Operations against the international terrorist organisations of the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties are the subject of
Delta Force: America Strikes Back! Designed (and illustrated) by William H. Keith, Jr., best known for his deep contributions to the background and setting of Game Designers’ Workshop’s seminal Science Fiction roleplaying game,
Traveller, it was the first roleplaying game to be published by Task Force Games, better known for the
Star Fleet Battles and
Starfire Science Fiction wargames. It is interesting to note that
The Delta Force, a film starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin, was also released in 1986. Of course, there is no connection between the two, but the release of the film cannot have failed to elevate the prominence of the roleplaying game. At least within the hobby. Although two other military-themed roleplaying games were published in 1986—
Freedom Fighters from Fantasy Games Unlimited (designed by J. Andrew Keith, William’s brother, but also illustrated by William H. Keith, Jr. with surprisingly similar covers) and the in some ways subtler
The Price of Freedom, designed by Greg Costikyan and published by West End Games, and that in addition to the
Phoenix Command fire combat rules from Leading Edge Games, the year marks the end of the strand of mundane military-themed roleplaying games. As the Cold War ebbed and relations between the West and East improved, so too did interest in strictly military roleplaying games slip away. Only fifteen years later with the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbour and the USA’s entry into World War 2 did interest in military roleplay games revive and that was with the military of past not the present. Arguably, the military roleplaying games of the early twenty-first century were not beset by the moral complexities of those nineteen-eighties.
Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is a boxed set containing three booklets, a three-panel Game Master Screen, and two six-sided dice. The three booklets, coverless and done in black and white with greyscale artwork also done by the author, consist of the forty-eight-page ‘Rules of Play’ book, the forty-page ‘Warbook’ book, and the thirty-two ‘Scenarios’ book. Although the internal artwork depicts the members of Delta Force in action as you would expect, there are a couple of illustrations depicting the blood-spattered and bullet-ridden bodies of terrorists and a special forces operative just having killed a sentry with a knife. It is surprisingly blunt in its depiction of the consequences of the Player Characters’ actions. The Game Master Screen has all of the tables that he needs to run Delta Force: America Strikes Back! on the one side with illustrations of members of Delta Force in action the front.
A Player Character in Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is defined by Strength, Agility, Dexterity, and Intelligence, which range in value between five and fifteen. From these are derived five secondary statistics—Training, Endurance, Experience, Reactions, and Stamina. Of these, Agility is physical co-ordination; Dexterity is fine manipulation; and Reactions are how quickly a Player Character responds to danger and threats. Training represents a Player Character’s military and specialist training, whilst Experience indicates his time in service and actual combat experience. Both Training and Experience are used as points that are spent to purchase levels in individual skills.
The Player Character creation process involves rolling dice for the four core attributes and then some arithmetic to determine the secondary attributes and other factors. Skills are categorised into Native, Basic Military, and Specialist Skills. The primary means of gaining skills during character creation is by selecting templates according to the nationality of the character. Skills such as languages, Culture, Negotiation, Interrogation, and so on, do point towards Delta Force: America Strikes Back! being a roleplaying game, but it very much a gun-first roleplaying game. Templates are provided for Delta Force and Seal teams of the USA, the Dutch Royal Marines of the Netherlands, West Germany’s GSG-9, the SAS of Great Britain, Italy’s Squadron Anti-Commando, Sayeret Matkal of Israel, and Egypt’s Unit 777. There is some bias here in that the more attention is devoted to the eponymous 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta (1st SFOD-D) than the special forces units of other countries in that members receive more training beyond basic military training. Another oddity is that that none of the templates for or details of the special forces units are in the ‘Rules of Play’ booklet which is where character generation begins, but in the ‘Warbook’. The creation process is not complex, but it is fiddly. Oddly, there is no means of determining rank and no difference is made between enlisted soldiers and officers, important given that officers in most militaries have to attend military college and receive different training.
Name: Lowell Larson
Unit: Delta Force
Training: Basic Military Training, Airborne Special Training, Rangers Special Training, Special Forces
CHARACTER STATS
Strength 14 Agility 11 Dexterity 10 Intelligence 07
Training 09 Endurance 15 Experience 12 Reactions 09 Stamina 12
Weight: 94 kg Age: 29 Handedness: Righthanded
Load Carried (Unburdened): 28 kg
Load Carried (Burdened): 42 kg
Load Carried (Heavily Burdened): 84 kg
Load Lifted: 112 kg
Load Dragged: 140 kg
MILITARY SKILLS
Area Survival (Desert) 1, Area Survival (Forest) 2, Area Survival (Jungle) 3, Area Survival (Mountain) 1, Boat Handling 3, Camouflage 2, Chemical Warfare 1, Climbing 2, Commo Operator 2, Commo Repair 2, Culture (Shi’ite Moslem) 1, Driving 2, Demolitions 3, Driving (Heavy Equipment) 3, Driving (Motorcycle) 2, Driving (Tracked) 1, First Aid 1, Free Fall 1, HALO 2, Hand-to-Hand Combat 5, Language (Arabic) 2, Leadership 2, Mechanic 3, Negotiation 1, Night Operations 3, Orienteering 3, Parachute 3, Stealth 3, Swimming 2, Tactics 2
WEAPON SKILLS
Hand Guns 1, Foreign Weapons 1, Knife Fighting 1, Light Automatic Weapons 3, Machine Guns 4, Mortars 1, Rifles 1, Sniper 1, Special Weapons (Grenade Launchers) 1
Mechanically, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! manages to both underwhelm and threaten to overwhelm. It uses two six-sided dice, much like Traveller which William H. Keith, Jr. had also worked on, but where in Traveller, a player needs to roll high to succeed, in Delta Force: America Strikes Back! a player must roll under to succeed. All rolls in the roleplaying game are counted as ‘Critical Rolls’. To make a ‘Critical Roll’, a Relative Difficulty Factor (RDF), which can range from between one and ten, is deducted from the statistic a player is rolling against. A skill adds a modifier to the stat being tested. The problem here is that between the sections on ‘Relative Difficulty’ and ‘Applying Skills’ it is not explicitly explained that a successful roll is one of equal to or under, rather than over. However, it does state that, “Since complicating factors in a task might be almost anything, there are no clear-cut rules for establishing an RDF.” In other words, there are no set difficulty factors and the play of Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is very much down to Referee judgement, and thus at odds with much of its design.
If Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is vague about its core mechanic, it is detailed about everything else! This is where it begins to overwhelm, starting with the time and travel rules. ‘Strategic Periods’ can last minutes, hours, or days, and cover periods of travel or relative inactivity, or rather non-combat. This includes mission briefings, planning, and intelligence gathering. The travel rules encompass movement by foot, tracked and wheeled vehicles, and by air. For ground travel, there are modifiers for terrain and weather, whilst for air there are modifiers for weather and other hazards which can lead to malfunctions or crashes. For extended activities, including combat, Endurance checks are required and will result in a temporary loss of Endurance if failed.
Prior to combat, the Player Characters need to spot the enemy. Intelligence, whether provided during a briefing prior to a mission or by an update during a mission, may already indicate where the terrorist enemies are, but not always and there is possibility of a chance encounter or a different pattern of activity by the terrorists. In such situations, a ‘Sighting’ check is required. The ‘Base Sighting Number’ is based on range, from thirty for under five meters to one for five thousand meters and more. This modified by light, weather, terrain, target type, target character, and the sighting character to give a ‘Modified Sighting Number’. Roll under this and the Player Characters will have spotted the enemy (or the enemy spotted the Player Characters).
Once done, there is a chance that the Player Characters can surprise the enemy, based on their Stealth skill and the enemies’ Alertness Factor, which ranges from five and fully alert and ready to one or “Drunk, dazed, or thoroughly engaged in doing something else.” Actual combat is played out in five-second ‘Tactical Rounds’ and initiative is determined by the Referee based on the logical and obvious course of events. A Player Character or other combatant can take as many actions as he wants in Tactical Round, the limiting factor being time. If an action takes longer than five seconds, that is longer than a single Tactical Round, it will spill over into the next round. However, bar movement distances and the reload time for weapons in the ‘Warbook’, there is no set list of actions and the time they take. Again, this is down to Referee judgement.
Direct fire is determined by the range and the weapon used—each weapon listed in the ‘Warbook’ having its own range table—to give a ‘Base To-Hit Number’ which is modified by movement, cover and visibility, vehicle type and size, how the weapon is used (including Weapon skill), aiming, and firing mode. The rules cover semi-automatic, burst, automatic, and suppressive fire as well as aimed and opportunity fire. Oddly single shots are handled by the Rifles skill, not the Light Automatic skill, so the Player Characters and the NPCs are encouraged to use burst fire. The ‘Penetration Number’ of a weapon determines whether a round overcomes the Armour Value of any cover, which includes wood, sheet metal, concrete, bricks, and stone by thickness. Also included are ratings for furniture, human bodies, and of course, Kevlar armour. Hand-to-hand combat handles most melee situations, whilst the advanced rules add more detail, including martial arts (using the Martial Arts skill) and various manoeuvres. With that detail comes greater complexity and longer playing time, so they probably best saved for showdowns with more important NPCs or to silence a prominent . The rules also cover grenades and attacks against vehicles, mostly civilian and utility vehicles, rather armour. The rules for grenades also cover what happens if a Player Character wants to throw a grenade back or even himself onto a grenade if he wants to protect his buddies and/or win the Medal of Honour.
Damage to Player Characters and NPCs is handled as wounds rather than Hit Points. These are suffered per hit location and can be light, moderate, or severe. A light wound will reduce a Player Character’s stats, a moderate wound will typically disable a limb as well as reducing stats, and a severe wound will incapacitate a Player Character and may even leave him with a severed or mangled limb. A Player Character or NPC can also be killed outright and severe wounds can bleed. Wounds and blood loss can also lead to a loss of Stamina and when that falls to zero, a Player Character is dead. However, a player never knows what his Stamina currently is, only the effects of its loss. This is an interesting narrative wrinkle in a simulationist roleplaying game, but it does mean that the Referee has to track the Stamina values for all of the Player Characters and the NPCs. Wound location is determined by the degree of cover protecting the target and then a random role modified by half of the weapon skill used and the Sniper skill. Although a Player Character will probably have the benefit of cover and wearing body armour, getting shot at is a nasty, brutal experience. First Aid will stablise a wounded or injured Player Character or NPC, but in keeping with the simulationist nature of Delta Force: America Strikes Back!, it takes time, rest, and recuperation for a Player Character to recover from anything more than a scratch.
Other rules cover parachute drops, communications, morale and panic for NPCs, and oddly, victory conditions for scenarios. Thus, ten points for achieving the primary mission goal, two each hostage rescued, two for each terrorist captured or killed, and so on, with points deducted for hostages being wounded or killed, each Delta Force team member killed or captured, and more. This sort of makes every scenario repayable to see if the players and their characters can do better each time, but it also makes the play of a mission less like a roleplaying game scenario, and more like a video game mission or miniatures wargame scenario. However, what it is supposed to reflect is the American public’s reaction to the execution of a mission, successful or otherwise, with it being noted that a poorly handled mission can lead to war with the nation where a mission is being staged or the loss of an ally. Essentially, “It should always be remembered that elite military units assault teams such as Delta Force are extensions of American foreign policy — the President’s final resort when American lives and property are in danger. To be effective, such military units must strike hard, fast, and with surgical precision.”
Rounding out the ‘Rules of Play’ booklet is a set of three appendices. The third details various martial arts, but the first two give ‘The Delta Force Referee’ and ‘Surviving in Delta Force’, advice for the Referee and the player respectively. Both are a page in length and advise that both player and Referee start small with simple situations and training exercises. The author recognises that whilst the Referee has less of a world to create because Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is set in the here and now, he has a lot to keep track of in terms of information to keep the world feeling real. The Referee is also advised to not always apply every combat modifier and to not be concerned about precise ranges or movement values, usually to ease play, but at other times to heighten the tension. Arguably, this is contradictory advice since it means that the author is telling the Referee that this simulationist roleplaying game is too much of simulationist roleplaying game, though only when it matters. Lastly, the advice points out that few if any Delta Force players are likely to have had any actual combat experience, so it is okay for the Referee to take the player whose character is leader aside and warn him of things that a real team leader know. This is further supported in the advice for players which focuses on roleplaying members of Delta Force rather than The A-Team and suggests numerous tactics and good practices.
The second book, the ‘Warbook’ is one part gear and equipment guide, one part setting guide, and one part the other half of the character creation rules. The first half lists stats and details of all of the hand guns, assault rifles, submachine guns, rifles, shotguns, special weapons, and grenade launchers that the Player Characters might arm themselves with and the referee might arm the enemy with. Most of them make sense. The inclusion of the Auto-Mag .44 seems more like a nod to cinematic recreation rather than reality and the inclusion of the Heckler & Koch G11 seems more like contractual obligation for a nineteen eighties military roleplaying game. A handful of vehicles are given stats, the M-113 APC being the only military vehicle, whilst more detail is paid to a range of civilian and military transport aeroplanes and helicopters. These are all included to be used to get the Player Characters close to the mission target and then away again, rather than provide onsite support. There are also sections on communications and surveillance gear as well as general items. Overall, the equipment content of the ‘Warbook’ is a job well done.
The penultimate section in the ‘Warbook’ consists of the ‘Delta Force Warbook Dossiers’. These detail twenty-one terrorist organisations across European, Middle Eastern, and both North and American theatres of operation. Each write-up describes each organisation’s origin, ideology, international ties, history, and present activities. The bulk of these are Palestinian, whilst there are some less prominent groups such as the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo in Argentina and the Republik Malaku Selatan in the Netherlands. The Provisional Irish Republican Army is written for use in the United Kingdom and the USA, but the write-ups for domestic US terrorist organisations—the Symbionese Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, and the Weatherman—are very broad in comparison. There is no denying that these groups committed acts of terror, but how much of a threat these groups posed to United States security is open to debate and by the time of that Delta Force: America Strikes Back! was published in 1986, they were all defunct anyway. Of course, Delta Force itself, as part of the US military, has limited capacity to operate on American soil. What the sole inclusion of these groups does indicate is a strong anti-Left Wing bias present in Delta Force: America Strikes Back!, since it ignores any Right Wing terror groups or movements—on home soil or abroad.
The last part of the ‘Warbook’ gives the templates for the special forces and anti-terror units featured in Delta Force: America Strikes Back!. It is followed by the templates for European, Middle-Eastern, and western hemisphere terrorists. These are again, fairly broad in their treatment.
The play of Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is mission-based and fairly formulaic in its structure. The Player Characters receive a briefing, plan the operation, select equipment, move to the area of operation, conduct the mission, and then exfiltrate, returning to base for a debriefing. Plus, of course, the valuation according to the Victory conditions for the mission. This makes missions easier to set up by the Referee, but barring the page of advice in the appendices of the ‘Rules of Play’ booklet, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is decidedly lacking when it comes help in designing missions, whilst the possibility of long term play is mentioned, but really only as an aside rather than be supported.
The three missions in the third booklet, ‘Scenarios’ all have their own mission objectives, location, and background as well as the mission for the Referee and the Victory table for determining how well the Player Characters did. They start out simple with ‘Operation Red Thunder’ in which the Player Characters must rescue hostages held at a PX (a retail store found on US Army installations that sells food, clothing, and goods to military personnel and their families) on a US Army base in Germany as well as capture one of the terrorists. The complexity rises with ‘Operation Lightning’. The Player Characters must rescue American and Israeli hostages held aboard WTA Flight 874 on the ground at Beirut Airport as well as capture a hostage and prevent the local Shi’ite Amal militia from reinforcing the hijackers. It is nicely detailed and is accompanied by detailed NPCs and advice on running the mission for the Referee. Lastly, ‘Operation Swiftsure’ returns the Player Characters to Beirut where they have to penetrate an Islamic Jihad planning centre and headquarters, kidnap its leader, acquire intelligence data, and destroy the planning centre and make it look like a rocket attack. Again, it is nicely detailed and as with the other two scenarios are accompanied by decent location maps.
Physically, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is decently presented for the time. The illustrations are not bad, but not really great either, but they are in keeping with the world that the roleplaying game is portraying. That said, the depiction of Middle Eastern is far from positive. The cartography is simple, clear, and easy to understand.
—oOo—
Phil Frances reviewed Delta Force: America Strikes Back! in Open Box in White Dwarf #84 (December, 1986). After describing the basics of the roleplaying game, he said, “Actually the game itself isn’t too bad – the rules are comprehensive, and don’t waste space getting their point across.” However, he concluded by saying, “In all, not a bad game, I suppose, but it’s very unethical and awfully tasteless. Is it Ok to talk about ethics and taste in a review? No? Give me a place to hide them…”
Thomas A. Grant reviewed Delta Force: America Strikes Back! in Game Reviews in Different Worlds Issue 47 (Fall, 1987). Interestingly, he evaluated the roleplaying game on the basis of its rules, its capacity to simulate modern small-unit tactics, and its treatment of its subject matter. Of the rules, he said, “All in all, Delta Force provides a competent though unexceptional role-playing system.” whilst of its capacity to simulate modern small-unit tactics, he stated that, “As a game of modern small-unit tactics, equipment, and training, Delta Force is very good. The game includes an exhaustive listing of weapons, equipment, and vehicles, including every type of military-issue firearm of which I’m aware.” Of its subject matter—terrorism and counterterrorism—he was more critical, pointing out that its illustrations depict its terrorists as stereotypes, that is, “…[T]he unkempt Middle Eastern terrorist with a large black mustache and five-o’clock shadow” and thus as barbarians. He concluded, “Admittedly, Delta Force shows only part of the entire counterterrorism picture, though it gives no acknowledgement to the existence of anything else. Handling a controversial subject such as this is bound to displease someone, and Delta Force will probably sell mostly to people whose minds are made up about terrorism. However, just as politicians and bureaucrats often are led into blunders by looking at too narrow a piece of a problem, so too can the citizens at large. Delta Force, for the important subject it tries to cover, is just too narrow. Still, for the student of modern “unconventional” warfare, Delta Force can provide some important lessons.”
—oOo—
Delta Force: America Strikes Back! draws comparisons with
Phoenix Command, published by Leading Edge Games in the same year. Both offer detailed combat simulations and both could be played as modern skirmish wargames. In fact, given its lack of non-combat skills,
Phoenix Command works better as a modern skirmish wargame. Whilst both are comprehensive,
Phoenix Command has the advantage of being a more coherent and definitely a more coherently explained set of rules.
Delta Force: America Strikes Back! suffers from a lack of explanation in places, but gives a player a more rounded—though not too rounded—character to play, as well as setting in which to play. One that would have been familiar to roleplayers in the nineteen eighties. Of the two,
Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is the more engaging of the two, since it has an actual premise and appears to have been written by humans.
In terms of design it is debatable as to whether or not Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is a roleplaying game. Its emphasis upon military action, including planning, stealth, and combat together with its primary method of interacting with NPCs being to shoot them shifts it away from being roleplaying game and towards being a special forces skirmish wargame. Which it very easy could be run as. However, its protagonists are defined and designed as Player Characters rather than simply characters and the rules do allow for them to interact with NPCs with skills such as Negotiation and Interrogation. So, the possibility is there. Yet with play focussing on missions rather than who the Player Characters are from one mission to the next, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is pulled back to being a wargame. At best, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is a very tactical roleplaying game focused on executing missions that support a political agenda.
Unfortunately, that political agenda is where Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is at most problematic. Of course, the roleplaying game is set in 1986 at the height of the Cold War and it reflects the political outlook of governments in the USA, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, but the USA in particular. Which means that whilst it would have been undeniably patriotic for some players at the time, for others it would have looked jingoistic and that is the main impression it gives today. The Player Characters are specialist members of the military trained to strike at terrorists and terrorist organisations and kill them. That was the reality then and in many ways, still is. Further, there is no denying that terrorists commit atrocious acts of brutality and murder, often targeting the innocent. That was the reality then and still is today. As a result, the outlook in Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is black and white, good versus evil, and the NPCs, the terrorists are stereotypes, even clichés. Especially when it comes to the depiction of Middle Eastern characters in the artwork. There is no advice on creating NPCs other than the numbers so it is difficult to do anything more than create what are effectively cardboard cut-out villains. Another issue with the game is its masculinity—just look at the cover, let alone the internal artwork—but given its subject matter it is difficult to get away from that. Arguably worse though, is its strong anti-Left Wing bias which ignores the possibility of Right Wing terror groups. Overall, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is not a subtle game in its depiction of the world in the middle of the nineteen eighties or its political stance.
Delta Force: America Strikes Back! reflects a moment a history, especially American history, and models it as a roleplaying game—if only just about, but more as tactical skirmish wargame with the potential for some roleplaying. That seems appropriate given that it is the first roleplaying game from Task Force Games, a publisher much better known for its wargames. The consequences of that are its complexity of rules, attention to situational detail and action, and often poor presentation when it comes to teaching the rules all serve to give the Referee a lot of extra work to do to prepare it for play. Ultimately, Delta Force: America Strikes Back! is a roleplaying game from the nineteen eighties that captures perfectly its time, genre, and the political landscape just at the moment before they all changed.
