the names by which the secret agency Delta Green is called, learns of a lethal foray of unnatural power into the heart of Iraq's war-torn city Mosul. Case officers and analysts will need to investigate and confirm the scale of the raid and gather resources to deploy against it.| ); }Delta Green's team of agents will face a scene full of horrors that are all too real and the players' characters will often wonder if the real horror is that brought by unnatural threats or is that which man can unleash on his fellowmen.
Delta Green: Iconoclasts, genesis of 'work
Delta Green: Iconoclasts opens with an interesting preface by the author Adam Scott Glancy, in which he tells the reader about the genesis of this work, which arose after the images released by the media all over the world showing how the soldiers of the ISIS were destroying artistic and cultural works thousands of years old, in the name of a distorted religious sentiment that pointed to them as blasphemous and infidels.“Look at the idiotic joy with which I know ISIL data destroyed the irreplaceable cultural heritage of Iraq and Syria made me angry. I mulled over childhood revenge fantasies. I would have liked those brutes to open some cursed artifact, unleashing a nightmare that would erase the silent smiles from their faces, leaving only a naked rictus of bleeding teeth and staring eyes, unable to evade the horror of what they had done. It left me unable to imagine proportional justice. What I wanted was a punishment so vile that it made me lose all morality. " | ); } Delta Green: Iconoclasts is therefore in fact a sort of revenge and revenge on the part of the author of the comparisons of those who committed those abominations, a way to exorcise one's feelings and make people pay, at least through play, the price of their actions to the authors of those abominations.
“This, of course, will never happen. There will be no cathartic end like the wrath of God that consumes the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But to paraphrase John Milius and H.P. Lovecraft: I may not be a sorcerer, but give me a word processor and I can take advantage of the shadows moving from one world to another to sow death and madness. "
Delta Green: Iconoclasts, the campaign
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, Delta Green: Iconoclasts sees its contents begin with an overview of the campaign, which describes the setting and presents a whole series of military facts and actions that really happened and that could be used as a framework for the actions of the players. This section also presents the Ancient One called the Father of War, the force that triggers unnatural horror, and the cult of the Children of War, which serves that bloodthirsty god.At the discretion of the Master, players may have two teams of Agents at their disposal. A team will take part in the first part of the campaign and will consist of investigators and analysts who gather information about the threat and determine how to fight it. A second team will be made up of infiltrating agents, able to blend with local cultures and trained in combat.
The introductory scenario
The Delta Green: Iconoclasts campaign thus kicks off with a decidedly unusual and above all extremely dark introductory scenario, which could even be disturbing for very sensitive players. These, in fact, will have to temporarily take on the roles of a handful of foreign fighters enlisted in the ranks of ISIL. In this introductory adventure, titled A Black Smoke Rising, these temporary player characters will have the easy task of destroying the region's pagan idols of the past and filming it all for propaganda purposes. Unfortunately, we do not go into further details so as not to provide nasty spoilers for the players.The scenarios of the Agents
In the second scenario, Operation BONE BOX, the players will move on to interpret their own reals. characters, the Agents of the Delta Green Program. The action they performed during the introductory scenario in which they interpreted the ISIL recruits will be presented to the Agents as part of their mission briefing, through a video recording of the incident that the Program managed to recover. The briefing will include information from an unusual source, which we will not reveal here and which could really come as a surprise to players.In The Evil of the Whisperer, the third scenario, the Agents will travel to Kirkuk, to gather information and resources from all over the region. The threat they will face is unknown to the Program, so it will be up to them to determine its extent and establish countermeasures to eliminate or contain it. There will be no "team B", the player characters will be everything Delta Green can field. This scenario can be played in two different ways, depending on the tastes of the game group: a long adventure of suspense and a deep spy taste, or as a tight series of crises of discovery and disinformation. We strongly recommend the first approach.
The Delta Green: Iconoclasts campaign will then conclude with the fourth scenario: Among Jinn and Men. The agents will have to infiltrate ISIL-occupied Mosul, move against the cult of the Children of War and face the Warfather himself.
New rules and appendices
This is followed by a section containing new rules, useful for the Master to present the suspense and risks of espionage and black operations, and an appendix that proposes useful tools during the campaign, such as rituals, artifacts, tomes, glossary, index and local names to use for NPCs, as well as ready-made character cards.From an editorial standpoint
Editorially speaking , Delta Green: Iconoclasts is a very high level product. Having at the moment only been able to view the digital version of the manual, we cannot spend words on the quality of the materials and the binding of the two hundred and four pages that make up the manual, but we are sure that the physical volume, which is scheduled for release in September, will keep the very high standard that Arc Dream Publishing has lavished in the other publications of Delta Green's editorial line.The layout and graphics of the book are masterful and in line with previous products, being created by the talented Dennis Detwiller, the art director and illustrator (as well as one of the Delta Green authors) of the entire Delta Green editorial line). Each page shows the precise attention to detail it takes to create the right tone for the campaign.
Delta Green: Iconoclasts also comes with a series of handouts in PDF format, equally excellent, including maps, clues of all kinds, portraits of NPCs that look like real photographs and a whole range of images and documents to confuse and enlighten the players.
Conclusions
From what emerged from our reading and field test (we started playing the campaign with some friends, who were enthusiastic about it, Delta Green: Iconoclasts is a very high quality product, although it may not satisfy the tastes of all types of players.This campaign, in fact, is somewhat atypical, compared to what the average player is accustomed to seeing, with a particularly marked emphasis on the more logistical, military and espionage aspects, rather than pure action and the fight against the entities of the Myths of Cthulhu. The introductory scenario, moreover, for the a The topics covered and the characters proposed to the players could really be problematic for some.
In the light of all this, in any case, in our opinion we are faced with an excellent product, whose atypicality is one of its strengths. Definitely recommended.
