What is Role-playing?

Let's for a moment take you back to the days of the Welcome Delvers, to
kindergarten playground, where you in mock anguish died after Derelict Delvers Delta Edition
being assaulted by the arrows of erstwhile Indians unleashed We've come a long way in the
from your and your fellow children's imaginations. nearly thirty years since the
publication of the little blue books,
Maybe you fired phantasmal bullets from loaded fingertips to Derelict Delvers Alpha [aka DDA ]
thwart the savage predators wild African jungles.
The journey through the
Perhaps you soared through the sky while riding illusory hazards of super-luminal space
rockets to pierce heaven's atmosphere seeking beyond the travel has nothing on the perilous
stratosphere to attain some sublime joy in investigating alien perfidy of the publishing world.
worlds and distant cometary bodies. Yet fear not we've valorously
faced the traverse and excelled in
Whatever your daydreams, those things were important, and spite of the dangers.
implicitly accepted as alright for a child to do.
This edition is the product of
Now, you are presumably a grownup, who doesn't have time laboriously applying the craft of
for such outlandish frivolity. our collective neural networks and
your positive [and sometimes
Or do you? negative] feedback through Delver
Magazine.
The act of daydreaming of fashioning an imaginary We'd like thank the many dutiful
landscape is not solely the act of children. Novelists, actors, and Delvers who stuck with us all this
others routinely exercise this capability to create something time as well as new Delvers taking
special. their first intrepid steps into the
Now you may never be one of those things (though we do exciting world of role-playing.
wish well in pursuing such dreams.)

Yet that doesn't diminish your need to daydream. This game Derelict Delvers Delta?
is simply a way to guide those urges to create a shared locale—
and breath a moment of life into them and have a rousing good Derelict Delvers Delta is the 4th
time in doing so. Edition of the wildly popular role-
playing games. You hold that very
Think of a role-playing games as a way to act out those book in your hands even now a
daydreams on paper. You pretend to be a hero of an adventure wondrous event worthy of
story, you talk in his or her voice, you do the things he or she jollification.
(let's not forget the heroines) would do. Now as a grown up we
don't expect you to run around saying “Pow!” “Pow!” and then
likely arguing over who shot whom first.
 Instead we offer a somewhat novel approach in this context
that gives you a few simple rules to work out who shot whom,
and how bad it hurts. We set things up for you—to let you be
Despite this being the 4th
the hero, and let someone else called the Derelict Master or DM
edition, many playtesters due to
for short.
the name began referring to Delta
as being 3-D, and in mirth we
The DM will create the world around you and bring it to life.
decided to accept this declaration
He gets to be the director, scene painter, and prop manager.
and make a run of it. Thus the
deluxe edition comes with 3-D art,
You get to be the actor playing the hero.
and duo-tone lenses to titillate
your eyes with the ocular illusion
Simplifying things you can sit around a table, with your
of depth.
friends who take up the various roles of other heroes, and one
If for some reason you chose to friend who becomes this “DM” and describe your actions like
get the mere ordinary edition of first person book. “I leap across the chasm!” you may say.
Derelict Delvers Delta, do not be
ashamed, for the game is every It is then of course the DM's job to make this challenging. He
bit, no, MORE exciting when sets how far the chasm will be, and how hard it will be for you
played! as your hero to do just that!
Wonders greater than simple
Thrills and excitement abound as he places your hero in
ogling the art would bring!
dangers even deadly situations in derelicts long left to ruin by
the long lost Ancients!

That is Role-playing in a nutshell. If you don't entirely get it. Just

imagine yourself as being in one of those fancy video games.
Yet, with very few restrictions on what you can do. No computer
who can't understand “Leap over the crates and blast the robot
in the leg actuator!” Instead a real, LIVE, person can say “sure,
you can try that!” then tell you how hard it will be for you to
manage it.

That is of course where the rules come in—they help him sort
it out and make it fast and fair.
 Introduction
Why the ARCHIVE?
The galaxy has witnessed ages virtually unfathomable to the
mortal minds that have shaped it. Before this mute witness,
numerous civilizations have grown and spread their wings The ARCHIVE was introduced in
across the spiraling splendor that it holds. Delver #6 in response to “My
players have too many artifacts,
As all things must these great empires collapsed inward and what should I do?” type questions
fell to barbarism and savagery. which plagued the first edition of
the game.
In time, they lost recollection of their ancient grandeurs.
When DDB (Derelict Delvers
Now, a new civilization has sprung forth eager and curious.
Beta) came out in 1981, we added
A civilization willing to brave the decrepit derelicts, lost
the ARCHIVE as an answer to the
laboratories, forgotten remnants of ages past to recover ancient
question, as well as rules for
alien artifacts and data left long dormant.
artifact sacrifice providing
experience points to the character
You are one of these delvers. Destined to glory or death and
as a reward for their retrieval. It
pursuing both with mad abandon.
also made sense that in a busy
universe, an adventuring society
ARCHIVE
might have some internal support
system in the settings.
The Artifact Recovery Control and Historical Investigation
Venture Enterprise licenses you to to enter ancient
archaeological sites, and kill the deadly denizens within, and
take those denizens stuff. The ARCHIVE is part of the
foundation upon which stable galactic civilization and law is
built.

Archive is a corporation founded on exploiting the vast

resources of the past it is also a part of what keeps the galactic
economy stable, on new resources being developed and on the
further exploration of space.

The ARCHIVE also has a significant stake in preventing

civilization destroying artifacts from being activated, used or
being duplicated, even for war. They prefer to keep such
devices as far from planetary governments as possible.