This jam is dedicated to all the Handlers who, bravely and foolishly, started with Impossible Landscapes

Delta Green is brimming with individual fan scenarios, but not so with fan campaigns. Delta Green is also sparse with starter campaigns for new Handlers and players (beyond Control Group). Let’s change both of those!

This jam is an unranked event to create small campaigns for Delta Green.

Jam Theme: Beginner Campaign (optional)

A beginner campaign is a campaign written for players and GMs new to Delta Green. Control Group is (currently) the only example for that.

With a steady stream of new players and new GMs, it's a good idea we give them a good starting place!

What is a Campaign?

For the purposes of this jam, a Campaign is a series of two or more separate scenarios connected by the same core threat, premise, or plot.

As a guideline: ask yourself if you can fit a Home Scene somewhere in the middle of your submission. If you can’t, it might not be a Campaign.

Some example Campaigns include:

• The submissions from the 2024 Mini-Campaign Jam. Fit the rules to a T (obviously).
• Future/Perfect parts 1-4, God’s Teeth, Impossible Landscapes, or The Borellus Connection. Each is a series of connected operations with the same core threat and premise.
• mellonbread and Will Roy’s Starkweather Foundation campaign. Three scenarios connected by the meddling by and confrontation with E-Cell.
• Control Group. Four scenarios connected by an overlapping cast of playable characters, with the premise of being introduced to the Unnatural. Culminating with the survivors uniting for a Delta Green operation.

Examples that aren’t Campaigns for our purposes include:

• The combined scenarios in A Night At The Opera or Black Sites. Those scenarios are too unrelated.
• The three shotgun scenarios that won the first place, second place, and people’s choice award this year. As-is, they’re unrelated.

Event Rules

1. No AI. Submissions must not include text written by generative chatbots (ChatGPT, Claude, etc) or any assets generated by generative AI (Midjourney, DALL-E, Artbreeder, ThisPersonDoesNotExist, etc).
   • If you need portraits, use some free headshots from sites like Unsplash. Desaturate the images for a classic B&W look.
   • If you need landscapes/location images, photobash them using stock images from sites like Unsplash.
   • Consider tag-teaming with an artist acquaintance. Or gather your non-artist friends together and make art anyway.

2. No advocating for bigotry. Lovecraft was racist, but your campaign doesn't need to be. Your submission can bring up themes of hate and bigotry, but can't advocate for those things.

3. Must be a campaign. Submissions must be a Delta Green Campaign (see What is a Campaign? above) for the Delta Green Roleplaying Game, Fall of Delta Green, or Cthulhu Deep Green/Cthulhu Dark. 
   • You are free to reuse/modify scenarios you’ve submitted to past/contemporary events (like the Shotgun Scenario contests or the N@TO Scenario Contests).
     
   • You’re also free to remix others’ scenarios if you have the original author’s permission and you credit them.
     • If you need help contacting original authors, post a comment and I'll help you out.
     • If you cannot get permission, you can link to that scenario and just write remix notes.
       • NOTE: scenarios you link to count towards your word count (i.e. linking Last Things Last costs you 1,514 words).  See this thread for more info.

4. Word limit. Submissions must be 30,000 words or less (~ 60 pages). Submissions over 30,000 words will not be accepted, but will be kicked back for authors to fix before the deadline. Things that aren’t counted:
   • Title,
     
   • Credits (multiple authors/collaborators allowed),
   • Table of contents and page numbers,
   • Delta Green Partnership license and any other license text (such as for any stock images used).
   • Note: STATBLOCKS COUNT TOWARDS THE WORD COUNT.
     
   • Note: SCENARIOS YOU LINK TO ALSO COUNT TOWARDS YOUR WORDCOUNT. See this thread for more info.
   
   
5. License. Submissions must include the Delta Green Partnership on the submission page and in the campaign itself. This can be found at the bottom of this page.
   1. This also means your submission must be free.

6. Fairfield Project. All submission will be backed up to the Fairfield Project, the fan-run Delta Green wiki/fan scenario repository.

Advice

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Avoid burnout by breaking the Campaign down into smaller, manageable chunks (like individual scenarios).

Start small. A Campaign can be composed of a few mere Shotgun Scenarios. If your Campaign is four shotgun scenarios, that’s only ~12 pages (6,000 words). Certainly more manageable than 30,000 words!

Back to front, front to back. Especially for a linear campaign, loosely outline your climax first and work backwards to your starting scenario. Then, fill out the details of the starting scenario and work towards the climax. If there are any branches, cover the breadth of branches before detailing any one branch deeper. This guarantees your campaign builds towards something, potential branches are identified early, but you only work on the details you need right now.

Playtest as soon as possible. Ideally, run the Mini-Campaign while you write it. That way, session prep and Campaign writing feed directly into each other. If you’re writing a starter campaign, consider finding newbie players/handlers to playtest your mini-campaign.

If you’re stuck, ask others for suggestions! Even if they don’t have all the answers, you’ll likely discover the answers for yourself while talking to other people. If you don’t have people locally to talk to, check out the official Delta Green Discord server or the Delta Green subreddit.

Delta Green Partnership

Published by arrangement with the Delta Green Partnership. The intellectual property known as Delta Green is a trademark and copyright owned by the Delta Green Partnership, who has licensed its use here. The contents of this document are © the respective submitters, excepting those elements that are components of the Delta Green intellectual property.