Every time I get twitchy at waiting for DG books to come out per release schedule, I remember that one of the best ever game adventures WASN'T PLANNED to be what it became.

IL is one of the best things I've ever run/read/played in 30 years.

So, as the kids say: "Let them [Arc Dream/DGP] cook".

Beautifully illustrated experimental novel masquerading as an RPG supplement. Player agency is routinely removed in the interests of the story (which might be the point?) and obvious PC actions are routinely blocked as though this were Gygax’s “Tomb of Horrors” (no, your trained Delta Green agents cannot ever catch anyone who the story doesn’t want you to catch). Unplayable but possibly worth mining for ideas.

Haven't run it yet but it's by far my favorite campaign to read. I was on the edge of my seat as I was reading it and it's a campaign book. Absurdly well written and though the price is high I think it's worth it!

An excellent Delta Green campaign full of the most surreal, bizarro horror I've ever read, which is exactly my jam. It requires a lot of work to tailor it to your characters, because the horror of this campaign is very personal, but it's very worth it.

Definitly the best TTRPG campaign I ever played. Night Floors is my favorite scenario of all time, and Impossible Landscapes extends it to an incredible campaign with surreal horror and really cool Twin Peaks vibes. Hail to the Yellow King!

SPOILER ALERT

Our group finished Impossible Landscapes last weekend. Looking back, I find it is an amazing experience, so much so that I’m sad I’ll never get to play in it. I’ve played one-shots where doom and inescapable horror is the premise. But to pull that off well in a campaign that took our group 5 or 6 months to finish, playing mostly weekly, is a considerable feat. The secret, I think, is the sandbox nature of much of the campaign, which gives you a lot of choice despite the inevitable end (c'est la vie).

By far the best chapter in this regard is A Volume of Secret Faces, if you take the trouble to flag up all the different threads that can be explored. And the Night Floors is also exceptional. I feared that The End of the World of the End would suffer from railroading, based on concerns others have raised. But I don’t really understand where this complaint comes from. It’s pretty clear what the players need to do and where they need to go. But there are many ways to navigate their way there. The ability to mentally conjure objects and situations is a masterstroke in this regard, and the whole setting is so atmospheric (tip: soundtrack this with the last pieces in The Caretaker's aptly named Everywhere At the End of Time mega-album, using the very final track for the Masquerade itself). There is also so much tension in navigating a war-stricken city, and the Factory and Gallery of Shades are amazing locations to explore. I’ve heard at least one person advise against using the countdown clock during the Masquerade. But it worked wonderfully well in our final session.

My main issues with the campaign concern the two lethal ‘funnel points’, the clown chase and STATIC chase, where there is little to no agency and only one correct action to take. These were the weakest points for the players, who found both frustrating. And I don’t think it’s incidental that the span between these two sequences was, for them, the least engaging part of the campaign, even though their investigation of the Samigina House during the Like a Map Made of Skin chapter was a campaign highlight.

I think these two chases are doubly problematic because of their lethality. It’s one thing to have a bit of railroading in a campaign that is otherwise very open. It’s another when these two sequences are likely to kill you. My players did not have fun dying in either (and STATIC was a TPK). No cool stories or reminiscences (unlike the War Zone in Chapter 4). Just quiet disappointment until I encouraged them to vent their frustrations.

So I’ll definitely be changing up those two chases the next time I run this. Taking a page out of Night's Black Agents' chase rules, for the clown chase I'll give some thought as to how players can attempt skill checks to obstruct the clown, which provide bonuses to the Agent being chased. And I'll probably come up with some other ways to get into Broadalbin, using the various STATIC sightings as a kind of countdown clock ('You feel them pulling nearer each time you see them'), with the chase as a fail state.

But all in all this was fantastic! Definitely going to run it again, both because of the fun I had, and because it was so prep intensive that I deserve even more from the time I invested. This is not for a novice GM, and it's not for all players (asking your players if they want to play Twin Peaks: The Roleplaying Game is not a bad litmus test). But if you're down for a detailed campaign of bleak surreal horror, this comes close to a gold standard.

I'm currently running two versions of this amazing campaign, its beautifully mad. Lots and Lots of thought went into it, the only thing I hope is that the US medical system isn't as bad as it is portrayed in this book, the UK ones are a bit better!

One campaign started at the beginning in night floors, but the players really didn't want to leave Abby to the King, it took a lot of direct prompts to get them to back off - Your experience may differ but the set up is to find this person and get them out and all the weirdness just spurred my group on. Went through a lot of the preplanned weird encounters so will have to generate new ones for later in the adventure which is a shame as they could've written a number of scenarios for the Dorchester house part.

The second started at Dorchester house and they found the group therapy session good, which bodes well for the later sections around the meetup group. I felt they didn't lose much from not doing the night floors, as the hook for Abby being missing is easy to incorparate after it.

All in all, a very good book and my players are in love with Melonia (or Ghost Cocaine as they call it) because it helps them through some of the 'what do we do next' bits.

This was probably the most interesting cerebral campaign book I've ever read. It's definitely one of (if not the best) horror campaign book I've found. My only complaint is that the complexity makes it very difficult to navigate and prepare to run.

I tend to not keeping players in a snowstorm villa or some sort so that they will always have access to normal world or a sanctuary that they can retreat to. This way, it won't be an adventure into a dungeon but be an investigation that can happen on a normal Wednesday daytime and they can head off home when it gets late.

Although this method keeps the investigation feeling flow, it also decrease the tense of horror when it happens because they can just "I'm going home".

Not for this book.

This book is true to the theme of "Horror in the truth" and unlike others, this truth is not bound to space, time or entities. It's not even inescapable because the idea of escape entails before and after the encounter. But there is no such thing here. (Curtain calls) It is and will always be me writing the comments here. Until I write it again.

This is a gargantuan beast, a wonder of design and flavor.

A pleasure to read and a pleasure to run.

But this is madness. Not as gritty reality of the rest but in perfect adequation with the King in Yellow.

I highly recommend it.

Just finished running this with my group and I must say it was AMAZING. Not only is the book crammed full of an amazing campaign that will befuddle and terrify players, but it is also laid out well that running this complex adventure isn't more ardous than any other linear story. Even if you're not sure if you're going to run this, I urge you to get this book, it's an excellent read through and can provide ideas for many other adventures.

Possibly the best CoC/Delta Green campaign ever written. Worth every penny if you're into the Hastur/KiY mythos.

This is an incredible campaign! It has all of the things that make Delta Green such an engaging game - investigation, creeping cosmic horror and dread, tense character decisions and dramatic death spirals, but it also moves beyond that into larger exploration of storytelling, reality, and the nature of gaming itself. Besides the thematic elements, Impossible Landscapes is an incredible and intuitive game to run. The digital handouts and detailed descriptions of NPCs and locations give Handlers all the tools they need to bring it to their physical or virtual tabletops. This is a richly designed campaign that will have Agents hooked from the very beginning as they attempt to unravel its secrets and mysteries. I've run it twice and each time was a really fun experience. I can't recommend it enough!

Fucking amazing. That's all I can say. Rich, deep and satisfying. Transcends the conventions of roleplaying to become a great work of wierd literature.

Impossible Landscapes is beautiful and engrossing. I have no particular interest in the Carcosa/ King in Yellow mythos. I expected to just skim it for ideas. It sucked me in so fast that 19 pages in, I found myself making a red string board of the connections it was hinting at in the images and marginalia.

I can sincerely say this is the most beautiful book I've ever read; and the art doesn't get in the way of function. I've never read an RPG with better layout. It's easy to navigate the main text and sidebars to understand how to run the campaign. It's also easy to see how to weave setpieces or characters from Impossible Landscapes into an existing Delta Green game. And if you want, you can go very deep extracting extra ideas from its marginalia. (Snippets from Project Stargate documents and Wikileaks releases; anagrams like "Hygromanteia = Mahogany Rite"; hints at the Imperial Dynasty of America timeline...)

There are two flaws, both common in horror campaigns:

1) There are setpieces that players will think can be solved by investigation or combat, but actually can only be solved by fleeing. (Don't make your PCs wander around losing sanity while learning nothing until everyone's bored and frustrated; or all get anticlimactically shot dead without knowing why or by who. Drop appropriate hints).

2) The book gives the GM a ton of cool information, much of which the PCs have no way to learn and no reason to investigate. (Come up with ways for your PCs to discover everything in the book that strikes you as particularly interesting, horrifying, etc).

These flaws are less pronounced than in some older Delta Green books. The authors are clearly aware that stubborn players will try to find the end of an endless maze or stand their ground against respawning murderers, and aren't cheering for the GM to trick their players into failure states. There's appropriate advice on how to run a horror game, how to keep players' choices and their characters' defining traits important within an overall mood of doom and danger.

Impossible Landscapes is a joy to read. I'd love to run the campaign. I'd recommend reading it for the story and art to anyone with an interest in horror, alternate history, or investigation.