I like Delta Green and think it's an interesting setting for CoC, but I don't get why so many gamers seem to have such an intense thing for it and act like it's the best RPG product ever made.  The writing is very good, and the information for creating investigators from all these government agencies is really useful even for non-DG games.  But you know, it would be really easy to do something similar with another system or on one's own, and it's not like there aren't similar things available for other systems (Dark*Matter comes to mind; I know they are different but it's the same general idea).

I can understand liking it, since I do too, but I just don't understand the rabid devotion of some people towards it.  What gives?

There have been a bunch of similar products, but the signal-to-noise ratio in DG is far higher than most. DG comprises a lot of material, some unusually good fiction, and a crunchy, robust new setting for a hoary old classic. The Cthulhu mythos is immersive and contagious, for the same reasons the government conspiracy mythos is addictive. They both worm into your brain and start coloring things you know, rewriting your braincode . . . Dammit--I've said too much! What's that sound? :eek:

I think it's also one of those things that seems obvious in hindsight but was still a big milestone in terms of development. A bit like the invention of the cat-flap.

CoC had been trucking along for years and then comes along DG and there's a whole lot of "Oh yeah, this is what we've been missing". A believable and robust campaign framework, as well as organisation and NPC write-ups designed to be interacted with and destroyed rather than left intact at all times (compare with oWoD canon NPCs, for example), were the main thing, I think. The high-quality adventures in the DG books and The Unspeakable Oath helped too.

In terms of design and atmosphere, I'd also say DG was a big step up from contemporary Chaosium books, which seems like a small thing but gets the Cthulhu Keeper cogs in your mind spinning.

It's got a bunch of guns and you get to play a rogue intelligence agent, so you can get away with carrying them.  All in the name of truth, justice, and stopping the Nyarlahotep plushies from taking over the local comic store.

Well, for one it's pretty well written.  For two, it does a nice job of matching up the Cthulhu Mythos with the alien conspiracy standards.  For Three, it gives you a reason to have a group of characters together, and a way to add in new characters once these die.  And finally, it's hard to find, so people want it real bad.

Quote from: CaudexCoC had been trucking along for years and then comes along DG and there's a whole lot of "Oh yeah, this is what we've been missing". A believable and robust campaign framework, as well as organisation and NPC write-ups designed to be interacted with and destroyed rather than left intact at all times (compare with oWoD canon NPCs, for example), were the main thing, I think. The high-quality adventures in the DG books and The Unspeakable Oath helped too.

In terms of design and atmosphere, I'd also say DG was a big step up from contemporary Chaosium books, which seems like a small thing but gets the Cthulhu Keeper cogs in your mind spinning.

Bingo.

DG was a breath of fresh air.  Chaosium, up to that time, was trucking along with occasional new material but pretty much just reprinting previously published material from the '80s.  Boring.

 - Ian