Main Gauche, to sum it up, if you liked Zweihander, it's more of the same.

If you don't like Zweihander, it's more of the same.

If you found the weird constant pop culture references funny in a kinda Tommy Wiseua's The Room sorta way and the waffling maddening in Zweihander, it's more of that.

I actually found myself laughing at the material (not with it), the waffling frustrating and everything else just totally fine.

So, I've seen some people complain about the price, and I can't really comment on that as I actually bought the book via the Arc Dream website so I could have the physical book to read through and the PDFs. I'm only going to comment on the material found within the PDFs.

So, a bit of personal background: I had prior to running my first Delta Green scenario (Last Things Last) been running quite a lot of Call of Cthulhu as a kinda system to take a break from Pathfinder 2e once a week, every so often, as just a silly little adventure. After playing Ladybug Ladybug Fly Away Home (from The Things We Leave Behind) and watching some Bud's RPG Reviews on Delta Green, I begun deeply curious with the system. So, I bought it and gave it a read.

If you've played Call of Cthulhu, then a lot of rules inside will be deeply familiar with the occassional tweak here and there (e.g. lethality ratings exist now for some high-end firearms so some weapons can instant kill on a roll, you can become adapted to sanity loss from violence/helplessness and crits/fumbles happen not only on a 1 or 100, but also on matching digits depending if you succeed or fail (e.g. 33, 66, 11)). Lots of skill swaps too. However, a personal favourite rule tweak is the downtime rules that really encourage personal development and improvement, so characters that last longer can blossom into even more fleshed out characters. That said, looking beyond the rules, the star of the show is just the attention to detail without waffling on. The Agents Handbook is a book that could have been twice the size, waffling about government agency information and extensive equipment lists, but it manages to restrict itself to just what you need to know. The level of control exercised in the Agents Handbook is immense.

The level of control in the Handler's Handbook is less so, waffling a little bit at times but never too much that I became bored to tears. Half the Handler's Handbook is focused on the history of Delta Green, which is immensely extensive but feels neccesary (if for no other reason, than to give the opportunity (and advice) to run scenarios within other decades like the 60s, 80s or 00s). The other half details who the key players are in Delta Green (which I've already found useful as Gavin Ross has come up in a pre-gen scenario) and the mythos beasties on show. It is longer, but it feels deservabily longer, and I've definitely read other RPG books that could do with the degree of conciseness and control Arc Dream has.

So, after running Last Things Last and having a blast, and after turning my back on Call of Cthulhu since Chaosium wants to still work with a person who hates people like me, I've turned Delta Green into my new "take a break from Pathfinder 2e" game to just play once in a while. Which so far, I've had a total blast and do really recommend giving Delta Green a go.

I ran two adventures in this book: "Ladybug Ladybug, Fly Away Home" ("Ladybug" from here on in) and "Intimate Encounters" ("Intimate" from here on in). I also read the other adventures in the book with a skim, and had a deep read into "Roots".

Now, let me say, Ladybug is an astounding adventure from beginning to end. I was recommended by Seth Skorkowsky's review on Youtube and had high hopes that I was sure would not be matched due to the nature of boundless optimism. However, my expectations were somehow exceeded. The adventure hook is a girl is abducted and there's a time limit based on a medical condition she has where if she doesn't take medicine within 3 days she'll potentially pass away. Your cast should be private investigators or, preferably, federal police assisting in the matter. My players easily latched onto the case with a clear hook of being from the FBI assisting in the case, and enjoyed delving into all the evidence trying to work out where to go to continue the trail. Slowly and surely, without spoiling it, starting to get the feeling there is something else going on. The encounter with the hostage taker sent two agents absolutely insane, one hiding in a subway scared of open spaces and another waking up in the reptile section of a local zoo in a frog costume with a fear of insects and an affinity for frogs. Said second character has yet to stop wearing a frog costume in future Call of Cthulhu and Delta Green scenarios, and if anything has taken this madness further by saying her character now does a children's TV show where she informs children about the police while still dressed like a frog. With the conclusion of the case feeling satisfying and, maybe a bit silly in a farcical way as they managed to stop proceedings before the grand finale even started. It was a total blast, and still memorable to my group.

Intimate, on the other hand, just did not work for my group. There's a case where someone has been brutally murderered in a hotel room and police are trying to work out what happened. Unlike Ladybird, the clues and expected path through the adventure felt immensely tight and specific, to the point where my players nearly (but not quite) got a good idea of how to proceed and it went a bit awkwardly? The final showdown with the creature, because it was caught outside its home base, also was an awkward affair where my players could not quite work out how to deal with it despite what I hoped would be obvious. So, it led to a lot of "you shoot it, 1 point of damage" and just... Going nowhere fast. It just ended on an unsatisfying dud note, and I'd totally blame myself for it but the adventure never really gave any obvious clues of how to kill it if you never went to its home base (which you have to track down yourself). I also just found the style of investigation restrictive.

I also read Roots as a potential adventure to run for my group, so without playing it I don't have much to say. My impression is it was a great idea presented, but with a very harsh and brutal ending that would be very hard for any PCs to survive afterwards. I would have actually kinda preferred a bit more of a True Detective style of ending where the reality is a little more mundane and harsh, or at least room for approaching the situation and a clear way to get out alive. Everything outside of the ending seems great, but that ending put my off running it for the group.

The other adventures, based on a skim, just didn't seem my cup of tea honestly to run for my group.

Honestly, if I was rating the book purely on Ladybug, then a 5/5 would be actually harsh as it exceeds a perfect score and is a total must play for any Call of Cthulhu group. Just a total classic that really gives The Haunting a run for its money. However, I settled on a 4/5 as you are paying $20 for what is 1 astounding excellent adventure and at least a few duds (one reviewer said Forget Me Not is good, but as someone who doesn't like the style of story it's seeking to tell it might be great but just not my thing). I found Intimate just a dud and Roots just an excellent idea that falls apart at the end into a total TPK fest. I still really recommend the book for Ladybug though, it's just amazing, but just be aware of how much you're paying for as few as one great scenario if the others don't pan out for you.

I'm going to be up-front and preface this by saying I don't like D&D 5th much, and my single experience playing Five Torches Deep with a group was a miserable ardious affair that I don't blame the publisher for at all. So if I sound a little bitter and harsh, it may be flavoured by that.

Five Torches Deep is a brief and short book, trying to bring D&D 5th rules back to the old early AD&D days when the Satanic Panic was running rampant, Miami Vice was still showing Bruce Willis on TV for the first time with a full head of hair and the keytar was still performed in front of live audiences. I'm not personally familiar with those days, as someone born in the 90s, but, I've heard the wild stories. Based on the bardic-like tales I've heard, the style and the rules delivered seem to really seem to align and I highly recommend the system for those hoping to have a taste of those old days.

Just be aware that my copy that I got was printed in landscape which I've personally found deeply awkward to both read and store on the shelf. I would have preferred it in portrait style, and I hope future copies reflect this. This was my only main issue with the book.

So, in my year or so of own the book, I managed to run one adventure, I'll get to why by the end. The adventure in question is the ever classic "A Rough Night at the Three Feathers". So, I'll be focusing on that adventure for the review.

The adventure has the group, world-weary and travel-weary, staying the night at the inconspicious Three Feathers. However, this might be the most disruptive night a fantasy pub may ever see. It has multiple conspiracies brewing that go off at specific times in the night, and it's up to the adventuring group if, well, if they even want to engage with it. This serves as one of the main hurdles of the adventure: The plot just happens at the adventurers and around them, and it is demanding the players to want to engage with it in some way. If they don't, if they want to mind their own business, the adventure makes a last-ditch attempt to rope the group in by framing one of the characters for murder, with the rest of the group as potential accomplicies, thus turning a plot that don't want to ask the adventurers to take part into a railroad off a cliff. It's as though the plot is aware they are struggling to involve the group, so they just force the group in.

These series of events happening around the players is delivered via a time-specific plot sheet where you tick the clock along by 15 minute increments and deliver and update to the pub. If anything, it actually bogs the game down and requires the GM to be very sharp and natural at delivering a plot that is, again, happening around the adventurers but never involving them until the last moment. It is a very demanding style, and honestly the most ardious example I've found of a timeline of events that happen as a group goes through-out an adventure depending how long they take and the like.

These flaws serve as a crippling shame because the presentation style is top-notch with a lot of artwork, and the NPCs that litter the adventure are a colourful cast varying wildly and able to draw any style of player into a variety of nonsense. It's also a deeper shame as I do really like the Warhammer Fantasy 4th ed rules and wanted to run it more, but this adventure actually put my group off wanting to play the game at all. They just found it immensely boring to wade through, and I'm genuinely not sure if any part of my GM style or delivery had much to do with it (as my players usually can tell if it's me or the adventure, and they definitely attacked the adventure ruthlessly). It made visiting the other possible adventures in the book impossible sadly, but I can comment based on a glance they all look supurbly presented.

Overall, I really really really wanted to like Rough Nights & Hard Days, especially as a fan of the core rule book, but, A Rough Night at the Three Feathers was personally a stodgy and awkward enough adventure to put my group off. I gave it a 3/5, with the assumption that my GMing style and ability (despite 10 years under my belt) might have had a hand in proceedings, but with the warning of my generally negative experience.